The breeding of New Principles…
What is a principle? I mean the question qute engeuinely. We all know, or think we know, they are ideas of asscation. But then what exactly is wrapped up in the idea of assocation? And that there are three of these principles, the realtinos of ressemblence, contiguity and causaility. But Hume’s [rpof of these realtion is itself enough to cautio us int any very quick rendetion of them. His proof is not one of logic but rather gentle force. These are the gentle forces that gradually ites us togther. Struggle as we might, we will rind our mind lways ‘assocationing’. Or to put it a slightly different way these realtinos are the one which all simple and complex ideas must conform to. Deas which follow the rules of relation will then define their position of against all other ideas, the know where and when the split off from these ideas, and how they can enrich temselves within the context of those ideas. The relations will then found the sense ideas become more vidid across time. Each idea will need to follow the gentle force of relations between impression in order that it can occupy the mind at all.
Principles task is therefore to articualte the SPlit of oidea and impressiosn. An impression is a vivid flash, and over, it is self finishing in being given. An Idea lacks that ability of finishing. It lingers. It understands itself, and its lingering, while beng finished (the split of Little Dorrit) then in terms of principles. As it lingerit enter the mind,a nd entirs th world pof more complex ideas, ideas that need o run across many simple ideas (as each impresisosn is already over). The principle then act as a gentle force, an apparently external element, but withi ideas give the occlusion of principles, by looking to other ideas, by forming relations within them, and being caught up in them. A simple idea ceases hen to ever be simply what it is. It also become caught up in other elements, in other dimensio of what it is not, and could never be: That is with complex ideas, and is done so by a forcea real )(if gentle) as that which created the impresiso in the first place.
However it is more or less at this point, Hume hit the buffers of Philosophical thought. There appear three deep and cutting problems withi this empirical decution of principles. Firstly and by far the least convincing. If one reads Hume awong, then might appear little power or rules to dciding which ideas becomes assocated with which. Is not everyhtig cotigigous to everything else? The proble with this critisim is that it fials to grasp two further dimenasions of ume. One the one hand, whileHume is of course aware that one cancreate connections between every ideas. Or course one can as one has a mid. His point is though that most connection so created will be unstable, in that they will encompasse assocation between different ideas, which only come togther once, and at a certai time. Suich assocation will thn tend to fragment I th face of more normal associations. This first dimension thought would then appear still to have the the problem of grouding. What can ground these ;gentle forces’, there habitual links? This is then where the second dimension comes i play. The Humean principle is no passive element. If is a force, albeit a gentle or, fin fine stitching by Little Dorrit herself. A principel wil the Frret or as Gyspy-Pancks would hav it, Mole aroud diggig up is own connection in labourous activities of its own. The be a gnele force is the to be setting out ones feels. To Be finding that Artheur Cellnanm is not one of he clennamas of Cornwall, and yet knows one of te Dorrits of Doreset. It is to be caution, to know that names are often the same, it is to produce extra information, which then gets testes and retested,. It is to be aware that the entire picture could easily reverse, an what seems one thing now could easily become otherwise. It is therefore to procede not with any quich or rash linking of everything to everytihin, but rateh it involves a very getle trying out of a force whose effects will be know In the mind only in gentle enquiry.
Secondly there appears a deep problem about whatcauses these forces. Humen chiirply says he does ot know, an cannot know. This failure is then problematic because it could be understood in two quite istinctve ways. On the one can one can understand it, as Kant certainly does undertand it, as a failure of nerve or confidence. Hume was simply unable or unwilling to think the necessary subtly of the Humean mind, and needs resort to a crude image of the body, an iamge whose application his own philosophy ought to have undermined. Alternatively, one might ccpe that Hume has a genuine reasosn to be chirpy. He knows that that the split of imression and idea precludes any other than the principles. Wr do not jhave a direct grasp of whjat the world is beyond that split, and do notreally need it. The split, which is then orchestrated within the assocations of these principles. It is not a lack of nerve, som much as an articulation of the point that the human mind enters into the process. The accord that this point keeps with world beyond it, clearly has something to do with soething else, that whch is for us given in having a body, and yet one cannot then know exactly how this link is made, from within its making. The Split then is what is creative in the mind, is its rights to set its self up within the world and give itself a world of its own. One needs to ignore the arrparent claims of reality, and merely rest in the care of something else, some mystery that allows this accord.
However this point leads to the third point here. Tjere is a sense where Hume is not quite been true to the radicalness of what he is trying to say. Hume clear;y wants principles, which with there gentle force, are capable of re-writing the world they findthemselves within. However it is not quiote clear his principles are really up to this. This is because in the end he fail to properly account for the difference between impressions and ideas which he has him,self installed. He therefore posses the principles of assocation as ifthey were equally between impressions and ideas: . Only Causalty, which of course Hume thinks ise esapcially important, does not operate accordingules which are actually set in impressions. Once Hume has made this move, then it is unlikely he can tell apart the two elements in the second point raisedabove. It is all too easy for the impressiosn, which are linked somehow (but who klnows how) to the world, and presumabley to the bpody, to be confused within the freddom of the ideas. One seeks to ground the one as one grounds the other, nd fails to allow for the really rather radicle differences one has opened up between the two. Morevoer this blindenesss has, for Hume and for phil;sophers following him, the additional advantge that it allows one to reintroduce a form of globalization. If the split of the mind is at one with the spolit of impressiosn, then there must be something else, some other principle of the world which can be suppose effecting this split. Moreover this something mus to a degree be as universal as the split itself is./ in an instance one has moved from the domaina of Empricism and into the realm of that ‘other’. Call it subjec5, call it time; call it will.
Hume’s problem here is the that he has not fully understood the radicalensss of his own idea. The point he is developing does not need a simple account rooted in parralelism. But more than this Hume also clearly wants to have principles which are easily reoncilled to a subject. It is the subjects fate to hold impressions within a loop (the Deah of my Soul), and therefore to hold impressions within a single mind. Ultimately Hume’s pricnuiples enforce and support this iodea. The assocation makes no difference to the idea (which by itself is fie). But That no difference is then confused within the iodea that the principle makes no diff3erence at all, which is manifestely false. For a The grey whilte mortar I w wall to finidh being Grey and white is oe thik, while to be infornt of the grey white of acharinging rhino is quite another, even though the impressiosn is the same. In thn end then, Hume does not appear to have quite the cofdence to le his principles actually create. He does not free Amy from the prison of ‘reality’, and does no then fully articulate the palyfullness of hat he has discovered: that is its abilty to re-confugure the world ti uncovers itself within.
Or to put this a slightly different way. What is surely the radical point in empricism is the being caught up a part of somethig one understands only in being a part (even though that understanding appears always to pose the world as compelte). The Split of Little Dprrit cannot mean anything else than this radical incompleteness. It is this that probably should be being articulated. And yet Hume does not do that. What he articyaltes instead are princiuples that appear to globalize within ease,m and tostraddke all inpressiosns. The Mystery then cease to become central, and ceases tobe distinct form the mystery of being a body. One is caught in the world, because one is a body, and therefore because thee ought to be an accord. A move that is quite unnecessary, it one matains the clearly seprate ideas; of being caught up as a radicle part in th world(whose wholeness if opnly given I that part), a; and the ideqa of beig a fininte part of the world (that is having a body). These ideas are no doubt liked; and yet are hardly synomous. One can easily imagine being a part is a divinity and therefore a part which lacks body. Or cou;d likewise very readily understas oneself a s a body within is itself part of materiality, but that being a part hen exaplained every there was to klnow about th body (and thence th mind). The divisions are different, and Asmy, sitting in the Marshalsea knows this. All the difference between herself, the unseen unheard focal point of the mind; and Mr merdle, the linch pin of psociety, who endlessly effect movements between different individuals, and yet whose wealth is as illssionary as the realtion he effects. The oe articulates into life, the other, to a degree into death, and the two need to be thought apart (even though ofcourse they merge: Merdle and ittle Dprrit togther give Mr Dorrit the death he needs). The Prblem si thn when one needs pricniplkes whose rogiane lies in being patchwork, in ot being global at all, in the denyial of simple globaliszaintion: but rather est of a huidden act of sowing, a sowing distinct from ipremssion, andnatiuve to ideas.
At this poujnt Amy again interveres. Sahe has noticed two further points about Hume’s pricnp;les. Firstly they appear to have a very pecualr relationship with time. The first, resemblance clearly p[ithes itself against temporality. It links and re-liksthe mind in th absence of distinct temporal occasions. It splice together memories whi are then years apart. It runs couter to simple times. While the second pricnipke is, if anything even more radical. It ppear as contiguity to include time as a subset to it. Time is oe of thye things that contiguity has, it is a subset of it: Athing it articualrtesm and move on from. While finally habit operates internally to time, but as a means to articulate it. Each principle therefore serves as a way to articulate a feeling of part hood. Is one a part across times, in the dina; of the ticking clock? Is one a part in the presentce of time articulates as a aprt of soemthign else, a part in different stories (but also its own story). Is time then itself merely a being a part. Snd if so a part of pwhjat? Finally are we as a habit, a part to time, and if we are what does this part itself look like? What could it then be? What makes principle interesting isnot then the naivatey I raltion to temporality as Kant and all his followers pretend to thinl. It is rather there profound blowing apart of any simple reading f time: Time is merely a set amongst others, a set whoe rules are by no means as clear as they might be.
