doctrine is of great service: it helps us in some measure to localize these processes, and the language that might otherwise be deemed figurative becomes literal. The imagination of visible objects is a process of seeing; the musician's imagination is hearing; the phantasies of the cook and the gourmand tickle the palate. The identity between actual and revived feelings shortens our labour by enabling us to transfer much of our knowledge of the one to the other. The properties that we find to hold of sensation in the actual, we may after a certain allowance ascribe to the ideal. Thus the qualities of the sense of sight in any one person, as for example, its discriminating power, would belong likewise to the visual ideas. The senses are in this way a key to the intellect. 16. I return to the Association of Feelings of Movement. It generally happens that if we can perform a movement actually, we can also perform it mentally. Thus we can go through in the mind the different steps of a dance; in other words, the feelings of the successive evolutions have been associated together, as well as the movements themselves. It must not be supposed, however, that the adhesion of actual movements and the adhesion of mental movements run exactly parallel, and that if the one is perfect so is the other. We may sometimes see a mechanic able to go through the actual steps of a process, but unable to go through them in his mind; the proof being that in describing them to another party he often forgets a step, and only remembers it by doing the thing. In this case the actions are more adhesive than the traces of them. It is not easy to produce any instance to show, on the other hand, that a series of actions can be repeated mentally and yet not bodily; for, as the mental actions are performed in the same circles, it usually needs only a volition, often the removal of a restraint merely, to bring them to the full length of actuating the muscles. 17. The principal field of examples of the association of pure feelings of muscular action, is the Voice. Most other cases are so complicated with sensation, that they do not ASSOCIATION OF FEELINGS OF MOVEMENT. 347 answer our present purpose. In speech, we have a series of actions fixed in trains by association, and performable either actually or mentally at pleasure; the mental action being nothing else than a sort of whisper, or approach to a whisper, instead of the full-spoken utterance. The child can repeat its catechism in a suppressed voice, as well as aloud. We can even acquire language mentally, or without speaking it out at all; that is to say, we can bring about a pure mental adhesion. To a learner, this happens continually for in reading a book one does not speak the words vocally; the articulate adherence takes place from the first within the circles of ideation. Children, learning their lessons in school, must acquire the verbal successions in the same way. As a general rule, it is best to rehearse verbal exercises aloud, if they are to be performed aloud, just as in the case of other mechanical operations. The sense of hearing is thus brought in aid of the other associating links. Besides, by coming to the actual execution, we set on a current that is both more energetic and larger in its sweep, inasmuch as it takes in the full operation of the muscles. In the early school acquirements, where everything has to be spoken out to the master, the audible repetition is the best; in after days, when we go over a great deal of language merely as thought, or the silent links of action, the speaking out is not called for; it would be an unnecessary waste of time and muscular exertion.* 18. The circumstances that favour the cohesion of mental trains of movement, are nearly the same as those already detailed for actual movements. A certain repetition is requisite; more or less, according as the other circumstances are favourable, namely, the general conditions of Concentration and Retentiveness on the whole; and the special muscular In the processes of ineditation and thought, we are constantly forming new combinations, and these we can permanently retain, if we have dwelt upon them sufficiently long. A speaker meditating an address trusts to the adhesiveness of his verbal trains, although they have been all the while in the state of mere ideas, he not having spoken them aloud. conditions-Muscular Strength, Spontaneity, and Discrimi nation. We may perhaps assume a common character for the active organs in the same individual; an activity of temperament that shows itself in every kind of exertion-in limbs, voice, eyes, and every part that is moved by muscleor a sluggish feebleness extending alike over every kind of exercise. But this does not exclude specific differences of endowment in separate members, rendering the movements more adhesive in one than in the others. Thus we may have a special development of the articulating members,-the voice, tongue, and mouth,-through superiority in the corresponding centres. SENSATIONS OF THE SAME SENSE. 