THE WORLD CREATED WITHIN US. 23 Causality-Traces the dependencies of phenomena, and the relations of cause and effect. The External Senses of Feeling or Touch, Taste, Smell, Hearing, and Sight, are necessary to connect these faculties with the external world, and to bring them into activity. The above phrenological organs furnish what are called by metaphysicians the à priori forms of thought. The raw force, if I may use the expression, taken in with the food at one part of the machine, is by the action of external force upon these organs, manufactured into the beautiful phantasmagoria of the external world. SECTION I. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PHRENOLOGY. "We are such stuff, As dreams are made of, and our little life "Omne quod cognoscitur non secundum sui vim, sed secundum cognoscentium potius comprehenditur facultatem.”-"All that is known is comprehended, not according to its own force, but according rather to the faculty of those knowing."-Boethius. "For man's sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things. On the contrary all the perceptions, both of the sense and of the mind, have reference to Man, and not to the universe."-Bacon, Nov. Org., Aph. 41. By careful observation of the action of the primitive faculties we are able to determine most of those psychological questions upon which metaphysical philosophers are still disputing, as Mill on Hamilton, Herbert Spencer on Mill, &c. The facts observed by the cerebral physiologists or phrenologists, however at present ignored and repudiated, furnish the test of the truth of these various conflicting systems. The Intellectual Faculties supply us with ideas, which ideas are only slight feelings or sensations, differing from our other feelings only in intensity. A perception of ideas and feelings pass through the mind, or rather constitute the mind; upon this succession we reflect or are conscious, and the only objects of knowledge are these ideas and feelings. We are conscious of nothing but these changes, and we never really advance one step beyond ourselves, or can know any kind of existence but those perceptions that lie in that narrow compass. We infer, however, that these ideas are connected with the brain, that the brain is in connection with the senses, and that the senses are acted upon by something external. But it is ideas only of which we are conscious, and it is these only therefore we can be said to know; of this " something external" we know nothing, and by what name we call it therefore signifies little. Matter and Force are the names we give to this non-ego. The properties of matter which are supposed to distinguish it from force, are, as we shall see, mere forms of thought, "clusters of sensations"; correlated force. The combination of forces which compose our own bodies, certain centres or reservoirs of which constitute the reality of the external world, clearly exist independently of perception, and are not mere abstractions, and if we disconnect the percipient from these external forces perception ceases. The organs of the Brain, through which the correlation of vital force to mental takes place, are of two kinds; those which are acted upon by external causes, through the medium of the senses, and the ideas belonging to which, therefore are THE COMBINED ACTION OF THE FACULTIES. 25 modified by the sense; and those faculties which act upon these ideas when so furnished by the first class. They have been divided into ideas of Simple and Relative Perception. All the knowledge we have therefore of an external world is of its action through the medium of the senses upon only a few of the mental faculties, and which perceptive faculties alone would be quite insufficient to give us the idea of nature as we now conceive of it. The world, as it appears to us as it exists in the region of our consciousness, is created in our own minds by the action of the faculties of Relative Perception and of Reflection upon the comparatively few ideas furnished by the faculties of Simple Perception. Our ideas of things result from the relation between the object or cause, the sense, and the three classes of intellectual faculties, and the vain effort to untie this untieable synthesis has caused most of the errors of the metaphysician. "What we term the properties of an object, are the powers it exerts of producing sensations in our consciousness. * The object acts upon the sense, and the sense upon the perceptive faculties of Form, Size, Weight, Colour, &c., and we have ideas of shapes and sizes and colours, of extension, of weight, of solidity, hardness, strength, &c., and these we call the properties of matter. The idea of extension and solidity, which is supposed peculiarly to distinguish matter, is derived from the faculties of form, size, and colour, which give the shape, and weight, the sense of resistance. Individuality unites these qualities into one, and gives the idea of the individual or substratum or noumenon upon which they are supposed to depend. "The name 'rose' is the mark of the sensation of colour, a sensation of shape, a sensation of touch, a sensation of smell, all in conjunction *J. S. Mill. (an action of the senses and intellectual faculties combined). * * * Of those names (such as rose) which denote clusters of sensation, it is obvious that some include a greater some a less, number of sensations. * * * We not only give names to clusters of sensations, but to clusters of clusters, that is to a number of minor clusters united into a greater cluster. Thus we give the name 'wood' to a particular cluster of sensations, the name canvas to another, the name rope to another. To these clusters and many others, joined together in one great cluster, we give the name ship. * * * And again, in using the names tree, horse, man, the names of what I call objects, I am referring only to my own sensations (and to other people's sensations); in fact, therefore, only naming a certain number of sensations, regarded as in a particular state of combination; that is, in concomitance." Accordingly, we name only our own sensation or idea, but this idea is compounded equally of the object, the sense, and the intellectual faculties, each of which we know can exist separately. Thus the noise which we say we hear in the street, is a sensation really in our own head, although the cause of the sensation is in the street and each has a separate and distinct existence. The cause in the street may affect other people in the same way, and have numberless other effects, while the sensation is a correlate of physical forces, proceeding from or put in motion in the street, which may again become physical force and take its place in the external world. The ego and the non-ego thus pass and repass into each other and are constantly changing places. INDIVIDUALITY.It is the form of thought peculiar to the organ of Individuality that gives oneness or unity to James Mill. CONSCIOUSNESS, AND ITS RELIABILITY. 27 these clusters of sensations. We individualize all our own parts and functions, and call it our body; we do the same with reference to the succession of our ideas, and call it our mind. IDENTITY.-The feeling of Personal Identity which we attach to this evanescent "cluster of ideas" which we call body and mind, results from a primitive mental faculty, or instinct, connected with its special organ in the brain. This is evidenced by the organ sometimes becoming diseased, when the feeling of Identity-the "I" of consciousness, becomes lost, or double, or otherwise deranged. BELIEF.-Each intellectual faculty and feeling supplies us with an instinct or intuition, and it is in the action of these faculties, in the intuitions supplied by them, that mankind necessarily believe. They furnish our fundamental truths. Faith or belief is not an action of the intellectual faculties, but a sentiment or feeling, and it is as easy to believe in one order of nature, or set of sequences, as in another, until experience or the intellect has determined what are permanent or invariable. Of course we can believe only in what we understand; when we are said to believe in the incomprehensible, we believe only in the testimony, or in so much only as we do understand. : CONSCIOUSNESS, AND ITS RELIABILITY.—And now comes the question are our Instincts or Intuitions worthy of belief? These intuitions, resulting from the action of our primitive faculties, constitute our Consciousness; -is the verdict of consciousness to be accepted without appeal, or can we reject its testimony? First, we must examine what is consciousness, and what is the nature of its verdict. James Mill says, "To have a feeling is to be conscious; and to be conscious is to have a feeling;" and J. S. Mill "To feel and not to know that we feel is an impossi says, |