PHILOSOPHY, MENTAL. 



and the sight of one object recalsthe vi- 

 sual idea of other objects which have 

 been uniformly or very frequently seen 

 with it. Innumei-able other instances 

 might be given with Jittle trouble, but 

 we shall mention only one other, which 

 may assist some of our readers in ac- 

 counting for certain cases of apparitions. 

 L. was one clay hastily passing by a room 

 in which a very excellent friend had usu- 

 ally sat in a particular chair, and in a par- 

 ticular part of the room. His thoughts at 

 the time were employed on some object 

 which did not excite deep attention, and 

 the sight of the chair excited in his mind 

 a vivid visual idea of his friend as sitting 

 in that chair. The friend had been dead 

 some weeks, and L. involuntarily came 

 back for another vision, but without ef- 

 fect. Such visual ideas, and similar ideas 

 derived from the other senses, particu- 

 larly from the hearing, are by Dugald 

 Stewart called conceptions ; and where 

 they are vivid and easily excited, they 

 frequently lead those who are inattentive 

 to their sensations to suppose that they 

 actually saw and heard, at a particular 

 time, what they did not then see or hear. 

 22. Sensations become connected with 

 ideas, so that the repetition of the sensa- 

 tion will excite the connected idea. Of 

 this case of connections the following will 

 serve as examples. Words associated with 

 ideas, will readily excite them even when 

 very complex : the words hero, philoso- 

 pher, justice, benevolence, truth, and the 

 like, whether written or pronounced, 

 immediately call up with precision the 

 corresponding idea. The hearing of a 

 particular national tune, is said to over- 

 power the Swiss soldier in a foreign land 

 with melancholy and despair ; and it is, 

 therefore, forbidden in the armies in 

 which they serve. The sound recals va- 

 rious heartfelt recollections ; the idea of 

 the peace, and the freedom of their 

 country, of the home from which they 

 are torn, and to which they may never 

 return. What trains of interesting 

 thought and feeling are usually called up 

 in the mind by the sight of the scenes of 

 early pleasure, where passed those years 

 when novelty gave charms to every sen- 

 sation, every employment of the faculty ; 

 when hope presented no prospects but 

 what were decked in " fancy's fairy frost- 

 work," and present joys precluded all re- 

 gret for the past. 



23. Sensations may become connected 

 with muscular action, that is, with those 

 sensorial changes which are followed by 

 jmuscular action ; so that the sensation 



will excite the muscular action, without 

 the intervention of that state of mind 

 which is called will. A person automa- 

 tically (that is without any volition), turns 

 his head towards another who calls him 

 by his name. When the hand of another 

 is rapidly moved towards the eye, we shut 

 the eye without thinking about it, or 

 even being conscious of it. When copy- 

 ing from any book, if a person is very fa- 

 miliar with the employment, the appro- 

 priate motion of the fingers immediately 

 follows the impression produced by the 

 appearance of the word. In the same 

 manner the visible impression derived 

 from musical notes regulate the motions 

 of the performer. " While I am walking 

 through that grove before my window," 

 says Darwin, " I do not run against the 

 trees or the branches, though my 

 thoughts are completely engaged on 

 some other object :" the sensible impres- 

 sion produced by the objects around, 

 excite in the sensorium the appropriate 

 connected motory changes, and these the 

 action of certain muscles. 



Secondly, ideas may be connected with 

 sensations, ideas, or motory motions. 



24. An idea associated a sufficient num- 

 ber of times with a sensation, will excite 

 the simple idea belonging to that sensation. 

 Thus the ideas, whether simple or com- 

 plex, which have been sufficiently asso- 

 ciated with names, excite the ideas of 

 their respective names. Hence it is that 

 we find ourselves continually thinking in 

 words ; that is, the trains of ideas which 

 pass in our minds, are accompanied with 

 their corresponding expressions, when 

 those expressions are familiar to us : and 

 it may be remarked that the habit of 

 thinking in words is one which contri- 

 butes greatly to accuracy and facility of 

 thought, and therefore one which the 

 young reasoner will do well to cultivate. 

 Those who are habituated to reason- 

 ing, find their trains of reasoning so ge-, 

 nerally clothed in words, and words so 

 necessary to their intellectual operations, 

 that the words are what they most attend 

 to, and some have even gone so far as to 

 suppose that general reasoning is con- 

 cerned merely about words and not about 

 ideas. They seem to lie under a similar 

 error with those who imagine that the vi- 

 sible appearance of objects is all we at- 

 tend to when we speajc of magnitude, 

 shape, &c. ; whereas the fact is, that the 

 visible appearance is nothing more than 

 a symbol which serves to introduce the 

 connected complex idea into the mind 

 and to keep its parts connected : and this 



