Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/41

Rh, there is more than mere sensation considered as a feeling; there is knowledge of something extended. Then along with every perception there is consciousness of self as perceiving. According to the school of James Mill, sensation is a mere feeling, and ideation is a reproduced sensation. Memories, imaginations, conceptions, are all ideations; nay, judgments and reasonings are only combined ideations. The sense of duty is the product of association of ideations founded on sensations of pleasure and pain. Dr. Carpenter proceeds, in fact, on this psychology. But, to his credit, he draws back at a certain point. He stands up resolutely for a self-determining will which he places above both sensation and ideation. When asked for his proof, he appeals very legitimately to a "conviction" felt by every mind. But a like conviction certifies that there is vastly more than he sees in operations which he has passed over so lightly; that in memory the idea of time is involved, as every thing is remembered as happening in time past; that in imagination there is a wonderful arranging power; in conception, a grouping power; and in judgment, the discovery of relations such as those of identity, of quantity, and cause and effect, all diving deep into the depth of things, while the conscience gives us an entirely new idea, that of good and evil, and makes us feel that we owe duties to God and our fellow-men. He who overlooks these attributes may imagine that he can identify mental operations with physiological; but it is simply because he has not noticed the characteristic attributes of the human mind.

Dr. Carpenter did essential service to science, to religion, and I may add to common-sense, by exposing the alleged evidence in behalf of mesmerism ami table-turning. He showed that, in regard to these phenomena, there were a "prepossession" and an "expectancy" which led persons to believe and affirm, without any valid proof, that they witnessed certain actions. I cannot see, however, that Dr. Carpenter has here unfolded any new truth, or that he has explained the nature of this "expectancy"—certainly no light can be thrown upon it by physiology. It is to be accounted for by purely mental causes, by a hasty judgment into which people are led by the association of ideas, guided by the wishes or feelings of the heart. If we have been accustomed to see two things together, on one of them presenting itself we are apt to look for the other, and believe that this other is present when we have no valid proof. It is thus that, associating the standing on a steep precipice with a fall, many tremble when placed there, even though there be no real danger. It is thus we account for the apparent deception of the senses. We rapidly infer that an object seen across an arm of the sea or a level plain is near, following the rule, usually correct, that an object is near when there are few visible objects between us and it. It is thus that a countryman, seated, and, as he feels, at rest, on a vessel leaving the quay, momentarily reasons that the quay is moving, as he has found that when he is at rest