before considered,-when, at a distance from home, and after an interval of years, we listen to any simple song with which the remembrance of a friend of our youth is connected, how many circumstances not merely rise again, but rush upon us together? The friend himself,-the scene where we last sat and listened to him,-the domestic circle that listened with us, a thousand circumstances of that particular period, which had perhaps escaped us, are again present to our mind: and with all these is mingled the actual perception of the song itself. As the parts of the song succeed each other, they call up occasionally some new circumstance of the past; but we do not, on that account, lose the group which were before assembled. The new circumstance is only added to them, and the song still continues to blend with the whole, the pleasure of its own melody, or rather mingling with them in mutual diffusion, at once gives and borrows delight.

If this virtual co-existence, in the sense now explained, which I trust you will always understand as the sense intended by me, be true, of the case in which perception mingles with suggestion,-it is true, though in a less remarkable degree, of our conceptions alone. Had the same ballad, as in the former case, not been actually sung, but merely suggested by some accidental circumstance, though our emotion would have been less lively, and though fewer objects and events, connected with the scene, might have arisen, it would still probably have suggested the friend, the place, the time, and many other circumstances, not in separate and exclusive succession, like the moving figures of a continued train, but multiplying and mingling as they arose. Of the innumerable objects of external sense, which pass before our eyes, in the course of a day, how many are there, which excite only a momentary sensation, forgotten, almost as soon as it is felt; while, on many others, we dwell with the liveliest interest. In like manner, there are many of our ideas of suggestion, which are as indifferent to us, as the thousand objects that flit before our eyes. They exist, therefore, but for a moment, or little more than a moment, and serve only for the suggestion of other ideas, some of which, perhaps, may be equally short-lived, while others, more lively and interesting, pause longer in the mind,—and, though they suggest ideas connected with themselves, continue with them, and survive, perhaps, the very conceptions which they suggest. I look at a volume on my table,-it recalls to me the friend from whom I received it,the remembrance of him suggests to me the conception of his family,-of an evening which I spent with them, and of various subjects of our conversation. Yet the conception of my friend may continue, mingled, indeed, with various conceptions, as they rise successively, but still co-existing with them,-and is, perhaps, the very part of the complex group, that, after a long train of thought, during which it had been constantly present, suggests at last some new conception, that introduces a different train of its own, of which the conception of my friend no longer forms a part.

But for this continuance and co-existence, of which I speak, I cannot but think, that the regular prosecution of any design would be absolutely impossible. When we sit down to study a particular subject, we must have a certain conception, though probably a dim and shadowy one, of the subject itself. To study it, however, is not to have that conception alone, but to have successively various other conceptions, its relations to which we endeavour to trace. The conception of our particular subject, therefore, must, in the very first stage of our progress, suggest some other conception. But this second con

ception, if it alone were present, having various relations of its own, as well as its relation to the subject which suggested it, would probably excite a third conception, which had no reference to the original subject,—and this third, a fourth, and thus a whole series, all equally unrelated to the subject which we wished to study. It would hence seem impossible, to think of the same subject, even for a single minute. Yet we know that the fact is very different, and that we often occupy whole hours in this manner, without any remarkable deviation from our original design. Innumerable conceptions, indeed, arise during this time, but all are more or less intimately related to the subject, by the continued conception of which they have every appearance of being suggested; and, if it be allowed, that the conception of a particular subject both suggests trains of conceptions, and continues to exist together with the conceptions which it has suggested, every thing for which I contend, in the present case, is implied in the admission.

The

What would be that selection of images, of which poets speak, if their fancy suggested only a fleeting series of consecutive images? To select, implies not the succession, but the co-existence of objects of choice; and there can be no discrimination and preference of parts of a train of thought, if each separate part have wholly ceased to exist, when another has arisen. conception of beauty calls up some immediate image to the poetic mind, and kindred images after images arise,—not fading, however, at each suggestion, but spreading out all their mingled loveliness, to that eye, which is to choose and reject. With what exquisite truth and beauty is this process described, by one, to whom the process was familiar, and who knew well to draw from it its happiest results!

