'give me,' and also the names of a number of other persons and things, mamma,' 'pussy,' 'dolly; and having the wish to give something to one of these other parties, there is no difficulty in displacing 'me' from the formula and admitting 'mamma,' 'pussy,' as the case may be. An effort of volition is implied. Two utterances are present to the mind; the articulate activity is awakened and repeats these utterances perhaps in two or three ways; one is hit upon such as to satisfy the purpose of the moment, and being hit upon is retained and repeated. The effort of substitution once or twice put in practice becomes easy; the mind knows as it were to carry on the current of words so far, then stop, and fall into a different current, so as thereby to produce a third different from either. It is a part of the voluntary command that we acquire over our actions, that we can stop a train at any stage, and commence another train from that point, and this is all that is required in such a case of verbal substitution as we have now supposed. Out of the two sentences, 'I am going out for the day,' 'I am coming home for the night,' a third sentence is constructed, 'I am going out for the night,' by no further effort of volition than this, namely, to arrest the current of articulation at a certain point in the first, to pass into the second, suspending vocal articulation till the word 'for' is reached, then tack on the remainder to the words already enounced from the other. The constructiveness, therefore, lies not in any purely intellectual operation, but in the command that the volition has obtained over the movements, by virtue of which command these are suspended and commenced at pleasure in the service of a particular end. The intellectual forces bring to mind the former acquisitions bearing on the situation, and if no one previous form is strictly applicable, it is a property of the volition to take part of one and part of another, and to make successive trials if necessary, until the want is satisfied.

Throughout the whole wide-ranging operation of adapting old forms of words to new meanings, this is essentially the process pursued. When all the elements requisite for a new combination are at hand, a volition alone is needed to make

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the selection and adaptation suited to the end in view. When there is not a sufficiency of forms within reach of the present recollection, the processes of intellectual recovery must be plied to bring up others, until the desired combination is attained. A voluntary effort is quite equal to the task of cutting down and making up, choosing and rejecting, sorting and re-sorting; the feeling that possesses the mind of the end to be served, is the criterion to judge by, and when this is satisfied the volition ceases, the stimulus being no longer present. In all difficult operations, for purposes or ends, the rule of trial and error is the grand and final resort.

It would thus appear that the first condition of good verbal combinations for the expression of meaning is a sufficient abundance of already formed combinations to choose from, in other words, the effect depends on the previous acquisitions, and on the associating forces whereby old forms are revived for the new occasion. If a complex meaning has to be expressed, every part of this meaning will revive by contiguity and similarity some former idea of an identical or like nature, and the language therewith associated; and out of the mixed assemblage of foregone phrases, the volition must combine a whole into the requisite unity, by trial and error. The more abundant and choice the material supplied from the past by the forces of intellectual recovery, the better will be the combination that it is possible for the mind to form by the selecting effort. This process is one so obvious and familiar, that I need not waste space on examples.

4. Let us next advert to some of the other conditions that have to be satisfied in making verbal combinations; for as yet I have alluded only to the one condition of conveying a given meaning. Certain grammatical forms have to be observed; likewise there are rhetorical proprieties or rules of good taste; a certain melody or cadence is sought to be imparted; and in poetic composition this last quality has to be attained under the restrictions of metre and rhyme. As a matter of course, the more numerous the conditions, the more difficult it is to satisfy them all; but the mode of proceeding is not altered in any essential point. When there are four or

five different conditions to satisfy, the range of choice must be so much the wider. It is not enough that I can combine one form of words sufficient to express a certain meaning, I must be able from my verbal resources, recovered from the past, to construct several forms all equally good as regards meaning, so that I may be able to choose the one that satisfies the other conditions as well. In fact, the mind must possess not one way of bringing out a certain effect, but a plurality of ways, and out of this plurality we fix upon the form that yields some second effect also desired. If a third effect is wanted there must be a power of altering the combination already made without losing those already gained; and for this end we must be able to command a choice of equivalent phrases in the room of those that are discordant as regards the new end.* Thus it is that we must have a plurality of ways of expressing any given meaning; a plurality of forms of the same grammatical construction; a plurality of forms of the same rhetorical propriety, and a great variety of sequences observing the same cadence. Out of this opulence of synonymes, we can at last light upon a combination that satisfies all the conditions of the case. The refusal to combine in any case can only be met by bringing forward new varieties of phrase, sometimes by the bond of meaning, at other times by the bond of grammar, of taste, or of cadence. The more richly stored the mind is on any one of those particulars, that is, the greater the number of words associated with meanings, or with melodious falls, the more surely will that one condition be observed, whatever may become of the rest. If the tendency of the mind has been to lay up stores of expressions adapted to the conveyance of meaning, there will be no difficulty in matching a new meaning, although there may be a difficulty in getting the language to comply with other requisites. If, on the