But L:ittle Dorrit has another point here. The trouble with Hume s not that assocatyions are not in a sense extensive and to a degree globalized, it is rather then wy thatglobalizing itself is being thought. The Global is not something to be supposed, or imposed, but rather soemthigt o be discovered. The principles are therefore ways of pul;ling out elements that one always feels one knew allalong. There are the silent trackway in the mind that are, like the high ways and byway of A,ies London beign trodden, and trodden again. It is no concincednet that psychoanalysis staryed from a theory of free assocation, and concoted the idea of the unconsciuous tho exaplain it. Howqever no such unconction is really necessary. Assocations are always hidden. I the sense that the exact streetys one passes as one make sa jpourney are hidden. Hiddn by waiting, but there, available for other liks. The asopscationist mind is then one that genuinely fails to understan lements in terms of New. On the contray it articualtesthe power of finding and refounding itself within those ideas it already knew it had. It is there ideas which gradually resticth themselves and warp into ont ideas, other impressions
Perhaps one needs to divide this ;last point up ino two seprate elements. One dimension is cleakry geographic. The elements of assocation lie always before oe, like the streets of lived London. The hosues one lives in, the journeys one makes: Alongside the oither journeys ione could make, the other ways one could be, or think ones own nature. Natures then become caught up not ith possibility or even virtualities, but rather trackways, routes on follows, within other trakcways aAlready caught up in then, and caught by them, othe rl;ements to be. The second element here lies in inventing. The creation of different rackways, if these trackways are not simply new is clearly complex. It is a case of refounded what was alreasy there, and pulling it, givie very particular new experiences in a deifferent manner. Onne needs not just a globalization of ideas, one also needs somethigjn wute different. A principle of the inventoir. Nor is this probably enough. There are also going to need to be principles which somehow weave togther or perhaps narrate these journeys: prinuiples whose role it to make them make sense, and to give the subcreation then involve, the linking togtehr hen inhabit, a reality of its own.
Principles appear suddenly to have become more complex, and more itnereting.
Once one sees then as principles of ideas, and therefore of orchestrating the missing element, the split or idea and impression, an orchestration that found thinking on always being a part in althoer system which is also know but… then the question of what they are is clearly re-opened. One must npt too readily reconcile the world these two dimesion: the dimension of the world that is ‘already there’, and the power of the principles to give oneself a s a aprt of it. Or do so is surely to risk, however implicitly redintroduing a domain of secret causes. Each impressiosn would, necessarily be the secret cause for subsequent ideas: And The Hueman dream of a ohilosophy based on effects alone would be lost. One must rather allow principle to be always arranging effects, as effects (and therefore in the absence of the need of a cause)l. the Gentle forc eof the principle is the the gentle force which one enquires of ideas how they are, and how they must be ,inked to and withi other ideas: That is the force which allows all idea togther to exist in the effect: In a world of parts and beign a part withouta world of hidden secret causes.Or rthaer, ni a world in which effect are natural, causes are a subset of hose effects (and not necessailr the most important subset).
However one needs a further word of caution here. Hume;s act of glbalsization is nt altogether worng. It is write in yet another dimeion., Princicples are not quite like little Dorrit. It is here role to stay within Marshaleas, and never strain beyond it. Principles clearly do not simply stay within the convines of experience. On the contary all rpcinciles always strain beyiod the experience they have, and strain towards a world. A Principle will hen always be arranging elements of which are not just part, but also part of (soe nmthign else). The Parts are thereore always angles to other reality, which are split from the principle itself, as Merdle ios split from the world of the real. Parts, and pars of, will run very close togthe thtereofre, and frequently harry Little Dorrit, the mistress of Parts alone.
Principles are therefore curiously pitches between different senses of beig a part. A pinciple si first n foremost a part as that part I given within ideas, as a sovereign effect. A part without demands or reoncilling. But The roincinpleis also, in being that part a part of (the world). It finds orinciples wihin the world, and applies the part (soverein) to them. It finds ways fro them to be. The problems is these voices need t be both kept apart, but also allowed to resonate across one another. The strength of the priciple lies in the cration of this ressoancne. This ressonace is comeplx: one can understand it both in terms of the streets of London: As the textiure of the unown within the unkown. In this context, maybe one can say Amy, the links hidden but there the part is allowed to be gorudinging in its very elusivity, the world of the p[art of soemthign: A street, a trackawya. Or one can foud the resonance the other way aroud, as the inventor, who as the surrogate father to little Doprrt, explains who what was elsewhere in the invents, can be caught up in her split, in creativity. Hime’s ‘porobem’ is not that he does not have all thse degrees of texture. On the contrary he clearl does. It si rather hat he can rush a little quickly, and gan imply the part and the part of must be related, in globalized principles, wihich give the wo as synomous, and ththerefore impressions Little Dorrit within debt, an the demand to account for the world which was never her own. It is the role of principles to straddle this divide, and they must not simply assume this divide is straddle: That was Kjant’s move, and Hume is different from that (teven though sometimes his clarity dmms and he is close to this point). One needs then principles which clearly juxatpose parts and partsof, and allow them to be rethought and re-examined, according to the influxes of thought.
In the context of Little Dporrit, perhapos one might identiety three such new pricnipniples: Affrey, the dreamer, who dream the truth of apparent reseembalcne: {Packs the gysypy, the mole of contiguity, who kows that contiguities need to be created from experience, and ar never to be simply assumed: And Folora the tajic mermaid of the past: Thewomen who poknows that habit hide xtra turhts, and need to be kept, inspite of their passing.
However this pricniiples will no longer need be enough. One also needs a rogue principle: the principle that illusateswhy simply assuming the spilt of part of and part are one and the same is so problematic:One neesds then a principle for who the part of is identical to the part: Te arist then of equaivalcne, of a world which is self justified, and ytt problematic: The Aritst of human Nature, Gowan is surely such a pricnuiple. Liekwsie one needs the oppsote priciple. That which shows how one confuses the part with the pat of, one ios caught up in fnatisy on new self tormenting problems of ones own: Here is the chaacter of Miss Wade, the Self-Tormentor.
This last principles matters in a world without synthesis, because it offers a way of moving between, and sperating out ideas and impressions that are, in most cases already complex. This mtters, all the more is aworld whee its it impossible totell between ideas and impressions, save as a matter of intensity (19). The Simple idea appears the copy of an orignal, that is not different from it (and therefore has no reference beyond being that copy): Or rather appearsdifferent not by votnent so much as strength vivacity, and completeness. (although hume forgets to menetion here the last point, 1). For example, take the abstract ideas of tiragles (20. folloing Berekely, Hume argues aht such an idea has two distinct ingredients. Oe theone hand is the idea we hold in our mind. This idea, Hume sugeests is wlays of some real exmple of being a triangle. One the other it produces, nested into this silge example, and liked to it by the princile of resemblance, a power to coceive all other triangles, as being similar o this one, and thereore to peceive the idea of triangles in general (20):An idea of a triangle carried within itself a power than runs beyod it. This power, or principle of invention, is the greater then the idea itself. Hume gives th example of the equilateral triganle. If one takes that triangle as the example for alltriangles, and terefor assert all triangles have the have size anlges, he suggests all counter examples comeinto ones mind, all other tiangles where this is not the case, and one must rethink one ideas. This does not the prevent one idea being the example used in amny different ideas (21). Or pepahs (although Hume does not quite put it this manner), being so because it is an abstract idea. I mean here, that the example itself, the trignalge, will clearly in beig different to the power it represents, become productive or new spin off ideas. To have an idea of an equaliateral triangle, is to have also an idea of all other triangles, but also of equality (which makes this triangle different), and regualriy (that ties this triangle, as opposed to all others to other shapes),, and though those shapes to series…The principle which sets up the sigle example as the power, from which other examples follow is of course inventiveness. It is the power of the inenvtion, to gather as a power a variety of prodcess, an abilty to kow a shape, a power given I a single element, a single represetation. This representation, then as it is givien ope itself back ontpthe world of diversity.
Or to put this another way, it is the power of invention to be able to genuinely treat impressions and idea as linked, but also become creatively, and endlessly distintinguished. Inventio, then achives soemthign remarkable, in that it makes ideas, which appear otherwise merely as the copies of impressions (save in their enduring nature), take on an new dimension of impressions, or almost ivert there logic. Each abstract complex idea, embodies a greater intensity than the idea itself has a right to. This intensity, is then given withi a power: and yet the givingof that power is itself subject to how that idea is making the linlks between elements it is making. It then it makes subtly different links, then the same image, will loose its itesity (or gain itin a different way), and become part in other power. Ideas the acquire the dimension of impressiosn, in that they are strangley ‘other intese’ , and strangley al oappear to demand that one links one linksthem with other ideas curotsery of this intensity. That is that they are, even as they appear how, demand to be, as an impressions does a part in a system, and so as they are the progeniture of differing other ideas (the idea of other trigahngles).
Or to putit another way, invention’s roleis to create a principle where the difference Amy makes, the difference beween impressions which are of themselves always over, and ideas which endure, while still being one and the same with those impressions, becomes imperceptible and proactive. As I invent, I form abstract ideas, in which ideas passinto one another, and endure, I a different for, in an intensity, in as image, which has acquired a new intensity, and which necessarily implies the formation of new impressions (other triangles), and so new ideas: To invent, is then to articulate the powers of Amy, to sp;lit impression and idea, while keeping the two one and the same.
