it is a work wherein all shades of thought-even every fibre of latent meaning-comes in where it should come in, and contributes its aid to the general effect.

518. The plasticity of language and its copiousness are the indispensable condition of so nice an operation as this. The speaker knows how to avail himself not merely of its stores and of its emphatic forces, but of its ambiguities, its conventional evasions, its graceful obliquities, its dim metonymic ironies. The solid matter of thought thrown in upon the liquid mass of language undergoes there a process of adjustment which, though it is completed in less than an instant of time, falls little short of being a perfect work when it reaches the ear in its measured yet artless cadences.

519. An extemporaneous work of thought, such as that which we have now imagined, and which— although it is not of every-day occurrence-is no miracle, we regard as the last product of A CAUSE over and beyond, or above which, or anterior to it, there is no causality whatever. This utterance is the exponent of a Power which, in the most strict sense, is initiative: there is nothing that is either of earlier date or of higher position than that Power of which the product (in the case before us) now meets the ear. In listening to such an utterance, a very peculiar feeling ensues; for, instead of being invited to accept the best we can get of the worn matter of customary discourse, we now, with a sort of galvanic consciousness, feel that we are in close contact with the Power of Mind. Sheer thought comes home upon every mind, or upon mind that is not itself too much worn, and every wasted, and spent to admit of such a consciousness.

520. A motive of reverence toward some metaphysic axiom may incline us to reject as delusive this vivid spontaneous consciousness of touching upon a First Cause on occasions of this sort, nor will there be wanting the semblance of reason to support us while we are endeavoring to choke our instinctive convictions with accredited academic formula.

XV.

RELATIVE VALUE OF CERTAIN TERMS.

521. Ar this stage of our course, and before entering upon subjects of an entirely different kind, it will be well to assign to their places certain terms and phrases which are customarily employed in speaking of the intellectual faculties. The words and the modes of speaking now referred to may retain their places in colloquial parlance, for convenience' sake, if only we remember that no scientific value attaches to them, and that they are employed much in the same way as we allow ourselves to speak of astronomical phenomena-not as they are, but as they seem to be.

522. The set of words, and the usual expressions which we have now to dispose of, carry with them this apparent meaning: that the mind-or, to speak restrictively, the human mind—is a concrete of various powers and separate faculties, which are lodged side by side, or in an upper and under relative position, within the thinking substance to which they cohere. It is thus that the "Will" is spoken of as if it were a faculty distinct; and so the "Memory," and the

"power of Attention," and the "faculty of Abstraction" or of Analysis; and so the "Association of ideas" is the mode or law of a faculty, and so the "Imagination."

523. This loose and popular mode of speaking has prevailed so much, and it has continued in use so long, partly because intellectual philosophy is an open field, trodden by a promiscuous crowd of intelligent persons, who, though they have never trained themselves to analytic thought, yet believe themselves competent to discourse concerning "mental science."

524. But the tendency to divide the mind into "faculties" or separate organs has taken its rise from certain anatomical and physiological habitudes or preoccupations on the part of some who have led the way in this department.

525. Sensation (in the five senses) is departmental undoubtedly, so far as it comes under the cognizance of the anatomist and the physiologist. This fact may seem to give support to the hypothesis of a departmental structure in the mind itself; and then, when, after using the scalpel and saw, we come to lift the osseous hemisphere from off the wondrous and uninterpretable mass which it protects, there meets the curious eye a complicated and multiform organ, the several parts of which may easily be regarded as if they were articulate with the facts of intellectual science. It is easy so to think when a human brain is laid open in horizontal and in transverse section, and when all its mysteries are laid bare; it is easier thus to think than it is to repel so specious a supposition. 526. But analytic severity demands of us that, put

ting away the palpable elements which the scalpel and the microscope bring to light, we should go into MIND —and nowhere else, when we are in search of MIND -sure of this truth, that that which is of the earth is earthy only.

527. A foremost article in popular mental philosophy is "THE WILL," which takes its place alongside of other faculties" and "powers" as one of them. But whatever those terms or phrases may be by means of which we note the difference that distinguishes the animal mind from vegetative life, the very same terms and phrases are those which offer themselves as the very best we can use for conveying our idea of this faculty, namely, "the Will;" yet only with this difference, that the animal mind is conscious also of the properties of matter, which consciousness, as we suppose, does not belong to vegetative life.

528. Mind is not always in act either toward the outer world, or, introvertedly, toward its own states. Consciousness, perhaps, is never intermitted (unless in cases of disease affecting the brain); simple consciousness is, however, passive throughout a large proportion of every twenty-four hours, even with the most active and vigorous minds. But whenever, and in whatsoever way, Mind is Mind in its own sense, then, and just so far as it is so, there are no terms in which we can speak of it which differ by a particle from those of which we must make use in setting forth what we mean by this faculty of the WILL. The "WILL" is neither more nor less than MIND itself; or, if we prefer a circumlocution, we may call it the first rudiment of Mind, the second rudiment being its passive consciousness toward the properties of matter.

529. The power or faculty of ATTENTION takes a separate place also in our colloquial mental philosophy. In this instance a very easy process of simplification suffices for dispersing this hypothetic faculty. In by far the larger number of those instances to which we should apply the word attention, the mind determines itself toward one object among several or among many which at any time may come within its prospect, and it does so at the instigation of a motive or an impulse-such, for instance, as those of which we have already spoken, or of others of which we are presently to speak. In these cases no separate faculty or organ need be imagined; what we have before us is Mind in act at the impulse of some of its emotions or its tastes.

530. But beside these instances of determinative action-action induced or impelled by an emotionattention fixes itself often upon a single object, external or internal, apart from, or in the absence of any motive attaching to that one object rather than to others of the same order, and which are ranging themselves on the same visible surface. If it shall be affirmed that on every such occasion the actual object of attention does in fact possess some preferential quality, although it may be quite inappreciable, our answer would be this-that the hypothesis of any such preference is purely gratuitous, for our consciousness gives no support to it. On the contrary, when we pursue -as far as, by the severest efforts of analysis, we can pursue the evolutions of thought, we come to this issue, that the sovereignty of Mind in relation to its own states demands or consists in this unconditional