CHAPTER II 



THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND 



IN the language of common life, the " mind " is 

 spoken of as an entity, independent of the body, 

 though resident in and closely connected with it, 

 and endowed with numerous " faculties," such as 

 sensibility, understanding, memory, volition, which 

 stand in the same relation to the mind as the 

 organs do to the body, and perform the functions 

 of feeling, reasoning, remembering, and willing. 

 Of these functions, some, such as sensation, are 

 supposed to be merely passive that is, they are 

 called into existence by impressions, made upon 

 the sensitive faculty by a material world of real 

 objects, of which our sensations are supposed to 

 give us pictures ; others, such as the memory and 

 the reasoning faculty, are considered to be partly 

 passive and partly active; while volition is held 

 to be potentially, if not always actually, a spon- 

 taneous activity. 