Whjere then does Gowan., the Artist come into the picture? He is the opostie element. If one takes Hume or invention at face value, it becomes immediately, and profoundly incorprenhisible. Hui,e asserts after all very badly tht ideas and impressions are one and the same. Ignoring Amy this is of course absolutely the case. And yet as such creates endlessly problems. Rif one takes Hume’s own example of line. He argues in the proviing of abstract ideas thatall simple ideas, even apparently abstract one such as a line come withi a quantity and a quality attached to them. The problem is such simpl example (and even more in more complex examples, such as the impression one has of Paris or Goldenmountains), is that the self occulding nature of the imression appears impossible to understand. What is it that makes one say this is a line, what gives it the value of being a line in ones mind, it that giving is not constructed in some way> Hume apparently, if one ignores Little Dorrit at least, has now answer.
Or rather his answer is clearly bizarre, or can easily appear so. The answer appears to be that what gives a line is lineness, is not the perception of it, some much as one very demand for quanity ad quanity tgther, and synomously.A line is made a line, because black, implies shap, and shape implies defintion. One simply then does not have a choice but t be fininte. The finte element, the being a shape, isthem implict withi impressions thesmvles 9and so faithfully copied wihin their ideas). One does not then have a sperate process of synthesis, because each quality and quantiy imply pne another: They are already withi one another. This is aftwerall for Hume the lesson of the self occi;ding impression. Each impression self occludes because in conveyoing a quality, it is already an quanity, it already has a certain amount, and does so as it is our perception (although we are of course hidden exact howand wh yhat mpression becameour object in the first place). Once this point is givien, one qualityand quanity are said t arise togtyher: Space has qualities, qualities demand space, and hove to realitybeyond that demanding then impressions carry wihjin them thir own being finte.
Every impression is finte because, at some point it needs to end. It is of course the case that impressions are or differing kinds. There are many impressions that occupy greater units that the self occulding moement. And yet one needs to undersand that this ios not because they involve some kind of synthesis so much as one has failed to undersand the nature of the self occul;sion. Gume isvery clear, there is nothing of itself special in the moements our minds draw in the world. It makes absolutely no sense therefore to say that the self occulusion in an impression related to a define plan. It rather relates to the limtation of our minds, and the factes of impressions. All impressions are necessarily finite, and must always be so, because they are impressions. Our minds are likewise finite, th least point is therefore the point at which our impressions start at. Hence here is nothing very special about the fact that an impression such as a lie or the Sun or even Paris occupy man moments: To a Giant or a God, even the complexities of life in Paris in a day,could inol;ve a moement. Each impression therefore naturally contains withi itself, a certain qualtity of space, and a a length of time in its comprehension. Tyo look at aother, is to be, I forming ones idea taken opver by that othr, by is impressiosn.
However to the pPost-Katnain world this sparks two sets of preoblem. How long eed one look at the shape to get an impression? If impressins really are ‘to do with the thing’, or at leas tour coflict within the thing, then surely one needs there ought to be a limt to the time one needs, and so how is that limt understood? Here one needs to take care to respect the right of Amy. Her point her is that the moement one forms an idea of a impression as an impression, as a line, or the sun or Paris, itself takes a shape and a time, certainly. It this time one could do know other than de occupy in that contemplation. However one must not mistake this fact for two other element. On the one hand once one has formed that idea then, the idea feedback into the impression itself. knowing thesun to be, omne then understands these impressions, via the principles to be akin to the sun itelf, and one establishes new linkls, and new possibilities. But likewise, needs to bare in mind the problematic nature of the perceptio of complex impressions. Such impressions, such as Paris or the hurch or state certainly do exist, but we do not readily form ideas of them. Or rather our ideas are always partial, as we cannot I our mind ever complete the impression of Paris itself (3). There is nothing then preventin an impressiobeing logically too great for our comprehesion. At suc times, ouur idas, Hume suggestes of this are adied various . Firstly, one can easily form an idea n the knowledge that there is a whole, even if one cannot directly comprehend it. One forms then an idea of a million, without an real dea of the kind of umber a million is. Likewise, as all Humans wil lbe caught in the same circumstance, custom and usugage wil lsurfice (24). In this process language then can no doubt a key role, in that it allows one to form a ‘simlest’complete impression. To say Paris, is to be caught up I a euence of ideas which are aleays incomplete), and yet which realte perfectly adequately to the complex dea of Pais 9which is likewise incomplete in every knower of Paris), and whichcan then be communctated, and used, whithoutit actually mattering that the impression which occasioned them., Paris itself, is itself never absolutely given: To be in paris is only ever to be caught I a fragement of its narrative.
That is, one avoids the problem of complex impressions, because one can at a certain point break of, one caninsert an extra dimension, whih makes the very fragmeneted for of the imprssion, realte back to an idea (which is of course of itself fragements). The Hwever there are two attendeant danger in this process. On the one handit is all too easily to then confuse this process with a substanc. Pairs, the impression, is clearly not some hidden susbstance, which impressions are expected to form to, bu rather a process within impressions itself. To be ion he comolex impression of Paris, is never to complete a thing: To be caught up in a sequenc eof sounds, and smells, different from anoy other city, and different from the country. Paris is therefore nthign beyond these impressions, and one needs not pose any sustance (although at time.,as will be discussd below it will be useful; to do so).
However there is a far deeper danger here. The existence of Paris or the chirch or state in my mind needs t be carefully clairifed. The ideqa itself is stiryru rather than a narraive. The impressions it the realte to are fractures, and fracuuring. It parts bleed across each oher, and demand a resolution that cannto be simply sigiev. Oe is then endelssl re-weaving the narrative squibs, and pulling of against each opther. Morevoer a part in this process is the very world Paris. The very failure to form a complete impression, ad the susbstituion for that impression by a random name, appear tp demand a narraive of its own. One appears tp need to tie these elements togther, and form an idea bi enopughto fit the impossible perceptipn of Paris. One faces then the danger one will attemot to move beyond being the teller of stories, and into quite another orbit.
Once of course this point is made, it becomes obvious that such events are too numnerou to mention. One need notneed to be great to be anevent. Pairs certainly is one, but so too,can be teingones shoe laces, in that in imposing a ause (or not) one is opened into other possible dimensions, other world, where diffeent circumstances happened, and with them differet peaople, differing thoughts. To Tie one laces, at a certain time is then to have numerous extra impl;iction of preculsaion, which shatter one abilty t grasp oneself as anything other than shattered into the implications of an envent. Pairs, is simailriy impssible to perceive, I its endless changes, both in the city, and beyond. Impression therefore very eaily poit to worlds that shatter all ideas, and all simple thoughts in which one attempots to grasp at those ideas. However Little Dorrit is rather impatien here. It never occurred to her than most peception where nto of th Paris kind. Of they are. Must perception, like most tlements in the world are beyond the conceptions of a littleDorrit. But what must b careful to understand the consequence of this beyond. The Storyteller (and for that mtter the inevotr) understand the consequenes of this beyond. They have no need of a grand narrative, and so except their shattering as a matter of course, a matter of creation; as the circumstnce they uncover Little Dorrit within. To be shtattered,to hve shattered isea is to have creative ideas, andthey need not worry about the circumstances, beyond little Dorrit herself for that spoliting. For then, then the power of grand event, or ven little events, is that in unwinding themsvles, they operate as abstract ideas, they alow new complication, new connection to be dran, between ideas which spring fromimpressions within the impression (and which must therefreo somhow realt back to that impression), and other ideas elsewhere. The mind in thiking these ideas, then opens itself out to new richness, now possibilities, in the sense of new links and connections. There is a pride then in may on the Iron Birdge, or Amy loking at stas, looking at what is not finished, and which it that unifnishing, in the extra dimension it provokes, the virtuality it instigates, allows other assocates in, and so creates extra resonance within those stories to be told, and those invention to be made.
For Amy it is not the impossibility of narratives than matter, andso not the shattering power of the even, but rathe the successful useae of th shattered elements, which must b constantly stitched and resticthed, as perpetual parts is shifting sories. Her problem is th that peole do not realize that. They value the Narrative, nd are for ever, very inncoinveienetly making themselves heors in narrative that have nothing to do with them. Atsuh time Amy needs recourse toevent ( walking of the iron Bidge), and the conetplation of impressions which are greater than even her (the star).
What then is the problem of being a narrative? It in short it makesa istake that Huime at time appears to endorse, the mistake of the simple confusion of idea and impression.He readilly assets that the two appear identical. And of course in regard to content, in simple examples they are (which is of course why must start with simple dimensions). And yet there are eveni these simpl dimension two lements where they appear widely dissimilar. Firstly in regard to thesplit itself. An idea’s power, even the most simplest, lies in it posing itself a part amongst opther ideas. Each idea needs, unlike impression never to be simply finished. It needs to occupy, and be an occupation.: it needs to fd itself problmaticaly (and therefore never simply acceot itself as it is). The confrantantion here then with impression thesmvles,which always, however spurilously claim to be finished is very marked. Impression are whole,eve when those whose are impossible to be thought. The must be complete, and over, and pose themselves as that which is overing.
