David Hartley on Human Nature (review)

Richard C. Allen. David Hartley on Human Nature. SUNY Series in the Philosophy of Psychology. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. xxiv + 469 pp. $24.95 (paperbound).

David Hartley (1705-57) is one of several eighteenth-century thinkers whose work has since become, in Richard Allen's evocative phrase, "a somnolent daughter of memory" (p. 2). In this book, the first full study of Hartley's thought, Allen brings to life this important but neglected theorist of the mind. He offers a brief but thorough biographical study and a detailed analysis of Hartley's most important work, his 1749 Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations, which deeply influenced both Priestley and Coleridge, as well as Benjamin Rush.

Hartley was a typical Georgian polymath, who practiced medicine without benefit of a medical degree, and who read widely in both theology and natural philosophy. His friends included the diarist John Byrom, the clergyman and natural philosopher Stephen Hales, and the physician George Cheyne. Hartley was a strong supporter of Joanna Stephens, whose medicine for the stone, he claimed, cured him, and he was one of those who verified its effectiveness before Parliament in 1740. He took part in the mystical religious circles centered on William Law and Cheyne, while at the same time being thoroughly imbued with Newton's natural philosophy.

Hartley is remembered, if at all, for his concept of the association of ideas: the notion that ideas bring to mind other ideas in a complex chain of associations. But Allen demonstrates that this is only one aspect of his thought. Observations on Man, as the rather odd but wholly eighteenth-century title indicates, is about much more than a theory of psychology. Hartley began by describing a physiological theory of sensation derived from Newton's theory of the ether. In his queries to the Opticks, Newton had tentatively ascribed the transmission of sensations to the vibration of an (or the?) ether along the nerves. George Cheyne developed this idea in his English Malady (1733), a source that Hartley certainly used, although Allen does not mention it. Allen's analysis, however, goes on to draw parallels with Newton's theories of colors and of musical harmonics, both also based on a notion of vibrations.

Allen then connects Hartley's neurophysiology to his doctrine of association, and a dense and complex analysis of this doctrine forms the center of the book. Here Allen writes as a philosopher rather than a historian, and this section is at times heavy going, although always perceptive. He spends less time on what he calls Hartley's construction of the self, and his prescriptions for human behavior. To my mind, Allen does not pay enough attention to Hartley's religious ideas and associations, which permeate his entire work. His analysis of Hartley's concept of "annihilation of self," in which his religious ideas are most evident, is merely adequate and contains several minor errors (for example, George Garden died in 1733, not 1717). John Wesley, who was Hartley's contemporary, is barely mentioned, although he was influenced by many of the same authors Hartley read and would have been a fruitful source for comparison.

Readers of the Bulletin may also wish that Allen had integrated Hartley's medical practice more fully into his analysis. Hartley was a practicing physician for almost thirty years--the last fifteen in Bath, that hotbed of neuroses--and surely connections can be made between his theories and his practice. Martha Webb indeed initiated such connections in an article in this very journal a decade ago. ¹ Nonetheless, I do not wish to detract from the great value of Allen's thorough and learned study. Students of eighteenth-century psychology and philosophy will find much to learn in it, and it is beautifully produced.

Anita Guerrini
University of California, Santa Barbara

Note

1. Martha Ellen Webb, "The Early Medical Studies and Practice of Dr. David Hartley...