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I am disposed to put some stress upon this point, I must account the quality of the muscle of far inferior importance, and indeed quite trifling in comparison with the quality of the nervous framework.

(6.) This leads me therefore to the last condition proper to be noticed in connexion with acquired movements, namely, the spontaneous activity of the system. The abundance of the natural or spontaneous activity makes the active or energetic temperament, and promotes the acquisition of new movements. The proof of this affirmation comes principally from an in Juctive examination of active temperaments, from which I believe it will receive ample confirmation, allowing always for the other conditions above enumerated, some of them quite as important as the present. It is usually the men of natural and abounding activity that make good sportsmen, adroit mechanics, and able contenders in games of bodily skill. Nor is the coincidence at all unlikely in itself; the same nervous power that disposes the frame to spontaneous movement is likely to aid the plastic operation that fixes movements in consecutive trains.

We have now before our view the principle of growth that confers upon human beings mechanical art and the power of labour and endurance. By it we can create new circles of power, make others fall into decay, and distribute the human forces anew, so as to adapt them more expressly for each man's necessities and position in life.

FEELINGS OF MOVEMENT.

6. The continuance and revival of a feeling of movement, without the movement itself, make a new and distinct case for the associating principle to work upon: a case, too, of very great interest as introducing us into the sphere of Thought. This transition from the external to the internal, from the Reality to the Idea, the greatest leap that can be taken within the compass of the present work,-needs to be introduced by a consideration of the question, what is the probable seat, or local embodiment, of a sensation or mechanical feeling, when persisting after the fact, or when revived without the

reality? The discussion of this question will interrupt, for a few pages, our exemplification of the law of contiguous adhesiveness.

A movement is a complex thing; looked at from without, it is an exertion of physical or mechanical force; to the inward consciousness it yields a manifestation such as we have endeavoured to describe.* Both the one and the other may be associated in trains, by virtue of the same law of adhesiveness on repetition; but what is more, the Feelings of a series of movements may be associated and revive one another without the movements themselves being revived. A mechanic can repeat to his mind all the operations of a day's work just as well as he can go through the reality. This implies the possibility of separating the feelings from the acts. We can easily conceive these two to have been constituted inseparable. We can suppose such an arrangement of things, that the feeling of movement or resistance should continue during the movements of exertion, and become extinct when exertion ceases, like the disappearance of light when a lamp is blown. out. So in the various sensations of taste, smell, touch, hearing, sight, the same limit might have existed; the sensibility might have lasted only during the actual contact or presence of the object, and the consciousness have become blank and silent the instant a sound ceased or the eye turned itself aside from a spectacle. This, however, is not what we actually find. A state of feeling or sensation, once stirred, remains for a longer or shorter time after the stimulus ceases; the nerve currents, once commenced, persist of themselves by their own natural energy, and only die away by degrees. Much depends on this quality of perseverance; it is one of the conditions on which thought and intelligence depend. The life of ideas, the enjoyment and suffering derived from the Past, would be extinct but for this; and intellectual comparisons and combinations would be impossible.

7. All feelings do not persist alike; the most persistent are the most intellectual. In all minds the persistence is not

*See Book I., chap. I.

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equally good, whence some minds are better fitted for the operations of intelligence than others. The first impetus depends on the outward cause, the retention of the echo is a quality of the recipient mechanism. A cadence falls on the ear and produces a wave of feeling; whether that feeling shall last for some seconds or minutes in all its strength or distinctness, or whether it shall immediately fade into dimness and confusion, depends on the quality of the ear and of the nerve circles associated with it, and on the cerebral mechanism at large; the difference is recognised in common language; we speak of a good ear or a bad ear. The retentiveness of impressions is the foundation of everything else in the intellectual fabric. The power of the chords once struck to vibrate by their own energy is the beginning of the second stage of mind, of that wherein the past and the present are brought together. We cannot look at two outward things in the same instant of time; and if the impression of the first were to die when we pass to the second, there could be no comparison and no feeling of preference. Volition would be impossible; for that supposes a preference of one state of mind to another, a past to a present, or a present to a past.

