Intellection

“ In a similar way, most of the supposed isolated "faculties" of higher intellection appear, upon clearer analysis, as complex aggregations of primary sensations, and hence necessarily dependent upon numerous and scattered centres. Some "faculties," as memory and volition, may be said in a sense to be primordial endowments of every nerve cell—even of every body cell. Indeed, an ultimate analysis relegates all intellection, in its primordial adumbrations, to every particle of living matter. ”

“ For intellection differs from sensation, somewhat as the understanding of a man differs from the perceptive faculty of a brute; and language, being framed for the reciprocal commerce of human minds, whose perceptions include both, is made to consist of signs of ideas both general and particular, yet without placing them on equal ground. ”

“ But in what Language do the impressions upon the nerves thus speak to us of an external world,—of the forms and qualities and actions of objects? How is it that by the aid of our nervous system we become acquainted not only with impressions but with things; that we learn not only the relation of objects to us, but to one another?
15. It has been shown at some length in the previous Books, that the mode in which Sensations are connected in our minds so as to convey to us the knowledge of Objects and their Relations, is by being contemplated with reference to Ideas. ”

“ Thus if anyone ask what is the mind's object when you say 'Columbus discovered America in 1492,' most people will reply 'Columbus,' or 'America,' or, at most, 'the discovery of America.' They will name a substantive kernel or nucleus of the consciousness, and say the thought is 'about' that,—as indeed it is,—and they will call that your thought's 'object.' Really that is usually only the grammatical object, or more likely the grammatical subject, of your sentence. ”

“ To what kind or mode of action shall we then look for the legitimate application of the term? In answer to this query, we may, I think, without fear of the consequences, put the following cases as exemplifying and justifying the use of the term Instinct in an appropriate sense. First: when there appears an action, not included either in the mere functions of life, acting within the sphere of its own organismus; nor yet an action attributable to the intelligent will or reason; yet, at the same time, not referable to any particular organ,—we then declare the presence of an Instinct. ”

“ On the one side we have seen logicians comparing them to so many letters, and on the other psychologists enumerating the several sensible properties of gold or wax—their colour, weight, texture, &c.—as instances of such elements. In this way formal logic and sensationalist psychology have been but blind leaders of the blind. Language, which has enabled thought to advance to the level at which reflection about thought can begin, is now an obstacle in the way of a thorough analysis of it. ”

“ Analogy leads us also to conclude, as before observed under feeling, that some faint vestiges or ideas must be raised in the parts of the brain corresponding to the tongue, upon the mere passage of each word, that expresses a remarkable taste, over the ear. And, when the imagination is assisted by the actual sight or smell of a highly grateful food, we seem able to raise an idea of a perceptible magnitude. ”

“ If the common faculties of understanding were attached to particular organs, the person who possesses the organ of any common faculty ought to be endowed with all particular kinds of faculties. If there were an organ of perception, of memory, of judgment, or of imagination, any one who has the organ of perception, of memory, of judgment, or of imagination, ought to possess all kinds of perception, of memory, of judgment, or of imagination. ”

“ It has been shown that there is a faculty of the mind by which bodies are cognized as kinds, which has been called sensation. It has further been shown that there is a faculty of the cognition of bodies as forms, which has been called perception. It is now designed to demonstrate that there is a faculty of the mind by which bodies are cognized as forces, and this faculty I shall call apprehension. ”

“ If the innate ideas be represented as mere elements of cognition, a perfectly correct and intelligible and impregnable psychology of innate ideas may, I conceive, be set on foot. But if the innate ideas be regarded as cognition, that is, as completed cognitions, nothing but an untrue doctrine, a doctrine of the most unintelligible and most bewildering character, can emerge. ”

“ Instinct, which is crystallized intelligence,—an absolute law with its invariable planes and angles introduced into the sphere of consciousness, as raphides are inclosed in the living cells of plants; Intellect,—the operation of the thinking principle through material organs, with an appreciable waste of tissue in every act of thought, so that our clergymen's blood has more phosphates to get rid of on Monday than on any other day of the week ”

“ The two vices of the body, and five of the tongue, are so called because they are manifested in the body and tongue, and also because, by so definitely classifying them, the mind of the reader will be the better helped; but it must be clearly understood that these vices arise primarily in the mind, and are wrong conditions of heart worked out in the body and the tongue. ”

“ The proof that there are material changes in the cell-groups of gray matter which have been educated in language is shown, as we have seen, by the study of injuries to the brains of polyglots who successively acquired several tongues. ”

“ The organs of sense sending their judgments by the sensory nerves from the exterior, the organ of feeling from the interior, and we are compelled to infer that every particle of matter in the animate body has judgment; and that in the organs of sense they have judgments of cognition, but in the mechanical organs they have judgments of good and evil. ”

“ De facto, because the existence of the object that consciousness carries with it is very embarrassing for the materialist; for this object is material, and as real and material as the fibres and cells of the brain. ”

“ The powers of abstraction and generalization, memory and reason, the tendencies which occasion the inflexions and combinations of words, are all necessary to the formation and use of language. Are not these parts of the same scheme of which the bodily faculties by which we are able to speak are another part? Has man his mental powers independently of the creator of his bodily frame? To what purpose then, or by what cause was the curious and complex machinery of the tongue, the glottis, the larynx produced? ”

“ There are thus no innate ideas, and no extranate ideas; but every idea or cognition has an element which is innate, and an element which is not so—every cognition, in short, is both innate and extranate—is a synthesis constituted by an a priori part and an a posteriori part. ”

