Chapter XXII: Part 22

After stating to you so many hypotheses, which have been formed on this subject, I need scarcely remark, what a fund of perpetual conjecture, and, therefore, of perpetual controversy, there is in the varied wonders of the external and internal universe, when it is so very difficult for a few philosophers to agree, as to what it is which gives rise to the simplest sensation of warmth, or fragrance, or colour. It might be thought, that, in the _intellectual opera_, if I may revert to that ingenious and lively allegory, of which I availed myself in one of my early Lectures, in treating of general physical inquiry,--as the whole spectacle which we behold, is passing within our minds, we are, in _this_ instance at least, fairly behind the scenes, and see the mechanism of Nature truly as it is. But though we are really behind the scenes, and even, in one sense of the word, may be said to be ourselves the movers of the machinery, by which the whole representation is carried on, still the minute parts and arrangements of the complicated mechanism are concealed from _our_ view, almost as completely as from the observation of the distant spectators. The primary springs and weights, indeed, by the agency of which Phaeton seemed to be carried off by the winds, are left visible to us; and we know, that when we touch a certain spring, it will put in motion a concealed set of wheels, or that when we pull a cord, it will act upon a system of pullies, which will ultimately produce a particular effect desired by us; but what is the number of wheels or pullies, and how they are arranged and adapted to each other so as to produce the effect,--are left to our penetration to divine. On this subject we have seen, that as many grave absurdities have been formed into systems, and honoured with commentaries and confutations, as in the opera of external nature, at which, in the quotation formerly made to you, the Pythagorases and Platos were supposed to be present. “It is not a system of cords and pullies which we put in motion,” says Aristotle, “--for to move such a heavy and distant mass would be beyond our power,--but only a number of little phantasms connected with them, which have the _form_, indeed, of cords and pullies, but not the _substance_, and which are light enough, therefore, to fly at our very touch.”--“We do not truly move any wheels,” says the great inventor of the System of Occasional Causes; “for, as we did not make the wheels, how can we know the principle on which their motion is to depend, or have such a command over them as to be capable of moving them? But when we touch a spring, it is the occasion on which the Mechanist himself, who is always present, though invisible, and who must know well how to move them, sets them instantly in motion.”--“We see the motion,” says Malebranche, “not by looking at the wheels or pullies,--for there is an impenetrable veil which hides them from us, but by looking at the Mechanist himself, who _must_ see them, because He is the mover of them: and whose eye, in which they are imaged as he gazes on them, must be a living mirror of all which he moves.”--“It is not a spring that acts upon the wheels,” says Leibnitz; “though, when the spring is touched, the wheels begin to move immediately, and never begin to move at any other time. This coincidence, however, is not owing to any connexion of one with the other; for, though the spring were destroyed, the wheels would move exactly as at present, beginning and ceasing at the same precise moments. It is owing to a _preestablished harmony of motion_ in the wheels and spring; by which arrangement the motion of the wheels, though completely independent of the other, always begins at the very moment when the spring is touched.”--“No,” exclaims Berkeley, “it is all illusion. The wheels, and cords, and weights, are not seen because they exist, but exist because they are seen; and, if the whole machinery is not absolutely annihilated when we shut our eyes, it is only because it finds shelter in the mind of some other Being whose eyes are never shut,--and are always _open_, therefore, at the time when ours are closing.”

From all this variety of conjectural speculations, the conclusion which you will perhaps have drawn most readily, is that which is too often the result of our researches in the History of Science,--that there may, as D'Alembert truly says, be a great deal of _philosophizing_, in which there is very little of _philosophy_.

I have now finished the remarks which I had to make on the very important class of our _external affections of mind_, as they may be considered _simply_; but it is not always simply that they exist; and, when they occur in combination with other feelings, the appearance which they assume is sometimes so different, as to lead to the erroneous belief, that the complex feeling is the result of a distinct power of the mind.

When, in my attempt to arrange the various feelings of which the mind is susceptible, I divided these into our _external_ and _internal_ affections, according as their causes are, in the one case, objects without the mind, and, in the other case, previous feelings, or affections of the mind itself: and subdivided this latter class of internal affections into the two orders of our _intellectual states_ of mind, and our _emotions_; I warned you, that you were not to consider these as always arising separately, and as merely successive to each other;--that, in the same manner, as we may both see and smell a rose, so may we see, or compare, or remember, while under the influence of some or other of our emotions; though, at the same time, by analysis, or at least by a reflective process that is similar to analysis, we may be able to distinguish the emotion from the coexisting perception, or remembrance, or comparison,--as we are able, by a very easy analysis, in like manner, when we both see and smell a rose, to distinguish in our complex perception, the fragrance from the colour and form.

