THE MIND AND KNO WLEDGE. 3 



colour, outline, sound, resistance, etc., would remain isolated from 

 one another in my mind, did I not possess the power or faculty 

 of associating them. Both men and animals possess this power ; 

 it is a sense faculty, an internal sense ; the ancients called it the 

 Sensus Communis, modern philosophers call it the central sense, or 

 the faculty of mental association. 



As those sensible impressions are made practically together, 

 it is easy to understand that the sensations produced by them are 

 associated with one another. The qualities perceived by the produc 

 tion of those sensations come into our consciousness as forming 

 one whole ; this whole, the resultant of as many factors as there 

 are qualities perceived, constitutes what we call the sense object : 

 the concrete, individual, material thing, existing here and now in 

 the actual conditions and circumstances of time and space in which 

 it is thus perceived by the senses. The cognitive activity of these 

 latter is called sense perception, or sensation, and the conscious 

 product of this activity is called a percept. 



Our sensations do not continue indefinitely in consciousness ; 

 but on passing out of consciousness they leave behind them traces 

 of themselves, images of the sense qualities originally perceived. 

 These images are preserved in the imagination and may be revived, 

 or recalled to consciousness, by sense memory. 



Now it is by the exercise of those partly bodily and partly 

 mental activities of external sense perception and imagination 

 that we obtain possession of the materials or data necessary for 

 thought proper. Aided by the sense percept or sense image, our 

 purely mental faculty of thought, our intellect or reason, is able 

 to form a concept or idea by which we apprehend what the thing 

 is, get a rational knowledge of it, give it an intelligible interpreta 

 tion or meaning and bestow upon it a name. In this we surpass 

 the brute creation. Animals have indeed percepts and images 

 of things ; but they have not ideas or concepts ; they do not 

 understand what things are ; they do not interpret their sense 

 experiences as we interpret ours and theirs ; nor have they lan 

 guage, the medium for expressing and communicating thought. 



It is difficult for the beginner, but it is very essential to accuracy, to dis 

 tinguish clearly between sensation with its concrete images, and intellectual 

 thought with its abstract ideas ; and to realize that it is intellectual thoughts 

 or ideas or concepts that are expressed in human language, and that it is 

 with these logic deals not with the products of the sense faculties, which 

 products are only the raw materials of thought (9). 



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