Ideas are then is a peculiar that they are parts, by parts hi deal within wholes. A man of ideas in the looking and the suppose man of whole disatified, and dissapinted. How cold it be anythelse.? But much more p[owerfully than this this dissapoint is contagopus (one has to bethe double of death to avoid it). The rasosns fo the dissapintemnt are clear. Impression, which simple ideas appear to be one and the same as, hae it easy! They are, and that is it. They eed not account for themselves, or do anything other than be. The reasosn for its abilty to spread is likewise easy to explain. Complexideas and complex impressin, go there seprate ways, and demand though in their compehension,. This is not o with simple impression,a nd their ideas. it is then very easy to take any complex idea, and complex impression, and to dissolve it into a sequence of imressions, and a sequence of ideas: Whizzig the two around, as they appear at the simplest level to be one and the same, until the entire economy of impressions and ideas become impocmprensible and utterly witout value. Idea abilty to linmk togther I then set as worthless. Impresisons immediacy, their ever yabilty to be over is likewise made valueless. Impressions are then merely caught within a prison jar, as if in a bad painting, where all there impressions are misrepresented, and yet in such a way that can ot tll the falsity of this impressions.
This abilty, the abilty of the artist, is the then aboth demand that every reality comes dow to th simple union of idea and impression and the simplest level. This dimeinsion Yiem argues (though May has her doubts). The simplest level for hume at least, should be the ultiamtel gurantor. The Empricist needs to take copmplex ideas, and suspend them, at leas titnailly with the uestio : I do ot understand. The empricist doesthis though, in the full knowledge that this question itself changes what the idea, and its imression might be. To opull the elements apart, and to put them back ogter is then perilous (which iswhy Amy would not for one start here). It use is then governed by custom, and stanardared usauge. For the empirical philsopher, it needs, for Hume merely to be part of their tool kit. A element id tracing where ideas are made and reamde, and howthey might be useful. Amy accepts this: Her problem her is that her power is best revealed when she is unnoticed. He dreads then being simply laid bare, in the knowledge of the subsequent demand.
That demand is where the second dimension of the artist come in. Once thew world is stripped down to it barest assumption (which move no doubt delights the artist mind), then the subsequent demand to runall these simplicities thrugh oneself, to synthesize (rather than conjoin them). The world becomes then my idea (insome way or other), and the power of what is external tome is devualed, or even lost altogether. The world becomes a realivsed exhachg, where the profound disjunction between myself ad the hiddneworld, and ideas and impression is lost or even inventered or reversed. The Ariist, starts with a straight forward concern, the problem ofof howto understad where things come form: The power of placing Amy is suspentionor even of ingoring her alteogther- a power (as I will devleope latter, which issynomous to death). From this point the decompse to world, and do so uch the conjunction become mere ‘custom’ or habit: And therefore apparently problematic. Hence Hume’s dictum that Scepticism heeds to b=only ome in small ticture. Killing ide, or rather cutting them back, back towards the simple has its validity, and yt withi limits: To pul lall the way, is to reduce little Dorit, and the power of the splitof of ideas and impressions, to nothing, in ones attemopt to uncover: or frather to reach a layer where one mneeds to switch the two other, or grief that onecannot. A pojt the world itself appear utterly lost at: Amy’s poit is sh must beheld to run I the opposite direction.
Here one needs caughtion. Amy herself is no idelist. She is more tht happy to emrge from a complex idea, and sirupt it, from ihin. But she knows this needs,as far as she ios concerned to from within. It is her role for example as her Father messenger not to ask for money, when she is meant to be asking for it: on the grounds that the result will be the same. It is not then that Amy does not disrupt: f corse she does, she does in a sns enothigelse. Theproblem isnow onereaches the level o her disruption. The Asrtist, Gowan runsthe opposte way for the shere joy of I: The point being then that there is othig is empricism that canprevent this move – and al lis left to I is for Huem and his Amy to disapprove, without preveting. However one lst point needs to be adeof thi last point. It is perhaps here in the artisit that Hume’s principles might to nadir. The principles f contiguity, resemblance and cuasaily, have all the the bedased power o the artist. Gowan would have beepround of them, and their stripped down effects. That is he wouldhave though that the fact that they attmt todefine what ought to be the mot omplex of phenomena, and e richest, in terms of the simplest elements, highly diverting. Here Hume has, Amy might suggest, has not really helped himself by sperating out preflexion from prociples. The point is that this diviion, the divsio by which he produced his principles was itself already a priciple, and therefore already suspect. The proble,m of globalization follow o from this. Once one ha divided down to the simple root, and produced a principel there, is certainly becomes global, and yet whether that globalization itself has value, is quit another matter. Amy suspect ishas some vale at the elve it is pitched; and yet could be all the more useulf if only it was pitched at other levels:; It would moreover then be utterly sperate from synthesis and from a process in the mind which might be demanded by which those thoughts become mine. A good Prinipel need not work that way. It knows impressions are related to beyond it. It need not the asosciuated from he simples impression (although it always cn do so). It can jus as easily assocat from complex ideas, and there related polyglot impressions, or even from the ideas producedby complex impressions themselves: There is not need the to retreat to a basic layer, t link ideas as parts togther: All one need are ideas, which are always parts: the role of the simple si then not essentialist or rather to be more truthful it is the denial of all essentialism in itself. The gurantee of tesimple levl is the guranteee that as the most bais layer of thinking, all ideas are a part: Ideas are that which experience even finishing asa reason to be a part: All the more so they are in a part when related to impressions which cannot be finished within the mind: That is when they are merely the part of a part. Litlte Dorrit’s principle are then that which need not facsimile the basic thoughts, and move: Those principles which deal with, being parts in complex wholes (impressions), being the aprt of the part, or evenm the part of a complex is finsiohed whole 9the idea of a sphere), andare woithotu being composed from scratched. Or to oput ti another way, they qare the sense that A,my is aleady ithin the line, linking it elseqwhre, and dragging it toward otherideas, even as that line is being forces, by som,e hidden force o the mind. She, and her the prinmciples are then the power to use where one is to be doiung other things… It is to those other I now will turn.
Before one looks directly at priciples, postive and negative, however, one needs very briefly to cosider somthign ese. Why os empricism, ithe hands of Hu,me at leas so opposed to time? Time does be come nearest, perhaps to the infamous Straw Man of Vulhgar time ( a formation no philosopher, perhaps Aristotle least of all ever adopts)?. Te answer lies surel in the realtiov strength and power of perceptions and time. The problem is what is owned, or perhaps better the stakes ivolves in owning. The choice Hume presents then are twoalterntives. O the one had time could be whatowns us, or what we own. His prolem, no doubt with this, is thatthis time presents, or perhaps better demands, externalworlds opr an internalworld. I mean here that either time owns us, we are internal to it, and ontolgoly is bak in business (something even the modicum of sceptism, Hume uses cannot accept). Or one can like Berekly, and Hume himself reamin caugh up in the truth of Empiricsm, the staring point of perception, that appear mysteriously in me, a mystery which is all the more profound, because those perception are known to be of the world, and of another , and never register anything about myself. Any attempt to grap either the ontology o the world o yet roué perceptions within a self is then automatically rulled out, and with it time. Or perhaps to put this differently. Time is a strand which poses an ownership in terms of a degree, a modicum of continuity, even if that continuity is based upon difference. What is own by an I think or what possesses or fabricates a soul, in a feeling of continutity, in whih the mind is divided. I Own, and am owns then are a individual. It ismy expoereince, I am, in the world ofg Deleuze like a sealed vessel, which can only realte to the rest of the world in diference. Hume rejects this viewpoint,. On the contrary the mind is no seled vessel. Its starting ground in perceptio lacks all unity enven the highly problematica uity time mingth give it. The point about a perception is then it is both finished in me (and which me) in thegiving; But also hat finishing is never of me. Prcveptios then occur within me, but never are mine. The same mysteries forces which gave them, could just as easily be had by another perso,or mytlef as another. Perceptions are then far from that which are owned, but are rather that lynh pin on which I could turn and return my mind. To Be green is the to be grass and poision and Islam and and…: it is to b a list, in whih all are what you are.
Hence the importace of principles, and the severe difference to categories. A Categoriy synthesizes time: in buils something other than is. The role of a principle of the contrary isto take the wiz bang world of casby, of treacherous memenry, where each idea opes onto others and onto falsehood, and install within that shifitin myriage of change certain set of gentle forces, whih incline, without propelling the mind in some way. The inclinatiuon itself being based on the fact that all these, in the absence of (or in the aritualtion of) a necessarily temporalio order, hang togther. That is they create counter points across the shifting Cabsy of the past, counter piountsm, that strike up realities.
One needs then to very berifely recap o the nature of Casby, of the kmirage, before understand how the three deepprinciples, of Mermaid (Flora), Gyspsy (packs), and dreamer affery) build upon whatlittle Dorrit gives them, to create a stradeling past.
Or perhaps one needs to fully grasp he oddity or originality of Hume’s position. Perhaps uniquely, his philosophy seeks to tread a new cause between naïve realism, perceptive reductionalist and constructionalism I mean, it is clear that for Hume perceptions are not the reality. On the contrary it is a repeated dictum of his that perception are not ralitd to things as they are, but rather to how we perceive them. and yet, and it is a big an yet, he is not Berekely. For Berekly percepti est esse. That is there was only perception, and no real wold beyod. This again is clearly not tre for Hume, I is not that there is not a real world,or even that we are not a ppart of that world, but rather that one cannot start either know the world of things themselves or our postion in that world. Both these realities depend on something else, on tumbling into our minds. Each perception then tumbles into our minds as a reference point to a world beyond it, and yet does so , in the readily awareness of the fact that the world to which it refers to is both real, and yet pecularily opaque, and unheard.
