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ASSOCIATIONS OF TOUCH.

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native power, and to the retentiveness (we have assumed these two properties to rise and fall together).

The other element of Touch is Muscularity; the weight, hardness, size, and form of things, are tested and remembered principally by the muscles of the hand and the arm.

The intellectual character of the muscular feelings is probably not the same for all muscles; hence each set would have to be independently judged. We know that the muscles of the eye excel in delicacy of discrimination and retentiveness; they would not otherwise be on a par with the optical sensibility. Probably the muscles of the voice and articulation come next, and, after these, the hand and the arm; the difference being no doubt related to the comparative supply of nerves, and the expansion of the corresponding centres.

There may be great individual differences of character in respect of tactual endowment. These are principally indicated by degrees of delicacy in the manual arts.

Both in the tactual and in the muscular element, any superior delicacy will tell upon the worker in plastic material. The muscular precision of the hand and the arm is a guarantee for nicety of execution in every species of manipulation-with the surgeon and the artist, no less than the common artizan.

22. It is only in the Blind, that we can appreciate the natural delicacy, or intellectual susceptibility, of the sense of Touch.

None but the blind are accustomed to think of outward objects as ideas of Touch; in the minds of others, the visible ideas preponderate, and constitute the chief material of recollection. A blind workman remembers and discriminates his tools by their tactile ideas. The trains of associations that determine the order and array of surrounding things are, to the blind, trains of ideas of touch.

23. The associations among Sounds include, besides many casual connexions, the two great departments of Musical and Articulate Sounds.

Any two sounds heard together, or in close succession, for a number of times, would mutually reproduce each other in idea. When a sound is made in front of an echoing wall, we anticipate the echo.

In Musical training, the individual notes are rendered selfsustaining, and are at the same associated in musical successions. One note sounded brings on the idea of another

that has usually followed it. When a sufficient number are given to determine an air, the remaining notes rise to the mind. The education of an accomplished musician is composed of many hundreds of these successions.

Besides the general conditions of acquirement, we must refer, in this case, to the quality termed the musical ear. Although the ear is improvable by cultivation, the basis of all great musical skill is a primitive endowment. There must be, from the beginning, a comparatively nice discrimination of musical tones, for which we may assume the physical basis of extensive auditory centres. A bad ear will not distinguish one note from the next above it or below it on the scale. good ear will discriminate the minute fraction of a note.

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It must be taken for granted, until the contrary is shown, that the delicate feeling of Agreement follows Discrimination; and that Retentiveness will follow both. Once for all, therefore, we may assume that delicacy of Discrimination is to be accepted as the criterion of all the three intellectual properties. Hence, when a sense has an unusual degree of discriminative power, there will also be an unusual retentiveness for its sensations. Not in music alone, therefore, but in everything, good memory will accompany acute feeling of difference.

Articulate sounds are made coherent on the same principle as musical sounds. We are familiarized with each distinct articulation, and are, at the same time, occupied with combining them into groups in the complex sounds of words and trains of words. In the minds of the uneducated, these connexions exist by hundreds; in a cultivated mind, they count by thousands.

The good articulate ear may be, to some extent, a modification of the musical ear. In so far as the letters are distinguished by being combinations of musical tones, the two sensibilities must be the same. But this applies only to the vowels; the consonants are discriminated by other kinds of effect. It would not be in accordance with fact to say, that a good musical ear infers a good articulate ear.

The successions of sounds, both musical and articulate, possess the quality termed Cadence or Accent. The ear remembers the cadences familiar to it, and reproduces them in vocal imitation. The brogue or accent of a province is impressed on the young ear; a large variety of cadences enters into the more elaborate training of the elocutionist. The ear for cadence may be somewhat different from, although containing points in common with, the musical and articulate ears.

ASSOCIATIONS OF SIGHT,

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24. Cohering aggregates and trains of Sight are, by pre-eminence, the material of thought, memory, and imagination.

Sensations of sight are composed of visual spectra and muscular feelings-passive feelings mixed with active.

While the separate colours and shades are acquiring ideal persistence, they are becoming associated together in aggregates and trains. We cannot produce cases of association of colours alone, or without muscular elements, but there are many instances where colour is the predominating fact. The splendours of sunrise and sunset, the succession of tints of the sky, exemplify the preponderance of colour. The variegated landscape is an aggregate of coloured masses, which may be associated in great part optically. The aspect of a city, with its streets, houses, shops, is many-coloured, and must be remembered chiefly by the help of associated colours.

On the other hand, in objects with little colour, and with sharp outlines, the muscular element predominates, as in a building or an interior, in machinery, and, most of all, in the forms and diagrams of Geometry, Architecture, Engineering, &c. We shall illustrate the adhesiveness, first, in Forms; secondly, in Coloured Surfaces.

