not exist in the subject; they do not exist in what is called the world of space, for they are not corporeal; where, then, do they or can they exist? There is but one answer to be given to this question; it is that they EXIST IN TIME as bodies do in space. Memory, though involving much which is, in the present state of our knowledge, wholly inexplicable, may be defined, THE SUBJECT PERCEIVING IN TIME.

This view of Memory, which, I believe, is not a very common one, though not altogether original with me, is of very great importance, and may help us to explain some phenomena which have hitherto been inexplicable. It recognizes a world of Time as well as a world of space, and in man the power of perceiving in the one world as well as in the other. On any other view of memory, time would have no meaning, would have no contents. The future we should say is not yet, and the past has ceased to be. There would, then, remain only the present, which is a mere point, and the type, if I may so speak, not of time, but of Eternity, that is, of No-time. Space marks the relations which bodies hold to each other, not merely as they exist in our mind, as Kant maintains, but as they exist in the Divine Mind, that is, as they really exist. Time marks the order in which events succeed, and not only the order of the events which have been, but also of the events which are to be. Events bear, then, the same relation to time, that bodies do to space, and perception of the events is properly perception in time, as perception of bodies is perception in space.

But time has two divisions, the Past and the Future. Memory is the subject PERCEIVING IN THE PAST; but may we not also perceive in the future? Cannot man look before as well as after? Does not the prophetic element, then, bear the same relation to the soul that the historical does? and is not PROPHECY found to be a fact as well attested in man's history as Memory itself? It may, or it may not exist in as great a degree; man may not have the same power of foresight that he has of after-sight; yet the power to foresee is as unquestionable and as universal as the power to

remember. Every man presages to a greater or less extent, has always a more or less vivid presentiment of what is to fall out. Most people can relate some remarkable instances of foresight or presentiment which have occurred in the course of their experience.

This FORESIGHT is not always clear and distinct, but in general feeble and confused; and so is it with our perception of bodies in space. It is only here and there one that is distinctly marked; the greater portion coming within the range of our vision are perceived only confusedly, as are the small particles of water which compose the wave I see rolling in upon the beach, or the hum of each separate insect which goes to make up the total hum of the swarm to which I listen. In Memory, too, our perceptions are for the most part of the same confused character. We often foresee with as much distinctness as we remember; and the objects of which we have a presentiment, not unfrequently stand out before us in as clear and as brilliant a light as the objects we perceive in space, and are capable of being discerned with equal ease and exactness.

Leibnitz contends that we not only have a reminiscence of all our past thoughts, but a PRESENTIMENT of all our thoughts, though in a confused manner, without distinguishing them. The fact that we perceive only in a confused manner without distinguishing one perception from another, makes nothing against the fact that we do perceive. We must not suppose that our actual perceptions are confined to the few distinct perceptions in which we not only perceive but apperceive. The me, or subject, is essentially active and percipient; the object, all nature, is always before it, around it, and streaming into it with ten thousand influences, each of which must, from the nature of the case, be perceived; for, unperceived, they would not and could not be influences; they would be as if they were not. In deep sleep, in fainting, in stupor, there is percep tion, but no apperception; or how otherwise could we awaken, or return, or be recalled, to consciousness? We close the eyelids unconsciously, when any foreign body approaches the eyes. We are at times swayed to and fro,

are powerfully affected, we know not how, and cannot tell wherefore. We experience the most pleasurable, or the most painful sensations, without a clear or distinct perception of any external cause. When we walk for our pleasure, we not seldom take one direction rather than another, without any reason of which we are conscious; and when we walk, lost in revery, or rapt in our own meditations, we turn aside, and with perfect unconsciousness carefully avoid the obstructions to our progress, which may be lying in our pathway. We must needs perceive what comes within the range of our organs of perception; and yet we seldom mark the roar of the Ocean near which we live, breaking on the distant beach; the hum of the city through which we daily pass; the rich and varied beauty of the landscape which has been lying spread out before us in warm sunlight from our childhood; and yet these influence our characters, and nice observers can easily tell, on seeing and conversing for a short time with a stranger, the general description of the natural scenery amidst which he has been brought up. Objects are constantly before us which we do not note; sounds are perpetually ringing in our ears of which we are unconscious; and yet remove those objects, silence those sounds, and we should instantly miss them; a sense of loneliness or desertion would come over us, and we should look around to find that of which, when present, we took no notice. These considerations, and many more of the same kind, warrant the induction, that we may perceive without apperceiving, and that we are never to assume that we do not perceive, when all the conditions of perception are present, merely be cause we do not distinguish our perceptions one from another, or because they are too numerous and too rapid in their transit across the plane of our vision, to allow us to clothe them with form, and thus convert them into thoughts. While, then, we may say with Locke, that the soul does not always think, we must still contend with Leibnitz, that it always perceives, and everywhere.

