David Hartley

Engraving by William Blake

Philosopher, scientist, and mystic, David Hartley (1705-57) wrote Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations (1749). The Observations is a work of great philosophical and scientific originality. It inspired social and religious radicals in the 1700s, led to the school of "association psychology" in the 1800s, and then was largely forgotten. It is now again receiving the attention of philosophers, especially those with an interest in neuroscience.

          Closely linked to Hartley, as one of his chief advocates, was Joseph Priestley (1733b-1804), the discoverer of oxygen and one of the foremost scientists of his age. Priestley wrote that the Observations "contains a new and most extensive science," and that "the study of it . . . will be like entering upon a new world." In Britain, America, and Europe, other scientists, social reformers, and religious radicals also looked to Hartley's Observations as the paradigm of the "new science" of human nature. Translations appeared in French (1755 and 1802), German (1772), and Italian (1809).

         Priestley also cautioned that the Observations is not a work one can "read over in a few evenings" and then explain "in a few sentences." The scope, depth, and complexity of the Observations makes a summary difficult.

As a prelude to the more sustained accounts available in the links on this page . . .

The title announces "observations on man, his frame, his duty, and his expectations": that is, the study of human beings -- as physical beings, as psychological and moral beings, and as religious beings. The theory that Hartley develops to account for these dimensions of human life focuses on processes of generation, transformation, and transcendence.

         For example, Hartley wishes to show how an infant's basic physiological processes generate, through the creation of associative links, the capacities for motor control, voluntary action, and eventually skilled repertoires of action, such as speaking a language or playing the piano. Automatic reflexes are combined and transformed into voluntary actions, and these in turn become what Hartley calls "secondarily automatic," when speaking a language or playing a musical instrument are second nature.

          Similarly, Hartley investigates, in great detail, the paths of psychological growth and transformation. In this, he was the Erik Erikson or Abraham Maslow of his age. He proposes six dimensions to human personality, each of which is generated out of the dimensions below it. The overall aim is to show how the child's spontaneous needs, and the adult's calculating egotism, can be transcended -- transformed into the capacity to love another as oneself.

         (In one remarkable section, Hartley traces out another path: the steps by which a child's reflexively raising of his arm to ward off an adult's blow becomes, through a series of substitutions, the blow the child now grown adult brings down upon a child.)

         Thanks to his attention to generation, transformation, and transcendence, Hartley sees unified continuities where others see dualistic discontinuities. Automatic and voluntary actions are connected: "All our voluntary powers are of the nature of memory." Body and mind, neurology and consciousness, do not split a human being into two parts. Giving, expansive care for others is the result of a psychological alchemy that transforms the grasping, narrow care for oneself.

         Hartley's confidence in unity also applies to what in the Christian world is the greatest discontinuity of all: Heaven and Hell. Hartley believed the true message of the gospel is God's "infinite benevolence" -- and hence universal salvation. The cosmos does not contain a prison, where those who enter must abandon all hope. Rather, the processes of psychological transformation show that the "manacles" that bind us are, as William Blake said, "mind-forged" -- and hence capable of being melted down and reformed.

         Hartley's analysis of the continuity of automatic and voluntary actions challenged the notion of free will -- of an independent mind exercising executive control over the body. Posing a similar challenge to popular philosophical and religious orthodoxies were his affirmation of the unity of body and mind, and his trust in universal salvation. Thus to some, such as Priestley, Hartley's Observations on Man announced a new science of human nature -- one that would liberate humanity. Others thought differently: if they engaged it at all, it was to declare its theories wrong and dangerous, and its author guilty of overlooking the fundamental distinctions that define human life.

David Hartley on Human Nature, by Richard C. Allen, is available at Amazon.com and from SUNY Press.

Read the review of David Hartley on Human Nature by John Sutton, in the Times Literary Supplement, 8 March 2002.

If your library has a subscription, read the article on David Hartley in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (New DNB).

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