INTRODUCTION. 



Consciousness would almost seem to consist in the break 

 between one state of mind and the next, just as an 

 induced current of electricity arises from the beginning 

 or the ending of the primary current. We are always 

 engaged in discrimination ; and the rudiment of thought 

 which exists in the lower animals probably consists in 

 their power of feeling difference and being agitated by 

 its occurrence. 



But had we power of discrimination only, Science could 

 not be created. To know that one feeling differs from 

 another gives purely negative information. It cannot teach 

 us what will happen. Each sensation would stand out dis 

 tinct from any other, and there would be no tie, no bridge 

 of affinity between them. We want a unifying power by 

 which the present and the future may be linked to the 

 past ; and this seems to be accomplished by a different 

 power of mind. Francis Bacon has pointed out that dif 

 ferent men possess in very different degrees the powers of 

 discrimination and identification. It may be said indeed 

 that discrimination necessarily implies the opposite process 

 of identification ; and so it doubtless does in superficial 

 points. But there is a rare property of mind which 

 consists in penetrating the disguise of variety and seizing 

 the common elements of sameness ; and it is this pro 

 perty which furnishes the true measure of intellect. The 

 very name of intellect (interligo) expresses the action, not 

 of separating, but of uniting and binding together the 

 particular and various into the general and like. Logic 

 is but another name for the same process b , the peculiar 

 work of reason ; and Plato said of this unifying power, 

 that if he met the man who could detect the one in the 

 many, he would follow him as a god. 



b Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, Second Series, vol. ii. p. 63. 



