The effect which our expectation might anticipate, is the very effect that is truly found to take place,—an increased liveliness of that part of the complex group, to which alone the desire relates.

That it is the nature of our emotions of every sort, to render more vivid all the mental affections with which they are peculiarly combined, as if their own vivacity were in some measure divided with these, every one who has felt any strong emotion, must have experienced. The eye has, as it were, a double quickness, to perceive what we love or hate, what we hope or fear. Other objects may be seen slightly; but these, if seen at all, become instantly permanent, and cannot appear to us without impressing their presence, as it were, in stronger feeling on our senses and our soul.

Such is the effect of emotion, when combined even with sensations that are of themselves, by their own nature, vivid; and mark, therefore, less strikingly, the increase of vividness received. The vivifying effect, however, is still more remarkable, by its relative proportion, when the feelings with which the emotion is combined, are in themselves peculiarly faint, as in the case of mere memory or imagination. The object of any of our emotions, thus merely conceived by us, becomes, in many cases, so vivid, as to render even our accompanying perceptions comparatively faint. The mental absence of lovers, for example, is proverbial; and what is thus termed in popular language absence, is nothing more than the greater vividness of some mere conception, or other internal feeling, than of any, or all of the external objects present at the time, which have no peculiar relation to the prevailing emotion.

"The darkened sun

Loses his light; The rosy-bosom'd Spring
To weeping Fancy pines; and yon bright arch
Contracted, bends into a dusky vault.

All nature fades, extinct; and she alone,
Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought,
Fills evere sense, and pants in every vein.
Books are but formal dulness, tedious friends,
And sad amid the social band he sits
Lonely and unattentive. From his tongue
The unfinish'd period falls; while, borne away

On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies
To the vain bosom of his distant Fair;
And leaves the semblance of a lover, fix'd
In melancholy site, with head declined
And love-dejected eyes."*

What brighter colours the fears of superstition give to the dim objects perceived in twilight, the inhabitants of the village who have to pass the churchyard at any late hour, and the little students of ballad lore, who have carried with them, from the nursery, many tales which they almost tremble to remember, know well. And in the second sight of this northern part of the island, there can be no doubt, that the objects which the seers conceive themselves to behold, truly are more vivid, as conceptions, than, but for the superstition and the melancholy character of the natives, which harmonize with the objects of this gloomy foresight, they would have been; and that it is in consequence of this brightening effect of the emotion, as concurring with the dim and shadowy objects which the vapoury atmosphere of our lakes and vallies presents, that fancy, relatively to the individual, becomes a temporary reality. The gifted eye, which has once believed itself favoured with such a view of the future, will, of course, ever after have a quicker foresight, and more frequent revelations; its own wilder emotion communicating still more vivid forms and colours to the objects which it dimly perceives.

On this subject, however, I need not seek any additional illustration. I may fairly suppose you to admit, as a general physical law of the Phenomena of Mind, that the influence of every emotion is to render more vivid the perception or conception of its object.

I must remark, however, that when the emotion is very violent, as in the violence of any of our fiercer passions, though it still renders every object, with which it harmonizes, more vivid and prominent, it mingles with them some degree of its own confusion of feeling. It magnifies and distorts; and what it renders brighter, it does not therefore render more distinct.

"The flame of passion, through the struggling soul
Deep-kindled, shews across that sudden blaze

*Thomson's Seasons-Spring, v. 1006-1021.

The object of his rapture, vast of size,

With fiercer colours and a night of shade."*

The species of desire which we are considering, however, is not of this fierce and tempestuous kind.

Emotions of a calmer species have the vivifying effect, without the indistinctness; and precisely of this degree is that desire which constitutes attention as coexisting with the sensations, or other feelings to which we are said to attend.

We have found, then, in the desire which accompanies attention, or rather which chiefly constitutes it, the cause of that increased intensity which we sought.

