minimum perceptibile; and he ascribed the apparent instantaneousness of the perception of wholes to the rapidity of mental action. This view, together with the parent assumption that the soul is incapable of more than one modification at a time, has been rejected as unfounded and improbable. Consciousness testifies that wholes of considerable complication can be perceived by the mind without any process and in one simple exertion of energy. The different parts of the object, — of a lamp, or inkstand, or chair, or table, together with the connecting relations of the parts, are apparently perceived as quickly and as simultaneously as the whole figure of a man is reflected from a mirror.

Were this statement in need of formal proof, no more ingenious argument could be desired than one which is employed by Sir William Hamilton. He calls attention to the fact that the face of a friend is much more easily recalled in its general outline than in its particular features. It is often found difficult to remember exactly the color of the hair or eyes, or the lines of the mouth or nose, of some perfectly well-known friend. But such a result could scarcely be expected were the parts of the face always first perceived in succession, and after that combined, as Stewart says, with the assistance of "the faculty of memory."

At the same time we must remark that in adult or developed perception the idea of the object is generally filled out from previous knowledge. When we speak of seeing a stone, or anything else which is hard, the idea of hardness is supplied by the mind from knowledge acquired through touch. Such percep

tion is double; yet probably no more time intervenes between the commencement and the completion of it than that which must elapse between the reflections from a looking-glass of the nearer and of the more distant parts of an object.

The first perceptions of the infant

in one sense more complex, in

after life.

The character of the perceptions of a new-born infant must be chiefly a matter of analogical conjecture. In comparison with that developed character which they soon attain, they are doubtless wanting greatly, another less, not in vividness, but in that distinction and separation than those of of things which results from an exercise of the analytic power. Though it would be hazardous to say respecting any doctrine whatever that it has not been upheld by some philosopher, we have never yet heard of any one who maintained that children an hour, or a day, or even a week, old are given to attentive and discriminating thought. Probably their thinking is confused and indefinite, unless when it may be concerned with some bodily want or pain.

The thinking power of

"The baby, new to earth and sky,"

may be supposed to be occupied simply with two comprehensive and ever-varying conceptions. All things other than the conscious spirit and its life probably appear to it as one complicated and fluctuating non-ego, surrounding the soul and affecting it on every hand; while at the same time the soul perceives itself as the diversely sentient and thinking ego. Plainly, this mode of thought would be more confused and complex than that of our ordinary perceptions. But we may conjecture it to be followed by a phase of mind in which attention is specially given to the cognitions of one sense at a time, in which, for example, the infant considers simply the visible appearance of some toy, or of a hand or foot, to the exclusion of those qualities which are apprehended in connection with muscular and tactile sensations. The conceptions thus formed would, in one respect at least, be less complex than those of our daily life. But, finally, the child learns that the world around him, with its scenes and agencies, is not a mass of confused and intermingling parts, - that many material forms may easily be distinguished, and that objects definitely perceived by one sense can be identified with the objects of other senses. So, at last, hands and feet, fingers and toes, persons and things, become individually marked and known. At the same time the young spirit begins to discern different general modes in its own life; sensation, thought, fear, desire, occasionally succeed in attracting some slight attention. Then perception may be supposed to have assumed its normal character, and to be ready for whatever increase in quickness and power is to be obtained through future practice.

The state of thought at the first formation of language.

The cognition, or rather the knowledge, which conditions the first formation and use of language, is more advanced than that of presentative thought; as is that, also, the possession of which is prerequisite to formal scientific or philosophical investigation. These, however, are illustrative of the general complexity of our earlier modes of thinking, and may be noticed in the present connection. Hamilton unadvisedly, we think, regards the question of the primum cognitum as applicable only to the origin of language, and gives the following statement of it: "Does language originate in general appellatives or by proper names?"

Without following the course of his discussion, we shall present what seems a reasonable answer. First, it appears evident that a considerable degree of mental development is necessary to the first use of language. Long before children begin to speak they possess general notions, and are able to think by means of them. It is true that many of their ideas are particular. Their conceptions of the different members of the family to which they

belong, of the different apartments of the house in which they live, and of the permanent objects within and about their home, are individual, or singular. But they have perceptions also of things which are continually changed and replaced by others of a similar character; and it is impossible that they should not form general ideas in connection with such perceptions. Not to speak of the modes of their own life which repeat themselves in rapid succession, classes of things, such as cups, saucers, plates, knives, forks, spoons, tables, chairs, and other articles of daily use, together with general notions, such as bread, butter, milk, water, wood, coal, which represent things of daily consumption, must find a place among their thoughts. It is unlikely, therefore, that human language at any stage of its development ever consisted wholly of proper names, or even that all words are first employed and understood by children as applicable only to singular objects. On the contrary, when children ask for a spoon or cup, a piece of bread or a glass of water, as they do so soon as they can talk at all, they are using common nouns in their appropriate significance.

