TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxxi FINE ART CONSTRUCTIONS.-IMAGINATION. Distinction between the constructions of imagination and 24. Combinations ruled by emotions: Terror, Anger 25. Superstructures reared on Egotistic feeling. 26. Constructions to satisfy the emotions of Fine Art properly INTRODUCTION. THE CHAPTER I. DEFINITION OF MIND. HE operations and appearances that constitute Mind are indicated by such terms as Feeling, Thought, Memory, Reason, Conscience, Imagination, Will, Passions, Affections, Taste. But the Definition of Mind aspires to comprehend in few words, by some apt generalisation, the whole kindred of mental facts, and to exclude everything of a foreign character. Mind, according to my conception of it, possesses three attributes, or capacities. I. It has Feeling, in which term I include what is commonly called Sensation and Emotion. 2. It can Act according to Feeling. 3. It can Think. Consciousness is inseparable from the first of these capacities, but not, as appears to me, from the second or the third. True, our actions and thoughts are usually conscious, that is, are known to us by an inward perception; but the consciousness of an act is manifestly not the act, and, although the assertion is less obvious, I believe that the consciousness of a thought is distinct from the thought. To flee on the appearance of danger is one thing, and to be conscious that we apprehend danger is another. The three terms, Feeling, Emotion, and Consciousness, will, I think, be found in reality to express one and the same fact or attribute of mind, and will be used accordingly in the present exposition. B 2. A Definition should itself be intelligible, and composed of terms not standing in need of further definition. Thus, for a notion of what feeling is, I must refer each person to their own experience. The warmth felt in sunshine, the fragrance of flowers, the sweetness of honey, the bleating of cattle, the beauty of a landscape, are so many known states of consciousness, feeling, or emotion. The aim of the definition is to propose a generalisation, or general expression including all such states; and this generalisation admits of being elucidated and discussed, proved or disproved. I shall now offer a few remarks in explanation of each of the heads of the Definition. (1.). With regard to the quality variously called Feeling, Consciousness, or Emotion, I would remark that this is the foremost and most unmistakeable mark of mind. The members of the human race agree in manifesting the property of Feeling. The orders of the brute creation give like symptoms of the same endowment. The vegetable and mineral worlds are devoid of it. True, it is each in ourselves that we have the direct evidence of the conscious state, no one person's consciousness being open to another person. But finding all the outward appearances that accompany consciousness in ourselves to be present in other human beings, as well as, under some variety of degree, in the lower animals, we naturally conclude their internal state to be the same with our own. The gambols of a child, the shrinking from a blow, or a cry on account of pain, and the corresponding expressions for mental states common to all languages, prove that men in all times have been similarly affected. The terms for expressing pleasure and pain in all their various forms and degrees are names of conscious states. Joy, sorrow, misery, comfort, bliss, happiness are a few examples out of this wide vocabulary. (2.) Although the signs and language of feeling are sufficient proofs of the existence of mind, yet mere feeling is not all that we look for in a mental nature. Action is a second requisite. The putting forth of power to execute some work or perform some operation is to us a mark of mind. Eating, drinking, running, flying, sowing, reaping, building, destroying, —are operations rising beyond the play of mere emotion. In ACTION A PART OF MIND. speaking of Action, however, as a characteristic of mind, we must render explicit the distinction between mental actions and such as are not mental. This distinction I have endeavoured to set forth by describing mental actions as under the prompting and guidance of Feeling. When an animal tears, masticates, and swallows its food, or hunts its prey, the stimulus and support of the activity manifested is to be sought in a strong sensation or feeling. By this limitation, we exclude many kinds of action familiar to us in nature, the powers of wind, water, gravity, steam, gunpowder, electricity, vegetation, &c. True, the impulse of personification, so spontaneous in man, has often personified those powers, ascribing their workings to some mental nature concealed behind them. But there is a very great difference between the two cases, as is shown by the habitual mode of dealing with each, especially in modern scientific discussions. With respect to the powers of nature, we ascertain the general laws of working solely by an examination of the phenomena themselves. As regards gravitation, for example, Newton and his followers went no deeper than the observed movements, describing as they best might the uniformities or general rules that these movements follow There is still, it is true, a class of less scientific and more fanciful speculators, who are disposed to regard gravity as the direct emanation of a mind or will. Yet even they are still obliged to speak of the laws in the same way. But in regard to mental actions the practice is otherwise. There we descend for an explanation into the laws of feeling or emotion, -into the sensations and various affections that work within the animated creature. We cannot trace any uniformity in the operations of a human being by merely looking at the actions themselves, as we can in the fall of a stone or the course of a planet. It is the unseen feelings that furnish the key to the vast complication of man's works and ways. We may also remark, that these powers of creation give no evidence of mind according to the only form known to us. They have no senses, no brain, no gesticulation or signs of passion, no articulate utterance or language of emotion. Poets may fancy a passionate expression in the tumult of wind and |