322 MENTAL FACULTIES. 



all the knowledge we possess regarding ourselves and the bodies sur- 

 rounding us; the latter comprising our internal feelings, appetites, 

 desires, and affections, by which we are incited to establish a relation 

 with the beings around us: the two sets of acts respectively embracing 

 the qualities of the mind, and those of the heart. 1 



If we attend to the different modes in which the intellectual mani- 

 festations are evinced in our own persons, we find, that there are several 

 acts which are by no means identical. We are conscious of the differ- 

 ence between appreciating an impression made upon one of the external 

 senses, which constitutes perception, and the recalling of such impres- 

 sion to the mind, which is the act of memory; as well as the distinction 

 between feeling the relations, that connect one thing with another, con- 

 stituting judgment; and the tendency to act in any direction, which 

 we call will. The consciousness of these various mental processes has 

 induced philosophers to admit the plurality of the intellectual acts, and 

 to endeavour to reduce them all to certain primary faculties; in other 

 words, to faculties which are fundamental or elementary, and by their 

 combination give rise to other and more complex manifestations. To 

 this analytical method they have been led by the fact, that the different 

 acts, which they esteem elementary, exhibit great variety in their degrees 

 of activity: one, for example, maybe impressed with a character of en- 

 ergy as the memory; whilst another, as the judgment, may be sin- 

 gularly feeble; and conversely. M. Broussais conceives, that without 

 the memory we cannot exercise a single act of judgment; as it is always 

 necessary, in order to judge, that we should experience two successive 

 perceptions; which we could not do, unless possessed of the faculty of 

 renewing that which we had felt before ; in other words, unless we pos- 

 sessed memory. Hence the loss of this faculty, he says, necessarily 

 occasions that of judgment, and reduces man to a state of imbecility. 

 To a certain extent this is true. Total privation of memory must be 

 attended with the results described. If an individual retains no con- 

 sciousness of that which impressed him previously, there can obviously 

 be no comparison. A man may, however, have an unusual memory for 

 certain things and not for others ; he may astonish us by the extreme 

 accuracy of his recollection of numbers, places, or persons; and yet he 

 may be singularly deficient in judging of other matters; his memory 

 suggesting only one train of objects for comparison. 



In enumerating the faculties, which, by their union, constitute the 

 intellect, we observe great discrepancy amongst metaphysicians. Some 

 admit will, imagination, understanding, and sensibility ; others, sensi- 

 bility, imagination, memory, and reason; others will, intelligence, and 

 memory ; and others, again, imagination, reflection, and memory. The 

 views of M. Condillac 2 on this subject have perhaps excited more atten- 

 tion than those of ai^y other individual. Professing, as we have seen, 

 that all our ideas are derived from successive operations of the senses 

 and the mind, he admits the following constituent faculties of the in- 

 tellect : sensation, attention, comparison, judgment, reflection, imagin- 



1 Adelon, Facultes de 1'Esprit et de 1'Atne, in Diet, de Med., via. 469, Paris, 1823; and 

 Physiologic de 1'Homme, edit, cit., i. 527. 

 3 Op. citat. 



