178 ON THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN MENTAL 



a subject, is simply to investigate the facts, or the relations of pheno- 

 mena, respecting the operations of mind itself, and the intercourse 

 which it carries on with the objects in the world about it."* 



The mind having acquired the knowledge of facts, through the 

 medium of the senses, disposes of them in a number and variety of 

 ways, which are termed, by metaphysicians, the powers or functions 

 of the mind, the mental or intellectual operations. For instance, 

 we remember the facts wherewith we have become acquainted, and 

 can call them to mind at pleasure ; the first of these processes is 

 Memory, the second that modification of it termed Recollection. 



We can compare facts with each other, observe their relations and 

 connexions, and trace the results which follow particular combina- 

 tions of them : we also observe their general characters, so as to 

 deduce, from the whole, general principles. This is the most useful 

 of all the mental operations, and is named Judgment. 



" There is a third power, by which the mind is enabled to separate 

 scenes, or classes of facts, into their constituent elements, to form 

 these elements into new combinations, so as to represent to ourselves 

 pictures or collections of events which have no real existence in 

 nature."t This mental process is Imagination, and is that to which 

 our attention will now be more particularly directed. 



'* Phantasie, or Imagination," says the quaint and learned Burton, 

 " is an inner sense, which doth more fully examine the species per- 

 ceived by common sense, — or judgment, recalling them to mind 

 again, in shapes, colours, and dresses of its own. In time of sleep, 

 this faculty is free, and unfettered by the cooler dictates of reason : 

 it then conceives strange, stupend, and absurd shapes, as in sick men 

 we commonly observe. Its organ is the middle portion of the brain: 

 its objects, all which are presented to it through the medium of the 

 senses ; by comparison of which it feigns infinite others unto itself. 

 In melancholy men, this faculty is most powerful and strong, and 

 often hurts, producing many monstrous and prodigious things, 

 especially if it be stirred up by some terrible object, presented 

 to it by sense or memory. In poets, painters, lovers, and lunatics, 

 imagination forcibly works, as appears by their several pictures 



• Abercrombie, On the Intellectual Powers. 

 t Abercrombie, Op. Cif., p. 99. 



