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59. Relating to the recovery of trains of imagery, there is a fact of the nervous system to be attended to; namely, that a mental movement once set on tends to persevere and feed itself. We can remark in the eye a tendency to continue in any motion when commenced, as in following a projectile, or in sweeping round the sky line that bounds a prospect. The spontaneous vigour of the moving organs carries them forward in any direction that they may chance to enter on; and, in addition to the spontaneity of the active system, the stimulus of the sensation itself operates in sustaining a movement that has been commenced. Thus it is, that the eye so naturally follows out a vista, or traces the course of a stream. Seeing the beginning of a straight line, or a part of a circle, we feel ourselves led on to the conception of other parts hidden from the view. A tall spire carries the regards upwards far into the heights beyond itself, while a descending current gives a downward direction to the bodily or the mental eye. Just as we acquire an almost mechanical persistence in walking, or in handling a tool, when once under way, so the sight falls into a given movement, and goes on of its own accord, over the course that has been chalked out for it. When our eye sweeps along the line of a procession, it acquires such a persevering tendency that it is apt to go beyond the termination until its view in that direction is completely exhausted. When a succession of objects is very rapid, as in a railway train, it sometimes impresses a diseased persistency on the visual circles, and we feel everything about us still in motion. Like all the other actions of the brain, this persistency has a moderate and healthy pace, which easily subsides, and a hurried and diseased pace that we cannot check without great difficulty.

Now, in the operation of recalling the steps or members of a succession at the prompting of those that go before, our recollection is aided by the tendency to go forward, or to leap from the one at present in the view, to the next in order. This restless forward impulse, will not suffice of itself to recall the next member without an adequate adhesive growth between it and the preceding, but it counts for something in the act of recovering any object that we are in want of in that particular train. It determines very much the degree of rapidity of the mental action; and from this circumstance gives a marked character to

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the individual. It does not confer intellectual power-this depends on the proper forces of the intellect—but it favours promptness and quickness in perceiving whatever it is within our power to perceive, a quality often useful in the emergencies of life.

60. The successions designated as cause and effect, are fixed in the mind by Contiguity. The simplest example is where our own activity is a cause. We strike a blow, and there come a noise and a fracture. The voluntary energy put forth in the act, becomes thenceforth associated with the sound and the breakage. Hardly any bond of association arrives sooner at maturity, than the bond between our own actions and the sensible effects that follow from them. There are circumstances favouring the concentration of the mind upon this particular sequence.

In the first place, these effects are often themselves energetic, startling, and impressive. This is indicated by the employment of the word 'effect' to mean what yields a startling sensation, something that takes the mind by storm. The stronger kinds are such as produce some startling change in the still routine of things. The firing of a cannon in the quiet of the night; the shattering of a window; the upsetting of a table covered with crockery; the kindling of a conflagration; the taking away of a life,—are all intensely exciting to the nervous system; and the excitement engrosses the mind. One single occasion is sufficient to connect for ever one of these startling events with its immediate antecedent or cause. According as the effects are milder in their character, and slower in their operation, their connexion with the causes is less speedily engrained in the mind. But as a general rule, causation, when distinctly apparent,—that is, when the two or more members of the succession are clearly ascertained and contemplated by the mind,-impresses itself much more strongly than the successions of things in a sweep of landscape, or the stages of vegetable or animal life. There is in man a natural liking for effects, owing to the mental stimulus they give; and much of the pleasure of life is made up of this kind of excitement.

But we must remark, in the second place, that the active impulses of the human mind, which are in many instances the causes of the effects we see, and are assumed as the type of all other causes, are readily impressed on the recollection; that is to say, it is easy to recall the notion of any action of ours that has been concerned in producing a startling change. Our moving members being always with us, their movements are the most familiar facts that we possess; we can easily remember a kick, a wrench, or any other common action. Hence, in a succession of two steps, one a familiar action of · our own, the other a striking effect on our senses, the first is already formed into a permanent idea by repetition, the second arrests attention; the fixing of the two is therefore comparatively rapid and sure. Unfamiliar actions as causes are not readily remembered; intricate constructions and mechanism do not impress themselves without due repetition.

