resting or painful in itself, but calculated to bring future gratification. This is, generally speaking, a less urgent stimulation, as being the influence of pleasure existing only in idea. There may, however, be all degrees of intensity of the motive, according to the strength of the ideal representation of the pleasure to come. It is on this stimulation, that we go through the dry studies necessary to a lucrative profession or a favourite object of pursuit. The young are insufficiently actuated by prospective pleasure, owing to their inferior ideal hold of it; and are therefore not powerfully moved in this way.

A third form of concentration is when present pain is made use of to deter and withdraw the mind from causes of distraction, or matters having an intrinsically superior charm. This is the final resort in securing the attention of the volatile learner. It is an inferior motive, on the score of economy, but cannot be dispensed with in early training. By an artificial appliance, the subject is made comparatively the most attractive. So with the use of future pains; the same allowance being made for the difference in their character, as for pleasures existing only in prospect.

Mere Excitement, whether as pleasure or as pain, or as neither, is a power of intellectual concentration. An idea that excites us very much persists in the mind, even if painful; and the remembrance of it will be stamped in consequence. This influence will be specially noticed, a few pages hence.

It is not uncommon, in stating the general conditions of Retentiveness, or memory, to specify the vividness or intensity of au impression; thus, we readily remember such effects as an intense odour, a speech uttered with vehemence, a conflagration. This, however, resolves itself into the concentration of mental and nervous force, due to the emotional excitement. Apart from the feelings, an idea may be more or less distinct and clear, but is not properly more or less intense. If an inscription is legible with ease, it is everything that the intellect demands; the adventitious aid of glaring characters, as when, at a public

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illumination, a sentiment is written in gas jets, is a species of excitement, securing an inordinate amount of attention or concentration of mind.

If we compare an object sharply defined with another whose lineaments are faded and obscure, there is a wide difference in the hold that the two would severally take on the memory; but such impressions differ in kind, and not simply in degree. The names 'vivid' and 'intense' are scarcely applicable except by a figure. Without a decisive difference or contrast, the mind is not impressed at all; everything that favours the contrast favours discrimination, and also depth of impression. All this, however, is pre-supposed as a fact or property of the Discriminating function of intellect; and is not to be repeated as appertaining to the Retentive function.

III. There appears to be specific to each individual a certain degree of General Retentiveness, or a certain aptitude for acquirement generally. We find a great inequality in the progress of learners placed almost exactly in the same circumstances. Sometimes the difference refers only to single departments, as mechanical art, music, or language; it is then referable to special and local endowments, as muscular sensibility, the musical ear, and so forth. Often, however, the superiority of individuals is seen in acquirement as a whole, in which form it is better regarded as a General power of Retentiveness.

5. We shall advert, as we proceed, to the modifying circumstances of a local kind peculiar to each class of acquisitions. As respects the present class, Movements, the special conditions seem to be as follows:

(1.) Bodily Strength, or mere muscular vigour, must be regarded as favouring acquisition. Not only is it an indication of a large share of vitality in the muscles, which is likely to attend their acquired aptitudes; it also qualifies for enduring, without fatigue, a great amount of continuance or practice of the operations required.

(2.) Distinct from mere muscular power is Spontaneity, or the active temperament; meaning the natural proneness

to copious muscular activity. This must be regarded as a property, not of the muscular tissue, but of the nerve-centres on the active side of the brain. Hence there is a likelihood, if not a certainty, that the endowment is accompanied with a greater facility in the association of movements. Observation accords with the view. It is usually men of abounding natural activity that make adroit mechanics, good sportsmen, and able combatants.

(3.) Of still greater importance is Muscular Delicacy, or Discrimination, which is not necessarily involved in either of the foregoing heads, although more allied to the second. The power of discriminating nice shades of muscular movement is at the foundation of muscular expertness in every mode. We have abundant proof that, wherever delicacy of discrimination exists, there exists also a special retentiveness of that class of impressions. The physical groundwork of the property is the abundance of the nerve elements-fibres and corpuscles-out of which also must spring the capacity for varied groupings and fixed associations.

