result? I reply, this is not a fair statement of the case. I may, if I please, still speculate upon the certainty of an extended universe, although death may have overtaken all its inhabitants. But my conception, even then, would not be an independent reality, I should merely take on the object-consciousness of a supposed mind then present. I should conceive nothing but states of muscular energy, conjoined with sensation.

Of the four particulars contained in the analysis, the last is what has most contributed to suggest the externality and independence of our object consciousness. When other beings are found to be affected by the same sensations, on performing the same movements, there appears to be an elimination of personality, or of all special or individual characteristics. We think we cannot mark the contrast strongly enough, by any process short of cutting each one's being into two parts, and depriving it of the part held by us in common, because it is in common. But I still contend, that the separation is only a figure of speech, which, like many other figures, has a rhetorical use while involving a contradiction in logic. The past existence and future persistence of the object-universe can mean to us only that if minds existed in the past, and are to exist in the future, they would be affected in a certain way. My object consciousness is as much a part of my being as my subject consciousness is. Only, when I am gone, other beings will sustain and keep alive the object part of my consciousness, while the subject part is in abeyance. The object is the perennial, the common to all; the subject is the fluctuating, the special to each. But there is nothing in the fact of community of experience (the object) that justifies us in separating the experience from the alliance with mind in the strict sense (the subject).

The new Realism is little better than the old popular notion, with Berkeley gagged.

F-Contiguous Association in the ideas of Natural Objects.-p. 417.

6

A critic in the 'National Review' has represented this order of derivation, making our objective knowledge begin with plurality and arrive at unity,' as 'a complete inversion of our Psychological history.' He considers, in opposition to the explanations in the text, 'that each state of consciousness, whether

FIRST COMMENCEMENT OF OUR NOTIONS OF THINGS. 683

Awakened through more or fewer channels, is, during its continuance, originally simple, and resolves itself only by change of equilibrium.' 'Experience proceeds, and intellect is trained, not by Association, but by Dissociation, not by reduction of pluralities of impression into one, but by the opening out of one into many.'

I was perhaps wrong in not guarding my exposition in the place alluded to, by the statement, that I was illustrating not the first steps of all in our cognition of things, but a later stage in our education, when we have obtained our elementary conceptions of body, and are engaged in combining these in all the varieties presented by nature. In treating of the first origin of our notions of form, colour, hardness, &c., a very different line of remark from that in the text would have to be pursued. But we soon arrive at a period of life when these notions are formed, and when we recognize any new concrete object presented to us, a building, for example, as a compound of form and effects of colour, and lay it up in our memory by the association of those notions. The education of the mineralogist, botanist, zoologist, proceeds, at the stage I am supposing, by association wholly. The objects of their several studies are aggregates of qualities in the acceptation of the text. I supposed the primary constituents of the different conceptions to have been obtained by the mind, which is the condition recognized by the critic as enabling the principle of Association to come into play.

I have, in various parts of my two volumes, discussed the primary origin of our ideas, so far as we are able to reason back to the dawn of intelligence; and, in the concluding chapter of The Emotions and the Will,' I have dwelt upon the fuudamentals of cognition, some of my statements on that subject obtaining the approval of the same reviewer. But I am bound to mention, that my able contemporary, Mr. Spencer, has, while adopting substantially the same views as mine, developed this part of the subject with a systematic completeness peculiar to himself. (Psychology, Part ii., Chapters on Perception, 9-17.)

It must be admitted, as the reviewer remarks, that the first presentation to consciousness of an object, afterwards accounted complex, does not necessarily give a feeling of complexity. The first effect of any new presentation is an indefinable shock to the mind, a rousing of consciousness, by the mere circumstance of change of impression. It is impossible to describe this conscious

