idea takes the form of exorbitant vanity; more often, however, the idea is morbid and gloomy, and still controls the actions. 13. The only way that I am able to explain the great fact of our nature, denominated Sympathy, fellow-feeling, pity, compassion, disinterestedness, is by a reference to this tendency of an idea to act itself out. We are able to conceive the pains of other beings, by our experience of the like; and when we do so conceive them, we feel urged to the same steps of alleviation as if the pains were our own. We become possessed with the mere idea of pain, there being no reality corresponding; but yet this idea will induce us to act as if it represented a reality of our own experience. To see another person hungry and cold is to take on the idea of those painful states, and we are induced by the power of the idea to relieve the pain that occasioned it. But for some such domination of an idea, I see nothing in the constitution of the human mind that would make us sympathize with other men's pleasures and pains. The ordinary action of the will is to gain our own pleasures, and remove our own pains. This is all that can, strictly speaking, interest us. Each organization is more or less formed to work for conserving itself; and it would seem, at first sight, an irrelevance to go beyond this. The mere operation of the will, as we have always supposed it, is strictly within the limits of self-conservation. But the intellect, which can form ideas of the mental condition of other sensitive beings, tends to make those ideas actualities; or induces the conduct that they would suggest if the pains or pleasures were personal to ourselves. This is sympathy and disinterested action, which is an undoubted fact of our nature, although unequally manifested in different individuals. 14. Much of the ambition and the aspirations of human beings belongs rather to the sphere of fixed ideas, than to the sphere of volition prompted by pleasures. It is true that the things that we aspire after, are usually calculated to give us pleasure; yet very often we indulge in ideal aspirations that POINTS OF COMMUNITY OF SENSATION AND THOUGHT. 345 are impracticable, and that, if we were masters of ourselves, we would disregard and repress. Unfortunately, however, a certain notion, say of power, wealth, grandeur, has fixed itself in our mind and keeps a persistent hold there, perverting the regular operation of the will, which would lead us to renounce whatever is hopeless or not worth the cost. Such phrases as insane ambition,' 'fixed idea,' 'overwhelming fascination,' are used to designate this not unfrequent pheno menon. Our regrets for what we have lost are generally out of proportion to the pleasure that the objects gave us. We may feel a sincere and a strong regret for the loss of some one related to us, who was an unmitigated burden and misery. The consideration of our pleasures and pains solely would cause this to be felt as a relief and a gratification; but we cannot so banish a familiar idea even although painful; we cannot forget, merely because our happiness would be increased by forgetting. Thoughts persist by a law that is not subject to the will, and not only persist, but interfere with the course of our actions and the pursuit of our interests.* 15. The general doctrine now contended for is not a barren speculation; if true, it bears important practical inferences. In expressing and describing thought and the thinking process, an operation essential to our subject, the Correctly speaking, two forces are at work in determining the influence of fixed ideas. One is the tendency of the idea of an action to become the action, to which the exposition in the text is devoted. This tendency is exemplified in its unmixed operation in such instances as the infection of particular crimes, and in the operation of sympathy generally. The other principle is the tendency of an idea to persist in the mind, in consequence of its intensity, or rather the intensity of the feeling that accompanies it. The power of the will is baffled by great mental excitement under any circumstances. It may be for our interest to banish a particular idea, and to give a footing to other ideas, which our intellectual forces are quite competent to suggest; yet when a feeling of any sort, whether pleasure or pain, or excitement that is neither, has allied itself with an idea, the forces of intellectual association and the force of the will are equally impotent to displace that idea. This is the way that fear operates to prevent a man from following out the regard to his own well-being. doctrine is of great service: it helps us in some measure to localize these processes, and the language that might otherwise be deemed figurative becomes literal. The imagination of visible objects is a process of seeing; the musician's imagination is hearing; the phantasies of the cook and the gourmand tickle the palate. The identity between actual and revived feelings shortens our labour by enabling us to transfer much of our knowledge of the one to the other. The properties that we find to hold of sensation in the actual, we may after a certain allowance ascribe to the ideal. Thus the qualities of the sense of sight in any one person, as for example, its discriminating power, would belong likewise to the visual ideas. The senses are in this way a key to the intellect. 