Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/325

 312 NOTES AND COKEESPONDENCE. The criticism that most excites my wonder is found in the following expressions. " Psychologists seem to be aware of no confusion when they talk indifferently of states of mind, contents of mind, acts of mind : treat the same fact now as a process, now as a product." Again, quoting riiy general analysis of mind, Mr. Ward remarks " We are told of three properties or functions of mind, as if there were no difference between predicating property and function ". I have already given an apology for using, at the outset, a variety of terms that cannot be denned at that stage. But I can quote Mr. Ward himself, as acknowledging the very same difficulty in his own treatment. This is the introductory sentence on Feeling in his Encyclopaedia Britannica article : " We might now proceed to inquire more closely into the character and relations of the three states, modes or acts of this subject". Here he appends the following foot-note. "It is useless at this point attempting to decide on the comparative appro- priateness of these and similar terms, such as 'faculties,' 'capacities,' 'functions,' &c." That is to say, he is aware that he must find access to his readers' minds by the use of whatever terms are familiar to them, and leave precise defining to a later stage. This is exactly my justification. Yet he goes on harping on the same theme, as when he says, "states, actions and powers are certainly not congruent conceptions". I should not say they were. Another alleged fault in my exposition is to misuse the ambiguous term 'Consciousness'. It seems to me that this is about the least ambiguous word in Psychology : its width of comprehension is a safeguard against its abuse. But Mr. Ward makes out a fallacy of division in calling a sensation a conscious state. For the life of me, I can see no harm in this ; nor would I venture to say that a sensation is not a conscious state, not a mode of consciousness at all. I ma) 7 be the victim of self-conceit, but I fancy I can always keep myself straight with the word 'consciousness'; it is seZ/-consciousness that floors me, and I am generally on my guard against using the combination. The difficulty, however, lies with ' self,' and not with consciousness. The sort of error that I am charged with, in the handling of conscious- ness, is the confounding the powers of the Intelligence, as Discrimination and Assimilation, with the materials discriminated and assimilated. Of course the sensation of blue is a conscious state ; the act of distinguishing blue from violet is also a conscious state, but they are not both in the same category ; and if, like Mr. Ward, I huddle, at the outset, states, modes and acts, I trust to the detailed exemplification of Sense on the one hand, and of Intellect on the other, to correct all essential errors of confusion of the kind attributed to me. The difficulties in connexion with Consciousness are, to my mind, greatly surpassed by those that beset Feeling. Mr. Ward, in his article in the Encyc. Brit, deserves the highest credit for his endeavour to clear up this word ; and I freely allow that he has achieved considerable success. At the same time, it takes no small effort to follow his nice distinctions ; and he cannot help beirg aware that a feeling very readily passes into a thing of intellect namely, by being subject to identification and discrimi- nation. These powers deserve to be named as distinct facts ; but without the feelings to be operated upon they are non-existent. Nay more, both the change accompanying discrimination, and the resuscitation of agree- ment, besides their intellectual result, give a more or less considerable shock of consciousness, which I cannot rank with either Intellect or Will, and therefore it must be under Feeling or nowhere. If instead of culling a number of phrases out of their context, Mr. Ward had followed the preliminary sketch of the fundamentals of the