When all the various objects of a scene are of themselves equally, or nearly equally, interesting or indifferent to us, the union of desire, with any particular perception of the group, might be supposed, a priori, to render this perception in some degree more vivid than it was before. It is not necessary that this difference of vividness should take place wholly, or even be very striking, in the first instant; for, by becoming in the first instant even slightly more vivid, it acquires additional colouring and prominence, so as to increase that interest, which led us originally to select it for our first minute observation, and thus to brighten it more and more progressively. Indeed, when we reflect on our consciousness during what is called an effort of attention, we feel that some such progress as this really takes place, the object becoming gradually more distinct while we gaze, till at length it requires a sort of effort to turn away to the other coexisting objects, and to renew with them the same process.

Attention, then, is not a simple mental state, but a process, or a combination of feelings. It is not the result of any peculiar power of the mind, but of those mere laws of perception, by which the increased vividness of one sensation produces a corresponding faintness of others coexisting with it, and of that law of our emotions, by which they communicate greater intensity to every perception, or other feeling, with which they coexist and harmonize.

* Pleasures of Imagination, Book II. v. 137–140.

490

LECTURE XXXII.

ON THE EXTERNAL AFFECTIONS OF MIND COMBINED WITH DESIRE, CONTINUED.-ON THE INTERNAL AFFECTIONS OF MIND.

-CLASSIFICATION OF THEM.

In my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I concluded my sketch of the IN different hypotheses of philosophers with respect to perception, with an account of that Pre-established Harmony, by which Leibnitz, excluding all reciprocal agency of mind and matter, endeavoured to account for the uniform coincidence of our mental feelings with our bodily movements,-an hypothesis which, though it does not seem to have gained many followers out of Germany, produced the most enthusiastic admiration in the country of its author. I may remark by the way,-as a very striking example of the strange mixture of seemingly opposite qualities, which we frequently find in the character of nations,-that, while the country, of which I speak, has met with ridicule,-most unjust in degree, as national ridicule always is, for the heaviness of its laborious erudition, it must be allowed to surpass all other countries in the passionate enthusiasm of its philosophy, which, particularly in metaphysics, from the reign of Leibnitz to the more recent worship paid to the transcendentalism of Kant, seems scarcely to have admitted of any calm approbation, or to have known any other inquirers than violent partisans and violent foes.

After my remarks on this hypothesis, which closed my view of our external affections of mind, as they exist simply, I next proceeded to consider them, as they exist, combined with desire, in that state of the mind, which is termed attention, a state which has been supposed to indicate a peculiar intellectual power, but which,

I endeavoured to shew you, admits of being analyzed into other more general principles.

It is to our consciousness, of course, that we must refer for the truth of any such analysis; and the process which it reveals to us, in attention, seems, I think, to justify the analysis which I made, indicating a combination of simpler feelings, but not any new and distinct species of feeling, to be referred to a peculiar faculty.

We see many objects together, and we see them indistinctly. We wish to know them more accurately, and we are aware, that this knowledge can be acquired only in detail. We select some one more prominent object, from the rest,—or rather, without any selection on our part, this object excites, in a higher degree, our desire of observing it particularly, merely by being more prominent, or, in some other respect, more interesting than the rest. To observe it particularly, we fix our body, and our eyes, -for it is a case of vision which I have taken for an example,— as steadily as possible, that the light from the same points of the object may continue to fall on the same points of the retina. Together with our wish, we have an expectation, the natural effect of uniform past experience, that the object will now be more distinctly perceived by us; and, in accordance with this expectation, when the process, which I have described, is completed, the object, as if it knew our very wish, and hastened to gratify it, does become more distinct; and, in proportion as it becomes thus more vivid, the other objects of the group become gradually fainter, till at length they are scarcely felt to be present. Such, without the intervention of any new and peculiar state of mind, is the mental process, as far as we are conscious of it; and, if this be the process, there is no reason to infer in it the operation of any power of the mind different from those which are exercised in other cases. The general capacities of perception, and desire, and expectation, and voluntary command of certain muscles, which, on every view of the phenomena of attention, we must allow the mind to possess, are, of themselves, sufficient to explain the phenomena, and preclude, therefore, any further reference.

The brightening of the objects to which we attend, that is to say, of the objects which have interested us, and which we feel a desire of knowing, and the consequent fading of the other coexisting objects, I explained, by the well known influence, not of de