88 Rev. James Witts on accidental Association. 
and self-scrutiny ; and, therefore, the facts to be stated are attended with the 
difficulty of being an appeal to the self-observation of others. The processes of 
thought are, it is true, generally the same in all; but it does not follow from this, 
that all will at once discern the result of an observation more or less dependent 
on analysis and continued attention. In the simplest operations of the mind there 
is considerable intermixture and complication, and a fact will seldom be truly 
understood until it shall have been separated from others. When we look for 
the elementary facts of mind, they at first present no visible limes of demarcation, 
but, like the colours of the rainbow, are more or less blended over the entire 
range of the intellectual phenomena. 
The earliest and most elementary fact that comes within the scope of actual 
observation, is simple apprehension, which is commensurate with, and inseparable 
from our consciousness. I have already described it as the sum of those percep- 
tions, of whatever kind, which are at the same time present to the mind. And I may 
observe that, in this statement, it isa matter of entire indifference whether these 
are operations, or states of mind, or the mind itself. With such considerations we 
are wholly unconcerned : they are wholly beyond the reach of observation, and 
the compass of rational inference. The elementary fact on which I proceed is 
this, that at every instant of conscious thought, there is a certain sum of percep- 
tions, or reflections, or both together, present, and together constituting one 
whole state of apprehension. Of this, some definite portion may be far more 
distinct than all the rest; and the rest be in consequence proportionably vague, 
even to the very limit of obliteration. But still, within this limit, the most dim 
shade of perception enters into, and in some infinitesimal degree modifies the 
whole existing state. This state will thus be in some way modified by any sen- 
sation or emotion, or act of distinct attention, that may give prominence to any 
part of it; so that the actual result is capable of the utmost variation, according 
to the person or the occasion. One person may be indistinctly gazing on the 
table and lights and crowd before us, and vaguely impressed by the murmur of 
voices ; another may, with these, be engaged in the thoughts of some other scene ; 
a third may be attending to the steps of a demonstration : of each the field of 
intellectual vision would be partly the same, partly different, while to each the 
whole state of existing apprehension would be far more considerably modified. 
To any portion of the entire scope here described there may be a special direc- 
ee a 
