LETTER VIII.

INTELLECTUAL OPERATIONS.

CONCEIVING.

DISCERNING AND

IN resuming the consideration of the second order in my proposed arrangement, I must first glance by the way at the fact already referred to, that most of the intellectual operations include and presuppose others. With the exception of perceiving, they can indeed, none of them, be considered as simple or uncombined.

Having representations or conceiving, implies having previously felt or perceived, or some other prior state of consciousness. Discerning, otherwise than through the organs of sense, includes conceiving: and reasoning includes both conceiving and discerning, and one species of it, believing.

In other words, although we may possibly perceive through the organs of sense, without any other conscious operation, we cannot conceive or have representations, without having previously perceived or felt what is thus represented to us; we cannot discern (when the organs of sense are not engaged) without recalling or remembering something on which our discernment is exercised; and we cannot reason without both remembering and

discerning, nor, in regard to contingent matters, without imagining and believing what we cannot know.

The operation which I have named discerning, and the reasons for so calling it, will require some explanation.

This term, it appears to me, or at least some equivalent general term, is needed to denote not only perception through the organs of sense, but all kinds of perception (if I may use the word for once in its most comprehensive acceptation), whether sensational or intellectual, external or internal, which are in fact frequently blended together.

If

This will be accomplished by adopting the term discerning as the name of the genus, and confining perceiving to that species of discernment which takes place through the organs of the senses. this is done, we may use the word discern in the latter case, either with or without mention of the senses; but when we wish to be at once brief and precise, we shall have recourse to the word per

ceive.

It frequently happens that our knowledge of a complex fact is the joint result of perceiving and conceiving, or recollecting.

I may observe, for example, that a certain house is a square building, by looking at it on all sides; but I do not perceive it to be square at once by the actual exercise of sight. I walk round it, and look successively at each angle, every one of which I

find to be a right angle, but at the moment of making the last observation, I only recollect that the others are right angles. I cannot, therefore, be said to perceive actually by sight that the whole building is square: but if we use the word discern in the sense above-mentioned, the whole process will be embraced, by saying that I discern the house to be square. I learn that it is so by comparing the angle in sight with the angles previously seen — what I perceive with what I recall.

This point will perhaps be still better illustrated by the hypothetical case which follows.

Suppose I am invited to look at the portrait of an eminent statesman whose person was before unknown to me. He is himself standing beside the picture when I enter the room, and from seeing both together, I pronounce it to be an excellent likeness. On another occasion, I visit it with a friend of the statesman in the absence of the original, and my companion, who sees the picture for the first time, agrees with me in adjudging it to be a faithful representation.

In the first case I may be said, with perfect correctness, to perceive the resemblance, as the two objects compared are both in sight; in the second case, my companion cannot be said to perceive, but he may be said to discern it, inasmuch as, although he perceives the picture, he only recollects the person represented by it. He compares what he perceives with what he remembers, and the result

is a discernment of the likeness of one to the other. Such nicety of designation, which would be needless, and might appear affected in common discourse, is essential for the accurate description of intellectual processes, and for correct deductions from them.

I will add another illustration. In geometrical reasoning, if I have a diagram before me, I may say either that I perceive the equality of two angles, or that I discern it through the organ of sight, or, making use of the generic term, simply that I discern it; but if I dispense with a diagram, and only conceive the figure, I can no longer say that I perceive the two things to be mutually equal; I must, if I adopt the suggested phraseology, affirm that I discern them to be so; and yet, except in the single point that the sight is exercised in one and not in the other, the two processes are exactly the same.

Philosophers are now, I think, agreed that it is desirable to have a general term exclusively appropriated to designate our cognisance of objects through the organs of the senses; and the word perceiving or perception seems to have better claims to the office than any other.

At the same time, the operation of distinguishing in those cases in which the organs of sense are not in exercise, is often so exactly the same as when they are, and the two species of operation are so perpetually blended together, that it is equally desirable to have a form of expression which may

be applied in common to both; and such a phrase we have in the generic term discerning.

A similar distinction, although in different language, and varying in some other respects, has been made by preceding writers, but it has seldom been rigorously adhered to. Harris, for example, divides perception into two kinds, sensitive and intellective, and if you wish to see how he treats them, you may consult his once celebrated "Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar." *

Before concluding this part of my subject, it may be necessary to notice a common mode of speaking about perception (to which, indeed, I alluded in a former Letter), as if it were an inferior task performed by those drudges, the senses. author last referred to may be cited in illustration: "When a truth is spoken," he says, "it is heard by our ears, and understood by our minds."

The

The philosophers who thus speak, evidently regard the senses, as acting indeed independently, but at the same time as only bringing objects before the understanding, which then proceeds to deal with them and subject them to its various processes; while my view of man as a percipient and intelligent being, leads me to consider the act of perceiving through the organs of sense to be as truly an intellectual operation as any other.

* See page 221. of the Works of James Harris, by his son, he Earl of Malmesbury.