There is _one_ emotion, in particular, that is capable of so many modifications, and has so extensive a sway over human life, which it may be said almost to occupy from the first wishes of our infancy to the last of our old age, that it cannot fail to be combined with many of our other feelings, both sensitive and intellectual. The emotion to which I allude is _desire_; a feeling which may exist of various species and degrees, from the strongest passion of which the mind is susceptible, to the slightest wish of knowing a little more accurately the most trifling object before us;--and though, in speaking of it at present, I am anticipating what, according to the strict division which we have made, should not be brought forward till we consider the emotions in general, this anticipation is absolutely unavoidable for understanding some of the most important phenomena, both of perception, which we have been considering, and of those intellectual faculties which we are soon to consider. I need not repeat to you, that Nature is not to be governed by the systems which we form; that though our systematic arrangements ought not to be complicated, her phenomena are almost always so; and that, while every thing is thus intermixed and connected with every thing in the actual phenomena of mind as well as of matter, it would be vain for us to think of accommodating our physical discussions with absolute exactness, even to the most perfect divisions and subdivisions which we may be capable of forming. All that is necessary is, that we should not depart from our order of arrangement without some advantage in view, and an advantage greater than the slight evil which may arise from the appearance of temporary confusion.

The reason of my anticipation, in the present instance, is to explain to you what I conceive to constitute the phenomena of attention,--a state of mind which has been understood to imply the exercise of a peculiar intellectual power, but which, in the case of attention to objects of sense, appears to be nothing more than the coexistence of desire, with the perception of the object to which we are said to attend; as, in attention to other phenomena of the mind, it is, in like manner, the coexistence of a particular desire with these particular phenomena. The desire, indeed, modifies the perception, rendering our feeling more intense, as any other emotion would do, that has equal relation to the object. But there is no operation of any power distinct from the desire and perception themselves.

To understand this fully, however, it may be necessary to make some previous remarks on the coexistence of sensations.

In the circumstances in which we are placed by our beneficent Creator, in a world of objects capable of exciting in us various feelings, and with senses awake to the profusion of delight,--breathing and moving in the midst of odours, and colours, and sounds, and pressed alike in gentle reaction, whether our limbs be in exercise or repose, by that firm soil which supports us, or the softness on which we rest,--in all this mingling action of external things, there is scarcely a moment in which any one of our feelings can be said to be truly simple.

Even when we consider but _one_ of our organs, to the exclusion of all the others, how innumerable are the objects that concur in producing the complex affections of a single sense? In the eye, for example, how wide a scene is open to us, wherever our glance maybe turned?--woods, fields, mountains, rivers, the whole atmosphere of light, and that magnificent luminary, which converts into light the whole space through which it moves, as if incapable of existing but in splendour. The mere opening of our eyelid is like the withdrawing of a veil, which before covered the universe:--It is more; it is almost like saying to the universe, which had perished, Exist again!

Innumerable objects, then, are constantly acting together on our organs of sense; and it is evident, that many of these can, at once, produce an effect of some sort in the mind, because we truly perceive them as a coexisting whole. It is not a single point of light only which we see, but a wide landscape; and we are capable of comparing various parts of the landscape with each other,--of distinguishing various odours in the compound fragrance of the meadow or the garden,--of feeling the harmony of various coexisting melodies.

The various sensations, then, may _coexist_, so as to produce one complex affection. When they do coexist, it must be remarked, that they are individually less intense. The same sound, for example, which is scarcely heard in the tumult of the day, is capable of affecting us powerfully if it recur in the calm of the night; not that it is then absolutely louder, but because it is no longer mingled with other sounds, and other sensations of various kinds, which rendered it weaker, by coexisting with it. It may be regarded, then, as a general law of our perceptions, that when many sensations coexist, each individually is less vivid than if it existed alone.

It may be considered almost as another form of the same proposition to say, that when many sensations coexist, each is not merely weaker, but less distinct from the others with which it is combined. When a few voices sing together, we easily recognize each separate voice. In a very full chorus, we distinguish each with more difficulty; and, if a great multitude were singing together, we should scarcely be able to distinguish any one voice from the rest, more than to distinguish the noise of a single billow, or a single dashing of a few particles of agitated air, in the whole thunders of the ocean and the storm.

When many sensations coexist, and are, therefore, of course weaker and less distinct, if any one were suddenly to become much more intense, the rest would fade in proportion, so as scarcely to be felt. A thousand faint sounds murmur around us, which are instantly hushed by any loud noise. If, when we are looking at the glittering firmament of suns in a winter night, any one of those distant orbs were to become as radiant as our own sun, which is itself but the star of our planetary system, there can be no question, that, like our sun on its rising, it would quench with its brilliancy, all those little glimmering lights, which would still shine on us, indeed, as before, but would shine on us without being perceived. It may be regarded, then, as another general law of the mind, that when many sensations coexist of equal intensity, the effect of the _increased_ intensity of _one_ is a _diminished_ intensity of those which coexist with it.

