The Scottish Philosophy [264]
III. The Conservative, Reproductive, and Representative faculties might all have been included, I think, under one head, with subdivisions. The account which he gives of this group is upon the whole the best which we have in our language. Still there are oversights in it. Thus, in order to make the analysis complete, I should have had the recognitive power, or that which recognizes the object recalled as having been before the mind . Had he given this power a separate place, he would have seen more clearly than he does how the idea of time arises. Along with the mere representative power he should have mentioned the compounding or grouping power of imagination, which combines the scattered images into one new whole. He refers at times to man's native power of using signs; why not specify a symbolic power, enabling man to think by signs standing for notions.
In explaining the nature of the conservative or retentive faculty, and elsewhere, he has unfolded some peculiar views which I consider to be as correct as they are profound, but he carries them to a length which I am not prepared to allow. What is the state of an idea when not falling at the time under consciousness? This is the question which has often been put. Thus having seen the Crystal Palace of 1851, the question is put, -- what place has that idea in my mind, when {438} I am not precisely thinking about the object? Is it dead or simply dormant? We must of course answer that the idea can have no existence as an idea, when not before the consciousness. Still it must have some sort of existence. There exists in the mind a power to reproduce it according to the laws of association. The writer of this article having had occasion, years ago, to pass over the plains of Lombardy, is not therefore always imaging them, but he has the power of recalling them, and finds that they are recalled every time he hears of the jealousies between Austria and Italy. It is a great truth that the mind is ever acquiring potency, is ever laying up power. We have something analogous in the physical world. Thus a power coming from the sun in the geological age of the coal-measures was laid up in the plant, went down into the strata of the ground, and comes up now in our coals ready to supply us with comfortable heat in our rooms, and with tremendous mechanical force for our steam-engines. This is the doctrine of all the physicists of our day. But there is a similar laying up of power in the mind, of intellectual, and we may add, of moral or immoral power. Aristotle had certainly a glimpse of some such doctrine, and spoke of a, an , and an ; the first denoting the original capacity, the second -- the capacity in complete readiness to act, and the third the capacity in act or operation. Modern mechanical science is enunciating this doctrine in a more definite form, and distinguishing between capacity and potential energy and actual energy. Sir William Hamilton, taking the hint from Aristotle, has adopted the views of the German Schmid (who again had certain speculations of Leibnitz before him), who declares that the energy of mind which has once been cannot readily be conceived as abolished, and that " the problem most difficult of solution is not how a mental activity endures, but how it ever vanishes." (Vol. II. P. 212.)
So far I can concur; but when he maintains that there are in the mind, acts, energies, and operations, of which it is not conscious, I hesitate and draw back. His doctrine on this subject is founded on the views of Leibnitz, as to there being perceptions below consciousness. The class of facts on which he rests his opinion seem to me to be misapprehended. {439} "When we hear the distant murmur of the sea, what are the constituents of this total perception of which we are conscious? " He answers that the murmur is a sum made up of parts, and that if the noise of each wave made no impression on our sense, the noise of the sea as the result of these impressions could not be realized. " But the noise of each several
In explaining the nature of the conservative or retentive faculty, and elsewhere, he has unfolded some peculiar views which I consider to be as correct as they are profound, but he carries them to a length which I am not prepared to allow. What is the state of an idea when not falling at the time under consciousness? This is the question which has often been put. Thus having seen the Crystal Palace of 1851, the question is put, -- what place has that idea in my mind, when {438} I am not precisely thinking about the object? Is it dead or simply dormant? We must of course answer that the idea can have no existence as an idea, when not before the consciousness. Still it must have some sort of existence. There exists in the mind a power to reproduce it according to the laws of association. The writer of this article having had occasion, years ago, to pass over the plains of Lombardy, is not therefore always imaging them, but he has the power of recalling them, and finds that they are recalled every time he hears of the jealousies between Austria and Italy. It is a great truth that the mind is ever acquiring potency, is ever laying up power. We have something analogous in the physical world. Thus a power coming from the sun in the geological age of the coal-measures was laid up in the plant, went down into the strata of the ground, and comes up now in our coals ready to supply us with comfortable heat in our rooms, and with tremendous mechanical force for our steam-engines. This is the doctrine of all the physicists of our day. But there is a similar laying up of power in the mind, of intellectual, and we may add, of moral or immoral power. Aristotle had certainly a glimpse of some such doctrine, and spoke of a
So far I can concur; but when he maintains that there are in the mind, acts, energies, and operations, of which it is not conscious, I hesitate and draw back. His doctrine on this subject is founded on the views of Leibnitz, as to there being perceptions below consciousness. The class of facts on which he rests his opinion seem to me to be misapprehended. {439} "When we hear the distant murmur of the sea, what are the constituents of this total perception of which we are conscious? " He answers that the murmur is a sum made up of parts, and that if the noise of each wave made no impression on our sense, the noise of the sea as the result of these impressions could not be realized. " But the noise of each several