figure of the object implies a knowledge of the relative situation of the different points with respect to each other, we must conclude that the perception of the figure by the eye, is the result of a number of different acts of attention. These acts of attention, however, are performed with such rapidity, that the effect, with respect to us, is the same as if the perception were instantaneous.

Corol. 1. If the perception of visible figure were an immediate consequence of the picture on the retina, we should have at the first glance, as distinct an idea of a figure of a thousand sides, as of a triangle or a square; for when the figure is very simple, the process of the mind is so rapid, that the perception seems to be instantaneous; but when the sides are multiplied beyond a certain number, the interval of time necessary for these different acts of attention becomes perceptible.

2. If these reasonings be admitted, it will follow, that without the faculty of memory, we could have no perception of visible figure.

CHAPTER V.

OF CONCEPTION.

139. CONCEPTION is that faculty of the mind which enables us to form a notion of an absent object of perception; or of a sensation which it has formerly felt.

Illus. When a painter paints a picture of a friend who is absent or dead, he is commonly said to paint from memory; and the expression is sufficiently correct for common conversation. But, in an analysis of the powers of the mind, there is ground for a distinction between conception and the other powers, with some of which it is often confounded. The power of conception enables the painter to make the features of his friend an object of thought, so as to copy the resemblance; the power of memory recognizes these features as a former object of perception. Thus, conception is distinguished from memory. Every act of memory includes an idea of the past; conception implies no idea of time whatever. Note. Shakespeare calls this power the mind's eye.

Hamlet. My father! Methinks I see my father.
Horatio. Where, my lord?

Hamlet. In my mind's eye, Horatio.

HAMLET, Act 1. Scene 4.

140. Conception corresponds, according to the view we have taken of it, to what the schoolmen call simple apprehension; with this difference only, that they include, under this name, our apprehension of general propositions ; whereas the word conception is, in this volume, limited to our sensations and the objects of our perceptions.

Illus. This distinction is warranted by the authority of philosóphers in a case perfectly analogous. Thus, in ordinary language, we apply the same word perception, to the knowledge which we have by our senses of external objects, and to our knowledge of a speculative truth. And between the conception of a truth, and the conception of an absent object of sense, there is obviously as wide a difference, as between the perception of a tree, and the perception of a mathematical theorem. Conception, therefore, is that faculty whose province it is to enable us to form a notion of our past sensations, or of the objects of sense that we have formerly perceived.

141. Conception is frequently used as synonymous with imagination, but imagination is distinguished from conception as a part from a whole.

Illus. The business of conception is to present us with an exact transcript of what we have felt or perceived. But we have, moreover, a power of modifying our conceptions, by combining the parts of different conceptions together, so as to form new wholes of our own creation. This power, according to Mr. Stewart, is expressed by the word imagination; and he apprehends, that this is the proper sense of the word; if imagination be the power which gives birth to the productions of the poet and the painter. This is not a simple faculty of the mind, for it presupposes abstraction, to separate from each other, qualities and circumstances which have been perceived in conjunction; and also judgment and taste to direct us in forming the combinations.

Obs. People, in common discourse, often use the phrase thinking upon an object, to express what we have illustrated as the conception of it. Shakespeare, whose talent for pilosophizing was equal to his imaginative powers as a poet, uses, in the following passage, the former of these phrases in the same sense as we should use conception, and the words imagination and apprehension as synony mous with each other.

-Who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December's snow,
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat;
Oh no! the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.
K. RICHARD II. Act 1. Scene 6.

142. We can conceive the objects of some senses much more easily than those of others. And, first, as to visible objects; we can conceive the structure of a building that is familiar to us, much more easily than a particular sound, a particular taste, or a particular pain which we have formerly felt.

Illus. The peculiarity in the case of visible objects seems to arise from this; that when we think of a sound or of a taste, the object.

"

of our conception is one single detached sensation; whereas every visible object is complex; and the conception that we form of it is aided by the association of ideas. We attend not, at one instant, to every point of the picture of an object on the retina (Corol. 1. Art. 138); nor at one instant, therefore, do we form a conception of the whole of any visible object; but our conception of the object as a whole, is the result of many conceptions. The association of ideas connects the different parts together, and presents them to the mind in their proper arrangement; and the various relations which these parts bear to one another in point of situation, contribute greatly to strengthen the associations. This illustration is confirmed by the fact, that it is more easy to remember a succession of sounds, than any particular sound which we have heard detached and unconnected. The war hoop of the American Indians, the yell of Cossacks, the shout of victory, or any cry that alarmed or encouraged us, may be considered a particular sound, but the conception of such a sound depends on the association of ideas.

143. The power of conceiving visible objects, like other powers that depend on the association of ideas, may be greatly improved by habit.

Illus. A person accustomed to drawing, retains a much more perfect notion of a building or of a landscape, which he has seen, than one who has never practised that art. A portrait painter traces the forms of the human body from memory with as little exertion as he employs in writing the letters which compose his name.

144. Secondly. In the power of conceiving colours, too, there are striking differences among individuals; and probably, in the greater number of instances, the supposed defects of sight, in this respect, ought rather to be ascribed to a defect in the power of conception, than in the organ of the perception of colour.

