CONCEIVING OF TASTES NOT EXPERIENCED.

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that ever man sat down to, yet it may not be possible to attain to the conception. The difficulty of forming new combinations, in some one region of sensations, is only another form of the difficulty of retaining and recovering our own experiences in that region. If I cannot easily conceive a degree, or kind of hunger, beyond anything I have ever known, it is because the states of hunger that I have actually experienced, cannot be well restored after they have completely passed away.

Inasmuch as Tastes, properly so called, are somewhat more intellectual than organic states, we can do more in the way of forming new combinations of them. Given a bitter, such as bitter aloes, and a saline taste, as of common salt, we might construct a taste combined of the two. So a sweet and an astringent might be fused. We might thus attain to the conception of tastes not actually experienced. The effort would doubtless be laborious in most instances, owing to the imperfect recollection that we have of tastes, even after much repetition. A person specially educated in tasting would have so much the less difficulty. And if we wished to retain and revive the new conception, and to make it a possession of the mind, as much so as the taste of sugar, we should need an amount of repetition sufficient for the ideal coherence of the elements brought together.

7. Without dwelling upon the almost parallel case of smells, I shall pass to the first of the intellectual senses. Touch, including the muscular feelings associated with the proper tactile sensibility, furnishes a more abiding species of recollections than the sensations just noticed, and we may therefore look for a higher degree of combining power among the feelings characteristic of this sense. I can acquire the touch of an orange, that is, the bulk, the weight, and the softness of the surface. I have acquired also the touch of a marble table, and the weight of marble as compared with other substances. By a voluntary exertion of the mind, directing the view on the round figure of the orange, and on the touch and specific gravity of the marble, I can make

to emerge a new conception-the collective impression of a marble ball equal in size to the orange. Part of the difficulty, in this trial, consists in the disassociating or separating of elements that have grown together in the mind; an exercise commonly spoken of as an effort of abstraction, or analysis, and arduous, on the one hand, according to the strong hold that the property to be disassociated has taken of the mind, and, on the other hand, according to the weak hold that we have of the property to be substituted. If I were very strongly affected by the peculiar soft touch of the orange, and had very little interest in the cold hard contact of the marble, there would be a repugnance in my mind to the proposed transmutation; and the effort of abstractive, or analytic, volition, preparatory to the new combination, would be severe. A mind sensitive to the warm and sensuous elements of touch and colour, revolts from the operation, so familiar to the mathematician, of stripping these off, and leaving only naked forms and arbitrary symbols to engage the intellect. The double decompositions illustrated by the above example, are made laborious, by every circumstance that favours in the mind a preference for the combinations already existing, and correspondingly easy, when there is a partiality for the new combination that is to be the result. Thus, even when we operate upon subjects very conceivable and retainable, unlike the organic sensations lately noticed, new difficulties may arise to clog the constructive operation. The mere effort of analysis is itself something considerable; it is not a favourite avocation of the untutored mind, with which associative growth is more congenial than disassociating surgery; and when the analysis has to be applied to break up favourite combinations, and constitute others of an unattractive kind, we become aware of the tyrannical influence that the likings and dislikings, the sympathies and antipathies, exert over the intellectual processes.

The very great difference between the constructions of Imagination, and the combinations for Practice or for Science, is herein faintly shadowed forth.

In the definition, or description, of the tactile quality of surfaces,―woods, cloths, minerals, metals,-reference must be made to touches familiar to us, by whose combination we are supposed to attain the feeling of a surface not experienced. Touch Touch is one of the defining properties of minerals.

8. In the very various states of mind excited through the sense of Hearing, there is wide scope for new combinations and constructions; the mode of operating being much the same as in the preceding instances. We may hear a note, or an air, sounded by an instrument or voice, and may wish to imagine it on a different instrument or voice. If we have a good mental grasp of the air, and of the tones of the second instrument, this transference may be effected after a certain amount of effort. We have heard a piece performed on a fine band; and we desire to conceive the effect of some other piece performed on the same band. Some faint notion of the result of such a combination might be attained, but the exercise is not one that is much attempted. Few people engage in an occupation of this nature, or endeavour to create to themselves non-experienced impressions with an approach to the vividness of reality.

