The senses and the intellect.

  • Bain, Alexander, 1818-1903.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The senses and the intellect. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    constructions of a higher order of complexity. There are discoveries that seem nothing short of absolute creations, as, for example, the whole science of Mathematics ; while, in the Tine Arts, a frieze of the Parthenon, a Gothic cathedral, a Paradise Lost, are very far beyond the highest stretches of the identifying faculty taken by itself. Nevertheless, the intellectual forces operating in those creations, are no other than the associating forces already discussed. Tlie new combinations grow out of elements already possessed by the mind, and brought to view according to the laws above laid down. MECHANICAL CONSTEUCTIVENESS. 2. In our mechanical education, complex and difficult actions are acquired by taking the simple acts separately. We learn part No. 1 by itself; then part No. 2, No. 3, and the rest; when each of these parts is attained, an effort of volition joins them together. Mechanical combinations are usually formed by succes- sive additions. A certain movement is mastered; another is entered on by itself, and when mastered is added to the first. In military drill, in learning to manipulate, or to dance, each step is practised alone; when two have been attained in separation, they can be performed together, merely by willing it. A third and fourth are added in the same way. Tliere is no new difficulty in grouping or combining the distinct operations. Any awkwardness in the imited effort is mainly owing to the separate parts not being fully confirmed. Our mechanical acquirements often demand the suppres- sion of one member of a complex action, a decomposition, as it were, of some of the primitive associated movements. In this case, a voluntary effort is directed upon the member whose movement is to be suppressed. In walking, there is a natural tendency to swing the arms and the body along with the lower limbs. By a volition, these extra movements may be arrested, and the primitive aggregate reduced to a more select aggregate.