CONTRAST CLEARS THE MIND OF CONTRADICTIONS.

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It happens, however, in fact, that the same mind will at different times maintain irreconcilable propositions unawares. Either the power of reinstatement by similarity is too feeble, or there is some strong feeling at work that repels the approach of any fact not in accordance with the view held for the time being. Both causes are found at work. In an average intellect, the power of similarity is not energetic enough to search the past for all the statements that may have been made upon any subject now in hand; and many inconsistencies are too subtle for the detection of an ordinary mind. When we add to this intellectual feebleness the power of emotion, the influence of the likings and dislikings,we have a sufficient explanation of the co-existence of contradiction in the same mind. It has been already observed, that a strong feeling will rebut all ideas incompatible with itself, however strongly they may be suggested by the forces of association. I can suppose the Apostle Peter to have been unconscious of contradicting himself within a few hours, when under excitement for his personal safety. The strong affirmations he had so lately made on the very same subject might not even have come into his mind. A current of violent emotion, besides overbearing hostile considerations that may be actually before the mind, can so obstruct, I might almost say paralyze, the workings of association, that such considerations, however near, shall not be allowed to come on the stage. This is one of the characteristic influences of emotion. Intellect cannot perform its ordinary functions in the presence of strong feeling. The accordance or discordance of objects and recollected ideas with the present emotion, is so powerful that the purely intellectual links may have but a small share in the resuscitation. The tendency of intellect proper is to banish all contradictions from the mind, in other words, to arrive at consistency, the test of truth: the tendency of men's emotions of all kinds runs counter to this, and renders the spectacle of a thoroughly consistent human being no less rare than admirable.

CHAPTER IV.

CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION.

By means of Association, the mind has the power to form new combinations, or aggregates, different from any that have been presented to it in the course of experience.

1. THROUGHOUT the whole of the preceding exposition, we have had in view the literal resuscitation, revival, or reinstatement of former actions, images, emotions, and trains of thought. No special reference has been made to the operations known by such names as Imagination, Creation, Constructiveness, Origination; through which we are supposed to put together new forms, or to construct images, conceptions, pictures, and modes of working, such as we have never before had any experience of. Yet the genius of the Painter, the Poet, the Musician, and the Inventor in the arts and sciences, evidently implies a process of this

nature.

Under the head of Similarity, we have had to recognize a power tending to originality and invention, as whenin virtue of the identifying of two things lying far apart in nature-whatever is known of the one is instantly transferred to the other, thereby constituting a new and instructive combination of ideas. Such was the case when Franklin's identification of electricity and thunder, led to the application of the Leyden jar to explain a thunderstorm. The power of recalling like by like, in spite of remoteness, disguise, and false lures, enters, as we have seen, into a very large number of inventive efforts, both in the sciences and in the arts. But we have now to deal with

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There are

constructions of a higher order of complexity. discoveries that seem nothing short of absolute creations, as, for example, the whole science of Mathematics; while, in the Fine Arts, a frieze of the Parthenon, a Gothic cathedral, a Paradise Lost, are very far beyond the highest stretches of the identifying faculty taken by itself.

Nevertheless, the intellectual forces operating in those creations, are no other than the associating forces already discussed. The new combinations grow out of elements already possessed by the mind, and brought to view according to the laws above laid down.

MECHANICAL CONSTRUCTIVENESS.

2. In our mechanical education, complex and difficult actions are acquired by taking the simple acts separately. We learn part No. 1 by itself; then part No. 2, No. 3, and the rest; when each of these parts is attained, an effort of volition joins them together.

Mechanical combinations are usually formed by successive additions. A certain movement is mastered; another is entered on by itself, and when mastered is added to the first. In military drill, in learning to manipulate, or to dance, each step is practised alone; when two have been attained in separation, they can be performed together, merely by willing it. A third and fourth are added in the same way. There is no new difficulty in grouping or combining the distinct operations. Any awkwardness in the united effort is mainly owing to the separate parts not being fully confirmed.

Our mechanical acquirements often demand the suppression of one member of a complex action, a decomposition, as it were, of some of the primitive associated movements. In this case, a voluntary effort is directed upon the member whose movement is to be suppressed. In walking, there is a natural tendency to swing the arms and the body along with the lower limbs. By a volition, these extra movements may be arrested, and the primitive aggregate reduced to a more select aggregate.

Learning to swim is a good example to show what remains to be done in mechanical combination, after the separate acts are fully mastered. The beginner includes among previous acquisitions the voluntary control of the arms, and of the lower limbs. Perhaps, indeed, this control needs to be improved as respects the swimming movements: accordingly, the first thing is to practise the separate acts of throwing out the arms and the legs. The next thing is to bring them together, in the proper rhythm or combination. There being, however, a certain delicacy of adjustment, the pupil does not succeed at the first attempt. Various tentatives are made; and at last, by chance, the rhythm is hit upon, and, being hit upon, is persisted in. The moment of a successful achievement, after struggles, is singularly favourable to the cohesive process, according to the law of awakened and concentrated attention; and the happy combination is already cemented to such a degree, that fewer tentatives are required on the second occasion. By two or three more repetitions, the fusion is complete.

In the full detail of Constructiveness, we shall have to exemplify these three main conditions :-namely, (1) a previous command of the elements entering into the combination; (2) a sense of the effect to be produced; and (3) a voluntary process of trial and error continued until the desired effect is actually produced.

VERBAL CONSTRUCTIVENESS.

3. The facility in passing from mere iteration into new combinations, is perhaps most obvious in the use of language. Few successions of words of any length, uttered in everyday intercourse, are precisely the same as any succession formerly said or heard by the speaker. Yet we find it easy to adapt the old to new purposes.

In the early efforts of imitation, whereby words are first mastered, there is a constructive process. The child has learned to say ba and na, and when these separate sounds become very easy to the organs, a chance impulse makes

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them run together into ban. Here, as before, the ripeness of the preliminary acquirements separately, is the first condition of a successful union.

After acquiring a certain number of words, and a few simple forms of sentences, new forms are produced. The child. has learned to say 'give me,' and also the names of a number of other persons and things, 'mamma,' 'pussy,' 'dolly'; and having the wish to give something to one of these, finds no difficulty in displacing 'me' from the formula, and admitting 'mamma,' 'pussy,' as the case may be. An effort of volition is implied. Two utterances are present to the mind; the articulate activity is awakened, and repeats these utterances perhaps in two or three ways; one is hit upon, such as to satisfy the purpose of the moment, and, being hit upon, is retained and repeated. The effort of substitution, once or twice put in practice, becomes easy; the mind knows as it were to carry on the current of words so far, then to stop, and to fall into a different current, so as thereby to produce a third, different from either. It is a part of the voluntary command of our movements, to stop a sequence at any stage, and to commence another train from that point; which is all that is necessary in the case supposed. Out of the two sentences, 'I am going out for the day,' I am coming home for the night,' a third sentence is constructed, 'I am going out for the night,' by no further effort of volition than this, namely, to arrest the current of articulation at a certain point in the first, to pass into the second, suspending vocal articulation till the word 'the' is reached, then to tack on the remainder, 'night,' to the words already enounced from the other. The constructiveness, therefore, lies not in any purely intellectual operation, but in the command that the volition has obtained over the movements, by virtue of which command, these are suspended and commenced at pleasure, in the service of a particular end. The intellectual forces bring to mind the former acquisitions bearing on the situation, and if no one previous form is strictly applicable, the volition