19. The next class of associable elements is the Sensations. We shall consider, first, the adhesion of impressions of the same sense-homogeneous impressions, as touches with touches, sounds with sounds, &c. There are various interesting operations that fall under this head; it comprises much of the early education of the senses. In the inferior senses, there is little scope for exemplifying the process. In the Organic Feelings, we might note the expectation of a series of painful feelings from the occurrence of some one, as in an illness. Even in Tastes, it is not common to have any important associations of one with another. One might easily suppose the formation of a train of tastes, such that any one would suggest the others, but instances are rare. So with Smell. If we frequently experience a succession of smells in one fixed order, an adhesion will be formed between the different impressions; and, in consequence, when one is presented, all the rest will be ready to arise in succession, without the actual experience. In passing frequently through a garden along the same track, we might come to acquire a succession of odours, and from any one anticipate the next, as dogs probably do. INDIVIDUAL IMPRESSIONS MADE SELF-SUBSISTING. 349 We seldom exist in a train of recollections of either Taste or Smell. They are difficult to realize to the full; and what we recover chiefly about them is their collaterals, such as the sentiment of liking or aversion that they produced. By a great effort of mind, we may approach very near the recovery of a smell that we have been extremely familiar with, as the odour of coffee; and if we were more dependent on ideas of smell, we might perhaps succeed still better; nevertheless, it must be admitted, that the recoverability of these states by mere mental association is of a low order. 20. This leads us to remark on the effect of repetition. in making any single impression adherent. The separate taste of sugar, by repetition, impresses the mind more and more, and by this circumstance becomes gradually easier to retain in idea. The smell of a rose, after a thousand repetitions, comes much nearer to an independent ideal persistence, than after twenty repetitions. So it is with all the senses, high and low. Apart altogether from the association of two or more distinct sensations in a group, or in a train, there is a fixing process going on with every individual sensation, rendering it more easy to retain when the original has passed away, and more vivid when, by means of association, it is afterwards reproduced in idea. This is one great part of the education of the senses. The simplest impression that can be made, of Taste, Smell, Touch, Hearing, Sight, needs repetition in order to endure of its own accord; even in the most persistent sense, Sight, the impressions on the infant mind that do not stir a strong feeling, will be apt to vanish as soon as the eye is turned some other way. We might devote a separate illustration to this primitive phase of our retentiveness, but I am not aware of any important applications of it, where there is not also a process of association between a plurality of sensations. Yet it is proper to remark, that the confirming of the separate impressions of sense, by which they are prepared for existing in the idea, is going on all the time that these links of coherence are in course of formation. 21. We pass to the more intellectual senses, Touch, Hearing, and Sight. In Touch, there are various classes of Sensations; the more purely emotional, as soft contacts and pungent contacts, and those entering into intellectual perceptions-as temperature, roughness, hardness, weight, size, &c. In all these, there is room for the associating principle to operate, but our present illustration will keep in view chiefly the second of the two classes, or those concerned in the development of the Intellect. The sensation of any one surface, with all its peculiarities, is a complex thing; it is an aggregate of impressions made on the skin, and having a certain arrangement and intensity. The face of a brush yields a number of impressions all occurring together; these must take on a certain coherence, so that the sensation in its entireness may survive the actual contact. They must preserve their co-existence, and return en masse at an after time. In comparing one surface with another, as in choosing a tooth brush, it is necessary only that a complex impression of one should survive a few seconds, while the other is felt; in comparing one with some other long since worn out, the permanence behoves to be much greater. So with surfaces of cloth or wood, of stone or metals, judged of by their asperity; an associating process must fuse the multiplex impression before it can endure when the original is gone. Some surfaces are distinguished by an aggregate of asperity and temperature, as the cold touch of a stone or a lump of metal, in which case the feeling of cold must cohere along with the other parts of the tactual impression. When muscular feelings and exertions are superadded to the impressions made on the skin, we obtain the complex notions of touch, such as combine feelings of weight, size, shape, and situation, with texture or surface. Here an adhesion needs to take place between the tactile and mobile impressions. In order that a workman may recognize his tool by the hand alone, he must have had frequent experience |