CONSTRUCTIVENESS IN THE SENSATIONS.

6. Beginning with organic sensibility, we might cite instances of constructiveness in the endeavour to conceive pains or hurts of a kind different from any we have experienced. We can as usual make the change of degree; and if the new state is a combination of two already familiar to us, or one minus some second, the conception is more or less in our power.

The agreeable and joyous states of general sensibility are very various. Each one has experience of some of them, and starting from these we may be made to conceive others, if the description, that is, the method of compounding the known into the known, be clearly given. I may never have experienced the ecstasy of intoxication by opium, but if I have felt a number of states whose combination would amount to this effect, and if these are pointed out to me, I can by an effort recal and fuse them into one whole, so as to construct the feeling in question. This is by no means an easy undertaking to the generality of people; and the reason is, that the strong organic feelings are not readily recoverable at all times in their entire fulness. Some one leading element of the combination sought would require to be present in the reality, and then it might be possible to bring up others, and to form a new conception, by introducing the requisite modifications. But, on the other hand, this method has its disadvantages; it is not easy to modify a strong and present reality by mere ideas; it would be more practicable to modify a mere recollection, which is itself an ideal thing. The non-intellectual nature of the organic feelings rendering them stubborn to recal, however powerful they are in the reality, is the great obstacle to our easily conceiving inexperienced varieties of them. A person may have enjoyed the pleasures of eating in a sufficient number of forms to possess all the elements necessary for conceiving the most luxurious feast that ever mortal man sat down to, yet it may not be possible to attain to the conception. The difficulty of forming new combina

tions, in some one region of sensations, is only another proof 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 times of hunger that I have actually gone through cannot be well restored after they have completely passed away.

Tastes, properly so called, being 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, one 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 less difficulty. If we wished to retain and revive the new conception, and to make it a possession of the mind, as much as the taste of sugar, we should require to repeat the effort of fusion a great many times.

7. Without waiting to dwell 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 character 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

ANALYSIS A REPULSIVE OPERATION.

581 that have grown together in the mind; this exercise is commonly spoken of as an effort of abstraction, or analysis, and is arduous, on the one hand, according to the hold that the property to be disassociated has taken of the mind, and on the other hand according to the little 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 very 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 it is that even when we have got into subjects very conceivable and retainable, unlike the organic sensations lately noticed, other difficulties may arise to clog the constructive operation. The mere effort of analysis is itself something considerable, so much so, that this is not a favourite avocation of the untutored mind, with which associative growth is more genial than disassociating surgery; but when the analysis has to be applied to break up favourite combinations, and constitute others of an unattractive kind, we are then 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 combining operations for a Rational end is herein faintly shadowed.

In the definition or description of the tactile quality of surfaces, woods, cloths, minerals, metals, &c., reference must be made to touches familiar to us, by whose combination

we are supposed to make up the feeling of an inexperienced surface. 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 great room 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 inexperienced impressions with all 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 vivid 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, size or dimensions, shape, distance, position,-are the constituents that concur 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 wood standing apart; I place the wood upon the mountain. Or to take Hobbes's

NEW CONCEPTIONS AMONG OBJECTS OF SIGHT. 583

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 having acquired a 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 retarded 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 the colour that I am most familiar with, or have a special affection for.

The disposition of the parts of a complicated object is rather trying to the constructive faculty. Wishing to rearrange 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

As 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. 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.'-Discourse on Human Nature, chap. iii., § 4.