Let us now, for the application of these remarks, consider, what it is which takes place in attention, when many objects are together acting on our senses, and we attend, perhaps, only to a single sensation. As a mere description of the process, I cannot use a happier exemplification, than that which Condillac has given us in his _Logique_.

Let us imagine a castle, which commands, from its elevation, an extensive view of a domain, rich with all the beauties of nature and art. It is night when we arrive at it. The next morning our window-shutters open at the moment when the sun has just risen above the horizon,--and close again the very moment after.

Though the whole sweep of country was shewn to us _but for an instant_, we must have seen every object which it comprehends within the sphere of our vision. In a second or a third instant we could have received only the same impressions which we received at first; consequently, though the window had not been closed again, we should have continued to see but what we saw before.

This first instant, however, though it unquestionably shewed us all the scene, gave us no real knowledge of it; and, when the windows were closed again, there is not one of us who could have ventured to give even the slightest description of it,--a sufficient proof, that we may have seen many objects, and yet have learned nothing.

At length the shutters are opened again, to remain open while the sun is above the horizon; and we see once more what we saw at first. Even now, however, if, in a sort of ecstacy, we were to continue to see at _once_, as in the first instant, all this multitude of different objects, we should know as little of them when the night arrived, as we knew when the window shutters were closed again after the very moment of their opening.

To have a knowledge of the scene, then, it is not sufficient to behold it _all at once_, so as to comprehend it in a single gaze; we must consider it in _detail_, and pass successively from object to object. This is what Nature has taught us all. If she has given us the power of seeing many objects at once, she has given us also the faculty of looking but at one,--that is to say, of directing our eyes on one only of the multitude; and it is to this faculty,--which is a result of our organization, says Condillac,--that we owe all the knowledge which we acquire from sight.

The faculty is common to us all: and yet, if afterwards we were to talk of the landscape which we had _all_ seen, it would be very evident, that our knowledge of it would not be exactly the same. By some of us, a picture might be given of it with tolerable exactness, in which there would be many objects such as they were, and many, certainly, which had very little resemblance to the parts of the landscape which we wished to describe. The picture which _others_ might give, would probably be so confused, that it would be quite impossible to recognize the scene in the description, and yet all had seen the same objects, and nothing but the same objects. The only difference is, that some of us had wandered from object to object irregularly, and that others had looked at them in a certain order.

Now, what is this order? Nature points it out to us herself. It is the very order in which she presents to us objects. There are some which are more striking than others, and which, of themselves, almost call to us to look at them; they are the _predominant objects_, around which the others seem to arrange themselves. It is to them, accordingly, that we give our _first_ attention; and when we have remarked their relative situations, the others gradually fill up the intervals.

We begin, then, with the principal objects; we observe them in succession; we compare them, to judge of their relative positions. When these are ascertained, we observe the objects that fill up the intervals, comparing each with the principal object, till we have fixed the positions of all.

When this process of successive, but regular observation, is accomplished, we know all the objects and their situations, and can embrace them with a single glance. Their order, in our mind, is no longer an order of mere succession; it is _simultaneous_. It is that in which they exist, and we see it at once distinctly.

The comprehensive knowledge thus acquired, we owe to the mere skill with which we have directed our eyes from object to object. The knowledge has been acquired in parts successively; but, when acquired, it is present at once to our mind, in the same manner, as the objects which it retraces to us, are all present to the single glance of the eye that beholds them.

The description which I have now given you, very nearly after the words of Condillac, is, I think, a very faithful representation of a process of which we must all repeatedly have been conscious. It seems to me however, faithful as it is, as a mere description, to leave the great difficulty unexplained, and even unremarked. We see a multitude of objects, and we have one complex indistinct feeling. We wish to know the scene more accurately, and in consequence of this wish, though the objects themselves continue as before, we no longer seem to view them all, but only one, or a few; and the few, which we now see, we see more distinctly. Such I conceive to be the process; but the difference is, that though we seem to view only a few objects, and these much more distinctly, the field of the eye still comprehends a wide expanse, the light from which scarcely affects us, while the light from other parts of it, though not more brilliant, produces in us distinct perception. It is vain for Condillac to say, that it is in consequence of a faculty which we have of directing our eyes on one subject, a faculty which is the result of our organization, and which is common to all mankind; for, in the first place, if this direction of our eyes, of which he speaks, on a single object, be meant, in its strict sense, of the eye itself, which we direct, it is not true that we have any such faculty. We cannot direct our eyes so as not to comprehend equally in our field of vision, many objects beside that single object which is supposed to have fixed our attention; and if, by the direction of our eyes, be meant the exclusive or limited perception by our mind itself, there remains the difficulty,--how it happens, that while light from innumerable objects falls on our retina as before, it no longer produces any distinct vision relatively to the objects from which it comes,--while light certainly not more brilliant, from other objects, produces vision much more distinct than before. Let us consider this difficulty which, in truth, constitutes the principal phenomenon of attention, a little more fully.