When the eye follows a circular form, as a ring, the effect is principally muscular. The adhesion resides in the active centres connected with the muscles of the eye. By these, we hold the figures of Geometry, the symbols of the sciences generally, outline plans of mechanical structures, the characteristic forms of all special objects. In the Fine Arts of Sculpture and Architecture, form is predominant.

There is probably a special endowment for the retention of visible forms, whose natural locality would be the active centres of vision. It would show itself in the rapid and extensive acquirement of unmeaning symbols, written characters, and skeleton outlines, as in maps and diagrams. The Chinese language is probably the extreme instance of the acquisition. of forms. The memory for maps is also a trying instance. These cases require the strongest disinterested adhesion.

In the case of Scientific forms, there may enter the scientific interest, determining special concentration of mind. Such forms are comparatively few in number, but intensely important.

In regard to Artistic forms, the Artistic interest is a

prompting to mental concentration; only such as enter into Art would be specially retained. Curves, for their beauty, and certain geometric forms, for their symmetry, would be laid hold of; those that have no interest except as symbols would be disregarded.

In Coloured Surfaces, we suppose the colour to be the chief fact; for, although Form can never be absent, the optical adhesiveness is the essential consideration. Such are, in addition to natural scenes and prospects, highly decorated interiors, pictures, assemblies of people, the human face and figure, animals, plants, and minerals.

The endowment for discriminating and remembering Colour may well be supposed to be special and distinct. Phrenology is justified in supposing a special organ of colour. The centres in relation with the optic nerve are probably far more expanded and richer in nervous elements, in some constitutions than in others. A special retentiveness for colour is a great determining fact of character. It not only constitutes a facility in remembering scenes, pictures, and coloured objects, thus entering into the faculty of the painter and the poet: it also leads to a liking for the concrete surface of the world with all its emotions and interests, and to a disliking or revulsion from the bare and naked symbols, forms, and abstractions of science.

SENSATIONS OF DIFFERENT SENSES.

25. Our education involves various connexions among Movements, Feelings of Movement, and the Sensations of the different senses.

In the complication of actual things, the same object may operate upon several senses at once. A bell is ideally retained as a combination of touch, sound, and sight. An orange can affect all the senses.

Movements with Sensations. Our movements are extensively associated with sensations. Our various actions are instigated by sensible signs, as names or other signals; the child's early education comprises the obedience to direction or command. Animals also can take on the same acquisition. The notes of the bugle, and the signals at sea, are associated with definite movements.

Our locomotive and other movements are incessantly attended with changes of our visible environment, and become associated with these changes accordingly. Every step forward alters the visual magnitude of all objects before the eyes;

ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATIONS.

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and of such as are near, in a very palpable degree. This is a principal part of our acquired perceptions of distance. (See Chap. VII.)

It was already remarked, under Associations of Movement, that there are few associations of mere movement; the sense of the effect generally intervenes and accompanies the exertion. A man digging does not mechanically put in the spade and turn it up; he, at the same time, sees and feels the results; the sight and the feeling co-operate in directing and guiding each movement, and in introducing the one that follows.

Muscular Ideas with Sensations. We may associate Ideas of Force and Movement, resulting from muscular expenditure, with Sensations. There are some interesting examples in point. We connect the weight and inertia of different kinds of material, with the visible appearance, and other sensible properties. On looking at a block of stone, at an iron bar, or a log of wood, we form a certain ideal estimate of the comparative weights, or of the muscular expenditure requisite to move, or support the several masses. This association is gained partly by our direct experience, and partly by seeing the muscular exertions of other persons; it becomes at last one of the powerful associations that enter into our ideas of external things. It is at the basis of our Architectural tastes and demands. When we see a mass of stone supported on a pedestal, we form at once an estimate of the sufficiency or insufficiency of the support, and are affected pleasantly or unplea santly according to the estimate. By a rapid process of association, almost like an instinct, we imagine the pressure of a block of any given size; an idea of its gravitating energy is constructed out of our own experiences; and a similar idea is formed of the strength of the rope that is to hoist it up, and the waggon that is to transport it. The same feeling determines our sense of Architectural proportions; these being very different in the case of wood, of stone, and of iron; and would be modified into another shape still, if gold were the material employed. From want of familiarity with gold in masses, we should be greatly at fault in connecting the visible appearance of a block with its weight and inertia.

Sensations with Sensations. We may have as many groups of combinations as there are possible unions among our senses. Organic sensations may be associated with Tastes, Smells, Touches, Sounds, Sights; Tastes with Smells, &c.; Smells with Touches, and so on. The more interesting cases occur under the three higher senses.

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