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 our 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. |