When Condillac speaks of the faculty of the mind, by which he supposes it capable of directing the eye, exclusively, on certain objects, he must speak of that only, of which we are conscious, previously to the more distinct perception of those objects, as certain parts of the scene.

What is it, then, of which we are conscious, between the indistinct perception of the wide scene, and the distinct perception of parts of the scene?

In the first place, there is a general desire of knowing the scene more accurately. This is the primary feeling of the process of attention. But this primary feeling is soon succeeded by others. Indistinct as the whole complex scene may be, some parts of it more brilliant, or more striking in general character, are less indistinct than others. There are a few _more prominent parts_, as Condillac says, around which the rest are indistinctly arranged.

With some _one_ of these, then, as in itself more impressive and attractive, we begin; our general desire of knowing the whole scene having been followed by a wish to know this principal part more accurately.

The next step is to prevent the eye itself from wandering, that no new objects may distract it, and that there may be as little confusion as possible of the rays from different objects, on that part of the retina, on which the rays fell from the particular object which we wish to consider. We fix our eyes, therefore, and our whole body, as steadily as we can, by the muscles subservient to these purposes.

So far, unquestionably, no new faculty is exercised. We have merely _the desire_ of knowing the scene before us,--the selection of some prominent object, or rather the mere perception of it, as peculiarly prominent,--the desire of knowing it particularly,--and the contraction of a few muscles, in obedience to our volition.

No sooner, however, has all this taken place, than instantly, or almost instantly, and without our consciousness of any new and peculiar state of mind intervening in the process, the landscape becomes to our vision altogether different. Certain parts only, those parts which we wished to know particularly, are seen by us; the remaining parts seem almost to have vanished. It is as if every thing before had been but the doubtful colouring of enchantment, which had disappeared, and left to us the few prominent realities on which we gaze; or rather, it is as if some instant enchantment, obedient to our wishes, had dissolved every reality besides, and brought closer to our sight the few objects which we desired to see.

Still, however, all of which we are truly conscious, as preceding immediately the change of appearance in the scene, is the mere desire, of which I have spoken, combined certainly with expectation of that more distinct vision which follows. There may be a combination of feelings, but no new and peculiar feeling, either as simple, or coexisting with other feelings,--no indication, in short, of the exercise of _new power_.

Even though we should be incapable, therefore, of understanding how the desire should have this effect, it would not be the less true, that the desire of knowing accurately a particular object in a group, is instantly,--or, at least, instantly after some organic change which may probably be necessary,--followed by a more vivid and distinct perception of the particular object, and a comparative faintness and indistinctness of the other objects that coexist with it; and that what we call attention is nothing more.

Are the comparative distinctness and indistinctness, however, a result which we had no reason to expect? or are they not rather what might, in some degree at least, have been expected, from our knowledge of the few physical facts with respect to our co-existing sensations, which I have already pointed out to you, and from the circumstance which we are next to consider? We have seen, in the observations already made by us, that many co-existing perceptions are indistinct, and that when _one_ becomes more vivid, the others become still fainter. All that is necessary, therefore, is to discover some cause of increased vividness of that one to which we are said to attend.

If we can discover any reason why _this_ should become more vivid, the comparative indistinctness of the other parts of the scene may be considered as following of course.

Such a cause exists, unquestionably, in that feeling of desire, without which there can be no attention. To attend, is to have a desire of knowing that to which we attend, and attention without desire is a verbal contradiction,--an inconsistency, at least, as great as if we were said to desire to know without any desire of knowing, or to be attentive without attention.

When we attend, then, to any part of a complex group of sensations, there is always an emotion of desire, however slight the emotion may be, connected exclusively with that particular part of the group to which we attend; and whatever effect our emotions produce on the complex feelings that accompany them, we may expect to be produced, in some greater or less degree, by the desire in the complex process which we term attention.

The effect which our expectation might anticipate, is the very effect that is truly found to take place,--an increased liveliness of that part of the complex group, to which alone the desire relates.

That it is the nature of our _emotions_ of every sort, to render _more vivid_ all the mental affections with which they are peculiarly combined, as if their own vivacity were in some measure divided with these, every one who has felt any strong emotion, must have experienced. The eye has, as it were, a double quickness, to perceive what we love or hate, what we hope or fear. Other objects may be seen slightly; but these, if seen at all, become instantly permanent, and cannot appear to us without impressing their presence, as it were, in stronger feeling on our senses and our soul.

