whether we had ever seen it, till we discovered it to be a view from a rising ground near Portpatrick. Now, surely our subsequently making that discovery does not convert that power of the mind by which the scene presented itself to us from imagination to memory. It was memory all along, although it was not accompanied with the memory of the time and place where we originally saw it. Another scene which has presented itself to us, as connected with the city of Glasgow,—an elevated platform on the northern bank of the river, extending from the city down the river for a considerable distance, with footpaths and broken hedges running along it, interspersed with furze bushes, a scene which certainly does not exist in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, nor have we been able to discover where it exists, although from the distinctness with which it has more than once occurred in dreams, we are pretty sure that it is a scene which we have actually seen somewhere (we suspect, in the neighbourhood of Bristol). It is, we doubt not, the exercise of memory, operating by some law of suggestion, and connected with the name and some of the characteristics of the city of Glasgow. Several other scenes are familiar to us in the same way, which we cannot trace to any time or place; and yet we have little doubt that they are scenes which we have somewhere seen, either in realities or in pictures, or that they are made up of different scenes which have been present to the mind. Now, this making up of scenes out of shreds and patches of different scenes, which we have actually witnessed, is what is called the power of imagination or conception, but which we believe to depend much, if not entirely, on the use of language, modifying the suggestions of memory. In support of this opinion, we offer the following observations:

1. Conception or imagination introduces no new thought into the mind. It never passes beyond those perceptions that are stored up in the memory, ready to

be recalled by suggestion. Those persons who have been most remarkable for the powers of imagination have never broached anything new. If they had, they would have been as unintelligible as if they had spoken of colours to a man born blind, or of sounds to a man born deaf. The whole history of the human mind attests this fact. All the efforts of men to imagine a class of beings different from those with which they are acquainted have failed. The gods of the heathen are merely men, women, or beasts. Their supernatural beasts are made up of dif ferent parts of beasts with which they are acquainted. Dragons with many heads and birds' claws; Satyrs, partly goats and partly men; Centaurs, partly horses. and partly men; the feats of gods or of angels, as fancied by poets, are all of the earth,-earthly,-indicating that our souls are as incapable of disentangling themselves from the objects of sense, as our bodies are of rising above the earth.

2. Without the use of language, our reminiscences would usually present themselves in the same connection in which the objects remembered have been actually perceived. We do not state this absolutely or universally, for it is possible that other operations of suggestion might recal detached portions of scenes which have been actually before the mind, and associate these detached portions so as to construct a new scene out of them. But we apprehend that this forming of scenes in the mind out of different scenes which we have actually seen would seldom take place without the use of language.

3. Descriptions in language of objects, or of scenes, call up images already in the mind; that is, already so connected with the mind by perception, as to be capable of being recalled to its consciousness. Graphic speakers or writers call up vivid pictures into the minds of others; but the picture is different in every mind. Painters can delineate, from their own mental pictures, the scenes suggested by graphic writers; but no two painters ever

agreed in the delineation of any such scene. Such writers tell of mountains, seas, lakes, rocks, trees, rivers, cottages, castles, men, women, cattle, wild beasts, and we fashion the scene after the pictures which we already possess the mountains, seas, lakes, rivers, castles, cottages, are formed of the materials in our own minds, which these words recal, and we people them with men and women, beasts and birds, which we have previously

seen.

4. Paintings furnish our minds with perceptions capable of being recalled nearly as real scenes do. They give us vivid conceptions of the scenes of other countries and climates. Let a poet or historian describe to us a battle, without saying to what nation the combatants belonged, and we shall have a picture in our minds of such soldiers fighting as we have been accustomed to see in reality, or in pictures. Let him add that it was among the Chinese, and the whole scene changes; and if we have seen Chinese soldiers, or pictures of them, the combatants in our imagination assume the features and the dresses and weapons of Chinese soldiery. Paintings also furnish us with the conceptions that other minds have formed from written descriptions. In reading the narratives in the gospels, for example, instead of making up the scenes described from our own materials, we often have the conception of another mind recalled as embodied in some painting of the scene described.

5. Scenes brought before us by paintings are capable, like real scenes, of being broken up, and combined to form other scenes. Thus, in reading a description, we may have a mountain from one painting, a river from another, a cottage such as we have actually seen, with many other fragments derived from various sources, formed into one imagined scene, called up into the mind by verbal description.

6. When a whole scene is thus constructed in the

mind, suggested, it may be, by description, or in any other way, it may itself become an object of memory, and may rise up to the view of the mind, as a whole, as often as it may be recalled. This is remarkably the fact in those cases of combined or imaginary scenes that we have noticed as having occurred repeatedly in dreams. Several such fictitious scenes are in our minds, which can be recalled by suggestion, just as real

scenes may.

7. One operation of the mind which is ascribed to imagination or conception as distinguished from memory, and often adduced as an evidence that the powers are essentially distinct, is the combining of different qualities in the same object which are never found combined in reality, and which therefore could never be recalled by memory; as when we think of a mountain of ivory, or a sea of gold. This power, we apprehend, depends solely on the use of language. We question whether any mind would ever have thought, or would have been capable of thinking of an ivory mountain, if it had not been in possession of the word ivory, signifying, not an elephant's tusk, but the substance, with its peculiar qualities, of which the elephant's tusk, consists, and another word signifying a certain elevation on the earth's surface. But having these words, nothing more is required than to bring them into juxtaposition, ivory mountain, or in a form more definitely to express their connection, mountain of ivory, to bring up in our minds the picture of a high elevation on the earth's surface constructed of the same substance with elephant's tooth. We question whether any mind ever could have thought of a sea of gold without the aid of two words signifying the expanse of water called sea, and the bright yellow metal called gold. On this, however, we would not dogmatise, because some effects of a rising or setting sun on the appearance of the sea might suggest to some minds, without the use of language, the conception of

sea combined with that of gold. In that case, however, there would be nothing more than the phenomenon of suggestion. Of some of these imaginary combinations, it would seem to be impossible that the mind could form any conception, even with the aid of language; as, for example, a sea of gold, like clear or transparent glass. For if it were transparent, like glass, it would not be a sea of gold; if it were opaque, with a metallic lustre, it would want one of the characteristic properties of transparent glass. Such an object, therefore, could never be seen, and could not be called up by suggestion. But the proximate position of the words, pure, gold, clear, and glass, calls up a sort of varying image, like the play of some kinds of fire-works, in which brilliant colours blending and changing into one another, afford great pleasure by their combination and splendour.

Imagination or conception as exercised about the mental phenomena of other persons, will fall to be considered afterwards.

END OF BOOK II.