But neither, is hume a constructionalist in either of is usual senses. That is he does ot follow Kant in claimking that perceptio is somehow made in our mind. It is not. On the contrary our reflection our ability to have ideas is clearly internal to perception themelve: We are therefore internal to the world, even if that world is only given as it I in our percption: Here of curse Kant draws his own philsohpy as close as he can to Humes. Arguing that the I think, and consciousness demand that the world that Hume’s order is merely revered. It is not that perceptions create a subject in which they occur, but rather that subject, and the consciousness that it inlves, which must exist to receive those perception n the first place: The I think is then the ‘propense stucture’., the necessary constitutents of a mind, in which perception can occur. However there is a critical difference at play here Where Kant wants a transcednetal agency, a consciousness which is capable of graspiong perceptin, to contrct the orders in which the world appears to us, Hume is content to have not so much a mystery as a a probab explication in the body. The body cannot of course for Hume be an entire expnaination, as the body it itself a percepipn akin to all others (as are its senses). And yet one can speculate that it is he movements of the bod which allow perception to be as they are. Or rather it is the body which in moving gives us our perceptions: is is the bodies movements we percepive (rather than the rlaity beyond ourselves directly). And yet, of course one cannot simply grasp the reality of that obdy, or even those perceptions, those fluctatation directly. One always has to remember thjat one starts only within a process of perception, and that the body of itself does not explicate that perception. One looks to the body then neither a s a model or as a formal explaination or even, strictly speaking a plausible hypothesis. It is rather, the point in which in my perception of the world, I come aware that there is a point in the world in which I begin,and a point beyond whose being cannot be, and which captures me is the physicality of what I ca seeing, cathes me as a aprt in tht physicality, even as it allows me to distance myself from all simple reductions.
But Neither is Hume a Bergsonian construcationalist. For Bergosn of course the point about duration lay in its ability to catre the soul within the world. One can then talk of a shared element; duration. This shared element not oly bound nature togther, but also made each part of that nture an element within that anuitre. Each indvidual will then percepive a world according to their own postion, their own affects. One cannot copare directly the affects of Horse or man; even though, of course there are viryrtual affinities between the two. Perceptio is then a part of a greater ontology/ Hume’s relation here is complex. As already seen in the body example this is not simple reject. Ion the contrary the mechanics of the body does impose upon the mind retriction which are partial. Hum;’s point however is that th world itself, as it is givien to me, as I perceive it is eruptive impression, rather than strictly speaking a slice of a single duration. I mean here, the strength of Hume’smethd surely lies in the fact that the percepion withi me are never mine. Not only is there no I thik which claims them, but there is npo duration in which I and what ever causes them can be thought. On the contrary each perceptyion, genuinely unpicks my being (rember the body itself does not guranatyee that being). In perceptivng I come aware then of other breaking into what I have been, into those ideas I was. In percepeinving I am then genuinely forced beyond what I was, forced into somethjwere other than I had been.
Hence th estrange mechanics of an impression. Each impression is of course at once the strongest feeling that the mind experience, and yet a feeling which, as it is ralited to time at least self occulding (36). Each operception isthen given and over. How does not understands this ending? Of course if oe wan to fial to understand the power of hume entirely, one could make a standard ‘Vulgar’ reading of Hume. Hiem appear, to the lazy rader to be the holyu grail of bad philosophy, they Philsoher who really does say that time is a sequenc eof moements. Excpet of course he code not. His point is noth thatthere are a sequence of strange moements, so much as there is a pioitn is space and in time in which the mind beining. Here again (and Hume does implicitly at least make the parralel (58?), the point lies in what perception, and what a body are. Perception is the initially about a point and beigning. Hee hume is very clear. The eis noting in the external world that is very special about this point of starting. My ppercetion, my least moments, my giviens, are then already highly complex (although never infinitely so). I then strat in the middle of a world of extenso, where numerolus thing are already ahppening: likewise IU srat in a world of space with a least snatch of time: that is a point in mymid, and no doubt related to a process in my body, in which I finally grasp however vapid a perception. Here, of course thepoint of the body really bites: This is ot a liebizian body. It sodoes not contain everything, every movement, and then filter out the unimportant moves. But rathr a body no doubt (although this is of course improvable) is affected by only certain forces beyond it, some of which it gear up into prception: giving to the mind, which become involved at a certain point or part, whle other remain firmly beyond the level of consciousness, and therefore existence in the mind itself (there is of course no unscionscious here to hold these moves).
It is then quite clear that the mechanics of being a mind impose of thought, in the physial point, a point of beginning, of starting. One cannot then move from this point to talk of duration or time. The antehma of duration lies in its refusual to understand that the mind starts at a certain point, is a certin snitch of time: A perception. There is no problem then about gathering individual wave lengths of light within the mind, within the duration. This gathering is no part of the mind. One mightspeciuale it was a problem in he body, but this remains a spoecuation on the part of a mind looking beyond itself. Nor is time the condition of these perception. For Kant each perceptio resents a unity of its ow. Apprehensions task isthen to break into this unity, in the name of time and pull it elsewhere, into ocnsciousness. Hume would reject this hypothesis for three clear reasons. On the one hand he has provided an early account of time. His moement are unifed, and therefore give themvles in being complete I time – in being finished . Seconldy apprenhison works its alachemy for Hume oly of the secoindray level of rellfection. Hume might indeed accept this point, and yet still claim this misses the key orignal contributation in what he is saying: namely that there is an unseeable, unstatement difference in the uality of imprssion, in rleation to the ideas which ape them. The two are not quite the same, and Kant’s theory which is founded in claiming this I th problematic. Finally, and even more substantially for Hume that is a faal oscilltion in kant’s approach. Kant wants of ocurse t claim the consciousnesness is king – even thogh that consciousness is itself a personal. Andyetat the cirtical moement there of the instant. Of the promrary snuff of ime, conscouisness has no role to play. Consco=ious might be an I Think, draggin elements into subseqnet time, and yet the simple unity being in the manifold of moements, then manifold of impression laid one upon he other, cleary is consciou (it it were then the entire need for a synthesis slips by the wayside.). Kant therefore, for Hume needs to claim that where for Hume consciouisness begins, isfor kant the point uniquely in his system where there can be on conciousness at all, for if ther ws time would be impossible.
Before I retun to the first of these points, which clearly requires further explication (a move than wil lthen allow then rerun to time and is booby from a differing direction). One needs to to fully appreciate the full scope of Hume, in contrast to Kant. Kant is clearly keeping consciousness, and through it the Human spirit king, and time is mis mechanism for doing so. Bhume has utterly dethroned that onsciousness in the idea of qualtivite meoemnt. It is not that consciousness demands a untiy beyond the moement, so much as all consciousness is itself derived within the moment: or rather it is included as a part of it: An impression is indescrnible from an idea in the sense that in perceiving I am necessary conscious (and sso outching thatperceptino, as simple idea across my entire being), and caught up in giving the impression itself. However rom this fact Hu,e des notthem deduce that thre mst be something else, soemthign other, an ‘other conscioiusness’ or even strictly speaking an ucnsciosprocess. There might of course be so. Or more partocualr there clearly is the body, or brain and bodily organ, whci hare caught up in giving this process (and which can then always have a recourse to the mind; can rpovide with highly plausible explication), without having to be the only possible expaliantion. Or to put this last pijt slightly differently. Emperically one knows that there si something else, some other agent creating the mind. One assumes it must be a body (but one does not know that). But one cannot simply assert ownership of that body, can cannot simply ttrbiute to it thoughts of its own. Or rather if one could (and Hume,empirically would keep an open mind here), as one is thinking where ones own mind began, these thoughts whould belong as to a very different indvidual: not really an ‘unconscious’, as that implies some mirrir to conciousness (ad an inverted I think0. But rather somthign just incomserate with the mind that I have: something whose action the gurantee the untiy in mind without formally striving to create it: the ‘unity’ is then the perceives accident of a materiality which cannot provide a principle of unity in itself; ad yet which will, when related in an impression to a mind, form the backdop of a unity: Be hat to which a mind attributes a untiy that is never its own (or its impressions). The body is the empirical is a proactive sense. Its very unattrbiuatable effect: its unity which belong not to it, or to the mind that inhabits it, but rather to a realtiy suspended in between where the body ‘end’ in the imporession, in grasping an impression, and the ind starts, in the awareness of the imressing. Or perhaps, and bettr, it is the unity which is below any being, whichis not in the body itself, nor in the impressions, but which the mind, is being debauch in impressions, assumes must be (as a pure state) inorder to be debauched at all. Its empircallity, its uncertain unity, is then a not a condtion or even an assumption, so much as an empirical belief givien the debauching nature of perceptions (a reality that belong itself to impressions).