Such is the effect of emotion, when combined even with sensations that are of themselves, by their own nature, vivid; and mark, therefore, less strikingly, the increase of vividness received. The vivifying effect, however, is still more remarkable, by its relative proportion, when the feelings with which the emotion is combined, are in themselves peculiarly faint, as in the case of mere memory or imagination. The object of any of our emotions, thus merely conceived by us, becomes, in many cases, so vivid, as to render even our accompanying perceptions comparatively faint. The mental absence of _lovers_, for example, is proverbial; and what is thus termed in popular language _absence_, is nothing more than the greater vividness of some mere conception, or other internal feeling, than of any, or all of the external objects present at the time, which have no peculiar relation to the prevailing emotion.

“The darkened sun
Loses his light; The rosy-bosom'd Spring
To weeping Fancy pines; and yon bright arch
Contracted, bends into a dusky vault.
All nature fades, extinct; and she alone,
Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought,
Fills every sense, and pants in every vein.
Books are but formal dulness,--tedious friends,
And sad amid the social band he sits
Lonely and unattentive. From his tongue
The unfinished period falls; while, borne away
On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies
To the vain bosom of his distant Fair;
And leaves the semblance of a lover, fix'd
In melancholy site, with head declined
And love-dejected eyes.”[131]

What brighter colours the fears of _superstition_ give to the dim objects perceived in twilight, the inhabitants of the village who have to pass the churchyard at any late hour, and the little students of ballad lore, who have carried with them, from the nursery, many tales which they almost tremble to remember, know well. And in the second sight of this northern part of the island, there can be no doubt, that the objects which the seers conceive themselves to behold, truly are more vivid, as conceptions, than, but for the superstition and the melancholy character of the natives, which harmonize with the objects of this gloomy foresight, they would have been; and that it is in consequence of this brightening effect of the emotion, as concurring with the dim and shadowy objects which the vapoury atmosphere of our lakes and vallies presents, that fancy, relatively to the individual, becomes a temporary reality. The _gifted eye_, which has once believed itself favoured with such a view of the future, will, of course, ever after have a _quicker foresight_, and more frequent revelations; its own wilder emotion communicating still more vivid forms and colours to the objects which it dimly perceives.

On this subject, however, I need not seek any additional illustration. I may fairly suppose you to admit, as a general physical law of the Phenomena of Mind, that the influence of every emotion is to render _more vivid_ the perception or conception of its object.

I must remark, however, that when the emotion is _very violent_, as in the violence of any of our fiercer passions, though it still renders every object, with which it harmonizes, more vivid and prominent, it mingles with them some degree of its own confusion of feeling. It magnifies and distorts; and what it renders brighter, it does not therefore render more distinct.

“The flame of passion, through the straggling soul
Deep-kindled, shews across that sudden blaze
The object of his rapture, vast of size,
With fiercer colours and a night of shade.”[132]

The species of desire which we are considering, however, is not of this fierce and tempestuous kind.

Emotions of a calmer species have the _vivifying_ effect, without the _indistinctness_; and precisely of this degree is that desire which constitutes attention as coexisting with the sensations, or other feelings to which we are said to attend.

We have found, then, in the desire which accompanies attention, or rather which chiefly constitutes it, the cause of that increased intensity which we sought.

When all the various objects of a scene are of themselves equally, or nearly equally, interesting or indifferent to us, the union of _desire_, with any particular perception of the group, might be supposed, _a priori_, to render this perception in some degree more vivid than it was before. It is not necessary that this difference of vividness should take place _wholly_, or even be very striking, in the first instant; for, by becoming in the first instant even slightly more vivid, it acquires additional colouring and prominence, so as to increase that interest, which led us originally to select it for our first minute observation, and thus to brighten it more and more progressively. Indeed, when we reflect on our consciousness during what is called _an effort of attention_, we feel that some such progress as this really takes place, the object becoming gradually more distinct while we gaze, till at length it requires a sort of effort to turn away to the other coexisting objects, and to renew with them the same process.

Attention, then, is not a simple mental state, but a process, or a combination of feelings. It is not the result of any peculiar power of the mind, but of those mere laws of perception, by which the increased vividness of one sensation produces a corresponding faintness of others coexisting with it, and of that law of our emotions, by which they communicate greater intensity to every perception, or other feeling, with which they coexist and harmonize.

FOOTNOTES:

[131] Thomson's Seasons--Spring, v. 1006-1021.

[132] Pleasures of Imagination, Book II. v. 137-140.

LECTURE XXXII.

ON THE EXTERNAL AFFECTIONS OF MIND COMBINED WITH DESIRE, CONTINUED.--ON THE INTERNAL AFFECTIONS OF MIND.--CLASSIFICATION OF THEM.

