MENTAL STATES AND PROCESSES. 6l 



orders of sensations in one common sensorium. It is 

 by it that the sleep-walker receives and accurately re- 

 sponds to the varied impressions which surrounding 

 objects make on his organs, and its existence suffices 

 to account for the simultaneous effect of sounds, sights, 

 and smells upon an animal seeking its prey or trying 

 to escape from pursuit. 



(6) We should also take pains to understand and 

 appreciate the distinction which exists between true 

 "inference," which is an essentially intellectual appre- 

 hension of a truth as implicitly contained in other 

 truths, and that mere sensuous reinstatement of past 

 impressions which may simulate it. The latter affection, 

 which we have distinguished as '' sensuous or organic 

 inference," * manifests itself as follows : Let any group 

 of sensations have become intimately associated with 

 certain other sensations, then, upon the recurrence of 

 that group, an imagination of the sensations previously 

 associated therewith spontaneously arises in the mind, 

 and we have an expectant feeling of their proximate 

 actual recurrence. Thus, the sensation of a vivid flash 

 of lightning has come, by association, to lead to an 

 expectant feeling of the thunder-clap to follow. Such 

 mere association of feelings, some of which when freshly 

 experienced lead to an expectant feeling of the others, 

 and to a feeling of satisfaction when the sense of expec- 

 tation is fulfilled, may certainly exist in animals as well 

 as in ourselves, and its presence will fully account for 

 all those actions which are so often taken as indications 

 of the existence in them of a truly reasoning faculty. 

 * See "On Truth," pp. 194, 201. 



