96 



HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



[chap. 



Intellec- 

 tual senses; 

 touch, 

 sight, and 

 hearing. 



Eeproduc- 

 tion in 

 memory of 

 impres- 

 sions of 

 sight and 

 hearing. 



Pleasure 

 due to 

 this. 



-Its moral 

 import- 



3. There are only three of the senses which can be re- 

 garded as in any way intellectual senses — I mean, as 

 ministering to the intellect ; these are hearing, sight, and 

 touch. By hearing we learn the thoughts of our fellow- 

 men, and by sight we obtain the greater part of our 

 knowledge of external things. In the developed state of 

 the intellect, we make progress in knowledge by means of 

 these two senses exclusively ; but at the beginning of in- 

 tellectual development, touch is probalily the most impor- 

 tant of all; for, as I shall have to show in the next 

 chapter, it is in all probability liy means of touch that we 

 acquire our first cognition of space, and with it our first 

 knowledge of the existence of an external world. 



4. In connexion with the intellectual character of sight 

 and hearing is the fact that they are the only senses the 

 impressions of which are capable of being reproduced in 

 recollection with any vividness. It is often easy to recaU in 

 thought what we have seen or heard, to recall an absent 

 face or scene before the mind's eye, or to repeat in thought 

 a conversation or a poem. This power is often a source of 

 very great enjoyment, especially to intellectual persons who 

 lead a lonely life ; and its usefulness needs no proof : but 

 what is not quite so obvious is the moral importance of 

 this fact. These " i^leasures of memory" are perfectly 

 pure, and of a kind that are good for the mind. But if it 

 were possible to recall pleasures of the unintellectual 

 senses in the same way, and to enjoy them in the recollec- 

 tion ; if it were possible, for instance, to feel the same kind 

 of reproduced pleasure in the memory of the meat we 

 have eaten and the wine we have drunk that we can feel 

 in the memory of the music we have heard and the 

 pictures we have seen, it needs no proof how bad this 

 would be for human character. And further : many of the 

 pains produced by disease or accident are very intense, and 

 would embitter life if they remained in the memory ; but, 

 like the pleasures of eating and drinking, and all other 

 unintellectual impressions on the consciousness, these pains 

 cannot be reproduced in consciousness, and are compara- 

 tively forgotten. 



