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the features of the face remain fixed, the mouth is open, our elocution accords with our gestures; rapid walking awakens thought, etc. Let us also remark the intimate relation which exists between taste, smell, and the stomach, and we shall conclude from all these facts that natural harmony between our movements exercises a great influence upon our mental life.

The expression of feeling has also its distinctive and original mechanism. It translates itself: first, by the movements produced by the muscular system, especially by the different muscles of the face, whence results the play of the physiognomy;1 Secondly, by the organic effects, that is to say, by an influence on the viscera. Grief troubles the digestion, joy exhilarates it; fear dries up the saliva and causes cold sweat ; the heart, the lacteal gland in women, feel the shock of the emotions; the lachrymal gland, which constantly secretes its liquid, lets it escape with more abundance in the fervour of tender emotions. All these facts, and a number of others, may be reduced to the following principle: the conditions of pleasure are united with an increase, the conditions of pain with a diminution of all or some of the vital functions. Nevertheless, if we submit this formula to a verification in detail, we shall see that it admits of exceptions. It is not true that augmentation of the vital energy is always coexistent with augmentation of the degree of pleasure. A sweet flavour, an agreeable contact, do not cause an increase of activity; a smart, on the contrary, excites a momentary development. It is the same with those narcotics which, while they cause pleasure, weaken vital power. In fact, neither the doctrine which unites pleasure to self-preservation, nor that which unites pleasure to the increase of activity, is sufficient if taken separately; they must be united in order to arrive at a complete explanation.

This portion of the work, a little vague in expression, is rather touched upon than treated. The question which lies at the bottom of it is this: all our pleasures and all our pains, whatever be their nature, may they be explained by one single principle?—

1 Müller ; see Lemoine, La Physionomie et la Parole, chap. iii. et seq.

are they reducible to one or two fundamental laws ? 1 This is by no means an idle question, because the progress of a science consists in uniting particular causes and derivative laws in a formula which shall contain both. The descriptive and analytical method of Mr. Bain seems to us insufficient. His study upon the emotions, which we shall explain hereafter, though excellent in detail, is only a succession of fragments, whose connexion is not shown with sufficient clearness; and this defect is in our opinion referable to the following cause. It is in that obscure region of the primitive phenomena of affective life, that the germs of pleasures, pains, and passions of every kind, which the play of life breeds, transforms, and incessantly refines, ought to be sought for.

The author has done this in the case of the will. He has sought for its germ in that spontaneous activity which has its seat in the nervous centres, which acts without any impressions from without, or former sentiment of any kind. This is the essential prelude of every development of voluntary power; this activity is one of the terms or elements of volition; volition, in a word, is a compound, formed of this spontaneous activity, and of something beside. It is in Müller's work that we must seek for this. No previous psychologist had demonstrated the part played by these instinctive movements, and their influence upon the will. This physiologist points out that the foetus produces motions which evidently cannot depend upon the complex circumstances which give rise to the same in the adult; if the fœtus moves his limbs, it is therefore because he can move them. Let us remark, besides, that nervous force cannot be equally distributed, and that the nervous centres are not equally charged; but that there is a condition of constitution or nutritive vigour which impels the foetus to move one foot rather than the other. Spontaneous excitement gives birth to movements, to changes of position, consequently to sensations; there is thus established

1 We know that Spinoza refers all our inclinations to the self-love of each individual. The most complete treatise on this subject is the Monograph of M. Bouillier, Du Plaisir et de la Douleur.

2 Müller, vol. ii. p. 312.

in the still empty mind a connexion between certain sensations and certain movements; and later, when the sensation shall be excited by some exterior cause, the mind will know that a certain movement will be executed, in consequence, by that part of the body. The nervous system may thus be compared to an organ whose pipes are constantly full of air, which discharges itself in such and such directions, according to the particular stops. which are employed. The stimulus produced from our sensations and from our feelings does not furnish the internal power, but it determines the method and the place of the discharge.

What is there in Will more than this discharge of spontaneous impulses? There is this, that spontaneous activity is regulated by physical circumstances and not by the final well-being of the animal. The dog, who in the morning runs wildly about, and expends his superabundance of activity, follows his instinct only; but it is just at the moment when he becomes exhausted that he feels the need of food, and that he is obliged to exert himself to procure it. Pure spontaneity falls short of that which it ought to do for self-preservation. Will, on the contrary, knows the end and the means, and does not expend itself by chance. Let us take account of the existence of this spontaneity, of this instinctive activity, which will aid us hereafter to a better comprehension of the nature of Will.

