COMPLEX OBJECTS OF SENSE.

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energy of the brain thrown into visual and tactile sensation, are characteristics not of the naturalist alone, but of all men that deal with outward things in the concrete; as the engineer, the military commander, and the poet. In those things that appeal to other senses also-as articles of foodthere is an additional motive, growing out of their special interest. So, there may be a superadded charm of the artistic kind, determining a preference, with some minds, for all objects of a nature to gratify the artistic sensibilities. But the naturalist should be above such partialities; to him every natural object must possess a moderate interest, and no one more than a fair share; it is only by this moderation that he can keep his mind equal to the multitude and variety of nature.

54. From the objects of the world thus apprehended, as they strike the immediate sense, we pass to a higher group of aggregates, things with properties not always present to the view. For example, a cup in its completeness must be conceived as containing something, as serving this purpose or use. We have to associate with the permanent sensible qualities this other quality of usefulness for some end, which has a special interest in it to quicken our retentiveness of the entire total. Furniture and tools and implements of every description have this superadded quality, which, however, instead of burdening the memory, rather lightens it by the spur of a special interest. All related objects are more easily fixed in the mind than those that are unrelated, particularly if the relation be an interesting one. A monarch is more impressive than a man; a millstone is more firmly remembered than a useless block on a moor. When the interest in industrial production is naturally high in an individual, every kind of machine arrests the regards and makes a stronger impression. We have here another example of that select or special attention, which concentrates the mind upon some things to the neglect of others, and is also in strong contrast with the catholic tendencies of the naturalist mind. Not only is there a restriction as regards the objects in the narrow point

of view, but the properties attended to are more limited. If a tool has a good edge, its specific gravity is a matter of indifference; if a quarry yields good building stone, the owner leaves it to others to determine its mineral composition and its geological era.

NATURAL AND HABITUAL CONJUNCTIONS-STILL LIFE.

55. The things about us that maintain fixed places and relations, become connected in idea as they are in reality, and we thus lay up a phantasmagoric representation of our habitual environment. The house we live in, with its furniture and fittings, the street, town, or rural scene that we encounter daily, by their incessant iteration, cohere into abiding recollections; and any one part easily brings all the rest into the view. These familiar haunts exemplify pictorial adhesion in a high degree; numerous repetitions and lively interest combine to the result. We likewise associate a number of human beings with their abodes, dresses, avocations, and all other constant accompaniments.

Objects at a distance from our daily circle afford a better opportunity of testing the natural adhesiveness of the mind for pictorial expanse. A house we have visited only once or twice, a strange street, a new scene, puts to the proof the visual persistence of the mind. This resolves itself partly into the case of coloured impressions, and partly into that of visual forms, the tenacity for colour being the essential point. A coloured decoration is quite irrecoverable, if the sense of colour is not very powerful; the same may be said of a heterogeneous and formless collection of ornaments or curiosities. The recollection of dresses turns principally upon the hold we have of colour. The interior of a room implies form, and may be retained as such; but if the sense of colour is indifferent, it will be revived only in outline. A garden, a shrubbery, an array of fields, also rely upon the coloured element. The more irregular the outlines of things are, the more do we depend upon the tenacity of the mind for coloured impressions.

RECOLLECTION OF SCENES OF NATURE.

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Thus, for the easy retention of the variegated imagery of the world about us in all its richness, the first requisite is a powerful adhesiveness as regards colour. This gives to the mind a pictorial character, an attraction for the concrete of nature, with all the interest thence arising. We have just seen how far it belongs to the naturalist; it is also the common basis of character in the Painter and Poet; for although both these have to select, from the multitude of appearances, such of them as have an interest in art, yet they should be constituted to keep a hold of anything that presents itself to the eye, whether beautiful or not. A luxuriant imagination implies the facility of retaining scenes of every description; nothing less could sustain the flow of a great poet. All objects may not be beautiful or picturesque, yet there is hardly any appearance but may enter effectively into some composition; and the poet-painter needs to be a person of strong disinterested retentiveness for everything that he sees. Any one stopping short at this point would be a naturalist simply; but when the poetic sense is added to lay a special stress upon the beautiful, grand, or touching objects, the naturalist passes into the artist. A strong artistic sense, without the broad disinterested hold of nature's concretes in general, may make a man a genuine or even an exquisite artist, but thin and meagre in his conceptions-great taste with feeble invention.

