Address to the British Association 



21 I 



in complex ways for definite ends; that they to a certain 

 extent learn by experience, and can combine perceptions and 

 reminiscences so as to draw practical inferences, directly 

 apprehending objects standing in different relations one to 

 another, so that, in a sense, they may be said to apprehend 

 relations. They will show hesitation, ending apparently, 

 after a conflict of desires, with what looks like choice or 

 vohtion, and such animals as the dog will not only exhibit 

 the most marvellous fidelity and affection, but will also 

 manifest evident signs of shame, which may seem the out- 

 come and indication of incipient moral perceptions. It is no 

 great wonder, then, that so many persons, httle given to 

 patient and careful introspection, should fail to perceive any 

 radical distinctions between a nature thus gifted and the 

 intellectual nature of man. 



But, unless I am greatly mistaken, the question can never 

 be answered by our observations of animals, unless we bear 

 in mind the distinctions between our own higher and lower 

 faculties.^ 



Now I cannot here even attempt to put before you what 

 I beheve to be the true view of our own intellectual processes. 

 Still I may, perhaps, be permitted to make one or two passing 

 observations. 



Everybody knows his own vivid feelings (or sensations), 

 and those faint revivals of feelings, simple or complex, dis- 

 tinct or confused, which are imaginations and emotions ; but 

 the same cannot be said as to thought. Careful introspec- 

 tion will, however, I think, convince any one that a ' thought ' 

 is a thing widely different from an * imagination ' — or revival 

 of a cluster of faint feelings. The simplest element of 

 thought seems to me to be a 'judgment,' with an intuition 

 of reality concerning some ' fact,' regarded as a fact real or 

 ideal. Moreover, this judgment is not itself a modified 

 imagination, because the imaginations which may give occa- 



1 Seean^e, pp. 28-31. 