These feeble, confused, undistinguished perceptions, play a very important part in the conduct of life. It

is by them that we must explain what are called involuntary actions. By them we are also able to account for a great variety of phenomena, which without them would be wholly inexplicable. Assuming that we may perceive without apperceiving, and in the world of time as well as in the world of space, we can readily account for the fact that we are so seldom surprised when we become conscious of perceiving, and for the fact long ago noted by Plato, and by him made the basis of his argument for the immortality of the soul, that all knowledge comes to us ever as a reminiscence, as something which we have previously known, and now suddenly remember. When a man utters a new and striking thought in my hearing, I seem to myself to have had that thought before. In all my observations on nature, in all my reflections on science, art, and morals, I seem to myself, for the most part, to be reviewing what I had before seen, though hastily and imperfectly. The authors who take hold of the popular heart, and enter into the life of their race as its restorers, rarely surprise us; they seem to us to be saying what we all had always thought or felt, but had never been able to express, and had never before heard expressed. This is precisely the effect we should look for in case we had, as Leibnitz says, "a presentiment of all our thoughts." The soul had had a presentiment, a dim and confused perception, before the clear and distinct view which converts the perception into a thought. What is subsequently thought had, as it were, in some degree, been foreseen and predicted. Hence we find that prophecy never surprises us; and the bulk of mankind, they who are not prejudiced by systems and theories, find no difficulty à priori in crediting to the fullest extent, those individuals who from time to time stand out from their race as the providential representatives of the prophetic power of our nature. Our power of clear and distinct perception in time as well as in space, varies with the state of our mind and body. We know by experience, that in our own case the power to foresee in certain states of nervous excitement or exaltation of sentiment, in trance, or what the Alexandrian philosophers called ecstasy, is altogether greater

and more certain than in our ordinary state. Hence the Pythoness who gave forth her oracles in her moments of almost convulsive excitement, natural or artificial, may readily have perceived what she predicted. The belief in oracles among the heathen, then, as well as in the prophets and seers among the Hebrews, may have had something solid at bottom.

To the same power of perceiving without apperceiving, and of perceiving in time, as well as in space, must be attributed our faith in the order and stability of nature. On this faith is founded the whole conduct of life; and yet it is no induction from experience, and no logical inference from the immutability of the Creator. It is never obtained by a logical process. Because the sun rose to-day, or because I have seen it rise for a thousand days, I cannot say that it will rise to-morrow. Men, too, have this faith, who never think of inferring it from the experience of the past. It is not inferred from the immutability of the Creator; for it may be found where there is no belief in the Creator, and where men have not asked themselves, if the immutability of the Creator involves the immutability of the creation. Nor is it inferable from the immutability of the Creator. We all admit that God is immutable, but none of us admit the immutability of creation. If we have a right to infer the order and stability of nature from the fact that God is immutable, it is only because this fact . implies that there can be no change in his works. If no change in his works, then, no progress, no deterioration; all is fixed, immovable. And yet in the case of man, we know this is not true. Humanity is capable both of improve

ment and of deterioration. There are no data from which this faith can be in

ferred, and, as a matter of fact, it

never is an inference. Yet all men have it, and in every act of their lives, in the least and the greatest, presuppose it. Whence comes it? The soul perceives in time, and in time future, as well as in time past. It has always a presentiment of the continuance of this order and stability, which must survive, whatever the changes nature may undergo.

