THE CEREBRUM, AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 781 



tion may be drawn towards it by the attractive qualities of the object itself, and 

 may be held to it until it is intentionally detached, or until the mind has be- 

 come satisfied by the persistence of one kind of impression. The intentional 

 direction of the attention to external objects is what is commonly known as 

 Observation ; those men being designated as " observant," who do not allow 

 their attention to be so far engrossed by one object or occurrence, or (as very 

 frequently happens) by their own trains of thought, as to exclude the cogni- 

 zance of what may be taking place around them ; whilst those are spoken of as 

 " unobservant," who, by allowing their consciousness to remain fixed upon some 

 one object or train of thought, prevent it from receiving a legitimate degree of 

 influence from other impressions received and transmitted to the Sensorium by 

 the organs of sense. We shall hereafter (CHAP, xv., Sect. 1) more particularly 

 examine the remarkable influence of Attention in augmenting the acuteness of 

 sensory impressions; but it may be here remarked, that the same influence ex- 

 tends itself to the perception of our own mental states; and that, as will be 

 presently shown ( 817), it is in the degree of Attention which we automati- 

 cally or voluntarily bestow on certain ideas presented to us by suggestion, 

 that those peculiar modes of thought, which are sometimes termed Intellectual 

 Faculties, essentially consist. The intentional direction of the consciousness to 

 what is passing within us, is sometimes designated as Reflection, but is more ap- 

 propriately termed Introspection. 



812. The reproduction of past states of consciousness by either of the forms 

 of suggestive action already described, constitutes what is known as Memory. 1 

 There seems much ground for the belief, that every sensory impression which 

 has been once recognized by the perceptive consciousness, is registered (so to 

 speak) in the Cerebrum, and may be reproduced at some subsequent time, 

 although there may l>e no consciousness of its existence in the mind during 

 the whole intermediate period. Instances are of very frequent occurrence, in 

 which ideas come up before the mind during delirium or dreaming, and are ex- 



It is commonly stated that Memory consists in the renewal of past sensations and of 

 the ideas they have excited ; but it may be questioned whether we primarily retain any- 

 thing else than the impressions left by ideas, and whether the recall of sensations is not a 

 secondary change, dependent upon the reaction of ideational (Cerebral) changes upon the 

 Sensorium. For if we wish to reproduce any sensational state whether visual, auditory, 

 olfactive, gustative, or tactile we first recall the notion of some object by which that state 

 was formerly produced; and it is only by keeping that notion strongly before our conscious- 

 ness, that we can bring ourselves to see, hear, smell, taste, or feel, that which we desire 

 to experience. Indeed, it is not every one who can thus reproduce sensational states, the 

 general notion being most commonly all that is arrived at; of this we have a good illus- 

 tration in the conception we form of the face of an absent friend, it being only a com- 

 paratively small number of persons who are able to reproduce the visual image with 

 sufficient distinctness to serve as a model for delineation, although a much larger number 

 would be able to say how far such a delineation realized their own conception of the 

 countenance, and to point out in what it might depart from this. It is a further con- 

 firmation of this view, that the expression of a countenance, which directly appeals to our 

 ideational consciousness, is much more distinctly remembered by most persons than the 

 features, the recognition of which is more dependent upon the recall of antecedent sensa- 

 tional states. What is true of the act of Recollection in this particular is probably true 

 also in a great degree of spontaneous Memory ; but perhaps we should admit that the 

 renewal of past states of sensational consciousness may be effected by fresh sensory im- 

 pressions which are closely allied to them ; as would seem probable from the fa.ct that wo 

 find ourselves comparing the new sensations with the old, without having in the mean 

 time formed any distinct conception of the object by which the old were produced. It 

 may, however, be pretty certainly affirmed that the Sensory Ganglia do not themselves 

 register sensory impressions; and that these can only be reproduced afresh by external 

 objects, or by the occurrence of ideational changes in the Cerebrum. On the other hand, 

 the Cerebrum seems to act quite independently of the Sensory Ganglia, in reproducing 

 ideas; save in so far as the results of its action must (on the theory advanced) be im- 

 pressed on the Sensorium, before we can be rendered conscious of them. 