CHAPTER II.

INTELLIGENCE.

Intelligence.-I. Association of ideas—2. Of consciousness-3. Association by contiguity: exterior perception-4. Association by resemblance: scientific processus-5. Compound association-6. Constructive association, or imagination.

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In treating of intelligence," says the author in his Preface, 'I have abandoned subdivision into faculties. This explanation is entirely founded upon the laws of association; very small details have been given as examples, and they have been followed up in the variety of their applications.' The treatment of this

portion of the work is masterly, as excellent in synthesis as it is in analysis. The collecting an innumerable multitude of facts around some fundamental principles, and submitting principles to verification by facts, is a truly experimental method. Thus, notwithstanding long enumeration of details and examples, the mind keeps a clear impression of this explanation, because it always has a clue to guide it. It knows that each illustration is a proof in support of some particular form of association of ideas; above the facts, it sees partial laws; above partial laws, a general and fundamental law, that irreducible property of intelligence by virtue of which our ideas direct each other and form a succession. When we see that Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Bain, in England; with the physiologists Luys and Vulpian, in France, and previous to them Herbart and Müller,1 in Germany, attach all our psychological acts to different methods of association between our ideas, feelings, sensations, and desires, we cannot help believing that this law of association is destined to become preponderant in experimental psychology, to remain for some time at least the ulterior mode of explanation of psychical phenomena; and thus it will take in the world of ideas a position analogous to that of attraction in the world of matter. It is strange that this discovery should have been arrived at so late. Nothing is more simple in appearance than to remark that this law of association is a realistic, fundamental, irreducible phenomenon of our mental life; that it is at the bottom of all our actions; that it admits of no exception; that neither dreams, reveries, mystic ecstasy, nor the most abstract reasoning can dispense with it; that its extermination would be the suppression of thought itself; and nevertheless no ancient has understood this, for we cannot seriously maintain that the few lines collected here and there from Aristotle and the Stoics constitute a theory and a distinct view upon the subject.2 It is to Hobbes, Hume, and Hartley that we must refer the origin of these studies on the connexion of our ideas. The discovery of the final law of our psychological acts has this in

1 Müller, vol. ii. p. 512.

2 See, for the history of the question, Mervoyer, Etude sur l'association des idées, and Hamilton, in his edition of Reid.

common with many other discoveries, that it has come late, and every one is astonished at its apparent simplicity.

Perhaps it is not superfluous to ask in what this method of explanation is superior to that of the faculties. The most general mode consists, as we know, of dividing the intellectual phenomena into classes, of separating those which differ, and grouping together those of the same nature, giving them a common name, and attributing them to one and the same cause; thus we have arrived at distinguishing those different aspects of intelligence which are called judgment, reasoning, abstraction, perception, etc. This method is exactly the same as that followed in physics, in which the words heat, electricity, weight, designate the unknown causes of certain groups of phenomena. If we do not lose sight of the fact that the various faculties are also only the unknown causes of known phenomena, that they are only a convenient means of classifying facts and speaking of them; if we do not fall into the common error of making them substantial entities, personages who form a little republic in intelligence; we do not see that there can be anything reprehensible in this distribution into faculties, in conformity with the rules of a healthy method and a good natural classification. In what then is Mr. Bain's manner of proceeding superior to the method of the faculties? In that the latter is only a classification, while his is an explanation. There is the same difference, in our opinion, between the psychology which attaches intellectual facts to certain faculties, and that which reduces them to the single law of association, as there is between the system of physics which attributes phenomena to five or six causes, and that which attaches weight, heat, light, etc., to motion. The system of the faculties explains nothing, since each of them is no more than a flatus vocis, only valuable for the phenomena which it contains, and signifying nothing less nor more than these phenomena. The new theory, on the contrary, shows that the different processes of intelligence are only the different forms of an unique law; that to imagine, to deduct, to induct, to perceive, etc., is to combine ideas in a definite manner; and that the differences of faculties are only differences of association. It explains all intellectual facts, not after the fashion of metaphysics, which insists

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