In imagining the causes of unknown effects, human power is the first thing suggested, from the facility the mind has of entering into this cause, and also from the pleasure derived by the very idea of human energy put forth in the accomplishment of effects. Hence the universal disposition to personify the powers of nature.

61. The action and reaction of one man on another is a notable example of cause and effect, under circumstances favourable to recollection. In this instance, both the cause and the effect are human manifestations, readily conceivable from the fact that we ourselves have been frequently actuated in the same way. When we witness, for example, an encounter of hostility, both the provocation and the retort are actions that we can completely realize from our own past experience. Here, too, as in the cases above noted, the rousing of a human. being from quiescence to animation, is a startling effect, and arrests and impresses the beholder. Most persons are susceptible to the view of these sudden changes in the expression of living beings, which constitute a great part of our interest in society and in the drama. By noting those various movements of expression, in connexion with the causes of them,

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we become impressed with innumerable sequences of cause and effect; and the recollections thus formed make up a large portion of our knowledge of the ways and characters of mankind.

Some minds are peculiarly susceptible to this class of effects; the movements that constitute the expression of men and animals take a deep hold of their attention, and are proportionably impressed on the memory. Such minds are thereby rendered more than usually knowing in human nature; while at the same time they feel a lively interest in the manifestations of living creatures.

62. Our impression of any individual man or woman is made up of their permanent image, and their various movements and activity, in a number of situations and circumstances. Thus, we have seen some one made angry; we connect the occurrence with the experience of anger in our own minds, and this connexion is an item of our knowledge of that person's character. When the anger is brought before our view, we are reminded of the cause; when the provocation is present, it recalls the anger. We can use the knowledge of this sequence for the purpose of either avoiding or bringing on the effect; we can reproduce it dramatically; we can generalize it as a fact of human nature in general; we can explain other men's anger by it. Other sequences are noted in like manner; and, by sufficient length of time and opportunity, we can associate together cause and effect through the whole cycle of an individual's ordinary actions. We are then said to know the person's character. Our knowledge of animals is of the same nature.

The peculiar susceptibility to the human presence now spoken of may arise out of several different sources. (1.) To the natural history mind all visible imagery is impressive, the human face and form among the rest. (2.) The susceptibility to visible movements is a distinct element, and with it is connected the sense of forms, and particularly the human. (3.) The sympathetic disposition, as contrasted with the egotistic, or self-engrossed, is in favour of the same turn for

noticing other people's ways. (4) The artistic sense finds much of its material in the human subject, and is thereby made alive to the manifestations of living men. To all these causes of special attention to the phenomena of humanity, we are to add (5) the strong passions and emotions that have our fellow beings for their subjects; and we then see how it comes that the natural, if not 'the proper study of mankind is man.' The interest of external nature viewed by itself is cold in comparison; hence its sequences makes a much smaller part of the acquired ideas of causation in the generality of minds, than those relating to living men and women. In the foregoing view, there has been no express mention of scientific causation.

MECHANICAL ACQUISITIONS.

We have now touched on the chief fundamental classes of associated things under Contiguity. What remains, is to carry out the illustration into the several departments of intellectual acquirement.

63. Under Mechanical Acquisitions, we include the whole of handicraft industry and skill, as well as the use of the bodily members in the more obvious and universal actions of daily life. Military training; the exercises of sport, recreation, and amusement; the handling of tools in every kind of manual operation; the care of the person,-are all so many acquired or artificial linkings of action with action, or action with sensation, through the operation of contiguous adhesiveness.

The first element of Mechanical Acquisitions concerns the quality of the active instrument-the muscles. All the circumstances formerly described (p. 335) as special to the association of movements-Muscular Strength, Spontaneity, and Delicacy of Discrimination-co-operate in promoting our muscular acquirements.

The next thing to be taken into account is the delicacy of the scnses concerned in the work produced. If the operation

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