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into the shade. A mere surprise, that has no effect but to impress a difference between two feelings, is but coldly entertained at such a time. We must both to a certain extent forego delights, and be free from eating cares, in order to dwell largely among the neutral excitements that stamp difference upon the mind. There is thus, upon a common mental basis, a specific difference of kind amounting to antithesis between the pleasurable or painful excitement and the intellectual excitement. This conclusion is not founded on any à priori consideration, but on an induction from facts. There is a large experience that can be interpreted in no other way. The devotion of the mind to incessant pleasure, or the incum bency of misery and care, are wholly adverse to the general cultivation of the intellect,—a cultivation which, in the last resort, reposes on the ready sensibility to difference. The best atmosphere for a high culture is a serene condition of mind, with no more pain than is necessary to stimulate pursuit, and no more pleasure than imparts an inducement to go on with life. The energy of the brain is thus reserved for the neutral stimulation that impresses every kind of difference, and in this way stores the intellect with distinct impressions of all kinds. The maximum of intellectual excellence implies at once a sparing resort to pleasure, and a tolerable exemption from misery. The inverse relationship thus implied is, moreover, an evidence of the previous doctrine of the common emotional basis. For why should the occupation of the cerebrum with the waves of pleasurable excitement be such a bar to intellectual impressions, if the same run of the general brain were not also a condition of those likewise? If the storage of discriminative sensations could be conducted within the bounds of certain sensory ganglia, the cerebrum proper might be available for any other excitement that happened to prevail. The truth must, therefore, be that the identical cerebral substance necessary to give effect to a thrill of pleasure is the essential support of the excitement that discrimination needs; and the profuse employment of it in the one direction is incompatible with its appropriation in the other. Thus we have at one and the same time a common basis of

the emotional and the intellectual in the free use of the brain, and a point of contrast in the mutual exclusion of the two, or the impossibility of carrying both to an extreme at the same time. In the ordinary experience of life a certain mixture, or moderate development of both, is the usual case; when one assumes inordinate dimensions, it must be at the expense of the other.*

15. While admitting that both pleasure and pain have a certain intellectual efficacy in impressing what concerns themselves, as when a man retains a lively impression of a scene that delighted him, simply because of the delight, or of a person that injured him because of the injury, we must also admit that even a neutral excitement may sometimes stand apart from the discriminative sense of change. A stirring novelty may set me off in a fit of surprise, and yet I may very soon pass from the thing itself, and transfer the benefit of the excitement to something else. Such a transferable, or mobile excitement, is not the true intellectual species. A few hours spent in hurry, bustle, and noise, put the brain into a fever of unnatural energy, under which everything felt or done. has more than ordinary power. Such a state is no more favourable, in the long run, for the storing up of differences (and resemblances) than the extremes of pleasure and pain. The smart that a change of impression makes should simply sustain the currents belonging to that impression, stopping short of a general animation of the brain. It should not prevent the cessation of the wave, and the taking on of another at a short interval, the mind all the while being what would be termed perfectly cool. The stirring-up of a

*I do not mean in the above illustration to advance any theory as to the exact portions of the cerebrum roused into action by different kinds of excitement, whether emotional or intellectual. I only mean to say that the engrossment under pleasure and pain extends so far as not to permit the full possible development of the intellectual modes of excitement. I think there are reasons for supposing that the wave of an intellectual surprise has a tolerably wide diffusion, seeing that surprises waken up an extensive active display; yet the two cannot follow identical courses, otherwise there would be no such thing as characteristic expression. I confine myself, therefore, to affirming the incompatibility of the expression of pleasure or pain, with an extreme development of intellectual sensibility proper.

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vague and wasting excitement, which follows on too many stimulants being applied at once, isas fatal to intellect, as pleasurable dissipation or wasting misery.

16. The illustration of the points of contrast or antithesis of the emotional and the intellectual, is not complete without signalizing another circumstance. The true intellectual nature is that which takes on the present sensibility and the abiding impression of difference (and resemblance) with the least emotional shock. To feel distinctly a faint transition, as of a slight gradation of tint, or a small alteration of the pitch of a sound, is the mark of a brain discriminative by nature. On the other hand, when the consciousness is not awake, except under a very broad difference, we consider the mental constitution the opposite of intellectual. In whatever department of impressions the nicest sensibility to difference prevails, in that department will reside, in all probability, the intellectual aptitude of the individual. It may be in the delicate appreciation of degrees of muscular force, giving birth to dexterity of manual or other bodily execution; it may be in taste or smell, so as to confer an aptitude for testing substances that affect those senses; it may be tactile, and contribute to the discrimination of solid substances from the texture of their surface, it may lie in some one or other of the properties of sounds, musical or articulate; or, finally, in the wide domain of the sense of vision. To be markedly sensitive to very minute shades of difference, or to have a distinctive consciousness under a very slight shock of change, is the first property of the intellect on any species of subject-matter. We cannot assign any fact more fundamental in the constitution of our intelligence. The laws of association, and the storing-up and engraining of various impressions, imagery, and ideas, presuppose the primitive susceptibility to every various mode or degree of primary sensations or feelings.