'Imagine Macready, or Rachel, delivering that passage.' We have heard the passage, and we have heard Macready. A constructive effort, taking place upon firm recollections of the two things to be combined, might be successful in such an instance. A good imitator, or mimic, actually succeeds in modifying his recollections of his original to suit an entirely new discourse. The ability to make the combination, as in all other cases, rests in the first instance on the full possession of the separate elements.

9. Under Sight, the sense of easy conception by preeminence, the examples of constructiveness are extremely copious. Light and shade, colour, lustre, visible size or dimensions, shape, distance, position,-are the constituents that unite in the complex perceptions of sight; and it is possible to vary any given combination, by putting out and taking in elements at pleasure. I see or remember a line of

houses; I can imagine it prolonged to double or triple the length; or I can transform the whole line by the addition of a story to the height. In the landscape I see a mountain and a wood standing apart; I place the wood upon the mountain. Or to take Hobbes's example of constructiveness :* I have the idea of a mountain and the idea of gold, and by superimposing the one upon the other, I can evoke the image of a mountain of gold. The facility in all such cases, depends, as usual, on the perfect and easy command the mind has of the separate ideas, owing to their good ideal persistence. The combination takes place of its own accord, if the elements are once properly brought together and kept, as it were, in close contact for a sufficient time. A continuance of the effort will enable us to retain the new image, until the parts of it acquire a certain contiguous adhesiveness, after which we shall possess it as a mental recollection not differing essentially from the recollections of things actually seen. As in former examples, the decomposition and recomposition, implied in the constructive effort, may be aided or thwarted by emotions. Hobbes's mountain of gold would emerge the more readily that the image is one to excite men's feelings, being an example of imagination in the more limited sense. of the word, or in that sense wherein lies the contrast between it and the creations of the intellect for scientific or practical ends. If I see a dress, and want to conceive it of some other colour, I can most easily substitute either the colour that I am most familiar with, or the one that I have a special affection for.

*As when the water, or any liquid thing moved at once by divers movements, receiveth one motion compounded of them all; so also the brain, or spirit therein, having been stirred by divers objects, composeth an imagination of divers conceptions that appeareth single to the sense. As for example, the sense showeth at one time the figure of a mountain, and at another time the colour of gold; but the imagination afterwards hath them both at once in a golden mountain. From the same cause it is, there appear unto us castles in the air, chimeras, and other monsters which are not in rerum naturâ, but have been conceived by the sense in pieces at several times. And this composition is that which we commonly call fiction of the mind.'-Human Nature, chap. iii., § 4.

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The re-disposition of the parts of an interior, or a scene, severely tests the constructive faculty. Wishing to re-arrange the furniture of a room, I endeavour to conceive beforehand the effect of a proposed arrangement. So with a garden; a person must have a good retentiveness of the ideas of the parts, in order to put together, and hold firmly, the new plan, so as to judge of the effect of it before taking any measures to realize it. An intellect naturally pictorial, or disposed to retain visual images in general, and an education in the particular subject operated upon, are the requisites for success in such an operation. The susceptibility to beauty, or to the emotional effects of the several combinations, operates in favour of every construction that yields the emotion.

CONSTRUCTION OF NEW EMOTIONS.

10. We may revive emotional states by contiguity or by similarity, or by a composition of associating bonds; and, from two or more states thus revived, new emotions may be generated by constructiveness. I have already touched upon this, in speaking of the organic sensations, these being almost purely emotional in their character. But if we pass to the feelings that are more recoverable and more retainable in the ideal form, we shall obtain examples of greater frequency in actual occurrence.

The problem is to realize emotions such as we have never experienced in ourselves, or have experienced too rarely to recall them by any effort of mere recollection. The feelings belonging to men whose character, position, occupation, &c., are totally different from our own, can in general be conceived only through a constructive process, operating upon feelings that we do possess.

There are certain elementary emotions that belong to human nature in general, although manifested very unequally, in consequence both of primitive differences of character, and of variety in the outward circumstances of individuals. Every one has experience of wonder, of fear,