Volume 1

On intelligence / by H. Taine ; translated from the French by T.D. Haye, and revised by the author.

Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On intelligence / by H. Taine ; translated from the French by T.D. Haye, and revised by the author. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    II. Different sensations have not all this aptitude for revival in an equal degree—Examples—General circumstances augmenting this aptitude —Extreme attention, voluntary or involuntary—The persistence of impressions acquired in infancy is thus explained—In what atten- tion consists—Competition between our different images—The Law of Natural Selection is applicable to Mental Events—Another cir- cumstance which augments the aptitude for revival—Repetition— Examples—Why these two circumstances augment the aptitude for revival PAGE 78 III. Special circumstances calling up, at a particular moment, one image rather than another—Example—The reviving image has already, either by contiguity or by similitude, commenced to revive—Why partial revival excites complete revival 82 IV. Absence of the indicated circumstances—Want of attention—Want of repetition—Enormous number of sensations which thus lose their aptitude for revival—Cases in which two tendencies neutralize each other—Repetition and variety of experience blunt the image— Origin of general names, and of the vague images accompanying them—The majority of our sensations do not exist in our minds in the state of express images, but in the state of dull consecutive tendencies 86 V. General views as to the history of images and ideas—They are in perpetual conflict for preponderance—Effect of internal laws and external incidents in determining which preponderate—Temporary obliteration, prolonged or definitive, of a whole group of images— Partial and total paralysis of memory, excited by fatigue, loss of blood, blows, apoplexy—Examples—Forgetfulness of names—For- getfulness of spoken names, but not of the meaning of written names—Restoration of lost faculties—Appearance of new faculties —Examples—Aptitudes and faculties are connected with the organic state—Possibility of two organic states severed from one another, and recurring periodically in the same individual—Case of an American lady—Two lives and two mental states may thus be met with in the same person—Instances—In what the moral personality consists—Two moral personalities may succeed one another in the same individual—What forms the continuity of a distinct moral person is the continuous revival of the same distinct group of images 90