CHAPTER XVI.

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE INTELLECTUAL AND ACTIVE POWERS OF THE HUMAN MIND.

“It is the greatest triumph of philosophy to refer many, and seemingly very various, phenomena, to one, or a very few, simple principles: and the more simple and evident such a principle is, provided it be truly applicable to all the cases in question, the greater is its value and scientific beauty.”—Elements of Logic, by Dr. Whately, p. 32.

THE Phenomena of Thought have long appeared to be divisible into two great classes; which were distinguished by the names, the one of the Intellectual, the other of the Active, Powers of the Human Mind. In the phenomena which compose the first of those classes, and which we have now pretty completely surveyed, the sensations and ideas are considered merely as existing. In the phenomena which compose the second of the two classes, the sensations and ideas are to be considered as not merely existing, but also as exciting to action.35

35 Instead of “The phenomena of Thought,” substitute the phenomena of Mind, the Subject, or the Subject Consciousness. The use of the word “Thought” seems to justify an opinion held by Hamilton and by the German philosophers, that thought, or the cognitive function is the basis of mind, instead of being co-ordinate with the other leading functions (Feeling and Will.) There is no evidence elsewhere that the author shares this opinion.

The defectiveness of the two-fold classification of the mind, which seems to have descended from Aristotle, and is only in the present generation supplanted by an explicitly worked-out triple division, is especially apparent in the handling of all the succeeding chapters of the present work. The Will, or the activity of the system, is spoken of as set on indiscriminately by “sensations and ideas;” which, as will be seen, is to mix together a number of entirely distinct processes.

There is no adequate separation of the emotional part of a Sensation, from its intellectual or knowledge-giving part. The same confusion extends to the word “idea,” which, without premonition, is employed for the memory of pleasures and pains, and for the memory of sensations of the intellectual or knowledge-giving kind. There is, as might be expected, an insufficient treatment of the special forms of Emotion; there being no basis laid for their exhaustive or natural classification.—B.

182 With respect to the sensations and ideas which compose the phenomena of the first class, we have observed, that they are apt to be formed into clusters of more or less complexity; and that they follow one another, in trains, according to certain laws.

The sensations and ideas, which compose the phenomena of the second class, are equally formed into clusters, with those composing the phenomena of the former class; and follow one another, in trains, according to the same laws.

So far, the two classes of phenomena agree; and so far, the analysis, which we have endeavoured to effect of the former class, is to be taken as the analysis also of the latter. Our object, now, is, to trace to their 183 source the differences which constitute this a separate class; to mark the subdivisions into which it can be most conveniently distributed; and to demonstrate the simple laws, into which the whole phenomena of human life, so numerous, and apparently so diversified, may all be easily resolved.

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