WE E now proceed to view the Intellect, or the thinking. function of the mind. The various faculties known as Memory, Judgment, Abstraction, Reason, Imagination,— are modes or varieties of Intellect. Although we can hardly ever exert this portion of cur mental system in separation from the other elements of mind-Feeling and Volition, yet scientific method requires it to be described apart. The primary, or fundamental attributes of Thought, or Intelligence, have been already stated to be, Consciousness of Difference, Consciousness of Agreement, and Retentiveness. The exposition of the Intellect will consist in tracing out the workings of these several attributes; the previous book containing the enumeration of all that we at first have to discriminate, identify, and retain. (1.) The first and most fundamental property is the Consciousness of Difference, or DISCRIMINATION. To be distinctively affected by two or more successive impressions is the most general fact of consciousness. We are never conscious at all without experiencing transition or change. (This has been called the Law of Relativity.) When the mental outburst is characterized mainly by pleasure or pain, we are said to be under a state of feeling. When the prominent circumstance is discrimination of the two distinct modes of the transition, we are occupied intellectually. There are many transitions that give little or no feeling in the sense of pleasure or pain, and that are attended to as transitions, in other words, as Differences. In states of enjoyment or suffering, we cannot be strictly devoid of the consciousness of difference; but we abstain from the exercise of the discriminating (and the identifying) function, and follow out the consequences of a state of feeling as such, these being to husband the pleasure and abate the pain, by voluntary actions. In the foregoing detail of the Feelings of Movement and the Sensations, the properties of each, as regards Feeling, and as regards Intellect, have always been kept distinct. In some of the Senses, as the Organic Sensibility, feeling is nearly every thing. In Taste and Smell, both feeling and discrimination are fully manifested. In Touch, and still more in Hearing, and in Sight, there are states of pleasure and of pain, and also a great number of sensations that are indifferent in those respects, and whose character it is to call forth the sensibilities to difference and to agreement. These last are the proper Intellectual Sensations. Thus the degrees of roughness or smoothness, of hardness or softness in Touch, are nothing as feeling, and everything as knowledge. Heat may be in such amount as to give intense pleasure or pain; it may also be wanting in either respect, and may occupy the mind purely with the consciousness of degree. The sensations of sound, in the same way, may incline to feeling, as in the pleasure of Music, or to intellect as in articulation. Light, colours, and visible forms have, similarly, a double aspect. The sense of Difference, or Discrimination, has therefore been unavoidably illustrated, almost to exhaustion, in the enumeration of the muscular feelings and the sensations. As a means of intellectual reproduction—which is a leading function of Intellect, commonly expressed by Memorythe property of Discrimination manifests itself in one form, called the associating principle of Contrast. As identical with the law of the Relativity of all feeling and knowledge, it must emerge at a great many points, and be everywhere tacitly implied. Some notice will have to be taken of acquired discrimination, but this is one of the applications of the Retentive power of the mind. The conscious state arising from Agreement in the midst of difference is the natural complement of the foregoing PRIMARY FUNCTIONS OF THE INTELLECT. 323 attribute; the two together exhaust the primitive forms of intellectual susceptibility. But in the order of exposition, we shall give precedence to the property of Retentiveness, inasmuch as Agreement in its higher applications presupposes the whole range of our acquired knowledge, which depends upon the Retentive function. (2.) The fundamental property of Intellect, named RETENTIVENESS, has two aspects, or degrees. First. The persistence or continuance of mental impressions, after the withdrawal of the external agent. When the ear is struck by a sonorous wave, we have a sensation of sound, but the mental excitement does not die away because the sound ceases; there is a certain continuing effect, generally much feebler, but varying greatly according to circumstances, and on some occasions quite equal to the effect of the actual sensation. In consequence of this property, our mental excitement, due to external causes, may greatly outlast the causes themselves; we are enabled to go on living a life in ideas, in addition to the life in actualities. But this is not all. We have, secondly, the power of recovering, or reviving, under the form of ideas, past or extinct sensations* and feeling of all kinds, without the originals, and by mental agencies alone. Although we can hardly avoid using such terms as 'recover,' 'revive, 'reproduce,' 'recollect,' with reference to Sensations, it is to be borne in mind that there is a radical difference between the