16. I return to the Association of Feelings of Movement. It generally happens that if we can perform a movement actually, we can also perform it mentally. Thus we can go through in the mind the different steps of a dance; in other words, the feelings of the successive evolutions have been associated together, as well as the movements themselves. It must not be supposed, however, that the adhesion of actual movements and the adhesion of mental movements run exactly parallel, and that if the one is perfect so is the other. We may sometimes see a mechanic able to go through the actual steps of a process, but unable to go through them in his mind; the proof being that in describing them to another party he often forgets a step, and only remembers it by doing the thing. In this case the actions are more adhesive than the traces of them. It is not easy to produce any instance to show, on the other hand, that a series of actions can be repeated mentally and yet not bodily; for, as the mental actions are performed in the same circles, it usually needs only a volition, often the removal of a restraint merely, to bring them to the full length of actuating the muscles. 17. The principal field of examples of the association of pure feelings of muscular action, is the Voice. Most other cases are so complicated with sensation, that they do not ASSOCIATION OF FEELINGS OF MOVEMENT. 347 answer our present purpose. In speech, we have a series of actions fixed in trains by association, and performable either actually or mentally at pleasure; the mental action being nothing else than a sort of whisper, or approach to a whisper, instead of the full-spoken utterance. The child can repeat its catechism in a suppressed voice, as well as aloud. We can even acquire language mentally, or without speaking it out at all; that is to say, we can bring about pure mental adhesion. To a learner, this happens continually for in reading a book one does not speak the words vocally; the articulate adherence takes place from the first within the circles of ideation. Children, learning their lessons in school, must acquire the verbal successions in the same way. As a general rule, it is best to rehearse verbal exercises. aloud, if they are to be performed aloud, just as in the case of other mechanical operations. The sense of hearing is thus brought in aid of the other associating links. Besides, by coming to the actual execution, we set on a current that is both more energetic and larger in its sweep, inasmuch as it takes in the full operation of the muscles. In the early school acquirements, where everything has to be spoken out to the master, the audible repetition is the best; in after days, when we go over a great deal of language merely as thought, or the silent links of action, the speaking out is not called for; it would be an unnecessary waste of time and muscular exertion.* 18. The circumstances that favour the cohesion of mental trains of movement, are nearly the same as those already detailed for actual movements. A certain repetition is requisite; more or less, according as the other circumstances are favourable, namely, the general conditions of Concentration and Retentiveness on the whole; and the special muscular In the processes of meditation and thought, we are constantly forming new combinations, and these we can permanently retain, if we have dwelt upon them sufficiently long. A speaker meditating an address trusts to the adhesiveness of his verbal trains, although they have been all the while in the state of mere ideas, he not having spoken them aloud. conditions-Muscular Strength, Spontaneity, and Discrimi nation. We may perhaps assume a common character for the active organs in the same individual; an activity of temperament that shows itself in every kind of exertion-in limbs, voice, eyes, and every part that is moved by muscleor a sluggish feebleness extending alike over every kind of exercise. But this does not exclude specific differences of endowment in separate members, rendering the movements more adhesive in one than in the others. Thus we may have a special development of the articulating members,—the voice, tongue, and mouth,-through superiority in the corresponding centres. SENSATIONS OF THE SAME SENSE. 19. The next class of associable elements is the Sensations. We shall consider, first, the adhesion of impressions of the same sense-homogeneous impressions, as touches with touches, sounds with sounds, &c. There are various interesting operations that fall under this head; it comprises much of the early education of the senses. In the inferior senses, there is little scope for exemplifying the process. In the Organic Feelings, we might note the expectation of a series of painful feelings from the occurrence of some one, as in an illness. Even in Tastes, it is not common to have any important associations of one with another. One might easily suppose the formation of a train of tastes, such that any one would suggest the others, but instances are rare. So with Smell. If we frequently experience a succession of smells in one fixed order, an adhesion will be formed between the different impressions; and, in consequence, when one is presented, all the rest will be ready to arise in succession, without the actual experience. In passing frequently through a garden along the same track, we might come to acquire a succession of odours, and from any one anticipate the next, as dogs probably do. |