In my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I concluded my sketch of the different hypotheses of philosophers with respect to perception, with an account of that Pre-established Harmony, by which Leibnitz, excluding all reciprocal agency of mind and matter, endeavoured to account for the uniform coincidence of our mental feelings with our bodily movements,--an hypothesis which, though it does not seem to have gained many followers out of Germany, produced the most enthusiastic admiration in the country of its author. I may remark by the way,--as a very striking example of the strange mixture of seemingly opposite qualities, which we frequently find in the character of nations,--that, while the country, of which I speak, has met with ridicule,--most unjust in degree, as national ridicule always is,--for the heaviness of its laborious erudition, it must be allowed to surpass all other countries in the passionate enthusiasm of its philosophy, which, particularly in metaphysics, from the reign of Leibnitz to the more recent worship paid to the transcendentalism of Kant, seems scarcely to have admitted of any calm approbation, or to have known any other inquirers than violent partisans and violent foes.

After my remarks on this hypothesis, which closed my view of our external affections of mind, as they exist simply, I next proceeded to consider them, as they exist, combined with desire, in that state of the mind, which is termed _attention_,--a state which has been supposed to indicate a peculiar intellectual power, but which, I endeavoured to shew you, admits of being analyzed into other more general principles.

It is to our consciousness, of course, that we must refer for the truth of any such analysis; and the process which it reveals to us, in attention, seems, I think, to justify the analysis which I made, indicating a combination of simpler feelings, but not any new and distinct species of feeling, to be referred to a peculiar faculty.

We see many objects together, and we see them indistinctly. We wish to know them more accurately,--and we are aware, that this knowledge can be acquired only in detail. We select some one more prominent object, from the rest,--or rather, without any selection on our part, this object excites, in a higher degree, our desire of observing it particularly, merely by being more prominent, or, in some other respect, more interesting than the rest. To observe it particularly, we fix our body, and our eyes,--for it is a case of vision which I have taken for an example,--as steadily as possible, that the light from the same points of the object may continue to fall on the same points of the retina. Together with our wish, we have an expectation, the natural effect of uniform past experience, that the object will now be more distinctly perceived by us; and, in accordance with this expectation, when the process, which I have described, is completed, the object, as if it knew our very wish, and hastened to gratify it, does become more distinct; and, in proportion as it becomes thus more vivid, the other objects of the group become gradually fainter, till at length they are scarcely felt to be present. Such, without the intervention of any new and peculiar state of mind, is the mental process, as far as we are conscious of it; and, if this be the process, there is no reason to infer in it the operation of any power of the mind different from those which are exercised in other cases. The general capacities of perception, and desire, and expectation, and voluntary command of certain muscles, which, on every view of the phenomena of attention, we must allow the mind to possess, are, of themselves, sufficient to explain the phenomena, and preclude, therefore, any further reference.

The brightening of the objects to which we attend, that is to say, of the objects which have interested us, and which we feel a _desire_ of knowing, and the consequent fading of the other coexisting objects, I explained, by the well known influence, not of desire merely, but of all our emotions, in rendering more vivid those objects of perception or fancy, with which they harmonize; and I illustrated this influence by various examples.

The phantasms of imagination, in the reveries of our waking hours, when our external senses are still open, and quick to feel, are, as mere conceptions, far less vivid than the primary perceptions, from which they originally flowed; and yet, under the influence of any strong emotion, they become so much more bright and prominent than external things, that, to the impassioned muser, on distant scenes and persons, the scenes and persons truly around him, are almost, as if they were not in existence. If a mere conception, then, faint as it must always be by its own nature, can thus be rendered more vivid than reality, by the union of any strong _desire_, it is surely less wonderful, that the same cause should communicate the same superior vividness to the brighter realities of perception. If what we remember with interest, and wish to see again, become so much more vivid in our fancy, merely by this very wish, that we scarcely perceive any one of the innumerable objects before our eyes, what we truly see, in its own lively colouring, and feel a strong desire of knowing more intimately, may well be supposed to render us less sensible to the other coexisting objects, which the very shadows of our imagination, when brightened by a similar desire, were able mutually to annihilate or eclipse.

In addition to this direct vivifying influence of the desire itself, some part,--and, perhaps a very considerable part--of the brightening of the object, during attention, may arise indirectly from the mere muscular adaptation of the organ. I do not speak merely of that _internal_ adaptation, whatever it may be, which accommodates the organ to the object, and, therefore, varies with the distance of the object, but of that simpler contraction, which keeps the organ, as a whole, steadily fixed. It is proved by many facts, that a certain time is necessary, for vision, and, probably, in like manner, for all our perceptions. A cannon ball, for example, though it must have reflected light to us, during its passage, may yet pass before our eyes, so rapidly, as not to be perceived; and, if a part of the eye be affected, in a certain manner, by one colour, and a different colour fall upon it so rapidly after the first, that the former affection has not previously ceased, the result is not the visual affection, which the second colour alone would have produced, but that which would have arisen at once from a mixture of the two colours. In this way, in an experiment which has been often performed, for the demonstration of this simple and beautiful fact; if a cylinder be painted in longitudinal bars, with the prismatic colours, in certain proportions, and be revolved rapidly on its axis, its surface to the eye will not seem to present any one of the colours, which are really painted on it, but an uniform _whiteness_, which it has not, on a single point of its whole surface.