17. In describing the muscular sensibilities, and the sensations of the senses, I have uniformly adverted to the intellectual or discriminative property. We have found, for example, that besides the pleasures and pains of muscular exercise, there is a discriminative sensibility to degree of expended energy of

all the voluntary muscles. There is a distinct shock given to the mental consciousness on passing from quietude to action, and another in relapsing to quietude again. There is also a series of distinctive impressions made through all the varying degrees of force expended, the mind assuming, as it were, a different attitude under each. When I am holding in my hand a weight of four pounds, if some one adds two more, the additional putting forth of muscular energy imparts a certain shock to the cerebrum, and gives a new character to the currents of the brain. The same language describes what happens throughout all the senses, wherever discrimination is to be found. Even in the regions of pleasurable and painful sensibility proper, we may be conscious of degree, which is the true intellectual consciousness. When, in tasting something sweet, I find in the course of turning the thing in my mouth, that the sweetness increases or diminishes, that is properly an intellectual consciousness; although the really extensive development of the intellectual susceptibility is among sensations and impressions that are quite neutral as regards pain or pleasure. This is evident by looking at the classes of properties under the different senses put down as discriminative— the discrimination of a plurality of points in touch, of articulateness in sounds, and of symbolical or arbitrary forms in sight. Such things are hardly ever reckoned either agreeable or disagreeable, and yet they waken and occupy the mental energy, and monopolize the forces of the cerebrum. We are distinctly affected merely by a change from one sense to another sense, and yet there is nothing in that circumstance to please us or otherwise. Such is the true type of the intellectual consciousness.*

I have adverted in my former volume (Contiguity, § 45) to what is perhaps the crowning instance of discriminative sensibility, namely, the bringing out of difference between an impression on the right hand, and one on the left, or between touches on different parts of the body. Originally, on comparing the two impressions right and left, supposing them of the same character, it is impossible to say that there is any difference, yet the fact of their distinct origin and transmission through separate nerves enables them to suspend separate trains of association, and by this meant we localize the different impressions made all over the body. Here is an originally latent difference made patent by subsequent associations. At first,

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18. An important part of our intellectual culture, which I scarcely did justice to in treating of our acquisitions, consists in forming new susceptibilities to difference by artificial methods. What is called the improvement of the senses, means this, in the first instance, as when the wine-taster acquires a delicate palate, or the chemist a fine nose for the odours that characterize different volatile bodies. By merely practising the organs, they become more discriminative, and differences are felt after a time that would originally have been unfelt. The musician experiences a steady improvement in the quality of his ear, as well as in his execution; the painter is by degrees more and more alive to tints of colour. In the higher intellectual education, much of the acquired power lies in tracing differences in matters where the uninitiated feels none. A person untaught in Logic would perhaps see no distinction between two arguments coming under different moods and figures, or between a truth arrived at deductively and one arrived at inductively. The term 'Judgment' expresses those higher forms of discrimination, and also not unfrequently the lower; and Sir W. Hamilton remarks that Judgment is implied in every act of consciousness, which is quite true on the supposition of its being merely one of the synonymes of discrimination. But there is another mode of the intellectual consciousness, whose mention is requisite preparatory to the full explication of these higher judgments of the mind. This we shall see presently.

19. The only farther observation to be made under the present head refers to the impressing of the mind with distinctive forms, notions, and imagery, to be connected by the laws of association, and made use of in guiding present action,

the common saying is applicable to us all, that we do not know our right hand from our left, the distinction in this case being an acquired one but the acquisition would not be possible without a certain independence and separateness of the nerves, rendering the cerebral attitude put on by a communication from one capable of being clearly distinguished from that put on by a communication from the other. Thus, states of consciousness, perfectly identical as regards the intensity of the mental shock, yet maintain an available distinctness according to the quarter whence the impres sion comes.

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