*Southey's lines on the Fall of Lodore are an instance to show that a word-artist is a person that can bring up for any occasion a large variety of names for the same thing. It is by means of this abundance of past and recoverable phraseology that the elaborate constructions of high composition are at all possible. The number of words that pass across the mind in forming a single couplet may be a hundred times those actually made use of.

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other hand, through a great susceptibility to cadence, and by being very much versed in melodious forms of speech, these forms be ready to occur in great abundance on all occasions, the flow of speech will be sure to be musical, but there will be no security for the compliance with the other conditions; and it may happen that both sense and grammar are neglected. Still out of the abundance of choice presented by this acquisition, a patient mind may seize upon forms that shall not be devoid of any of the other important attributes. Or if the first suggestion of the material of a sentence is left to the associations with meaning, it will be very easy for such a mind to make substitutions and alterations to meet the oratorical condition. In these efforts of combination, the disposition of the mind to be satisfied with a more or less perfect reconciliation of the conflicting claims is always an element in the result.

FEELINGS OF MOVEMENT.

5. We next proceed to exemplify constructiveness among our feelings and perceptions, or the more passive elements of the mind.

Movement gives rise, as has been seen, to a variety of conscious states; some emotional, as the states of exercise and repose, and others with an almost exclusively intellectual character, as the feelings of pressure, space, and form. I shall here take a few examples from the last class.

Having acquired a discriminative sensibility corresponding to some one resistance or pressure, it is possible for us to construct the feeling of another differing in degree. I possess in my hand, after much practice, the engrained impression, say, of a pound weight; and I am commanded to construct, conceive, or imagine, the impression corresponding to three pounds. For this end I must endeavour to fuse the two notions of one pound and of a triple, being formerly very familiar with both in their separation; the notion of doubleness being derived from my experience of the fact in quantities of various kinds. By keeping my mind very much bent upon the two elements in question, I may succeed in

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conjuring up an impression compounded of both, and very nearly corresponding to the actual feeling of a three-pound weight in my hand. If there be any difficulty in the case, this will arise from my not being perfectly in possession of the separate notions, more especially the feeling of the one pound. In the same way I might attain a conception of half a pound, of two pounds, and less accurately of ten or twenty pounds. The more delicate my perception of the degrees of the quality as felt by my muscular sensibility, the nearer I should come to the mark, for it is quite easy to increase or diminish a perception of this kind, and if we have a sufficiently nice judgment of the result when actually attained, we shall succeed perfectly in the construction aimed at.

We are not unfrequently called upon to make efforts implying this sort of adaptiveness. If I have been accustomed to jump a ditch three feet wide, I can easily increase the notion of the effort requisite for five feet. So in throwing objects to hit a mark; we have in this case a power of graduating our strength by combining our notion of increased or diminished quantity with the sensibility acquired, corresponding to some one distance. In this case the constructiveness is first operated upon the pre-conceived idea of the action, whence it passes to the action itself.

The same power of changing degree may be put forth in reference to size and form. Having acquired the arm sensibility to a sweep of one foot, we can construct a feeling corresponding to the sweep of two feet, or half a foot. We can also change a given area from one form to another. By fixing the mind upon the form of a circle, and the area of a pane of glass, we can construct the conception of a round piece of the same extent.

The emotional feelings of movement present a somewhat different case. Under the two next heads I shall bring forward examples, bringing out the peculiarity attaching to the case of emotional constructiveness generally.