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power lies in tracing differences in matters where the uninitiated feels none. A person untaught in Logic would perhaps see no distinction between two arguments coming under different moods and figures, or between a truth arrived at deductively and one arrived at inductively. The term 'Judgment' expresses those higher forms of discrimination, and also not unfrequently the lower; and Sir W. Hamilton remarks that Judgment is implied in every act of consciousness, which is quite true on the supposition of its being merely one of the synonymes of discrimination. But, as we shall see presently, there is another mode of the intellectual consciousness, whose mention is requisite preparatory to the full explication of these higher judgments of the mind.

15. The only farther observation to be made under the present head, refers to the impressing of the mind with distinctive forms, notions, and imagery, to be connected by the laws of association, and made use of in guiding present action, and in preparing those higher combinations, designated under the faculties of Reason, Imagination, &c. Were it not for the primitive shock that difference gives, there would be no basis for the intellect. All colours would be alike; sounds would not be distinct from touches or smells, and there would be no cognition possible in any sense. The feeling of difference, therefore, is the first step; the impressing of that into an enduring notion, under the plastic property of the mind, is the next. We begin by being alive to the distinctive shocks of red and green, of round and oval, small and large; by-and-bye, we attain the fixed notion of a rose on its stem; thence we go on combining this with others, until the mind is full of the most variegated trains of imagery. The law of contiguous association follows up, and does not necessarily imply, or contain in itself, the primordial sense of difference, which is the most rudimentary of all the properties of our intellectual being. Analysis can descend no deeper, explanation can go no farther; we must take a stand upon this, as the preliminary condition of all intelligence, and merely seek to place its character in a clear and certain light.

Sense of Agreement.

16. The foregoing remarks proceed on the assumption, that a continuous or unbroken impression supplies no element of the consciousness, and that change, novelty, variety, are what incite the mental being into wakeful manifestation. There are, nevertheless, cases where Agreement imparts the shock requisite for rousing the intellectual wave. It is, however, agreement in a qualified sense, indeed, so qualified as to be really a mode of difference. We have seen at large, in the exposition of the Law of Similarity, that the discovery of identity comes upon the mind with a flash or a shock of the nature of surprise, but the identity in such cases must be surrounded with diversity. It gives no surprise to waken every morning, and see the same objects in the same positions, but it does surprise us to go away into a remote place, where everything is altered and where we are prepared for changes, and find a prospect exactly resembling a familiar scene at home. We are not surprised by seeing friends in their wonted haunts, the surprise is given when we meet them in some region far remote. Agreements of this sort are in reality differences; they are breaches of expectation, and give us a start exactly in the same way as a difference arising where we looked for agreement. The mind once accustomed to a certain fixed routine of change, is startled by the substitution of uniformity instead. Having often been in a room hung with pictures, and otherwise richly furnished, one feels a rupture of expectation and a violent surprise on encountering naked walls and an empty floor. It is still change, or a discrepancy between a past and a present attitude of mind, that is the exciting cause of the awakened consciousness; although it sometimes happens that the change consists in producing an old familiar impression in an unlooked-for connexion.

17. Having premised thus much, we have next to study the influence of this new class of surprises on the growth of our intelligence. It so happens that the noticing of agree