"Thus at length

Endow'd with all that nature can bestow,
The child of Fancy oft in silence bends

O'er these mix'd treasures of his pregnant breast,
With conscious pride. From them he oft resolves
To frame he knows not what excelling things,
And win he knows not what sublime reward
Of praise and wonder. By degrees the mind
Feels her young nerves dilate-the plastic powers
Labour for action :-blind emotions heave
His bosom ;-and with loveliest frenzy caught,
From earth to heaven he rolls his daring eye,
From heaven to earth. Anon ten thousand shapes,
Like spectres trooping to the wizard's call,
Flit swift before him. From the womb of earth,
From ocean's bed they come; the eternal heavens
Disclose their splendours, and the dark abyss
Pours out her births unknown. With fixed gaze
He marks the rising phantoms :-now compares

Their different forms, now blends them, now divides,
Enlarges and extenuates by turns,

Opposes, ranges in fantastic bands,

And infinitely varies. Hither now,

Now thither, fluctuates his inconstant aim

With endless choice perplex'd. At length his plan

Begins to open. Lucid order dawns;

And as from Chaos old the jarring seeds

Of nature, at the voice divine repair'd
Each to its place, till rosy carth unveil'd
Her fragrant bosom, and the joyful sun
Sprung up the blue serene; by swift degrees
Thus disentangled, his entire design
Emerges. Colours mingle, features join,

And lines converge -the fainter parts retire,
The fairer, eminent in light, advance,

And every image on its neighbour smiles."*

There is, then, it appears, a continued co-existence of some of our associate feelings with the feelings which they suggest. And it is well for us, that nature has made this arrangement. I do not speak at present of its importance to our intellectual powers, as essential to all continuity of design, and to every wide comparison of the relations of things, for this I have already endeavoured to demonstrate to you. I speak of the infinite accession which it affords to our happiness and affections. By this, indeed, we acquire the power of fixing, in a great degree, our too fugitive enjoyments, and concentrating them in the objects which we love. When the mother caresses her infant, the delight which she feels is not lost in the moment, in which it appears to fade. It still lives in the innocent and smiling form that inspired it, and is suggested again, when the idea of that smile passes across her mind. An infinity of other pleasures are, in the progress of life, associated in like manner; and with these additional associations, the feeling which her child excites, becomes proportionately more complex. It is not the same unvarying image, exciting the remembrance, first of one pleasure, and then of another, for, in that case, the whole delight would not, at any one moment, be greater than if the two feelings alone co-existed; but a thousand past feelings are present together, and continuing with the new images which themselves awake, produce one mingled result of tenderness, which it would be impossible distinctly to analyze. Why is it, that the idea of our home, and of our country, has such powerful dominion over us, that the native of the most barren soil, when placed amid fields of plenty, and beneath a sunshine of eternal spring, should still sigh for the rocks, and the wastes, and storms which he had left?

"But where to find that happiest spot below,
Who can direct, when all pretend to know?
The shuddering tenant of the frigid zone
Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own;
Extols the treasures of his stormy seas,
And his long night of revelry and ease.

The naked negro, panting at the Line,

Boasts of his golden sands, and palmy wine,
Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave,

And thanks his gods for all the good they gave."+

In vain may we labour to think, with Varro, as a consolation in banishment, that, "wherever we go, we must still have the same system of nature around us,"—or, with Marcus Brutus, that, whatever else may be torn from the exile, "he is still permitted at least to carry with him his own virtues.' In vain may we peruse the arguments, with which Seneca quaintly attempts to show, that there can be no such thing as banishment, since the country of a wise man is, wherever there is good,-and the existence of what is good for him depends, not on the accident of place, but on his own will. Exulabis. Non patria mihi interdicitur, sed locus. In quamcumque terram venio, in meam venio. Nulla terra exilium est. Altera patria est. Patria est, ubicumque bene est; illud autem, per quod bene est, in homine, non * Pleasures of Imagination, Book III. v. 373–408. ↑ Goldsmith's Poems,-Traveller,-v. 63–72.

in loco est. In ipsius potestate est, quæ sit illi fortuna. Si sapiens est, peregrinatur; si stultus, exulat." All this reminds us of the Stoic, who, tortured with bodily pain, and expressing the common signs of agony, still maintained, at intervals, with systematic obstinacy, that this was no affliction :

'Pain's not an ill, he utters-with a groan.'

