Editing David Hartley (philosopher) (section)

==Observations on Man: "A New and Most Extensive Science"==
{{Main|Observations on Man}}
[[File:HartleyObservations.png|left|thumb|Title page from the first edition of the ''Observations'']]
In the 18th century, "Observations" appears in the titles of scientific works – compare [[Benjamin Franklin]]'s ''Experiments and Observations on Electricity'' (1751) and [[Joseph Priestley]]'s ''Experiments and Observations of Different Kinds of Air'' (1774). Priestley, Hartley's champion, would declare that Hartley's work "contains a new and most extensive ''science. …'' [T]he study of it will be like entering upon a ''new world. …''"<ref>{{Cite book|title=An Examination of Dr. Reid's "Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense," Dr. Beattie's "Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth," and Dr. Oswald's "Appeal to Common Sense on Behalf of Religion"|last=Priestley|first=Joseph|publisher=J. Johnson|year=1774|location=London|pages=xix}}</ref> The science is the science of "man", and the "new world" is the one embodied in the human "frame" itself.

The result, on the one hand, is a "vast haystack of a book".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Webb|first=Robert K.|year=1998|title=Perspectives on David Hartley|journal=Enlightenment and Dissent|volume=17|pages=17–47, at 28}}</ref> As one would expect from a physician with an inquiring mind and active medical practice, Hartley draws together a wide range of observations – to name a few, on phantom limbs, savant syndrome, and the experiences and mental development of the blind and the deaf (''OM'' 1, props. 34, 69, 78, 80, and 93).<ref>Because the text of the ''Observations'' is unchanged throughout the editions, citation is to part, chapter, section, and proposition. The 1791 folio edition numbers all the propositions consecutively, so that prop. 1 of part 2 is given as proposition 100, prop. 2 as 101, etc.</ref>

On the other hand, just as [[Newton's law of universal gravitation]] unified celestial and terrestrial mechanics, Hartley proposed a single "law" — "association" — to account for any and all observations of "man". Hartley's many observations are meant to be illustrations of the law.

Moreover, "association" has explanatory power. For example, in the section "The Affections by which we rejoice at the Misery of Others" (''OM'' 1.1.4.97–98), Hartley presents a detailed analysis of the process by which an abused, bullied child becomes an abusive, bullying adult.<ref>See Allen 1999, pp. 19–21.</ref> He traces out how the child's automatic gesture of raising an arm to ward off a blow becomes, through a series of associative substitutions, the fist the adult raises to strike a child. An initial defensive gesture becomes a general aggressive stance, and thus the source of the insulting words and threatening actions by which the adult "goes on multiplying perpetually … the occasions of anger and the expressions of it".

Nonetheless, Hartley believed that it was no-one's destiny to be permanently trapped in such a hell. He was, rather, a religious visionary, and his fundamental belief breathtakingly optimistic: that association "has a tendency to reduce the state of those who have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, back again to a paradisiacal one" (OM 1.1.2.14, Cor. 9). From this vantage point, Hartley's ''Observations on Man'' is a psychological epic, a story of "paradise regained" — but an epic describing, ultimately, the life of each human being.