If rays of different colours, falling in rapid succession, on the same points of the retina, thus seem to mingle with each other, and produce one confused effect, it must evidently be of great importance, for distinct vision, that the eyes should be so fixed, that the rays from the objects which we wish to observe, may not fall, on some parts of the retina, previously affected by the light of other objects, but, as much as possible, on the same parts, during the whole time of our observation. This can be done, as I have said, only by the continued agency of certain muscles; and hence arises that feeling of _muscular effort_, of which we are conscious in the process. How difficult is it for us, to keep a muscle, for any length of time, in the same exact point of contraction, without the slightest deviation from this point, is well known to physiologists; and, it is not wonderful, therefore, that in attention, we should be conscious of a considerable effort, in endeavouring to fix steadily any of our organs. The power of thus fixing our muscles, is a power which improves by habitual exercise; and it is probably very much in this way, that the _practised_ eye is able so rapidly to distinguish the minute parts of objects, which require from others a much longer effort of attention.

But, whatever the effect of the _muscular adaptation_ may be, it is not the less certain, if we reflect on our feelings, that the mental part of the process of attention involves nothing more, in addition to the primary perception, which is its object, than _desire with expectation_. This is all of which we are truly conscious, previously to the brightening of the perception itself, to which we are said to attend;--a brightening, which, from the general laws of emotion, might very naturally be expected as the result of the union of desire, with any of our sensations. In such circumstances, then, it is not wonderful, that we should remember best the objects to which we pay most attention, since this is only to say, that we remember best the objects on which we have dwelt longest, and with greatest interest, and which we have, therefore, known most accurately.

Such are our sensations or perceptions, when united with desire, exhibiting appearances, which seem, at first, to indicate, though they do not truly indicate, a peculiar power or susceptibility of the mind. We shall find, in considering our intellectual states of mind, the order of mental phenomena, to which we next proceed, that the union of _desire_ with these, has led, in like manner, to the belief of many distinct intellectual powers, which yet, like _attention_, admit of being analyzed into simpler elements. These intellectual phenomena themselves, in their simple state, must, however, be first examined by us.

Having now, then, offered all the observations for which our limited course allows me room, on the very important _primary_ class of external affections of the mind, I proceed according to our general division, to consider the _secondary_ class of its internal affections; those states of it, which are not the result of causes foreign to the mind itself, but immediate consequents of its own preceding feelings.

The Divine Contriver of our mental frame, who formed the soul to exist in certain states, on the presence of external things, formed it also to exist, in certain successive states, without the presence or direct influence of any thing external; the one state of the mind, being, as immediately the cause of the state of mind which follows it, as, in our external feelings, the change produced, in our corporeal organ of sense, is the cause of any one of the particular affections of that class. In the one class, that of our internal affections, the phenomena depend on the laws which regulate the successive changes of state of the mind itself. In the other class, that of our external affections, they depend on the laws of the _mind_, indeed, which is susceptible of these peculiar changes of state; but they depend, in an equal degree, on the laws which give to _matter_ its peculiar qualities, and, consequently, its peculiar influence on this mental susceptibility. If light were to be annihilated, it is very evident, that, though our mind itself were to continue endowed with all its present susceptibilities, it never again could behold the sun, around whose cold and gloomy mass our earth might still revolve as now; nor, in such circumstances, is there any reason to suppose that it would exist in any one of those various states, which constitute the delightful sensations of vision. These sensations, then, depend on _external_ things, as much as on the _mind_ itself. But, though after we have once been enriched with the splendid acquisitions, which our perceptive organs afford us, every thing external were to vanish, not from our sight merely, but from all our senses, and our mind alone were to exist in the infinity of space, together with that Eternal Majesty which formed it,--still thought after thought, and feeling after feeling, would arise, as it were, spontaneously, in the disembodied spirit,--if no change in its nature were to take place; and the whole world of light, and fragrance, and harmony, would, in its remembrance, almost rise again, as if outliving annihilation itself. It is by this capacity of internal change of state, indeed, that the soul is truly immortal, which, if it were capable of no affections, but those which I have termed external, would itself be virtually as mortal as all the mortal things that are around it; since, but for them, as causes of its feelings, it could not, in these circumstances, of complete dependence, have any feelings whatever, and could, therefore, exist only in that state of original insensibility, which preceded the first sensation that gave it consciousness of existence. It is, in the true sense of immortality of life, immortal, only because it depends for its feelings, as well as for its mere existence, not on the state of perishable things, which are but the atmosphere that floats around it, but on its own independent laws; or, at least,--for the laws of mind, as well as the laws of matter, can mean nothing more,--depends, for the successions of its feelings, only on the provident arrangements, of that _All-foreseeing Power_ whose will, as it existed at the very moment at which it called every thing from nothing, and gave to mind and matter their powers and susceptibilities, is thus, consequently, in the whole series of effects, from age to age, the eternal legislation of the universe.

