ledge of the objects respectively suited to satisfy their activity; the nerves of hunger do not know aliments; nor circumspection, the object of fear; nor veneration, the object deserving its application, &c. &c. Even supposing the affective powers had an obscure consciousness of their own existence, a point which, by-the-bye, is not proved, it is still certain that the intellectual faculties alone procure clear consciousness. The internal senses of individuality and eventuality, combined with those of comparison and causality, determine the species of both internal and external perceptions. As it is, however, much more difficult to specify the internal than the external sensations, the species of the former have remained almost entirely unknown to philosophers.

Thus, perception is an essential constituent in the nature of the intellectual faculties generally, and one of their particular modes of activity; yet it is no special faculty of the mind; it is a mere effect of activity in the perceptive powers.

From the preceding considerations, it follows that in my opinion every fundamental faculty of the mind is not perceptive, consequently I make a distinction between perceptive powers and kinds of perception. There are as many sorts of perceptions as fundamental functions, but the intellectual faculties alone seem to be perceptive.

It is remarkable that consciousness and perception are not always single, that in the same person they may be healthy with respect to some faculties and diseased with respect to others. There are also cases on record, where persons subject to nervous fits, completely forget what occurs during the paroxysms, when these are over; and remember perfectly during subsequent paroxysms, what has happened during preceding fits. The same phenomenon is related of the state of persons under the influence of animal magnetism. Mr. Combe mentions the fact observed by Dr. Abel in an Irish porter to a warehouse, who forgot when sober, what he had done when drunk, but who, being drunk again, recollected the transactions of his former state of intoxication. On one occasion, being drunk, he had lost a parcel of some value, and in his sober

moments could give no account of it.. Next time he was intoxicated he recollected that he had left the parcel at a certain house, and there being no address on it, it had remained there safely and was got on his calling for it. It seems that, before recollection can exist, the organs require to be in the same state they were in when the impression was first received.

III. Attention.

Almost all philosophers speak of attention as a primitive power of the mind, active throughout all its operations, and the basis on which observation and reflection repose. 'It is attention,' says Helvetius,* 'more or less active, which fixes objects more or less in the memory.' According to Vicq d'Azyr, apes and monkeys are turbulent, because they have no attention. Dr. Reid† makes a distinction between attention and consciousness, calling the first a voluntary, the second an involuntary act; whilst other philosophers, with Locke, confound these two mental phenomena. Dr. Brown confounds attention with desire; he thinks that without desire there can be no attention.

To all that has been said upon attention as a faculty of the mind, I reply, that attention, in none of its acceptations, is a single faculty; for if it were, he who possesses it in a particular sense should be able to apply it universally. But how does it happen that an individual, animal or man, pays great attention to one object, and very little or none to another? Sheep never attend to philosophy or theology; and while the squirrel and ringdove see a hare pass with indifference, the fox and eagle eye it with attention. The instinct to live on plants or flesh produces unlike sorts of attention. In the human kind, individuals are influenced in their attention to different objects, even by sex and age: little girls prefer dolls, ribands, &c., as playthings; boys like horses, whips, and drums. One man is pleased with philosophic discussion, another with witty

* De l'esprit, ch. de l'inegole capacité de l'attention.

+ Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, p. 60.

conversation; one with the recital of events which touch the heart, and another with accounts of sanguinary battles, and so on.

The word attention denotes no more than the active state of any intellectual faculty; or, in other terms, attention is the effect of the intellectual faculties, acting either from their proper force, or from being excited by external impressions, or by one or several affective faculties. Hence there are as many species of attention as fundamental faculties of the mind. He who has an active faculty of configuration, of locality, or of coloring, pays attention to the objects respectively suited to gratify it. In this manner we conceive why attention is so different, and also why it is impossible to succeed in any pursuit or undertaking without attention. It is, indeed, absurd to expect success in an art or science, when the individual power on which its comprehension depends is inactive. Again, the more active the power is, the more it is attentive. The affective faculties, though they have no clear consciousness, yet excite the intellectual faculties, and thereby produce attention. The love of approbation, for instance, may stimulate the faculty of artificial language; boys who are fond of applause will be apt to study with more attention and perseverance than those who are without such a motive.

Thus, perception and attention, though both modes of activity, may be distinguished from each other, as perception denotes knowledge of the external and internal impressions in a passive manner, or, as perceptivity or passive capability of Kant, whilst attention indicates the active state of the intellectual faculties and their application to their respective objects, or spontaniety, in Kant's language.

IV. Memory.

Memory is another mental operation, which has, at all times, occupied speculative philosophers. Those, too, who have written on education have given it much consideration. It is treated of as a faculty which collects the individual perceptions, and recalls

them when wanted; and is further considered as being assisted by the faculties of attention and association. Memory varies more in its kind than any other of the intellectual faculties recognised by philosophers. It is notorious that some children occasionally learn long passages of books by heart with great facility, who cannot recollect the persons they have seen before, nor the places they have visited. Others, again, remember facts or events, while they cannot recall the dates at which they happened; and, on the contrary, this latter sort of knowledge gives great pleasure to others. The Jesuits, observing nature, consequently admitted a memory of facts, a local memory, a verbal memory, and so on. Even the causes of these differences in memory were looked for. Malebranche supposed some peculiar and modified state of the cerebral organization to explain the facts, such as softness and flexibility of the cerebral fibres in youth, their hardness and stiffness in old age, &c.

Is memory, then, a fundamental power of the mind? Gall thinks not; he considers it as the second degree of activity of every organ and faculty; and therefore admits as many memories as fundamental faculties.

My opinion also is, that memory is not a fundamental faculty, but the repetition of some previous perception, and a quantitive mode of action. The question arises whether memory takes place among both the affective and intellectual faculties. It is true the affective powers act without clear consciousness, and the mind cannot call up into fresh existence the perceptions experienced from the propensities and sentiments with the same facility as the perceptions of the intellectual powers; yet it renews them more or less, and consequently, I cannot confine the mode of action under discussion to the intellectual faculties. However, I distinguish between the faculties which have clear memory and the species of notions remembered: the perceptive faculties alone have clear memory, and all kinds of perceptions are remembered. Further, as the intellectual faculties do not all act with the same energy, memory necessarily varies in kind and strength in each and in every

individual. No one therefore has an equally strong memory for every branch of knowledge. Attention too, being another name for activity of the intellectual faculties applied to their respective objects, naturally strengthens memory: viz. it facilitates repetition. Exercise of the faculties, it is further evident, must invigorate memory, that is, repetition is made more easy. Let us now see the difference between memory and

V. Reminiscence or remembrance.

We have reminiscence, if we remember how certain perceptions have been acquired, while memory consists in the perfect reproduction of former perceptions. Reminiscence is often taken for a fundamental faculty of the mind; sometimes, also, it is considered as a modification of memory.

I neither consider reminiscence as a fundamental faculty, nor as a modification of memory, but as the peculiar memory or repetition of the functions of eventuality, that faculty which takes cognizance of the functions of all the others.

This view shows how we may have reminiscence, but no memory of the functions of our affective faculties. And also, how we may remember having had a sensation which we cannot reproduce, and repeat a perception without remembering how it had been acquired. Thus we may recollect that we know the name of a person without being able to utter it, and also repeat a song without remembering where we learned it. The special intellectual faculties, in general, repeat their individual perceptions and produce memory, while that of eventuality, in particular, recollects, or has reminiscence. Reminiscence, then, is to eventuality that which each kind of memory is to the other intellectual faculties.

VI. Imagination.

This expression has several significations: it is employed to indicate at one time a fundamental power, called also the faculty of