From this last point another arises There isclearly a real ambivalence within the Humean method about the stauts o external objects, or rather the untiy they force on us. Given ou unity is never itself gveble. The same is also true for external pecetpions. We can perceive then as they effet our body, and drag its unity otherwise. The untiy we then attrboute to them s neither theres or our own, but again suspended within us, and ithin thereeffect on that element that must be (as we empirically knw) inorder for use to perceive – namely our body.And yet of course from the Humean perspective one needs caution here. One mighy spoecualtae in this manner (via reflection), and yet of couse one canot simply know thiese elements exist, any more than one knows abiout the body.All ones speculation is is then plausible hypothesiz, and elements beyond us, and there effect upon us…
Far more substantive, and cirtical in the Humeanthought in the stuas of impressions themselves. Here a new perplexity clarly arises. Each impression as it is one alone, imposes itself upon us as something finished. This is al the more so in the matter of time.Each perception is then givie to the consciusness as in a sense perect. It is there a quality for it to grap, in the first instance the mind is (and with a percualr instensity in thinking). In being A perfect snatch of time, then ch mpresison imposes upon then mind a strange and very unfomcfortable prosition. An imoression grasps, alebt within possible physical contrati, a genuine externality of the world. The Mind is the affect in some way: it ithen jarred into thinking something beyond it. And yet, that thought is ereme and voiolent., in that is coculdes. The door then opens, the intense impression is givien, and immediately shut. Each isntanc, as a snatch occludes in giving. A Mind ishen caught in very pereplexily place. It has acess in a sequence of impressions to something real beyond it, and yet the beyond remaind violently different from it: Each perception dies as it is givien in the mind: Or better, is simply over; and finished in its giving. It otherness then remains utterly an complete, I that the mind cannt is any sense calim its unity. On the contrary o reflect, to imagine, to have ideas, and to have a mind is then different to the impression itself. Nor can the mind itself havefrom this percetio any guantee that its world can continue. All it knows ios that it will not be if there are o more perception, and that it can only operate as it does givien that stream remains. It itself cannot speculate about how this steam is, how it operates, and merely kws that it is is not, then the mind is not.
Or perhaos one needs, given toabove specualtin, a firther ualtification. One can of course speculate about where the iimpressions come from, as long as one does not confuse those specualtation for the ‘truth’ or rather for reality. The point about the body as a model is that I imposes an impossible untiy of thought (a unity not of thinking or perceiving). One can speculate empirically, and put forward hypoithesize, to ague about th nature of how how live avoides this perpetual lieelt edeath, and yt in doing this one needs o remember one very important point. The little death itself, the point impression splits off from the simple idea, and tumbles out of being, founds in that idea a point to reover in mind life. And yet here one needs for Hume to pay real attention to Amy (which temporal merchants, must surely fail to do). Amy’s point is that she does not synthesis reality. Reality for here has in a sens ealready happen. The rodl, the impression has takent he mind beyod itself. It is here to faithfully think abot what this beign beyond might mean, in her own domain. Reflction need then to be kept apart. Or perhaps better, oe nees th pride and confidence to allowreflection its own world. The rpobem here is, the thatAmy is of herself almost indescnible to the inattentive from impression. Th claim of time, which cts as the agent of circumlucation ( As Ctsby acts as the agent of Lord Branacle), is to claim a right on behalf ore eflection, and in the name of time to reality.
This move is effected in two distincyt ways. Firstly, and very explicitly there is poor old Kant’\s formation of apprehension and reconceeltion. Here the link is explict to reflection, in the grasping of moements, and the past that gras involves. It is this process that is then said to be our reality. The demands for that reality then foprm the backdrop of Kant’s criticism. How is, he asks that assocation work? Surely there must be some means to ensure perceptions do not dropout of the mind, and some synthetic elements hih also ensures tat these perceptions gie reality. That is there mut be some rules to the past an to the constution of time. Hiu,e would inject here, that he can rules, and Kant is dafy not to realize it. The rule are simple, that the impression is itneself exetnal, and taken in the giving as synomous withn an idea: Tjis idea then follows he rules of being an and idea , and the combination that this being them inilves. Kant’s time is then split beween two distinctive lement. The is of course the extrnal flow of impressions, which is unknowable ni origne, and profound in consequence (in that tehy force the mind up against the external). There is then a second time, that internal toreflection: te tim of habit (and ocntiuity), which constrcts within itself extra times. Either as a partial construction (as is the case o contiguity) or an atual articulation, in the case of habit. But what is not neede is a principle that simply unites the two element. Or rather which poses, in the I think a unity before perception themsvles, which then creates, across the process a unity to time. If one makles that move, one has quietly murdered little Dorrit (who is always the most vualranerable of heroines), tough ones instance that she conform to reality in her flights of fancy. Th pnt about amy is that reality and here have a toubled realtinoship. Be mrembmer,s and in rembmering distorts, or better relfets what has been, and the ideas that were. She does notneeds a seprate place, a time to hold themse impressions in, and respects the clear difference between her own articulation and the givings of the world.
The other line on Time, mght be following Deleuze, to welcome the otherness before perception, and o use this otherness, in the Idea to think the entire spectrum of time. Time is our reflecting in that otherness: is our being caught by it, and changed in it. If kant had conmfgureed time aroundtheneeds of refletion, and hypojtsized the needs for an I think which could forge reality as theunity of reflection, then Dleueze inverts this move. Reflection now needs to follow the volcanic lines of a temporality which pitches then mind always beyond itself, and a abyss of different. Bit agaion, hume woild can (and again chiveralously shield Amy), that this, whatever its admitted birllants, misses the real issue. Amy of course knows her relation are caught up in events, and yet she herself is not of those events.On the contary here reflections pitcher whith the mind (here her affinities,a s ae Hmes are firmly wih the artist of What is Philosophy). Tshe fels then no need to link back her wanderings to the world in itself. or rathershe knows that her access to tha world, to he world of society, is [problematic, and to be taken carfully. She will of course in making links between ideas, eastiblish a link of simplicity, and will, in her principles, come to replicate a form of reality (her ideas grow more and more real, inthat the as tehjey include any ideas, ecome more and more intense). And yetth they realityof the world, and yet her entire power lies not n this realty. Or its mystery, but rather involves the indescrinbility of perception andsimple ieas: That is the point of juncture where the idea and the perception appear one and the same: a moement, which them splits of, ad founds her abilty to think the world. Her staring pojnt is then not the event, butthis point;and its consequence: She is nt the cented of the external world, but rather exists in the lack of a cenre, is an endlessly series of journeying, of foot or needle. All tht she requires is that onedoes not look to her orgianes (althouygshe does not actively hide them), and allow here tostand alone, a principle of reflection, appreacited in its own right (and not mistaken to ‘reality’.
Or to put it slgiuhtly differently.Amy knows her power is ntinthe formal creating of new impressions. The semtress is nit the weaver. She patches up , and interliks what is givien in thw world and does not synthezie anything new. Thence the Hume example. Five notes might give in the mind no not sythsize anything, and do not create a new impression. What they opricue through refection is an idea which arranges itself across all these impression, and stitches togther, in the idea of time, the manner of their giving. It iis this astract relfection thatthen Amy knows is time; alhohgh she does not think that such a time really matter so very much (36-37), and the manner of a giving might well change. That is a time in te Hume model follow perception, times themsvles can change as there deamdns of eprcivng changes: To be asleep or to have more of less perception is then really to live I differing times, and there is nothing externalizing I the giving of it (35). The problem is hen for Amy always one of starting, and being. The problemof time, is thn te problem of cutting off realities beyond us, is a smallest emelemnt of prcetion (which isoof course itself expendanble0. One sees a glowing circle, and not a moving brazier, because the movement of the fire isfaster tha our take of time (35). That is it is to us a single object, as it has moved, and moved again, as we are arranging our thoughts.
This last point demands further calrifacation. The trouble with refletion is hat when I truns is mind to time it deamdns too much of its reality. Reflection will then poll axe itself between the Scylla and charades of philosophy, instance and ininfite divisibility: ((40-41). The emrpicist s contrast knows thatthere is appoint,awhere sensation begins. It is not thatthere is not, in certain circumstac a time befoe this instance. One the contrary Hume thinks there hust be.
The piont after all about this sticht of time is that it is full. One might then have the case o a circling brazier of coal, which appear to us a a ing cicle, because our mind only (curtersy of the body) comes into the rpcess long after the brazer has moved on. And yet, Hume resist the niave move of then talking of a durtion which encompasses my perception, and the movement dthe brazier. Such a move is simply unprovable. Bttter to mus the m,ove down to physical circumstance, a a body, or the speed of particules moving agross material world, that osome irrecubile duration, and an paradoxed that then includes (although strictly speaking of course for Hume such specualtaion is mere conjectre). What can be known however is that there is a celar difference beween the tp of unite tht in native to impression and allother unities. Numbers such as groups of men, or legth, such as a foot or a mile are Hume argues realitve (30). They can be divided or not. Likewise the point at which one snitches time will vary,. What is fixed is the snith, the snip itself. There is a pjt in which the mind is conjured into being in a body. Hence Hume arges the cut is of another kind to unity, and has a pecualry place in time: The idea of the self giving, self occulding unity (31).
What matter then for Amy is where she sarts in the world. She has no use to mathematical point, or inifnte regresses, which attemot to picth a mandner of refleting beyond experiences. Here Hme notes a numer of troubling paradoxes. Frstly there appears to be a problem with whtehranything actively exists. This [ardox f division ,for Hume is the delight of philsopher, wh oenjoy the prlbemtaic stauyts it mposes on thought, to the detriment fo reality (30). And yet there is cealr assyemtery here. The answer to this problem instants and inifte regress are both dismissed and yet nt to the same effect. Inifnte regress, where reflection claims a strident emand is absolutely dismissed, while instance clearly at least reflect reality., as not only is perception itself limited, but also a some point, there must be actual occasion in the universe. That is there must be a finite element I reality, even if what that element is, and how it might be remains forever removed from us (42-44). And yetone needs, while keeping this idea, not to indulgeis specualtins in provingit (such as math do).The rpoblem the allow refelcton to bred new paradoxes;In particular equality. Equality calms to llow one to set up a measure tog the world which is somehow external to the wprld of experience. Hume’s p[oint is then such a move again misses the point of amy, the power to transform. Equality isreal as a hibt therefore, but false if it is simply imposed on the mind and its world (48-51). Afgain the problem is never to step beyond amy, and claim for reflection a greater word than it is entitled to..
