76 



HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



[chap. 



due to the 

 power of 

 directing 

 thought 

 at will : 



whence 

 also the 

 power of 

 abstrac- 

 tion. 



Instance 

 in aritli- 

 metic. 



Voluntary 

 action is 

 always 

 later deve- 

 loped than 

 involun- 

 tary. 



I were myself unable to carry the analysis any further. But 

 I believe it is a result of another power, which constitutes 

 the really primary and fundamental difference between the 

 intellect of man and that of the animals which most nearly 

 approach him ; namely, the power of directing thought at 

 will. Thought is impossible without the formation of 

 associations : indeed all thought which is higher than the 

 cognition of the simplest relations consists in forming new 

 associations. In forming associations the mind is at first 

 purely passive ; but it soon becomes active, and one of the 

 most important results of its activity is the formation of 

 language ; which consists in the formation of arbitrary 

 associations between the words and their meanings, by a 

 voluntary, though probably only haK-conscious, act of the 

 mind. A second result of the power of directing thought 

 at will is the power of abstraction. Without abstraction 

 none but the most rudimentary process of thought would 

 be possible. An example may best serve to make this 

 subject clear, and the best example I can think of is that 

 contained in elementary arithmetic. The multiplication 

 table is the statement of a set of abstract truths — truths, 

 that is to say, which can only be arrived at by abstracting, 

 in thought, the relations of number from the ideas of all 

 the things that are or can be numbered. In saying that 

 eight times eight are sixty-four, for instance, we have 

 nothing to do with any things that may count up to the 

 number of sixty-four ; they may be books, or cattle, or 

 houses, it matters not : we only make an assertion con- 

 cerning the abstract numbers eight and sixty-four. Thus in 

 ■thought and in language to abstract a particular set of the 

 relations, or of the properties, of things from the things 

 themselves, is what mere suggestion, working by the laws 

 of association, could never do ; only a voluntary act of the 

 mind can do it. 



In reasoning as well as in memory, the voluntary action 

 of the mind is a later and a higher development than its 

 spontaneous action. Voluntary recollection is higher than 

 spontaneous remembrance, and voluntarily directed thought 

 is higher than spontaneou.^ thought. The same is also true 