To this same power we must at tribute our faith in our own personal

identity, a faith which we retain, notwithstanding the perpetual interruptions of consciousness, as in deep sleep when we do not dream, in fainting, and stupor. These interruptions never shake our faith in our own identity. We are always the same, invariable, persisting subject. The subject finds itself, recognizes its own existence only in its acts. It is not think; and therefore, if it acted only always conscious, does not always when it thought, it would at times lose all sense of itself, which in point of fact never happens. It perceives, always; and in all perception it acts; and in all acting, however feeble or confused, it must have a feeble and obscure sense of its own being;-too feeble and obscure, it may be, to give it a clear and distinct consciousness, yet always sufficient to keep alive a faith in its own identity and persist

ence.

The fact here touched upon, might perhaps carry us farther yet, and account, in some manner, for our faith in Immortality, and, at the same time, show us that the substance of that faith rests on as high a degree of certainty as that which we have of our présent existence. The faith in Immortality, which in some form is, and always has been the universal faith of mankind, is after all nothing but the faith which we have in our identity and persistence, and requires no other conditions. It is a presentiment of the soul, an actual perception in time, shading off as all time does into eternity.

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How the soul can perceive in time, past or future, is no doubt inexplicable; There is no more mystery in the one so is it, how it can perceive in space. case than in the other. All we can do, is to determine what it perceives; how it perceives, we shall never be in all we shall ever be able to do, is to say a condition to explain. All we can do, that it perceives because it is essentially a percipient activity, which after all is only saying simply that it per

ceives.

$3. Imagination.

IMAGINING or Imagination, is commonly reckoned among the original facul

ties of the soul; but it is more properly a fact of human life, implying the presence and activity of all the faculties. As an operation of the mind, taken in a broad and perhaps loose sense, it is hardly a simple operation, but partakes in some degree of reasoning as well as of perceiving, and of perceiving in time as well as in space; yet taken strictly, it is in the main, if not entirely, a mere mode or degree of perceiving, and therefore appropriately enough treated under the general head of PERCEPTION.

The name of this operation is borrowed, not from what may be regarded as its essence, but from one of its incidents, or frequent, though not unfailing, accompaniments. Taken literally, the word implies the act of representing by images, and perhaps, the act of so representing actual existences; but the operation itself is chiefly concerned with ideal existences; and its essence consists rather in the degree of intenseness and energy with which those existences are perceived, than in the mode in which they are expressed or represented.

In Imagination, as in perception, as in apperception, there are both subject and object; but the object is for the most part ideal, and therefore commonly supposed to be a mode, affection, or creation of the subject; and therefore again as wholly subjective and without objective validity. Hence, imaginary would say fictitious, unreal, without any solid foundation. But the object in Imagination, as in thought, according to the doctrine already laid down, must be really not me, and therefore really existing out and independent of the subject. The subject in imagining, is as far from being or creating its own object as in apperceiving or remembering. Imagination in its elements differs not at all from apperception, nor indeed from simple perception. The difference is a difference in quantity, not in quality. It is distinguished from apperception, as apperception is distinguished from perception, that is, by being a higher degree of the same activity. We may reckon FOUR degrees of activity, which may be named,

3. IMAGINATION.

4. ECSTASY or TRANCE.

Heighten perception to a given degree, and it is apperception; heighten apperception to a given degree, and it is Imagination; heighten Imagination to a given degree, and it is Ecstasy or Trance. The reality of the phenomena included by the ancient Alexandrian school under the head of Ecstasy, and which the modern believers in mesmerism ascribe to the mesineric state, cannot be altogether denied; but as they are still wrapt in great obscurity, and as we are unable to affirm anything with much positiveness concerning them, they are best classed under the head of Imagination, with which they are certainly allied, and from which in the present state of our knowledge they are by no means easily distinguished. Including then the ecstasy of the ancients, and the mesmeric state of the moderns, under the head of Imagination, we must reduce the degrees of activity to THREE, Perception, Apperception, and Imagination; of which Imagination will be the highest, and differing from the other two only in being a more intense and energetic degree of the same activity.

