FUNCTIONS OF THE CEREBRUM. 213 



in the mind. Again, the individual may then be able only to say, that ho 

 heard the clock strike ; or he may be able to retrace the number of strokes. 

 Now, in either case, a simple perception is formed, without his being aware 

 that any mental operation has intervened. He would say that he remembers 

 hearing the clock strike ; but this would not express the truth. That which 

 he remembers is a certain series of sonorous impressions, which was commu- 

 nicated to his mind ; and he recognizes them as the striking of a clock, by a 

 process in which memory and judgment are combined, which process may 

 further inform him, that the sounds proceeded from his own particular clock. 

 If he had never heard a clock strike, and the sound produced by it had never 

 been described to him, he would not have been able to form that notion of the 

 object giving rise to the sensation, which, simple as it appears to be at the 

 time, is the result of complex mental operations. But when these operations 

 have been frequently performed, the perception or notion of the object be- 

 comes inseparably connected with the sensation ; and thus it is excited by the 

 latter, without any knowledge, on the part of the individual, that a mental 

 operation has taken place. Such perceptions are termed acquired, in contra- 

 distinction to the intuitive perceptions, of which the lower animals seem to 

 possess a large number. The idea of the distance of an object, for example, 

 is one derived in Man from many sources, and is the result of a long experi- 

 ence ; the infant, or the adult seeing for the first time, has to bring the senses 

 of sight and of touch to bear upon one another, in order to obtain it ; but, 

 when once the power of determining it is acquired, the steps of the process 

 are lost 'sight of. In the lower tribes of animals, however, in which the 

 young receive no assistance from their parents, there is an evident necessity 

 for some immediate power of forming this determination ; since they would 

 not be able to obtain their food without it. Accordingly they manifest in their 

 actions a perception of governing idea of distances, which can only be gained 

 by Man after long experience. A Fly-catcher, for example, just come out of 

 its shell, has been seen to peck at an insect, with an aim as perfect, as if it 

 had been all its life engaged in learning the art ( 341). 



290. In some instances, animals learn that, by intuitive perception, at which 

 Man could only arrive by the most refined processes of reasoning, or b the 

 careful application of the most varied experience. Thus, a little fish, named 

 the ChsRtodon rostratus, is in the habit of ejecting from its prolonged snout, 

 drops of fluid, which strike insects that happen to be near the surface of the 

 water, and cause them to fall into it, so as to come within its own reach. 

 Now, by the laws of refraction of light, the place of the Insect in the air will 

 not really be that, at which it appears to the Fish in the water ; but it will be 

 a little below its apparent place, and to this point the aim must be directed. 

 But the difference between the real and the apparent place will not be con- 

 stant ; for the more perpendicularly the rays enter the water, the less will be 

 the variation ; and, on the other hand, the more oblique the direction, the 

 greater will be the difference. Now it is impossible to imagine but that, by 

 an intuitive perception, the real plac^of the Insect is known to the Fish in 

 every instance, as perfectly as it could be to the most sagacious Human 

 mathematician, or to a clever marksman, who had learned the requisite allow- 

 ance in each case by a long experience. In Man, the acquirement of per- 

 ceptions is clearly a cerebral operation ; but their intuitional formation in the 

 lower animals is probably to be regarded as one of those processes, to which 

 the ganglia connected with the organs of special sense, that are in them of so 

 great a proportional size, are subservient. The same may be said of many of 

 the intuitive perceptions in Man, which, if analyzed, are found to be con- 

 nected rather with the instinctive and emotional tendencies than with the 

 intellectual powers ; the perceptions which minister to the exercise of these 



