758 OF THE FUNCTIONS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 



consciousness of its source, and the patient may subsequently describe his state 

 as an uneasy dream. Such, it is probable, is the condition of the Infant at the 

 commencement of its psychical life. " If," as has been well remarked by Mr. 

 Morell, 1 " we could by any means transport ourselves into the mind of an infant 

 before the perceptive consciousness is awakened, we should find it in a state of 

 absolute isolation from everything else in the world around it. Whatever objects 

 may be presented to the eye, the ear, or the touch, they are treated simply as 

 subjective feelings, without the mind's possessing any consciousness of them as 

 objects at all. To it, the inward world is everything, the outward world is 

 nothing." However difficult it may be, under the influence of our life-long 

 experience, to dissociate any sensation which we- experience from the idea of its 

 external cause since, the moment the feeling is experienced, and the mind is 

 directed to it, the object from which it arises is immediately suggested yet 

 nothing is more certain than that all of which we are ourselves conscious, in 

 any case whatever, is a certain internal or subjective state, a change in our pre- 

 vious consciousness ; and that the formation of the idea of the object to which 

 that change is due, is dependent upon a higher mental process, to which the 

 name of Perception or Perceptive Consciousness is now generally accorded. 2 

 We may recognize the manifestation of this process in the child, as it advances 

 beyond the first few months of its helplessness. " A sight or a sound/' remarks 

 Mr. Morell (Op. cit.), "which at first produced simply an involuntary start, now 

 awakens a smile or a look of recognition. The mind is evidently struggling out 

 of itself; it begins to throw itself into the objects around, and to live in the 

 world of outward realities." We may recognize a similar transition, more ra- 

 pidly effected, during the passage from sleep, or from the insensibility of a swoon, 

 to the state of complete wakefulness ; when we are at first conscious only of 

 our own sensations, and gradually come to the knowledge of our condition as it 

 relates to the world around, and of the position and circumstances, new and 

 strange as they may be, in which we find ourselves. 



790. Now the elementary notion of the outness or externality* of the cause of 

 sensational change is undoubtedly formed by a law of our mental nature ; and 

 must be regarded as a mental instinct or intuition. We do not infer the exist- 

 ence of objective realities by any act of the reason; in fact, the strict application 

 of logical processes tends rather to shake than to confirm the belief in the ex- 

 ternal world; but the qualities of matter are directly and immediately recognized 

 by our minds, and we then go on to shape the information we have thus acquired, 

 into a definite notion of the object. Some of these notions are so simple, and 

 so constantly excited by certain sensations, that we can scarcely do otherwise 

 than attribute their formation to original and fundamental properties of the mind, 

 called into activity by the sensations in question; thus, as we shall hereafter 

 see (CHAP. xv. SECT. 5), the notion of the projection or solidity of an object is 

 necessarily developed in our minds, when two pictures, having certain relations 

 of dissimilarity, are projected on our two retinae. But in other cases, the ideas 

 are connected with the sensations by habit alone ; and it is entirely due to the 

 association which has been gradually formed between them, that the one calls 

 up the other. Of this we have a valuable illustration in the process by which 



1 " Philosophy of Religion," p. 7. 



2 For the attachment of this definite meaning of the term Perception, as for many other 

 services to Psychological Science, we are indebted to Sir William Hamilton. See especially 

 his note on the "Philosophy of Sensation and Perception," in his edition of the "Works 

 of Dr. Reid." 



3 This term is to be understood, in the present inquiry, as implying what is external to 

 the mind. Viewed in that aspect, the bodily organism stands in the same kind of relation 

 to it, as does the world beyond ; and the changes in the former which give rise to sensa- 

 tions are as much objective as are those of the latter. 