ness as either single or complex; it is better considered as purely vague. If the state passes away, and, after an interval, when the mind has had other shocks, is reproduced, there arises with it the consciousness of identity, or recognition, which is a step towards determining and defining its character. If it is a sensation of cold, we are led by it to reinstate the previous states of cold; and the comparison has the effect of singling out and detaching this experience from others, an effect already commenced by the consciousness of the difference between it and other states. No long time is necessary to recognize the complexity of our sensations; for, if we see a fire, and feel the warmth, we dissociate the conjunct impression by identifying the sight with former impressions of the same colour, and the warmth with former experiences of warmth. As soon as we have a past to refer to, however limited, we separate every compound sensation into its elements. If the first sensation that combined light and warmth be vague and unanalyzable, two or three experiences, where these occur in different connexions, would lead to a commencement of the disentangling consciousness. Each element in a compound would recall the previous impressions of that element; heat would bring up heat, blackness would go on the old track of blackness, and so We cannot tell how soon this process would be distinctly possible; it matters little what the precise lapse of time is; we can see that the mind after an experience, longer or shorter, must arrive at the state representing our habitual conduct in the matter —namely, that every complex sensation is instantaneously taken to pieces by filing every separate ingredient on its own thread. The round figure of a pebble revives the accumulated impression made by all experiences of roundness; the colour is fused with all the previous impressions of that colour; the hardness brings back the sum total of traces of the same hardness, and so on. Hence, Mr. Spencer justly describes perception as a process of classification. Of course there can be no perception until some accumulation of separate impressions has taken place; but it cannot be long ere we are prepared to make a beginning in the work. As a compositor distributing types effectually disintegrates his compound impression of a word, by tossing au a with the a's, and an n with the n's, so we require a foregone reference for each item of a compound sensation; but when this has been obtained by means of our growing stock of agreeing impressions, we are

on.

THE OBJECT ATTITUDE OF MIND.

685

prepared for the work of combining and associating in the manner attempted to be explained in the text. Not to say that the dissociation was operated only through an association (of similarity) for every element separately.

G.-Subjective studies and regards.-p. 442.

The Objective direction of the mind implies the exercise of the senses upon the various properties of the Object world, with the least degree of attention even to the pleasures and pains growing out of this exercise. Extension, Form, Colour, Sound, and the chief Tactile properties, belong to our objective attitude. They cannot be taken cognizance of in an absolute void of subjective regards, since the motives to attention are, in the last resort, feelings, that is, elements of the Subject. In the inferior, and more exclusively emotional, senses,-Smell, Taste, Organic Life,-subjectivity is more developed, and attains its maximum in the Organic sensations.

The Object attitude farther includes reflection on object properties, as when the geometer studies a problem mentally, or an engineer meditates his plans before putting them on paper. In these situations, the mind is conversant with subject elements, in the form of ideas; but it thinks of these ideas as representing object realities; it does not make a study (as a psychologist would do) of the successions of ideas as exemplifying mental laws.

The study of the sciences of the so-called External, or the Object, world, is purely an object attitude. In none of them is it absolutely necessary to be subjectively engaged. In the practical science named Logic, maxims may indeed be derived from the study of mind; in Ethics, this is so to a still greater degree; but to that extent, Logic and Ethics are conversant with the subject mind.

The various practical arts and operations conversant with object properties (Agriculture, Manufactures, Navigation, &c.) evoke the object regards by almost exclusive preference. Except in the motive (the end of Aristotle), which must ever be some feeling-pleasure or pain-such arts do not strictly involve in their machinery anything introspective. The exception to the rule will be noticed presently.

Even as regards the mind itself, our knowledge is not necessarily, or wholly, subjective. It must be so in part; but as every mental fact has a physical counterpart, and every mental sequence runs side by side with a physical sequence, we may, and often do, remain content with the physical aspect, and may image the phenomena to ourselves under that aspect exclusively. Such is the form wherein we embody our knowledge of the inferior animals; we make little or no attempt to penetrate into their consciousness; perhaps when they give evidence of acute pain, or acute pleasure, we have a certain subjective sympathy with those states; but we think of their characteristics mainly under the objective manifestations, their likings and dislikings are imaged under a variety of movements and bodily configurations, like a spinning jenny or the working of a ship.

In nearly the same exclusively objective forms, we can study, and think of, our fellow-men. We may refrain from conceiving their pleasures, pains, emotions, ideas, in the subjective character; we may think of them all through the allied object appearances:-such objective circumstances as material abundance or material privation, and the objective displays in action, gesture, and language, in symptoms of health or disease, life or death. We may even maintain a certain propriety of conduct towards our fellows, while considering their interests solely on the objective side. There is comparatively greater precision and certainty in dealing with this outward side; our senses can tell us whether any one has had an average meal, or the usual amount of clothing; and whether the person has a satisfied cheerful look, or very much the reverse.

The practical management of human beings may be conducted (not badly) on the same subjective method. A military commander may image or conceive his army purely as a fighting engine, requiring material supports, and displaying itself to the eye of sense by marching and fighting, and by outward expressions of contentment or displeasure. He may never think of their proper feelings at all; perhaps he is too exclusively bent upon object regards, to be often aware of his own.

Nevertheless, the knowledge of beings endowed with mind is not complete, not thorough, without, to some extent, coupling the subject study with the object study: as will be seen when we consider the precise nature and results of a subjective reference.