At this poit, Amy was has been flagging in her attention, suddenly becomes rather interested. She has noticed one or two things. Firstly he most important point in Hume’s anaylsis of Vacuum and distance is surely is calim that if one sets up reflecion, and alledges that it has an existence which is seprate from impressions on cease to be able to distinguish differing reflection from one another. He presents therefore a shcmea, where three distinct reflection os distance and existence are intailly produces, and then become confused in one another. Distance can be conceived therefore wither in terms of objects, seprated from one another by darkness, (which Hume has already agued implies a simple lack of sensation, 55), and yet which still convey to perceiver an impression of a difference between them, defined by a distinction in the exact position (measured by angle of rays following from them. 58). This reflectio is then necessarily confused with an alternative scenerio, where the same two objects are visible, and yet the space between them is filled within other perceptions and movements; and with the final case of a boy naturally vainishing as it recedes ino a distance (59). The reflections drawn from these slightly different experiences are them automatically confused ithi one another. It becomes impossible to think of te filled visible and tangible space in which objects occur, without reference to the invisible spae of drakenss,or the imprecible space of gradual dimuntion. Space theefore is constructed,not by an imression, but a polyglot series of interlinked and indistinguishable reflections (62).
Moreover the same argument, Hume claims must be made for time. In Time’s case, for Hume the three disnt impressions inolve the pereptual flow of perception, the endurance of a certain object across time, which is nonetheless only perceived by us at two distinct times. The object will then appear both unchanged in itself, nd yet to us, aware as we are of the flow of our perceptions, an the possibility of its alternation, it appears is some hidden way altered. Finally time appears as a mtheod for removing or advancing otherwise distant objects. A Reflection of temporality is then set up between these two distinctive reflection – a reflection which is naturally treacherous, in that one ceases ever to impyl knmow on what one is rweflecting. However this is clearly not quite all Hime has to sy of the matter. In considering idenity, Hume clearly to a degree inverts this methodlogy. And identity, he claims lies between aplurality of differingperceptio (hat is of differing qulativie instances), and a unity in an object, which remains as one and the same thing throught these changes (200-201). It is not then that time somehow changes, the unchaning oject, but rather identiy of the unchanging objects itself, which sets up its own reflections across perceptions, ad breeds an illicit reflection which splices thogthermany disitct impressions .
Wea re surely then, in this last example back in the plaour of Catsby, a palour dominated by a picture of the young Ctabsby, and the presence of the old Catsby, who nonetheless look one and the same, and whose sole joke lies in the the reversing of prhazes. That is, the power of Catsby is splice togther, illicitly, reflections. This power, a power described accurately enough by Flora, as the power to whilr a mind around, so that it does not know quite where it is, is the power to confuse distinctive reflections. Thi confusion is so ingrained that the p[atriach himself needs ot be present. Fo examply when Pancks tells Clennam that Catsby has leant him money order to investigate the oranges of te Dorrits, clennam is initially so gripped with a feeling of gladness (derived utliamtely from the reflection that Little Dorrit will be free), he assumes that the partiachs has lent the money freely (and without interest); and is bought to earth with a bump when Plancks describes the far from generous terms (388).
However at this point, Amy us looking concerned, there something still wong somewhere, buit shedoes not really start with that. One thcontrary she has noticed, first, soemthign else she rather likes in Hume, or rather prefers in Hme’s accou that the accoint I gave above. She has noticed tht Him,e jumps to his account of the brain, in relation to elfections, and not perception and impressions. It is relfection and impression thyat demand a brain in the sense that they demand somekind of internal architure; opr perhaps better a something a hiumn already is, in order to reflect within: A vessel of relfectio (which the effects the reflectsion ((60-62). Why Amy likes this is clear enough. Reflections ae not a part of the world, but rather belong to the internal articheture of being a human, tah tthey are inbuilt in us is then linked to the fact that thought itself is inbuilt within us. Or rather, to be accurate we are ithin thought. Thiyght is never owned. To say then that a relfection realtes to the brai as if it were its cause (and Hme is of course very cautious here to say that this cause is finctional, to a degree at least0, is to say that relfection is somehow the special property of being human, or at least of being alive, and habving a body. The error, that is the fact that an impression a reflection necessarily slides into other impressions is therefore a naturual dimension in living, and part, as it were of the very power to life.A Fact Amy resonates with
However there is of course anrinolny here in Hume’s turninmg. However cautious to the brain 9Hi,e is clear to say in attrbituting the brain as a cause to the phenomena of th mind, he is uncovering a cause which could be wroing, and is provisional, and yet still convincing, 60). The irony is of course that in his apparent attack on Spce, and the notion of reflection, Hume suddenly has recourse to a sptail argument, that is to the geography of the brain. Space appears cirticesed because of the presence somewhere of an internal spae, which foms our idea of it. The question immediately aises its head, as to whether this is a simple confusion on Hume’s part )either deliberately, or mistakenly), or whther sohemting more substantial and important is happening.
Amy herself is clearl, there is all the difference I theworld between thinking of space as an absolute external confusion of reflection (which Hume is ciritquing) and relating that pace bacl tot he brain. She has two quite distinct arguments here. Firstl she argues that the brain investigated here, is surely very muc like the Marshalsea. The Marhalsea is ot the bicks and mortal of a prision, or the endless gates and rulkes, but rather the point these rules erupt upon, and warp the minds that are caught by them. The Marshalsea, is then theinvisible prison, within the ovortex which suchks in on set of events, (debt, locks, and walls), andd spews out another, the prisioners of the Marshalsea, with their elbourate righs and customs. Here father is then the classic case. He arrives a a man, who, as they all say, will only be there for a short space of time, but then is gradually warped into the ways of the palce, and sitorted (into its lives. Likewsie Hume’s caution, allows Amy to argue that the powerof reflection, the power of the slippage of the architecture of the brain, is not ‘caused’ by the spatial relations. one the contrary the sptial relations are merely what allows us to tesifify to some ikind of chnge. They are winess (as the wall, and lock and debt are), to a gthering into an outside, which remains utterly beyond them, in its transformational power. Each individual wil lthen find thesmevles in their brain, as an outside: As that which is outside of them, and it is this being outside, this slip which takes them from impressions (that is the ideas of everythin else), to reflection, which eventually gives there own ideas. To have a brai, is then to have a link to an impossible physicality, a physacallity expressed in the meeting point of two dimesion, or rather in the very disjuntion of the two.
And yet Amy has a second explaiantion. Maybe, rather that the statuc Marshalsea, the brain here is more like London (she means her London). A Place of intense vyage, and wandering.. The brainor London both have streets of jpourneyimn and bridges of meory to be accessed: Both then in a sense preexit a journey, and yet are all the same only created by it; even as the indvidual is created in journeying in lving. Hence Amy otes even one her marriage day, she fel the needs togo amongt the the roaring streets, as it was I those streets, and int htem alone she lived and bredthed. London, then gives the links which while present, all the same reamin still to be drawn, and redraw within peprcetions. The Holding body of thse sensations, the brain, is then a fnction, in the sense that what matters, again in Loondon, is not bricks and mortar so much as an entire approach of thinking, to allowing meories to take o on journeys, and lopps, s my wanders aroud London. Memory is the geographical, is both a goegrphay of maps, and a physical geography, of the creation of landmasses. Or to put it slightly different, Amy takes here London as the natural inhabitent of the p[aradfo H,e presents at the end of hs account of vaccums. He suggests that the real world appears to face us either with the poisbbility that matter and externion are one and the same, and yet ontheneless a vaccum, understood as the caoacity for becoming visble and tangible distance is real; or that matter is a plenum, and yet movement is nonetheless possible (64). The real world then appears to demand either an emptiness to move it, and yet at eacgh point laks anything empty, or a completeness that would appear to restrict movement., London Likewise, as both goegraphy and geolog capacity to be : It is then at once a pelnum, a memory which is at each mement filled with thoughts and dreams: Amy cannot journeyaround London, without meeting people and having adventures, or without worrying about what might happen The same journey is then simply a set of memories, and yet those same memories are creative, and spiring as I they were a vacuum, a capcity for being filled, other movments, other opening, by which the same memories suddenly becomes resovled into something quite distinct and different: Her Iron bidge, which links her both back to the past and forward in her love of Clennam. Space and Time, might then be of thesemvles wrong, or rather might inolve illict reflections, and yet the same reflections,and yet the creative splicing togther of reflections they ispire can nonehtless be right.