8. In discussing the Sensations and Muscular feelings in the first Book, we were obliged to assume this quality, although it belongs properly to Intellect. The degree of persistence in the absence of the original, made one of the distinguishing features in describing sensations, some, as the organic feelings, having a low order of persistence; touch, hearing, and sight being much more endowed in this respect. It is always to be remembered, that although scientific method requires us to take the different aspects of mind apart, yet in the mind itself they are always working together; Emotion, Intellect, and Volition, concur in almost every manifestation. In treating of one we are obliged to assume the others, if we do not specifically bring them forward. Thus it was impossible to do justice to the Sensations without touching on their persistence or Intellectual quality, and on their power to excite action, which is their Volitional quality. It was necessary to imply the sense of discrimination based on this retentiveness,

in order to show the use of the different senses in making us acquainted with the outer world, a point to be more fully brought out in the present Book.

9. All the muscular feelings already described, both the organic feelings of Muscle, and the states produced by exercise in its various forms, can be sustained for some time after the physical cause has ceased. All the Sensations of the senses can be sustained in like manner, some more and some less easily; and they can afterwards be revived as ideas by means of the associating forces. What then is the mode of existence of these feelings bereft of their outward support and first cause? in what particular form do they possess or occupy the mental and cerebral system? This question carries us as far as we are able to go into the cerebral process of intelligence. It admits of two different answers or assumptions, the one old and widely prevalent, the other new but better founded. The old notion supposes that the brain is a sort of receptacle of the impressions of sense, where they lie stored up in a chamber quite apart from the recipient apparatus, to be manifested again to the mind when occasion calls. But the modern theory of the brain already developed in the Introduction suggests a totally different view. We have seen that the brain is only one part of the course of nervous action; that the completed circles take in the nerves and the extremities of the body; that nervous action consists of a current passing through these complete circles, or to and fro between the ganglia and the organs of sense and motion; and that short of a completed course no nervous action exists. The idea of a cerebral closet is quite incompatible with the real manner of the working of nerve. Seeing then that a sensation in the first instance diffuses nerve currents through the interior of the brain outwards to the organs of expression and movement, the persistence of that sensation after the outward exciting cause is withdrawn, can only be a continuance of the same diffusive currents, perhaps less intense, but not otherwise different. The shock remaining in the ear and the brain after the firing of artillery must pass through the same circles, and act in the same way, as during the actual sound. We have

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no reason for believing that in the self-sustaining condition the impression changes its seat, or passes into some new circles that have the special property of retaining it. Every part actuated after the shock must have been actuated by the shock, only more powerfully. With this single difference of intensity, the mode of existence of a sensation enduring after the fact is essentially the same as its mode of existence during the fact; the same organs are occupied, the same current action goes on. We see in the continuance of the attitude and expression the identical outward appearances; and these appearances are produced by the course of power being still by the same routes. Moreover, the identity in the inward mode of consciousness implies that the manner of action within the brain is unaltered.

10. Now if this be the case with impressions persisting when the cause has ceased, what view are we to adopt concerning impressions reproduced by mental causes alone, or without the aid of the original, as in ordinary recollection? What is the manner of occupation of the brain with a resuscitated feeling of resistance, a smell, or a sound? There is only one answer so far as I can see. The renewed feeling occupies the very same parts and in the same manner as the original feeling, and no other parts, nor in any other manner that can be assigned. I imagine that if our present knowledge of the brain had been present to the earliest speculators, no other hypothesis than this would ever have occurred to any one. For where should a past feeling be re-embodied if not in the same organs as the feeling when present. It is only in this way that its identity can be preserved; a feeling differently embodied must to all intents and purposes be a different feeling, unless we suppose a duplicate brain on which everything past is to be transferred. But such duplication has no proof and serves no end.

It is possible, however, to adduce facts that set in a still clearer light this re-occupation of the sentient circles with recovered impressions and feelings. Take first the recovery of feelings of energetic action, as when reviving the exploits and exertions of yesterday. It is a notorious circumstance that if