80 Rev. J. Wills on Mr. Stewart's Explanation of 



perceived. Had he distinctly asserted this proposition, he vpould have quickly 

 seen his error, but he takes it for granted, and goes on to applications in which 

 it misleads him. There is, in those who are in a state of consciousness, at all 

 times a certain aggregate of things presented to the perception. Of these, some 

 may become more prominently the objects of attention, and the rest will invariably, 

 in the same proportion, become vague and indistinct. The perception of indi- 

 vidual parts of this vague whole will, in general, not be separately recollected, 

 because they have not been separately observed; and not, as Mr. Stewart assumes, 

 because the observation has been too rapid. There is a process, it is true, by 

 which, in a certain class of cases, the mind can recal and analyze a large combi- 

 nation of things ; but this is not what Mr. Stewart has in view.* 



I shall presently be in a condition to examine more closely some of Mr. 

 Stewart's reasonings on this point, but I shall now proceed by a more simple and 

 far shorter method, which Mr. Stewart himself has the great- and signal merit of 

 having pointed out, and in some measure exemplified. Instead of adopting de- 

 finitions, and launching out upon the vague ocean of pure reasoning, I shall essay 

 the humbler adventure of a coasting voyage along the safe shore of known and 

 familiar facts ; the only method that I suspect will be ever found to lead to any 

 satisfactory result, in a science of which the first elements are so little tangible 

 to strict observation as those of the mind. 



The nature then of the analysis to which I beg to call the attention of the 

 Academy is strictly this ; I shall state in order a numerous train of well known 

 and most common facts, in all of which the same process can be easily observed, 

 and which will exhibit this process in a variety of aspects, so that it may thus 

 appear what method of explanation will best agree with all. Among these I 

 shall include Mr. Stewart's cases, and endeavour to show that his explanation, 

 which is specious enough on a confined view of examples selected for the purpose, 

 is negatived entirely when referred to other cases which cannot be regarded as 

 specifically different. 



The first case which Mr. Stewart states, with an explicit reference to the 

 subject of this essay, has the advantage of offering a passing view of another 



• Some of the examples by which Mr. Stewart illustrates his views concerning consciousness, 

 perception, and attention, cannot be here satisfactorily discussed, until I shall have first fully ex- 

 plained the principle to be asserted in this essay. I shall, therefore, revert to them further on. 