“ Self-will is normally developed, while Size, Form, Observation, Weight, Locality, Calculation, and Memory of various sorts are manifest. The signs of Language in the eye and mouth denote fluency, while the practical faculties, being dominant, would give clearness, perspicacity, and directness to his style of expression, either oral or written. Time, Order, Reason, and Intuition are well developed. ”

“ These areas of the brain which harbor the faculty of speech do not originate our words any more than paper and type originate them; but like paper and type the sensory areas register the incoming words, and like a phonograph the motor-areas discharge the outgoing words. Therefore, of the mind all words are born; in the mind they dwell and have their being; but in the brain a mysterious mechanism gives them currency. ”

“ These concepts are not innate; because no idea can be innate, for the reason that several peripheral impressions are necessary for the formation of even a single perception. They are, however, inherited. ”

“ After certain verbs (bid, dare, help, make, need, etc.) the to is omitted from the infinitive group. (He bids me go. I need not hesitate.) Inflection.Change in the form of a word to show a modification or shade of meaning. At a very early period in our language there was a separate form for practically every modification. Although separate forms are now less numerous, inflection is still a convenient term in grammar. Its scope is general: it includes the declension of nouns, the comparison of adjectives and adverbs, and the conjugation of verbs. ”

“ We know of the thoughts, of the emotions, of our companions, by the muscular expressions of the face, by the changes in the brilliancy of the eye, by the general bodily state, such as quietness or restlessness, by their gestures, by many other physical expressions, but principally by means of those physical manifestations known as speech. Were all those concomitant physical processes absent, there would have been no means whatever of knowing of the very existence of external states of consciousness. ”

“ Those who are in the nostrils, are in perception. Those who are in the mouth and tongue, are in discoursing from understanding and perception. Those who are in the kidneys, are in truth which examines, separates and corrects. ”

“ In the present stage of our inquiry, I must, in like manner, take for granted the existence of bodies, which act, by their contiguity or pressure, on our organ of touch, as the odoriferous or sapid particles, act on our nerves of smell and taste—not that I assume this belief, as existing in the mind whose intellectual acquisitions are the subject of inquiry,—for, in that case, the inquiry itself would be superfluous. ”

“ The appropriate scientific term should be applied to each organ. No more effort is required to learn the meaning of a proper, than an improper term. For example: a child will pronounce the word as readily, and obtain as correct an idea, if you say lungs, as if you used the word lights. ”

“ As we have occasion to speak of things; animals, vegetables, minerals; so we have occasion to speak of the marks, which we are under the necessity of using, in order to record or to communicate our thoughts respecting them. We cannot record or communicate our thoughts respecting names, as man, tree, horse, to walk, to fly, to eat, to converse, without marks for them. We proceed in the case of names, as we do in other cases. We form them into classes, some more, some less, comprehensive, and give a name to each. ”

“ Phrenology claims to be a science in which the relation of the functions of mind to the material of the brain substance is observed. It asserts that just as speech, taste, touch, &c., have their centres in certain convolutions of the brain, so have benevolence, firmness, conscientiousness, &c., and that by studying the configuration of the brain, as indicated by that of the skull, a man's character may be approximately discovered. ”

“ Are you not making a transient confusion of intuitions with innate ideas? The most thorough experientialists admit intuition—i.e., direct impressions of sensibility underlying all proof, as necessary starting-points for thought. ”

“ For all those who do not hold the view that words and thoughts originate from sources above and outside the nerve substance, the localization of the functions of speech in portions of the cortex follows as a necessary postulate of logic.... ”

“ When I taste I infer that I taste some other thing or object; when I smell I infer that I smell some external thing; when I am touched I infer that I am touched by some external thing; when I am pressed I infer that I am pressed by some external thing ”

“ Depend upon it, dear reader, your reading and writing, your sums and your tables, nay, even the terrible dog’s-eared grammar, are nothing to what the smallest needle must go through before it is fit to appear in the world! ”

“ That the organs of the senses communicate with the mind, through the mediation of certain mysterious filaments, or thread-like bodies, termed nerves, cannot be denied; but the manner in which this communication takes place, the process by which mind receives information from matter, and the subtle operations which enable matter to transfer impressions to mind, are points around which, as it appears to us, the great Author of our being has thrown an impenetrable veil. ”

“ Overagainst all true words, or words that express some conception, stand the expressions of feeling—or the Interjections, which originally are not true words at all, but gradually enter,—at least in part,—into purely grammatical associations, and even serve to form notional words. ”

“ We now arrive at some of the most senseless and absurd jargon, that ever affected sensibility reduced to language—if that may be called language, which inverts its purpose, and confounds, instead of assisting, the understanding. ”

“ What he claims is, that in the analysis of consciousness we detect a class of facts or ideas which are not psychological or subjective, but really ontological, and do actually carry us out of the region of psychology into that of ontology. ”

“ At the beginning, when the centers of sight, hearing, smell, and taste, in the brain are still imperfectly developed, each of these perceives for itself, the perceptions in the different departments of sense having as yet no connection at all with one another. ”

“ This change of the subjective to the objective may be illustrated by the simplest sensations. What we call sweet or sour, red or yellow, no one will deny to be purely subjective. We can only say, I have such or such a sensation. But others claim also to have the sensation of sweet or sour, and the rest. ”

“ Enough has now been said to prove incontestably that animals present what I have called the germ of the sign-making faculty. As the main object of these chapters is to estimate the probability of human language having arisen by way of a continuous development from this germ, we may next turn to take a general survey of human language in its largest sense, or as comprising all the manifestations of the sign-making faculty. ”

“ Though the analysis of a sentence into the words of which it is constituted is as imaginary as the analysis of a word into the letter-form sounds, it is generally done in order to get an analytical view of the meaning of a sentence—an imaginary division of it as into cases, verbs, etc. ”