At the same time it is true that the very first words used by children are either proper names or terms which they take for such, and which are not as yet understood by them to have a common applicability. Locke, and Aristotle before him, are only two out of a long line of philosophers who have remarked that the little ones at first use appellatives, such as papa, mamma, nurse, aunt, in just the same way as they do proper names, such as Edward or Eliza, not knowing that the former have a general meaning, while the latter are individual properties. So, also, often in very early life, the cow, the horse, and the dog are names which represent individual animals only. The same philosophers remark that the action of the mind in forming general notions is instanced by the readiness with which terms are transferred from a singular to a common signification. A child who has learned to say papa and mamma will call every man he sees a papa and every woman a mamma. Very soon, however, such mistakes are corrected, and words are employed properly.

But the law of thought, that the complex and particular precedes the abstract and general, affects the language of adults no less than that of children. Numberless instances might be adduced in which the individual fact has lent its own proper name for a general service; and many are of special interest. The verb meander" was originally a noun designating a winding stream in Asia Minor. Buncombe, which is the name of a county in North Carolina, came to signify the making of speeches for the sake of distant popular effect, by reason of the remark of a

rough old mountaineer, Felix Walker, who once represented that county in the State Legislature. His fellow-members were tired of the old man's rustic oratory. Some shouted, "Question, question; others begged him to desist. But he could not be stopped; "for," said he, "I am bound to make a speech for Buncombe." Jack Ketch, which is a common English expression for hangman, was at first the proper name of a man who busily discharged the duties of that office during the "bloody assizes" of Lord Jeffreys, in the reign of James the Second. The term "Czar," or " Kaiser," is an enduring monument of that supreme authority which Julius Cæsar once obtained for himself over the ancient world; while "Emperor," which is from the Latin Imperator," and is the English equivalent of "Czar,” also dates its origin from the times of Cæsar; for, being unwilling to offend Roman ears by the designation "king," he contented himself with this military title.

66

The doctrine of the priority of the complex in the history of mental development is also supported by the fact that our more abstract nouns are, for the most part, of late appearance, as compared with those more concrete. Such words as "animal,"

quadruped," mammal," which present certain aspects of that natural genus to which horses, cows, dogs, cats, and other like species belong, are of later use than these specific names. Grammarians, also, note that modern languages are analytic, while the ancient are synthetic, in modes of expression, which circumstance indicates a kind of unconscious public progress in discriminating and abstractive conception.

Science

a consideration of the complex.

After all that has been said, we need not dwell on starts from the doctrine that the knowledge with which any science begins is more complex than that afterwards attained. This is simply to say that the analytic is the only reliable method in scientific investigation. For if this be granted, it is plain that the knowledge of attentive observation is that with which philosophizing commences, and that this knowledge is more complex than the general conceptions and principles which may be evolved from it by means of right thinking. Few now hold the contrary doctrine, though too many yet conform their practice to antiquated methods. Very few deny that our knowledge of the general is originally derived from our perception of the individual. And no fact is better attested by the past history of philosophy than that those who will construct science, whether physical or mental, from abstract principles unsupported by induction or generalization from particulars, are devoting their lives to the accomplishment of failures.

The doctrine

CHAPTER XXXII.

CONSCIOUSNESS.

1. Of the three subordinate modes of the presentaof conscious- tive intellect, that immediately conditioned on sensaness simpler than that of tion, and therefore called sense-perception, is more sense-percep- noticeable than the rest, involves a greater number of tion, and logically important questions, and has received more attention antecedent from philosophers. For that appearance of simplicity which characterizes our external perceptions, notwithstanding the real complexity and subtilty of most of them, has beguiled many into a task which they have found easier to begin than to finish. The problem of sense-perception has been the questio vexata of twenty centuries, and has reached a satisfactory solution only during the last one hundred years.

Before attempting the discussion of it, let us consider the power of consciousness. For the action of this power is simpler than that of external perception, and also conditions it; because material agents are never seen save in connection with the psychical changes which they produce in us.

The history

"conscious

ness.

tion" as em

The term consciousness" signifies, literally, "an of the term accompanying knowledge." In this radical meaning The it is synonymous with " conscience," or "conscientia," term "reflec- which term, in mediæval philosophy, was the ordinary ployed by expression for what we now call consciousness. The Locke. scholastic definition of "conscientia" was "perceptio qua mens de presenti suo statu admonetur." But our activities may be perceived either simply and as to their own essential nature; or as being right or wrong, virtuous or vicious or indifferent, by reason of their relation to the moral law. Accordingly, two kinds of knowledge may be said immediately to accompany the life of a rational spirit. Thus the term “* conscientia," as expressing equally either of these kinds of knowledge, was affected with an ambiguity. This was avoided, in the English language, by forming the word "consciousness" and by surrendering the word conscience" to a use purely ethical. The ambiguity had been previously avoided by Latin writers, who employed the term reflexio for the notice taken by the mind of itself and its life; and so when Locke wrote, a choice of terms was presented to him. Although Locke speaks of consciousness, and even gives the definition, "Consciousness is the perception of what