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ment in the midst of difference is an exceedingly useful function as regards our knowledge of the world, where amid great variety there is much resemblance. A long chapter having been devoted to the exposition of that fact, and the consequences of it, any laboured demonstration in this place is superfluous. What concerns us at present, is to notice the manner whereby we are made alive to those agreements, so as to stamp them on the mind and make them a part of the permanent intellectual furniture. Take a simple case of classification to illustrate our meaning. The young mind looking again and again at one tree acquires an impression of it merely through the sensibility to difference. We being at last familiarized with the repetition of the very same aggregate of differences, so to speak, there is an end of any special surprise on the presentation of the object, and a gradual tendency to the indifferentism that monotony induces. Let the mind, however, encounter another tree smaller in dimensions but similar in all else; the similarity recalls the old tree, while the difference gives the stimulus of surprise. We are then awakened as it were to a new circumstance as important as the original fact of difference, and a flow of excitement accompanies the experience, rendering it vivid at the moment, and laying the basis of a permanent recollection. Thus, besides accumulating differences, and enlarging the stock of intellectual imagery grounded upon these, we enter on a new class of impressions, the impressions of agreement in diversity. If these agreements fell upon the mind perfectly flat, like the unbroken continuance of one impression, I doubt whether we should have been able to take any cognisance of the great fact of recurrence in the midst of change, on which depends the operations of classifying, generalizing, induction, and the like. In order to impress upon the mind the existence of a class of houses, trees, mer, and so on, it seems essential that the recurrence of similarity should give a smart or fillip to the cerebral organism, quite as much as the transition from action to rest, from light to shade, or from rough to smooth. I do not see how those valuable

elements of knowledge that we term generalities, general ideas, principles, could have found a standing in the intellectual consciousness but for the shock of surprise that, in common with change in general, they are able to affect us with. If we were totally indifferent to the occurrence of the feeling of sweetness in a number of different objects, the faculty of classifying and generalizing would never to all appearance be manifested in our minds. It is the liveliness of that thrill of surprise, caused by likeness in the company of unlikeness, that rouses us to the perception or impression of recurring properties, and uniform law among natural things. There is a certain depth of stupidity exhibited by individuals, amounting almost to total indifference on this peculiarity; and in such cases the power both of generalizing and of comprehending generalities, of forming and applying analogies, will to that extent be found wanting. Just as a keen sensibility to difference determines the lively cognition of the variety of natural properties, which a blunter sense would confound, so the corresponding sensitiveness to the shock of similarity in diversity, leads to the appreciation and the storing up of nature's generalities, and comprehensive unity of plan.

Sensation and Perception.

18. It is proper to take notice of the precise meanings of these names in relation to the present subject. As regards Sensation there is a certain complexity to be unravelled, owing to the circumstance that sensations extend between the extremes of emotion and intellect, and have therefore no uniform character except in their mode of origination. Some sensations are mere pleasures or pains and little else; such are the feelings of organic life, and the sweet and bitter tastes and odours. Others stretch away into the region of pure intellect, and are nothing as respects enjoyment or suffering; as, for example, a great number of those of the three higher senses. A sensation in the signification of one extreme is quite a different matter from one in the

other extreme. The tendency of most writers on Mental Philosophy has been to put an almost exclusive stress on the intellectual, discriminative, or knowledge-giving class; which meaning, if consistently adhered to, could not be censured. But, occasionally, the other or more emotional class is intended. by the term, which is then used in contrast, or contradistinction, to the discriminative element of the mind. Sir William Hamilton's doctrine of the inverse relation of Sensation and Perception involves this meaning; for he really means to contrast the Emotional with the Intellectual aspect of the senses.

19. A sensation is, under any view of it, a conscious element of the mind. As pleasure or pain, we are conscious in one way, as discrimination, we are conscious in the other way; namely, in a mode of neutral excitement. A balmy odour wakens up the mind with a certain charm; the odour of camphor gives no charm and no pain, while causing a certain excitement and a characteristic attitude of the cerebral system. But this is not all. After much contact with the sensible world, a new situation arises, and a new variety of the consciousness, which stands in need of some explanation. When a child experiences for the first time the sensation of scarlet, there is nothing but the sensibility of a new impression, more or less intense, according to the intensity of the object, and the susceptibility of the mind. It is very difficult for us to realize or define this original shock, our position in mature life being totally altered. It is the rarest thing for us then to come under a radically new impression, and we can only, by the help of imperfect analogies, form an approximate conception of what happens at the first shock of a discriminative sensation. The process of engraining these impressions on the mind after repetition, gives to subsequent sensations quite different character as compared with the first. The second shock of scarlet, if it stood alone, would doubtless resemble the preceding; but such is the nature of the mind that the new shock will not stand alone, but restores the notion, or idea, or trace that survived the former. The