50 perceive, is cheerful as themselves. In the very darkness of the storm, the cloud which hides the sunshine from their eye, does not hide it from their heart: while, to the sullen, no sky is bright, and no scene is fair. There are future fogs, which to their eyes, pollute and darken the purest airs of spring; and spring itself is known to them less as the season which follows and repairs the desolation of winter that is past, than as the season which announces its approaching return. The next secondary law of suggestion to which I proceed, is one akin to the last which we have considered. The primary laws are modified, not by constitutional and permanent differences only, but by differences which occur in the same individual, according to the varying emotion of the hour. As there are persons, whose general character is gloomy or cheerful, we have, in like maner, our peculiar days or moments in which we pass from one of these characters to the other, and in which our trains of thought are tinctured with the corresponding varieties. A mere change of fortune is often sufficient to alter the whole cast of sentiment. Those who are in possession of public station, and power and affluence, are accustomed to represent affairs in a favourable light: the disappointed competitors for place to represent them in the most gloomy light; and though much of this difference may, unquestionably, be ascribed to wilful mis-statement in both cases, much of it is, as unquestionably, referable to that difference of colouring in which objects appear to the successful and the unsuccessful. "Ask men's opinions ;-Scoto now shall tell How trade increases, and the world goes well, The same remark may be applied to the different periods of life, to the happy thoughtlessness of youth, and to the cautious, calculating sadness of old age. The comparative gaiety of our earlier years is not merely a cause, but an effect also, of the tendency of the mind, at that period, to suggest images of hope and pleasure, on almost every occasion. If even a slight momentary feeling of joy or sorrow have the power of modifying our suggestions, in accordance with it, emo * Pope's Moral Essays, Ep. I. v. 158-161. tions of a stronger and lasting kind must influence the trains of thought still more;—the meditations of every day rendering stronger the habitual connexions of such thoughts as accord with the peculiar frame of mind. It is in this way that every passion, which has one fixed object, such as love, jealousy, revenge, derives nourishment from itself, suggesting images that give it, in return, new force and liveliness. We see, in every thing, what we feel in ourselves; and the thoughts which external things seem to suggest, are thus, in part at least, suggested by the permanent emotion within. When Eloisa, in Pope's celebrated Epistle, thinks of the invention of letters, the only uses which her train of thought suggests, are those which are analogous to the circumstances of her own passion. "Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid, They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires The virgin's wish without her fears impart, The temporary diversities of state, that give rise to varieties of suggestion, are not mental only, but corporeal; and this difference of bodily state furnishes another secondary law, in modification of the primary. I need not refer to the extreme cases of intoxication or actual delirium,-to the copious flow of follies, which a little wine, or a few grains of opium, may extract from the proudest reasoner. In circumstances less striking, how different are the trains of thought in health and in sickness,—after a temperate meal and after a luxurious excess! It is not to the animal powers only, that the burthen of digestion may become oppressive, but to the intellectual also; and often to the intellectual powers even more than to the animal. In that most delightful of all states, when the bodily frame has recovered from disease, and when, in the first walk beneath the open sunshine, amid the blossoms and balmy air of summer, there is a mixture of corporeal and *V. 51-58. mental enjoyment, in which it is not easy to discriminate what images of pleasure arise from every object, that, in other states of health, might have excited no thought or emotion whatever. "See the wretch, that long has toss'd On the thorny bed of pain, There is yet another principle which modifies the primary laws of suggestion with very powerful influence. This is the Principle of habit. I do not speak of its influence in suggesting images, which have been already frequently suggested in a certain order, for it would then be simpler to reduce the habit itself to the mere power of association. I speak of cases, in which the images suggested may have been of recent acquisition, but are suggested more readily in consequence of general tendencies produced by prior habits. When men of different professions observe the same circumstances, listen to the same story, or peruse the same work, their subsequent suggestions are far from being the same; and could the future differences of the associate feelings that are to rise, be foreseen by us at the time, we should probably be able to trace many of them to former professional peculiarities, which are thus always unfortunately apt to be more and more aggravated by the very suggestions to which they have themselves given rise. The most striking example, however, of the power of habit in modifying suggestion, is in the command which it gives to the orator, who has long been practised in extemporary elocutión; a command not of words merely, but of thoughts and judgments, which, at the very moment of their sudden inspiration, appear like the long weighed calculations of deliberative reflection. The whole divisions of his subject start before him at once; image after image, as he proceeds, arises to illustrate it; and proper words in proper places are all the while embodying his sentiments, as if without the slightest effort of his own. * Gray's Ode, On the Pleasures arising from Vicissitude, Stanza vi. In addition then, to the primary laws of suggestion, which are founded on the mere relations of the objects or feelings to each other, it appears that there is another set of laws, the operation of which is indispensable to account for the variety in the effects of the former. To these I have given the name of secondary laws of suggestion ;—and we have seen, accordingly, that the suggestions are various as the original feelings have been, 1st, Of longer or shorter continuance; 2dly, More or less lively; 3dly, More or less frequently present; 4thly, More or less recent; 5thly, More or less pure, if I may so express it, from the mixture of other feelings; 6thly, That they vary according to differences of original constitution; 7thly, According to the differences of temporary emotion; 8thly, According to the changes produced in the state of the body; and, 9thly, According to general tendencies produced by prior habits. The first four laws, which relate rather to the momentary feelings themselves than to the particular frame of mind of the individual, have, it must be remembered, a double operation. When the two associate feelings have both, together, or in immediate succession, been of long continuance, very lively, frequently renewed in the same order, and that recently, the tendency to suggest each other is most powerful. But the greater tendency,— though then most remarkably exhibited,-is not confined to cases in which these laws are applicable to both the associate feelings. It is much increased, even when they apply only to that one which is second in the succession. The sight of an object which is altogether new to us, and which, therefore, could not have formed a stronger connexion with one set of objects than with another, will more readily recal to us, by its resemblance or other relation, such objects as have been long familiar to us, than others which may have passed frequently before us, but with which we are little acquainted. The sailor sees every where some near or distant similarity to the parts of his own ship; and the phraseology, so rich in nautical metaphors, which he uses, and applies, with most rhetorical exactness, even to objects perceived by him. for the first time, is a proof, that, for readiness of suggestion, it is not necessary that the secondary laws of suggestion should, in every particular case, have been applicable to both the suggesting and the suggested idea. Even one of these secondary laws, alone, may be sufficient to change completely the suggestion, which would otherwise have arisen from the operation of the primary laws; and it is not wonderful, therefore, that when many of them, as they usually do, concur in one joint effect, the result in different individuals should be so various. Of the whole audience of a crowded theatre, who witness together the representation of the same piece, there are probably no two individuals, who carry away the same images, though the resemblances, contiguities, contrasts, and in general what I have called the primary, in opposition to the secondary laws of suggestion, may have been the same to both. Some will perhaps think afterwards of the plot, and general developement of the drama; some, of the merits of the performers; some will remember little more, than that they were in a great crowd, and were very happy; a gay and dissipated young man will perhaps think only of the charms of some fascinating actress; and a young beauty will as probably carry away no remembrance so strong, as that of the eyes which were most frequently fixed upon hers. By the consideration of these secondary laws of suggestion, then, the difficulty, which the consideration of the primary laws left unexplained, is at once removed. We see now, how one suggestion takes place rather than another, when, by the operation of the mere primary laws, many suggestions might arise equally; the influence of the secondary laws modifying this general tendency, and modifying it, of course, variously, as themselves are various. |