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In Imagination we apperceive, but with greater intenseness and energy than in ordinary thought. Hence, the NOTION or Form with which the subject clothes the naked elements of the thought, is more real, living, substantial, than in ordinary thinking. man imagining is a greater, a more vigorous and exalted being, than a man merely thinking. Herein is the true distinction between the ordinary thinker and the poet, and between the artisan and the artist. Intensify ordinary thought, and it is poetry; as is evinced by the fact that all real thinkers, all men of sincere and earnest minds, in their more felicitous moments, when acting with the whole force and energy of their being, become more or less imaginative, and rise into strains of genuine poetry. Intensify the power of the artisan, and the miserable sign he is painting for some obscure village inn, becomes a Madonna, in which shall be inshrined "the beauty of holiness." The rough, jarring tones of the rude peasant, grating harsh discord on the ear, become sweet, musical, tender,

and touching, the moment his heart warms up with a generous passion, or melts with love and devotion.

The fact here insisted on deserves the attention of all who are concerned with Esthetics, or the science of the Fine Arts. Every one has felt that poetry depends on the imagination, but wherein imagination differs from other mental operations, no one seems to have been able to determine. It evidently is not in the expression, otherwise all figurative or symbolical expressions would be poetical; and the huge, ill-shapen beasts of Hindoo and Egyptian mythology, would be truer specimens of art, than the symmetrical, graceful, and finished productions of Grecian genius. "White as snow," "swift as the wind," "quick as lightning," and similar expressions, are figurative in a high degree; but, whatever they may once have been, are now far from being poetical, or indicating the presence of imagination. They may be used poetically, but they are ordinarily nothing more than extravagant prose. Those who have agreed that Imagination is not in the expression, have usually considered it a special faculty of human nature, and have considered poetry to be the result of a special power of the soul not called into exercise in ordinary prose. Yet analysis of the finest passages of poetry taken from Homer, Dante, Milton, or Shakspeare, will by no means sustain this view. These passages indicate the presence of no original element of human nature, not essential to the driest and dullest prose. Art contains no elements not requisite to the most ordinary productions of the artisan. Every stone-cutter is an incipient Phidias; and the richest and sublimest of Beethoven's Symphonies, contain no elements not contained in the usual tones of the human voice, and brought into play in ordinary speech. Few men are artists; yet all men are able in a degree to relish Art. The germs of the poet are in all hearts; hence, the true poet fetches from all hearts an echo to his song. All men love the poet, for he is to them what they are aspiring to be,-is themselves enlarged. All men love Art, and are moved by it. The rude Indian paints the prow of his canoe, polishes his war-club and his bow; and the Indian maiden strings her

beads of wampum, and decks her hair with shells, to win his admiration or his love. The artist, whether painter, poet, sculptor, architect, or musician, is no doubt above the mass of men, and very distinguishable from them; but not by having aught of which they have not the elements. In this respect, all men are brothers, and equals.

The simple truth is, there is not the radical distinction between poetry and prose, between imagination and ordinary thinking, commonly contended for. Poetry and prose differ not in kind, but are merely different degrees of what at the bottom is the same. All prose writers, of the least genius, when warmed up, are poetical in thought and expression; and our truest poets, for the most part of the time, give us merely measured prose. Prose rises imperceptibly into poetry; and poetry sinks imperceptibly into prose. No man can define the exact boundary line between them; and it is only when at a considerable distance from the line, that we can tell whether we are in the territory of the one or of the other. On each side of the line, there is and always must be a disputed territory, which will be enlarged or contracted according to the intensity and energy of the life of him who undertakes to adjust the dispute.

Imagination has at times been called the creative faculty of the soul, and therefore looked upon as the highest faculty of our nature. But all activity is creative. To act is to do, to effect, or produce something; that is, to create. Man is active by nature, and therefore must act in all his phenomena. He must then be creative in them all. He is then creative, not because he is imaginative, but because he is active. Including, as we have said, under the head of Imagination, the phenomena which the ancients ascribed to ecstasy, and the moderns to the mesmeric state, man is more active in imagination than in any other of his operations, because imagination is the highest degree of activity of which he is capable.

In regard to this higher degree of activity, men differ one from another, and the same man differs from himself, at different epochs of his life. The