In explaining the nature of the conservative or retentive faculty, and elsewhere, he has unfolded some peculiar views which I consider to be as correct as they are profound, but he carries them to a length which I am not prepared to allow.What is the state of an idea when not falling at the time under consciousness? This is the question which has often been put.Thus having seen the Crystal Palace of 1851, the question is put, -- what place has that idea in my mind, when {438} I am not precisely thinking about the object? Is it dead or simply dormant? We must of course answer that the idea can have no existence as an idea, when not before the consciousness.Still it must have some sort of existence.There exists in the mind a power to reproduce it according to the laws of association.
The writer of this article having had occasion, years ago, to pass over the plains of Lombardy, is not therefore always imaging them, but he has the power of recalling them, and finds that they are recalled every time he hears of the jealousies between Austria and Italy.It is a great truth that the mind is ever acquiring potency, is ever laying up power.We have something analogous in the physical world.
Thus a power coming from the sun in the geological age of the coal-measures was laid up in the plant, went down into the strata of the ground, and comes up now in our coals ready to supply us with comfortable heat in our rooms, and with tremendous mechanical force for our steam-engines.This is the doctrine of all the physicists of our day.But there is a similar laying up of power in the mind, of intellectual, and we may add, of moral or immoral power.
Aristotle had certainly a glimpse of some such doctrine, and spoke of a <dunamis>, an <entelecheia>, and an <energeia>;the first denoting the original capacity, the second -- the capacity in complete readiness to act, and the third the capacity in act or operation.Modern mechanical science is enunciating this doctrine in a more definite form, and distinguishing between capacity and potential energy and actual energy.Sir William Hamilton, taking the hint from Aristotle, has adopted the views of the German Schmid (who again had certain speculations of Leibnitz before him), who declares that the energy of mind which has once been cannot readily be conceived as abolished, and that " the problem most difficult of solution is not how a mental activity endures, but how it ever vanishes." (Vol.II.P.212.)So far I can concur; but when he maintains that there are in the mind, acts, energies, and operations, of which it is not conscious, I hesitate and draw back.His doctrine on this subject is founded on the views of Leibnitz, as to there being perceptions below consciousness.The class of facts on which he rests his opinion seem to me to be misapprehended.{439} "When we hear the distant murmur of the sea, what are the constituents of this total perception of which we are conscious? " He answers that the murmur is a sum made up of parts, and that if the noise of each wave made no impression on our sense, the noise of the sea as the result of these impressions could not be realized." But the noise of each several wave at the distance, we suppose, is inaudible; we must, how ever, admit that they produce a certain modification beyond consciousness, on the percipient object." (Vol.I.P.351.) He speaks of our perception of a forest as made up of impressions left by each leaf, which impressions are below consciousness.There is an entire misinterpretation of the facts in these statements, and this according to Hamilton's own theory of the object intuitively perceived.The mind is not immediately cognizant of the sound of the sea or of its several waves; nor of the trees of the forest and their several leaves.All that it knows intuitively is an affection of the organism as affected by the sound or sight.The impression made by the distant object is on the organism, and when the impression is sufficiently strong on the organism, the mind is called into exercise, and from the organic affections <argues> or <infers> the external and distant cause.Thus there is no proof of a mental operation of which we are unconscious.
He explains by these supposed unconscious acts a class of mental phenomena with which every one who has ever reflected on the operations of his own mind is familiar.The merchant walks in a brown study from his house to his place of business; there must have been many mental acts performed on the way, but they are now all gone.The question is, were they ever before the consciousness? Hamilton maintains that they never were; Dugald Stewart maintains that they were for the time, but that the mind cannot recall them.
Notwithstanding all the acute remarks of Hamilton, I adhere to the theory of Stewart.I do so on the general principle that in devising a theory to explain a set of phenomena we should never call in a class of facts, of whose existence we have no other proof, when we can account for the whole by an order of facts known to exist on independent evidence.