Sensation and the recollection of the Sensation, or what is properly termed the Idea. This fundamental and unerasible difference relates to the sense of objective reality which belongs to the sensation, and not to the idea. The sensation caused by the sight of the sun is one thing, and the idea or recollection of the sun is another thing; for although the two resemble each other, they yet differ in this vital particular. For certain purposes (as, for example, in urging the will to pursuit or to avoidance) the idea can stand in the room of the sensation; the recollection of things answers the same ends as the real presence. But there is one great question connected with our science, in which this distinction is the turning point of the problem, namely, the question as to our perception and belief of an external world. In discussing that subject, we shall have to attend closely to the circumstances that characterize a sensation as distinct from the counterpart idea After the impression of a sound has ceased entirely, and the mind has been occupied with other things, there is a possibility of recovering from temporary oblivion the idea, or mental effect, without reproducing the actual sound. We. remember, or bring back to mind, sights, and sounds, and thoughts, that have not been experienced for months or years. This implies a still higher mode of retentiveness than the previous fact; it supposes that something has been engrained in the mental structure; that an effect has been produced of a kind that succeeding impressions have not been able to blot out. Now, one medium of the restoration to consciousness of a particular past state, is the actual presence of some impression that had often occurred in company with that state. Thus we are reminded of a name-as ship, star, tree-by seeing the thing; the previous concurrence of name and thing has led to a mental companionship between the two. Impressions that have frequently accompanied one another in the mind grow together, so as to become at last almost inseparable: we cannot have one without a disposition or prompting to renew all the rest. This is the highest form of the Retentive, or plastic, property of the mind. It will be exemplified at length under the title of Association by Contiguity. (3.) The remaining property of Intellect is consciousness of AGREEMENT. Besides the consciousness of difference, the mind is also affected by agreement rising out of partial difference. The continuance of the same impression produces no effect, but after experiencing a certain impression and passing away from it to something else, the recurrence of the first causes a certain shock or start, the shock of recognition; which is all the greater according as the circumstances of the present and of the past occurrence are different. Change produces one effect, the effect called discrimination; Similarity in the midst of change produces a new and distinct effect; and these are the two modes of intellectual stimulation, the two constituents of knowledge. When we see in the child the features of the man, we are struck by agreement in the midst of difference. This power of recognition, identification, or discovery of THE DIVISION INTO FACULTIES. 325 likeness in unlikeness, is another means of bringing to mind past ideas; and is spoken of as the Associating, or Reproductive principle of SIMILARITY. We are as often reminded of things by their resemblance to something present, as by their previous proximity to what is now in the view. Contiguity and Similarity express two great principles or forces of mental reproduction; they are distinct powers of the mind, varying in degree among individuals-the one sometimes preponderating, and sometimes the other. The first governs Acquisition, the second Invention. The commonly recognized intellectual faculties, enumerated by Psychologists with much discrepancy, in so far as they do not involve Feeling and Volition, are resolvable into these three primitive properties of Intellect-Discrimination, Retention, Similarity. The faculty called Memory is almost exclusively founded in the Retentive power, although sometimes aided by Similarity. The processes of Reason and Abstraction involve Similarity chiefly; there being in both the identification of resembling things. What is termed Judgment may consist in Discrimination on the one hand, or in the Sense of Agreement on the other: we determine two or more things either to differ or to agree. It is impossible to find any case of Judging that does not, in the last resort, mean one or other of these two essential activities of the intellect. Lastly, Imagination is a product of all the three fundamentals of our intelligence, with the addition of an element of Emotion. The exposition of Intellect proper will consist mainly in a full development of the two processes of Retentiveness and Agreement. These will constitute the two first chapters. A third chapter will be devoted to the cases of Complicated mental Reproduction, including the association by Contrast. A fourth will deal with the applications of the intellectual forces to form new constructions-the Creative or Inventive faculty of the mind. The purposes to be served by a scientific discussion of our intellectual powers are these : |