Even while our soul is united to this bodily frame, and continually capable of being affected by the objects that are continually present with it, by far the greater number of our feelings are those which arise from our _internal_ successions of thought. Innumerable as our perceptions are, they are but a small part of the varied consciousness of a day. We do not see, or feel, objects merely, for this alone would be of little value,--but we compare them with each other,--we form plans of action, and prosecute them with assiduous attention,--or we meditate on the means by which they may most effectually be prosecuted; and with all our perceptions of external things, and plans of serious thought, a continued fairy work of involuntary fancy, is incessantly mingling, in consequence of the laws of suggestion in the mind itself, like the transient shadows, on a stream, of the clouds that fled over it, which picture on it their momentary forms, as they pass in rapid variety, without affecting the course of the busy current, which glides along in its majestic track, as if they had never been. If we had the power of _external_ sense only, life would be as passive as the most unconnected dream, or rather far more passive and irregular than the wildest of our dreams. Our remembrances, comparisons, our hopes, our fears, and all the variety of our thoughts and emotions, give a harmony and unity to our general consciousness, which make the consciousness of each day a little drama, or a connected part of that still greater drama, which is to end only with the death of its hero, or rather with the commencement of his glorious apotheosis.

How wide a field the internal affections of the mind present, without dependence on the system of material things,--with which we are connected, indeed, by many delightful ties, but by ties that have relation only to this mortal scene,--is proved in a very striking manner, by the increased energy of thought which we often seem to acquire in those hours of the quiet of the night, when every _external_ influence is nearly _excluded_,--the hours of inward meditation, in which the mind has been poetically said, to retire into the sanctuary of its own immense abode, and to feel there and enjoy its spiritual infinity, as if admitted to the etherial dwellings and the feasts of the Gods.

“Nonne vides, quoties nox circumfunditur atra
Immensi terga Oceani terramque polumque,
Cum rerum obduxit species obnubilus Aer
Nec fragor impulsas aut vox allabitur aures,
Ut nullo intuitu mens jam defixa, recedit
In sese, et vires intra se colligit omnes?
Ut magno hospitio potitur, seque excipit ipsa
Totam intus; seu jussa Deum discumbere mensis.
Nam neque sic illam solido de marmore tecta
Nec cum porticibus capiunt laquiaria centum
Aurea, tot distincta locis, tot regibus apta,
Quæsitæque epulæ, Tyrioque instructus ab ostro;
Ut gaudet sibi juncta, sibique intenditur ipsa,
Ipsa sibi tota incumbens, totamque pererrans
Immensa immensam spatio longeque patentem.
Seu dulces inter latebras Heliconis amæni,
Et sacram Phœbi nemorum divertitur umbram,
Fœcundum pleno exercens sub pectore numen;
Seu causas rerum occultas, et semina volvit,
Et queis fœderibus conspirent maximus Æther
Neptunusque Pater, Tellusque, atque omnia gignant;
Sive altum virtutis iter subducit, et almus
Molitur leges, queis fortunata juventus
Pareat, ac pace imperium tutetur et armis.”[133]

The _internal_ states of mind, then, which form the class next to be considered by us, present to our inquiry no narrow or uninteresting field. We are to find in these again every thing, though in fainter colours, which delighted and interested us in the former class; while we are, at the same time, to discover, an abundant source of feelings still more delightful and sublime in themselves, and still more interesting to our analysis. We are no longer mere _sensitive_ beings, that _gaze_ upon the universe, and feel pain or pleasure as a few of its elementary particles touch our nerves. We are the discoverers of laws, which every element of the universe obeys,--the tracers of events of ages that are past,--the calculators and prophets of events, that are not to occur till generation after generation of the prophetic calculators that succeed us shall themselves have passed away;--and, while we are thus able to discover the innumerable relations of created things, we are, at the same time, by the medium of these internal states of our own mind, the _discoverers_ also of that _Infinite Being_, who framed every thing which it is our glory to be capable merely of observing, and who, without acting directly on any of our organs of sense, is yet present to our intellect with as bright a reality of perception, as the suns and planets which he has formed are present to our corporeal vision.