MENTAL OPERATIONS IN RELATION TO TIME. 103 



succession by effort of will. No one can fail to recog- 

 nise the reality of these differences. Who does not 

 see in them the material for definition of the highest 

 forms of intellectual power ? This faculty of govern- 

 ing and directing the operations of mind one of the 

 peculiar prerogatives of man expresses in its degree 

 the superiority of one man to another. Let the test 

 be applied to those whom we meet in the familiar in- 

 tercourse of life. You see the mind of one man sub- 

 mitted to vague and incoherent associations, unable to 

 maintain continuity of thought, or to disengage itself 

 from any dominant idea or feeling of the moment. 

 Contrasted with this defect is the power, just denoted, 

 of guiding and controlling the operations which form 

 in themselves our intellectual and moral existence a 

 power varying in every degree innate for the most 

 part in the individual, but susceptible of change from 

 the incidents and conditions of life necessary to the 

 highest grades of mental excellence ; but in its en- 

 feeblement, from whatever cause, reducing man to a 

 lower level of mental being. 



It is not easy to find language for the exigencies of 

 this enquiry. We are speaking at once of mental 

 operations and of the power of the mind to change and 

 control them. How are we to separate and distin- 

 guish functions thus blended in one identity of exist- 

 ence ? The ancients in some sort did it, by their 

 distinction of the z>oOs and ^v^q ; the latter represent- 

 ing a higher spirituality, farther removed from the 

 material world. Our own words, mind, soul, &c., are 

 perhaps less definite, yet all tend to denote, however 



