CLEARING THE MIND OF INCONSISTENCY.

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the same subject was under my consideration, and makes present the opinion then entertained on the subject. In this way the past and the present are confronted as effectually as if the opposites had been affirmed at the same moment, and I am thereupon urged, by the whole force of revulsion against inconsistency inherent in my nature, to dismiss one or other of the conflicting opinions.

20. The force of similarity, when sufficiently well developed, and not restricted in its operation, is able to rid the mind of contradictions, in so far as this can be done by bringing the conflicting opinions together. A present assertion revives any past assertion that may have been made on the same subject, and, if the two are contradictory, there is opportunity given for choosing between the two. 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. Many inconsistencies are too subtle for the detection of an ordinary mind. When we add the power of emotion, the influence of the likings and dislikings,-to this intellectual feebleness, we have a sufficient explanation of the co-existence of contradictions in the same mind. We have 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 paralyse, 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 character of the present emotion, counts for so much in the recovery of the past, that the purely intellectual links have but a small share in the result. 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.

I.

CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION.

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

HROUGHOUT the whole of the preceding exposition

THR

we have had in view the literal resuscitation, revival, or reinstatement of former sensations, images, emotions, and trains of thought. No special reference has been made to the operation 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, poet, musician, and inventor in the arts and sciences, evidently implies such a process as this.

Under the head of similarity we have had to recognise a power tending to originality and invention, as when in virtue of the identifying of two things formerly considered remote from each other, 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 extension of all the properties of the Leyden jar to explain a thunder-storm. 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, particularly in science. But we have now to consider constructions of a much higher order of complexity. There are discoveries that seem nothing short of absolute creations, as for example, the

whole science of Mathematics; while in the Fine Arts, a Gothic cathedral, a frieze of the Parthenon, a Paradise Lost, are very far from repetitions of experienced objects, even with all the power of extension that the highest reach of the identifying faculty can impart.

Nevertheless, I mean to affirm that the intellectual forces operating in those creations are no other than the associating forces already discussed. For the new combinations grow out of elements already in the possession of the mind, and brought forward according to the laws above laid down. This position we shall now endeavour to illustrate.

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 so on; and if each of these parts were so firmly acquired as to be maintained without any exercise of the attention, we should have no new labour in performing them altogether. The performance of the whole is the performance of the parts; a volition directing the order and time of the various exertions constitutes all that can be pointed out as peculiar to the fact of combination.

Most commonly mechanical combinations are learned by keeping up the exercise of the parts already acquired, and adding new ones in the manner now indicated. Thus in learning to dance the pupil is first put through the simple positions and steps; and when these are firmly fixed, they are performed along with other additions, and so on, until an exceedingly complex movement is arrived at. There is no new fact of mind in passing from the performance of a single act by itself to the performance of that act in company with a second; the only peculiarity of the case is the demand for the thorough acquisition of the movement requiring to be kept up while the attention is directed upon some other moveWhen the degree of cohesion is sufficient to make the

ment.

EARLY EFFORTS OF SPEECH.

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first of the two self-supporting, there is nothing else wanted to make it combine with the second.

Our mechanical acquirements often demand the suppression of one member of a complex action, a decomposition, as it were, of some of the concurring movements that we have seen to be natural to the system. In this case a voluntary effort is directed upon the member whose movement is to be suppressed, during the exercise of the complex whole. In walking there is a natural tendency to swing the arms and the body along with the lower limbs. By a voluntary effort these extra movements may be arrested, and the primitive aggregate reduced to a smaller aggregate. So the wild ecstasy of the animal spirits may be trained to burst out with the total suppression of vocal accompaniment. For this purpose we combine with the instinctive display a negative acquirement, an exertion for the suppression of a movement, and the result is an effect consisting of a various display, minus one of the members of the primitive combination.

VERBAL CONSTRUCTIVENESS.

3. The facility the mind has in passing from mere repetition into new combinations is perhaps most obvious in the use of language. Scarcely any succession of words uttered in everyday intercourse is precisely the same as any other succession formerly said or heard by the speaker. It seems particularly easy for us to adapt and modify this acquisition in an endless variety of ways.

In the early efforts of imitation, whereby words are first learned, 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 them run together into ban. Here, as before, the ripeness of the preliminary acquirements separately is the main condition.

When a number of words have been acquired, with a few simple forms of intelligible sentences, it becomes easy to make new applications of these forms. The child has learned to say