And if it was truly during the period of his dismal residence in Corsica, that the philosopher made this vain attempt to prove the impossibility of banishment, it is probable, that, while he was thus laboriously endeavouring to demonstrate that his country was still with him, on the barren rocks to which he was condemned, his own Corduba or Rome was rising on his memory, with painful tenderness; and that the very arguments, with which he strove to comfort himself, would be read by him, not with a groan, perhaps, but at least with an inward sigh. His poetry was, unquestionably, far more true to nature than his philosophy,—if he was indeed the author of those pathetic poems on his exile, in some verses of which, he speaks of the banished, as of those on whom the rites of burial, that separate them from the world, had been already performed, and prays the earth of Corsica to lie light on the ashes of the living

"Parce relegatis, hoc est jam parce sepultis.*
Vivorum cineri sit tua terra levis."t

In the instance of Seneca, indeed, whose relegation was not the effect of crime on his part, but of the artifices of an adulterous empress, the remembrances attached to the land from which he was separated, may be supposed to have been more powerful, because they were not accompanied with feelings of remorse and shame, that might have rendered the very thought of return painful to the criminal. But in the bosom of the criminal himself, there is still some lingering affection, which these dreadful feelings are not able wholly to subdue; and he returns, at the risk of life itself, to the very land which had thrown him from her bosom, and marked him with infamy. There is, perhaps, no human being, however torpid in vice, and lost to social regard, who can return, after a long absence, to the spot of his birth, and look on it with indifference, and to whom the name of his country presents no other image, than that of the place in which he dwells.

What, then, is this irresistible power which the mere sound of home can exercise over our mind? It surely does not arise from the suggestion of a number of conceptions, or other feelings, in separate succession; for no single part of this succession could of itself be sufficiently powerful. It is because home does not suggest merely a multitude of feelings, but has itself become the name of an actual multitude; and though, in proportion as we dwell on it longer, it suggests more and more additional images, still these are only added to the group which formerly existed, and increase the general effect; which could not be the case, if the suggestion of a single new idea extinguished all those which had preceded it. It is probable even, that there is no one interesting object, which has been of frequent occurrence, that is precisely the same as it arises to our mind at different times, ↑ Senecæ Epig. ad Corsicam, v. 7, 8.

* Al. solutis.

but that it is always more or less complex, being combined with conceptions or other feelings that co-existed with it when present to the mind on former occasions. The very circumstance of its being interesting, and therefore lively, will render it less fugitive whenever it occurs in a train of thought, and will thus give it an opportunity of combining itself with more ideas of the train, which, though accidentally mingled with it at the time, may still, from the laws of suggestion, form with it, afterwards, one complex and inseparable whole.

What extensive applications may be made of this doctrine of the continuance of the suggesting feeling, in co-existence with the feelings which it suggests, will be seen, when we proceed to the consideration of various intellectual phenomena, and still more, of our emotions in general, particularly of those which regard our taste and our moral affections. It is this condensation of thoughts and feelings, indeed, on which, in a great measure, depends that intellectual and moral progress, of which it is the noblest excellence of our being, even in this life, to be susceptible, and which may be regarded as a pledge of that far nobler progression which is to be our splendid destiny in the unceasing ages that await us, when the richest acquisitions of the sublimest genius, to which we have looked almost with the homage of adoration on this mortal scene, may seem to us like the very rudiments of infant thought. Even then, however, the truths which we have been capable of attaining here, may still, by that condensation and diffusion of which I have spoken, form an element of the transcendent knowledge which is to comprehend all the relations of all the worlds in infinity, as we are now capable of tracing the relations of the few planets that circle our sun; and, by a similar diffusion, those generous affections, which it has been our delight to cultivate in our social communion on earth, may not only prepare for us a purer and more glorious communion, but be themselves constituent elements of that ever increasing happiness, which, still prolonging, and still augmenting the joys of virtue, is to reward, through immortality, the sufferings, and the toils, and the struggles of its brief mortal career.

LECTURE XL.

REASONS FOR Preferring the term suggestION, TO THE PHRASE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.

THE latter part of my Lecture of yesterday, gentlemen, was employed, in illustrating a distinction, which seems to me of great consequence, in its applications to the whole theory of the intellectual phenomena, the distinction of the trains of our thought from other trains of which we are accustomed to speak, in this most important circumstance, that, in our mental sequences, the one feeling, which precedes and induces another feeling, does not, necessarily, on that account, give place to it; but may continue, in that virtual sense of combination, as applied to the phenomena of the mind, of which I have often spoken,-to co-exist with the new feeling which it