Any yet at this point she suddenly braks off. She knows that she cannot pt off dsicusing wht she feels is Hume;s deep error any longer. The rpobpem is a little latter is treatise. Here Hume preens himself opn having found the only principles are are genralizable. It is this gneralizablilty which he says marks out the principles he gives, fro all the others possibles, and so secures his ways of reasoning (93). And yet, amy immediately wonders, can this really be rights? It goes without saying tht this genrality insures that each principle involves error, and Amy for one has no problem with that, indeed , on the contrary she thinks that it must necessarily involve error., and that is fine (sheis used to folloy). No the real problem for her is that the aspire to genrality is problematic. Why she wonders would who really want to? What is so special about being general, unless one secretly whated to have an explaination for everything, an exaplanation which (even if it included error), be adequate to the world? And surely that line of enquiry flies in the face of empoicisms prime objective which is is to wok out whatit means to be in the world. Perhaps (ad here Amy Blushes slightly), Hume might be being gallant, she thought. He might beensuring that there is always room for Amy in his system – that is always room for refelction, as it is general. Wll maybe she thinks, must that is really to treat her as Mr Clennam did. That is it is to understad here in the end from him own concerns, his own desires for genral explications, and amy: She inot sure she would not rather stay in her room looking at the stars, then have this kind of terlation: For amy might appear slight, and might appear desperate, but the child of the Marshalsea must be tough t have survived at all…
Perhaps here objection here come udners two disnct heads: firstly there is the problems she feels the appeal tog enrality presents to hume’s argument,; and secondly to her own postion in in. The first of these two itself is complex. Hume’s appeal has two dimension of its own. He suggests principles need t beunderstood noth only interms of generality but also depth. That is, he argues (93) that at the bootm of must ideas there lies one of the principles of associations. Here May looks alarmed. Firsty she wonders wht right has empricism to talk of bootm at all? What have experience to do with depth at all? Should not depth be their anathema to experience? As for Amy herself, (and this is perhaps why she is alarmed), depth implies to her that there must be a point where here creativeness stops, where as any other butterfly she can be caught and pinned into a scrap boo: But she knows things are not that simple (anmore than she is free to be engraved on Joh Chivery’s headstone): She is simply too creative to that: Force her to produce a singletthings, and she will automatically do something else…
Perhaos more problematically, she says, Poor Hume’s appeal to genrality, stymies his arugement (and sets him up as a whipping boy, for Idiots to have a go at). The key part of Hume’s empricism she feels ought to lie in it constructionalism. Each point is then made, and reame. It should not turn then of over-arching principles. If it did would demand a rule, or a pretext for its giving. This rule would then need to be apriori or at least a durii (that is givien in duration). Principles, then is they ae to be properlyempircal need not to to be about generality, so much as a means, an approach to simple ideas.. Each principle is not then for her fundamentally a prescriptionb for action, a necessary mechanism, so much (as she notes Hume says repeatedly) a broad direction, a nexus, an approach by which differing reflection might be articulated in and through one another. The plurality then, of this principle,the fact they they need to be a gentle force, an overall direction, must have priority over any simplistic claims of generality. It is only this move that allows here to achieve whjat is so importan to her, namely thaqt reflection of her self, and those around her are allowed bothy to stand out, and yet also put in dialogue with out reflections, while respecting their difference to hese reflecting.
That is it is very important that both her father be allowed to have money, and ytethat this having, and the begging that goes with it, does not dinish his standig in the regard of others, and does not blight his perspnality. He must be allowed to be a beggar, and yet avoidd the act of actual begging. This must be done, even at the risk of consiring to increase his regard for himself. That is his thought that he is not a beggar at all. All these reflection that she does nto query or help, but rather connects up, in the hope that in this pride, in this feeling that he should be different ( pride that ncomasses the debtor ‘protection’ of the work-house inmate), in the hope, that inbetween these relfectio another reflection could be born, which whould unite these fragements of personality into a father she could be proud of. Her tragedy (or rather her father’s trajedy) isthen that the power of the prison remains too great. Her father can then only feel concerned about his brother, an never directly himself, and so can never take on the character she still sees in him, the other character linking these elements. He redemption thenin the end lies in her care alone. Amy therefore creates extra reflection, without the need to force gernalities on being, at attemots to act of a gentle force, whiothout need to arch anything.
The problem of course is that f one does not do this. If some fool takes Hume at his world, and then ignoring al;l the gentleness of his force, and alkl its purality, to unconver the rule by which a principle of association could be made ture (as it it were a category), thendisartor stokes. One immediately looses sight of the entire point and power of relfection and of amy, the miute one pretends to oneself that the reflecvtio are somehow, compatible across time. Or rather as soo as one makes this move, as soon as one demands a rule for the genrality in time, one is caught ion Catsby. Each refelction is then seen to to necessarily link to all otoehr though lines that are established within it, even if only virtually, and then only need pulling out into actual existence (according to the actualizing principles). Amy’ point is that these are really diferen reflection, which link nonetheless, givien the right cut across them. there is no overarchiong set of durations therefore t contain this divsersoty: the unity it could ever be said to be have is always arranges across diversioty, and is never anything other than diverting (it is a journey in short, a regiving, which was never virtually there at all). To gonfuse prciples with an overaching enrality is then to breed monsters or reflection, and to loose sight to the creativity of juxtaposed, if commuinicating reflections (across which other thoughts are always endlessly born).
This ls point leads her onto her final point (the second head idenitified above), is that Hume himself needs more cae over the status of memory. Memory is at once akin to an impression, in that it is more vivid that an imagination, and yet is clearly and idea *8). The impciation is then is works according to the rhym of ideas and not impressions: hence it is multiple, and more powerful when (though ideas it allies itself to other ideas). It is then these memroies that breed thoughts, and that breed the ideas by which one understands the qwworld. If then these ideas are made at each point to conform to the world, if the they had to operate simply accoding to the dieas of impressions, there would need to be some extra principle, some reasosn wh ythis was so; a reasosn that was moreover beyond the giving of these memeories in ideas. that s, it is one of Amies points that she does not simply conform to the world of impressions (and again Hume knows this. He is afterall not the thinker for whom error is an aitmony (that Is a necessary logical apriori error) so much as actively indistinguishable from truth. A Humean thinker genrunely then has no use for the truth, or no real knowledge of what it could be. Each prionciple breeds, and is breeding illict links, quite as must and correct ones: And doing so in the same sense. te only ‘correction’ the only truth’ lies in the gentle forc itself: that is the fact that we call something more ture the more it conforms to a principles: the more it is enmeshed within a certain force, a certain direction: And yet there is of course here, givien what I have said abov considerable tension in exactly what this propolsion inilves (The force as it is gentle, if instistent merely needs to poperate in the same genral direction, and does not need to be formally identical across its action, so long as it always pulls in the same way, overall).
Ideas, and the memories that they inolve have then to be allowed to find their own rhytm, a rhthm that cannot be directed at grasping the ‘real world’ (which they deny) or even impression from whom they must surely take their distince). They are creative as ideas, and need to be thought that way. One cannot therefoe rest with Hume’s relatively simple principles, who reasosn for existence remains in and with the impressions; but must rather look the empirical adventres within ideas, adventures that show differing gentle forces in action. The staring point here as was noted in the first essay, is surely Amy herself. What makes empricism and its idea different is the rejecion of a simple parrelism of impression and idea (inspite of the Hume’s somethines claim the opposite). That is In the’ real world’ of impressions, each impression vivdness clearly bliong to its alone (and gradually fades). I the world of Amy he oppsite is the case. The vividness itself becomes vlatile, each memory then following the split (that is each simple idea) is enforced by the ideas within preced and which followed it. Instnsity becomes progressive (to a dgreee at least). The Principles therefore start with an phenomena which is then at once at odds with impressions themselves, and yet, could not exist withut seeiming to ape those impressions thesmvles. Or to put it another way Amy, the split of of impressions that self occlude from ideas which progress, or rather interconnect starts from progressions. However this tranfer of Sensation (via conguity0 is of coruse far from absolute. There are other intensities possil (this is ressemblence. Ressemblence (unile causality or contiguity) inlves, hume Claims (71 and 79) an immediate certainty, ad dos o inspite of the errors. That is it operates at odds to times direction, and weaves its on diretion. Contguity thn follows thattranser closely, and yet is never made certain by it. Contguity could always be doping something else, and could only find other connections in what it lnks (74). It is oly cause and effect wich pecualry orchestrates this memory.
That is. The memory itself,, that is the split of, and re-arranging of impressions in a slice or selction,in which intensities are gathered, is real, and yet volatile. There is no reasosn wh ythis instensity, for hume needs to reami the same., on the contrary meory will fade in time, and the links forged in it will falter (as the contiguities that establish it drag the same transtion elsewhere). Mmoeries therefore need to be actively linked togther: There lkiok needs to be made to matter, and kept intense. It is this pecualir function that Cause and Efect achive. Contra Kant therefore memory has already moved beyond the domain of ‘reality’ even if that reality is composed of apparence. To Be in memory is no longer to be ppearing in the world, but is rather (through the menchaication of Amy) to already be within a word of pluralities which strech beyond simple impressio (which then do not need accounting of), or even any duration. The succession, whci Amy initially arranges the movement of simple ideas arranged so each otne enforces the others, may or may not reamin important- may or may not be articulated, according to the principles which (in contiguity) initially posit it (onctiguity), tur it into a possibility (causal;ity) or run counter to it (ressemblence).
Once, Memories does nt bind principles, nor opf itself is it the condtion of their freedom. It rather is that they wil ltake up and abuse (in theoir own distinct ways): that whaich they must mstreat (even when appearing tosupport it), inorder to be at all. Thjere is then really no need to insists either that principles genrality needs to be founded on laws, be they duration or reasosn. On the contrary one needs, as Amy wants one to do, to face up to he the fact thatgentle forces slowly contain many differing elements, and can always intermingle, and pull at varying sppeds, and in varying precise ways,e vn when their prevailing direction is fixed. Or to put it as a philsopher rather different from may or Hme, might: one can to allow principles to be not a final cause, with all the hope offered to trascend causes that offers. One needs them rather to be an indwelling immanat cause,whose mettle is proves and reproved each time they are thought.