Physical vigour in general, and those modes of it that are the counterparts of mental vigour in particular, must be reckoned among the conditions of Retentiveness. Other things being the same, acquisition is most rapid in health, and in the nourished and fresh condition of all the organs. When the forces of the system run strongly to the nervous system in general, there is a natural exuberance of all the mental manifestations; and energy of mind is then compatible with much bodily feebleness, yet not with any circumstances that restrict the nourishment of the brain.

IDEAL FEELINGS OF MOVEMENT.

6. The continuance and revival of feelings of movement without movement itself-that is, ideal feelings as opposed to the feelings accompanying actual movement—are a new and distinct case of the associating principle; a case, too, of great interest, as introducing us into the sphere of Thought.

This transition from the external to the internal, from

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the Reality to the Idea-the greatest leap that can be taken within the compass of our subject-needs, in accordance with the principle of our whole Exposition, to be prefaced by a consideration of the question, What is the probable seat, or local embodiment, of a sensation, or a mechanical feeling, when persisting after the fact, or when revived without the reality? The discussion of this question will interrupt, for a few pages, the exemplification of the law of Contiguous adhesiveness.

7. All the Muscular feelings can be sustained for some time after the physical cause has ceased. All the Sensations of the senses can be sustained in like manner, some more and some less easily; and they can afterwards be revived as ideas by means of the associating forces. What, then, is the mode of existence of those feelings bereft of their outward support and first cause? In what particular form do they possess or occupy the mental and cerebral system? This question admits of two different answers or assumptions, the one old and widely prevalent, the other new but better founded. The old notion supposes that the brain is a sort of receptacle of the impressions of sense, where they lie stored up in a chamber quite apart from the recipient apparatus, to be manifested again to the mind when the occasion calls. But the modern theory of the brain, already developed (see Introduction), suggests a totally different view. We have seen that the brain is only one part of the course of nervous action; that the completed circles take in the nerves and the extremities of the body; that nervous action supposes currents passing through these completed circles, or to and fro between the central ganglia and the organs of sense and motion; and that, short of a completed course, no nervous action exists. The idea of a cerebral closet shut-off is quite incompatible with the real manner of the working of nerve. Since, then, a sensation, in the first instance, diffuses nerve currents through the interior of the brain outwards to the organs of expression and movement,-the persistence of that sensation, after the outward exciting cause is withdrawn, can

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be but a continuance of the same diffusive currents, perhaps less intense, but not otherwise different. The shock remaining in the ear and in the brain, after the sound of thunder, must pass through the same circles, and operate in the same way, as during the actual sound. We can have no reason for believing that, in this self-sustaining condition, the impression changes its seat, or passes into some new circles that have the special property of retaining it. Every part actuated after the shock must have been actuated by the shock, only more powerfully. With this single difference of intensity, the mode of existence of a sensation persisting after the fact is essentially the same as its mode of existence during the fact; the same organs are occupied, the same current action goes on. We see in the continuance of the attitude and expression the identical outward appearances, and these appearances are produced by the course of power being still by the same routes. Moreover, the identity in the mode of consciousness implies that the manner of action within the brain is unaltered.

8. Now, if this be the case with impressions persisting when the cause has ceased, what view are we to adopt concerning impressions reproduced by mental causes alone, or without the aid of the original, as in ordinary recollection? What is the manner of occupation of the brain with a resuscitated feeling of resistance, a smell, or a sound? There is only one answer that seems admissible. The renewed feeling occupies the very same parts, and in the same manner, as the original feeling, and no other parts, nor in any other assignable manner. I imagine that if our present knowledge of the brain had been present to the earliest speculators, this is the only hypothesis that would have occurred to them. For where should a past feeling be reembodied, if not in the same organs as the feeling when present? It is only in this way that its identity can be preserved; a feeling differently embodied would be a different feeling.

It is possible, however, to adduce facts that set in a still