It appears, then, that in respect of cohesiveness, the habitual conjunctions of objects differ but little from the individual concretes. The retentiveness of the sense of Sight is the mainstay of both the one and the other; in the smaller and more accessible objects we bring in touch and other senses; in the sphere of the large and the remote, we embody the images in sight alone.

56. Among the important aggregates implied under the present head, I may include those artificial representations intended to aid the conception of the outer world, as for example, Maps, Diagrams, and Pictorial Sketches. A very great utility is served by these devices, and much intellectual

power and practical skill depend on our being able to associate and retain them. The Geography of the globe is summed up in an artificial globe, or in a set of maps, with outline, shade, and colour, to correspond with the differences of sea and land, mountain and plain. There are very great differences among individuals in remembering a map. A good adhesiveness for colour is still an important element, just as in the recollection of the actual surface of a country. It is a case of that facile retentiveness of a great multitude of impressions, that contrasts with the severe hold of a few selected ones; an extensive rather than an intensive grasp. Next to maps, we may reckon Natural History sketches, which contain a great variety of appearance depending much upon differences of colour. Anatomical diagrams and the drawings of machinery are of the same nature, but incline to the diagrams of abstract science, where attention is strongly concentrated on few and limited features. When we come to the figures of Euclid, colour entirely disappears as an element; the pictorial retentiveness is of no avail. Form is everything, and that Form is not various, but limited, and exceedingly important. This illustrates, by contrast, the power of seizing nature's aggregates and concretes, where thousands of distinct impressions must fall into their places and cohere with ease, and in a short time. A crowded theatre and the fortyseventh of Euclid are equally objects to the eye, and also to the conceiving mind when they are gone; but the region of the brain that determines the adhesiveness must be quite different in the two cases; in the one, we have colour and variegated form, in the other, a few regular forms with negation of colour.

57. There is an interesting class of artificial conjunctions, wherein the obvious appearances of things are associated with other appearances brought out by Manipulation and Experiment. The properties of a Mineral-the complete notion that we can attain respecting it-are a combination of the sight and the touch with the artificial aspects made by a process of measuring angles, a fracture, a scratch, the blowpipe,

THE EXPERIMENTAL PROPERTIES OF THINGS.

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the application of an acid. A complex impression is thus stamped on the mind; at an after time, any one of the characteristic properties will revive the total conception of the mineral. So in Chemistry, each substance is conceived, not simply as seen and handled by itself, but as acted on by many other substances, by changes of temperature, and so forth. The chemist's notion of sulphur is a large aggregate of appearances and sensations produced in various ways; it is, in fact, the notion of a great collection of substances-the compounds of sulphur-as odour of burnt brimstone, oil of vitriol, salts of sulphuric acid, compounds of sulphur with metals, &c. In like manner, the properties of a plant are not completely summed up and aggregated in the mind, till, in addition to all the aspects it presents by itself, other aspects are taken along with it, brought out by dissection. and manipulation. This is an exact parallel to an example occurring under the immediately preceding head, namely, tools and machinery, where the present aspect has to be conjoined with other appearances, shown when they are put to their practical uses.

In these mineral and chemical aggregates, there is great scope for proving the force of contiguous association, but still more for testing the disposition to dwell upon artificial combinations, the results of previous analysis or forced separation of natural conjunctions. Science, as I shall afterwards have occasion to illustrate, is repellent to the natural mind, from the necessity of disassociating appearances that go naturally and easily together, of renouncing the full and total aspect of an object whereby it engages agreeably the various senses, and of resting upon some feature that has no interest to the common eye. Those compounds of sulphur that have to be conjoined with the simple substance as a part of its idea, are constantly viewed by the chemist under the one aspect of composition or decomposition in the contact with other bodies; the appearance of any single substance to the eye may be wholly irrelevant to any purpose of his.