TR.VX8 ACTIONS OK THE SECTIONS. 1G1 



to physiological facts. For instance, a portrait painter searches to get, not only the 

 fixed features, but the adjusting capabilities by which they express the thoughts of 

 the mind ; when he is satisfied he has succeeded in this, he copies it on his canvas : 

 here then Mr. Locke is right; the conception has passed through the senses to the 

 intellect. The creations of the poetical painter, on the contrary, pass from the intel- 

 lectual senses. 



Now Berkeley has said, " That a conception has no existence but while it is per- 

 ceived ;" yet in both the instances cited, the conception remained fixed and permanent 

 in its existence for years, though no one is present to perceive it. 



The sublime " Cathedral of York" must have been a conception in the mind of 

 the architect, and have existed for ages a reality, though for long intervals not 

 perceived by others. The " Great Eastern," the conception of Brunei, as other 

 conceptions, the materialized inventions, remain enduring existences when not 

 perceived by any one. 



I may here remark on the difference between discovery and invention. 

 Discovery comes to the intellect through the senses, by facts suggesting search, as 

 in the case of the planet Neptune. Now the bridge to connect mind with what is 

 external to the mind, will be found, I think, in the pre-established affinities of the 

 forces with which phenomena are composed, and the mind which perceives them. 

 Such affinities constitute the pre-established harmony suggested by Leibnitz. 



All chemical affinities are of this kind; all sensational, all intellectual, all associa- 

 tions of ideas, the affinities of force for each other, as magnetism for iron (see 

 Ampere) . 



What is the bridge which affords communication from mind to mind for thousands 

 of miles, but the Electro-magnetic Telegraph, the two forces of ebctricity and 

 magnetism passed from the galvanic trough to the vibrating needles at the ends of 

 the conducting wires ? 



The thoughts that constitute this subject are so numerous and evanescent, so far 

 away from the ordinary occupations of men, that I have great doubts of being able 

 to arrange them without being both tedious and obscure. 



In Berkeley's time, matter was supposed to consist of atoms, with an impene- 

 trable nucleus surrounded by attractive and repulsive forces ; he probably saw that 

 all the phenomena perceived by the mind were affected by these forces, without 

 contact with the supposed impenetrable nuclei. He was aware, too, that all our 

 knowledge consists, not of objective, but of subjective impressions, and therefore 

 that we had no certainty that any objects external to the mind had existence, but 

 that all we saw, heard, or touched, were merely modes of mind, and that the 

 phenomena had no existence when not perceived. 



The permanent existence of phenomena is, I think, proved by the instances to 

 which I have referred in the former part of this paper — the portrait, for example, 

 and all inventions of art, real creations of the mind. 



If this be so, the severance or gulph between matter and mind will be found to 

 be bridged over by affinities analogous to the chemical, as the oxygen of the atmo- 

 sphere has for the carbon of the blood, or by forces modified by their coils. The 

 force light, for example, carries the species, or resemblance of the face through a 

 camera obscura to the sensitive surface on which it is fixed, and remains permanent, 

 both in time and space, though not seen in its passage by the eyes of others. 

 Thoughts embodied in words pass by the forced motion from one concave disc to 

 another at a distance of many feet (as at the Polytechnic, and the whispering gallery 

 at St. Paul's Cathedral). 



The air is the. medium through which such motion passes, and when modified by 

 different musical instruments, results in songs and operas, and all the varied 

 phenomena which can be produced by sound. 



The vitality of sap in trees is so modified by the graft coil through which it 

 passes, as to result in varieties of fruit corresponding with the graft. The motion 

 by which a ship moves is modified by the adjustment of the sails, the rudder, 

 paddles, and screw. Now the law of these forces requires investigation, and is 

 clearly (as Turgot and Dugald Stewart asserted) independent of the mind, and 

 external to it. May it then not be asserted, as affirmed, that the forces are the 

 bridges by which the mind passes to and from the phenomena which it perceives J 

 1859. 11 



