460 Edivard Livingston Youmans. 



anything worth hearing; I write because I cannot help it." 

 Jean Paul remarks of the poet's work : " The character 

 must appear Hving before you, and you must hear it, 

 not merely see it ; it must, as takes place in dreams, dic- 

 tate to you, not you to it. A poet wh* must r^y?'^^/ whether, 

 in a given case, he will make his character say Yes, or No, 

 to the devil with him ! " An author may be as much as- 

 tonished at the brilliancy of his unwilled inspirations as his 

 most partial reader. " That's splendid ! " exclaimed Thack- 

 eray, as he struck the table in admiring surprise at the 

 utterance of one of his characters in the story he was writ- 

 ing. Again, the mental actions which constitute reasoning 

 have an undoubted spontaneous element, the office of voli- 

 tion being, as in the former cases, to rivet the attention to 

 the subject of inquiry, while the gradual blending of the 

 like in different ideas into general conceptions is the work 

 of the involuntary faculties. You cannot will a logical 

 conclusion, but only maintain steadily before the mind the 

 problem to be solved. Sir Isaac Newton thus discloses the 

 secret of his immortal discoveries : " I keep the subject 

 constantly before me, and wait till the first dawnings open, 

 by little and little, into a full light." 



But corporeal agency in processes of thought has an 

 aspect still more marked ; the higher intellectual opera- 

 tions may take place, not only independent of the will, but 

 also independent of consciousness itself. Consciousness 

 and mind are far from being one and the same thing. The 

 former applies only to that which is at any time present in 

 thought; the latter comprehends all psychical activity. 

 Not a thousandth part of our knowledge is at any time in 

 consciousness, but it is all and always in the mind. An 

 idea or feeling passes out of consciousness, but not into 

 annihilation ; in what state, then, is it } We cannot be sat- 

 isfied with the indefinite statement, that it is stored away 

 in the receptacle or chamber of memory. Science affirms 