Illus. We often see two men who are perfectly sensible of the difference between two colours when they are presented to them, who cannot give names to these colours with confidence, when they see them apart; and are perhaps apt to confound the one with the other. They feel the sensation of colour like other men, it should seem, when the object is present, but are incapable, probably in consequence of some early habit of inattention, to conceive the sensation distinctly when the object is removed. Without this power of conception, Mr. Stewart thinks, that it is evidently impossible for them, how lively soever their sensations may be, to give a name to any colour; for the application of the name supposes not only a capacity of receiving the sensation, but a power of compa ring it with one formerly felt. In some cases, perhaps, the sensa tion is not felt at all; and in others, the faintness of the sensation may be one cause of those habits of inattention, from which the incapacity of conception has arisen.

145. Thirdly. A talent for lively description, at least in the case of sensible objects, depends chiefly on the degree

in which the describer posseses the power of conception. Nor is it merely to the accuracy of our description, in common conversation, that this power is subservient; it contributes more than any thing else to render them striking and expressive to others, by guiding us to a selection of such circumstances as are most prominent and characteristical.

Obs. The best rule for descriptive composition, is, to attend to those rules which make the deepest impression on our own minds. Now these particulars are in general the outline; and it is the province of conception to neglect a minute specification of particulars, and to select only such as struck us most at the moment the object we are describing from recollection was present to our view. A person may therefore write a happier description of an object, from the conception than from the actual perception of that object.

146. The foregoing observations, with their respective illustrations, apply to conception as distinguished from imagination. The two faculties, we observed, are very nearly allied; and are frequently so blended and compounded, that it is difficult to say, to which of the two, some particular operations of the mind are to be referred. There are also general facts which hold equally with respect to both. 147. The exercise both of conception and imagination is always accompanied with a belief that their objects exist.

Illus. 1. Thus, when the imagination is very lively, as in dreaming and madness, a real existence is ascribed to its objects; and in the case too of those who, in spite of their own general belief of the absurdity of the vulgar stories of apparitions, dare not trust themselves alone with their own imaginations in the dark, we have all the evidence that the thing admits of, that imagination is attended with belief. Dr. Reid's friend, who could not sleep in a room alone, nor go alone into a room in the dark, felt and acted in the same manner as he would have done, if he had believed that the objects of his fear were real, which is the only proof that the philosophers produce, or can produce, of the belief which accompanies perception.

2. The painter who conceives the face and figure of an absent friend, in order to draw his picture, believes, for the moment, that his friend is before him. The belief is only momentary, for it is extremely difficult, in our waking hours, to keep up a steady and undivided attention to any object we conceive or imagine; and as soon as the conception or imagination is over, the belief which attended it is at an end. We, in fact, consider them as creations of the mind, which have no separate and independent existence, from the facility with which we can recal or dismiss the objects of these powers at pleasure. But when the conceptions of the mind are rendered steady and permanent, by being strongly associated with any sensible impression, as when we gaze on a magnificent prospect, they command our belief no less that our actual perceptions, and, therefore, if it were possible for us, with our eyes shut, to keep

up for a length of time, the conception of the immense extent of the whole scene that had formerly engaged our eyes, we should, as long as this effort continued, believe that all the different parts of which it was composed, were present to our senses.

148. The knowledge we obtain by the eye, of the tangible qualities of bodies, is the result of a complex operation of the mind; comprehending, first, the perception of those qualities, which are the proper and original objects of sight; and, secondly, the conception of those tangible qualities, of which the original perceptions of sight are found from experience to be the signs.

Corol. The notions, therefore, we form by means of the eye, of the tangible qualities of bodies, and of the distances of these objects from the organ, are mere conceptions; strongly and indeed indissolubly, associated, by early and constant habit, with the original perceptions of sight.

149. The effects which exhibitions of fictitious distress produce on the mind, may all be resolved into the conceptions we have, for the moment, that the whole is real.

Illus. 1. During the representation of a tragedy, we have a general conviction that the whole is a fiction; but, I believe, no person ever witnessed Mrs. Siddons, Miss O'Neill, Mr. John Kemble, and Mr. Kean, in tragedy, who did not partake in the emotions which those artists created; who did not entertain a momentary belief that the distresses, which were but fictitious, were actually real. But whence arose this belief? whence the conception?but from the contagion spread by the faithful expression of the passions.

2. The emotions produced by tragedy are, thence, analogous to the dread we feel when we look down from the battlements of a tower;-or the horror which seizes a person, who, fleeing from a conflagration, escapes from the top of a house, by a path, which, at another time, he would have considered as impracticable ;-or to the astonishment of soldiers, who, in mounting a breach, have found their way to the enemy, by a route which appeared inaccessible after their violent passions had subsided. We have a general conviction that there is no ground for the feelings which we experience during the representation of a tragedy, or when we look down from the battlements of a tower, any more than the person who has escaped from the fire has to feel horror at the recollection of the imminent danger he was in as he traversed the hazardous path, or than the soldier's wonder at himself in having scrambled by a route the bare contemplation of which suspends his curiosity to retrace his footsteps.