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DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 
 
 EXPLORATIONS OF THE BOTTOM; 
 
 Ultimate Inalgsts of foumart 3£tt0$rileogc. 
 
 BY A. B. JOHNSON. 
 
 11 Whence and what are we? — 
 What means the drama by the world sustained?"' 
 
 COWPKR. 
 
 PRINTED FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION. 
 1861. 
 
 INSTlfu- 
 SCHOOI 
 
 1 
 
lp\ 
 
 *$« 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 OF CONGRESS 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 BOSTON: 
 PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
 
 22, School Street. 
 
 / 6 & J"? 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 L 
 
 Page. 
 
 Man's Triplicity 7 
 
 Triplicity of Human Knowledge 16 
 
 Triplicity of Things Knowable 23 
 
 II. 
 
 The Analysis and Boundaries of Ideas; or, The Cyles of 
 the Intellect 28 
 
 III. 
 
 The Predestinate Ideas of the Intellect 32 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Relation of the Three Organisms to each other. . 39 
 
 The Relation of the Emotional Organism to the Physical . . 39 
 
 The Relation of the Intellectual to the Physical 41 
 
 The Relation of the Intellectual to the Emotional 44 
 
 The Two different Organic Powers of the Intellect 47 
 
 V. ? ~ 6 
 
 The Polarity of Intellections 49 
 
 VI. 
 
 What we Think ; How we Think ; What we cannot Think ; 
 and the Order in which we Think 58 
 
4 CONTENTS. 
 
 Chap. I. What we Think; or, The Analysis of Thought. 58 
 
 Visual Thoughts 58 
 
 Verbal Thoughts 58 
 
 Auricular Thoughts 58 
 
 Sapid Thoughts 60 
 
 Nasal Thoughts 61 
 
 Tactile Thoughts 62 
 
 Chap. II. How we Think 63 
 
 Verbal Thoughts 63 
 
 Visual Thoughts 65 
 
 Auricular Thoughts 66 
 
 The remaining Three Classes of Thoughts 67 
 
 Chap. III. What we cannot Think . . 70 
 
 Chap. IV. The Order in which we Think 73 
 
 Thoughts succeed each other in the order that the objects 
 thought of became known to us: — 
 
 The Recollections of Words 73 
 
 The Recollection of Sights 76 
 
 The Recollection of Sounds 76 
 
 The Recollection of Tastes, Feels, and Smells 77 
 
 Conclusion 78 
 
 DIAGRAMS. 
 
 Page. 
 The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, previously to its 
 
 Germination 6 
 
 The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, with some of 
 
 its Germs and Fruit 15 
 
 Diagram B 20 
 
 Diagram C 27 
 
DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS. 
 
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL, 
 
 PREVIOUSLY TO ITS GERMINATION. 
 
MAN'S TRIPLICITY. 
 
 ll/TAN is intellectual, physical, and emotional, as 
 exhibited in the foregoing diagram : hence 
 education is divided into physical, intellectual, and 
 moral. Physical education relates to all that the 
 senses of a man can perceive ; intellectual, to all the 
 processes of his intellect ; and moral education, to all 
 his emotional feelings. The most illiterate person is 
 practically conscious of his triplicity as above ; and 
 he will say, " I heard a noise ; I saw a color ; I tasted 
 an acid : " and he will discriminate equally well the 
 two other senses when he is referring to their informa- 
 tion. With like accuracy, he will attribute to his 
 emotional organism the feelings which pertain there- 
 to, and say, " I feel hopeful ; I feel angry, envious, 
 proud, discontented, humble," &c. : and, when he 
 speaks of his intellectual processes, he will employ 
 words designative of his intellect ; as, " I think I met 
 A yesterday; I remember his appearance; I ima- 
 gined he did not see me ; I reflected afterwards on the 
 
8 man's triplicity. 
 
 occurrence ; I judged he was not well ; I conceive lie 
 will be sorry ; " &c. A nice distinction exists between 
 the words " shall " and " will ; " will relating to the 
 emotional organism, and shall to the intellectual. The 
 misplacement of these words never occurs to an Eng- 
 lishman ; but a common joke attributes the misplace- 
 ment to a Frenchman, who, when struggling in the 
 water to prevent being drowned, exclaimed to the by- 
 standers, " I will drown, and nobody shall help me." 
 We often say, a man compliments his heart at the 
 expense of his head. Everybody understands that 
 the heart denotes the emotional organism ; and the 
 head, the intellectual. " My heart is sad, but my head 
 is ignorant of any cause therefor," refers to an emo- 
 tional depression, and an intellectual ignorance of its 
 cause. Should I say, " My head is sad," the assertion 
 would not be understood as denoting an emotional 
 depression, but a physical pain, or a diseased confu- 
 sion of thought. These distinctions in the employ- 
 ment of words form no part of literary education ; but 
 every man refers as spontaneously to his respective 
 three organisms as he refers to his respective physical 
 members, and says his feet shall carry him, his hands 
 shall support him, his back shall bear the burden, his 
 tongue shall speak, he will pour drink down his throat, 
 and put meat into his stomach, &c. 
 
 Man's three organisms are recognized further by 
 diseases peculiar to each; as, physical, intellectual, and 
 moral ; moral being a synonyme of emotional. Idiocy, 
 
MAN 3 TRIPLICITY. V 
 
 also, is a recognized condition of either a total or par- 
 tial absence of the intellect alone, or of the intellect 
 and emotions, while the physical organism may be 
 perfect. Sleep affects the physical organism more 
 than the intellectual, whose actions, under such a con- 
 dition of the body, are called " dreams ; " and to these 
 the emotional organism responds almost as vividly as 
 during physical wakefulness. Old age affects the 
 physical and emotional organisms earlier, usually, 
 than the intellectual. Alcohol, taken into the stomach, 
 affects the emotional organism first, then the physical, 
 and last the intellectual. Whether anaesthetics impair 
 alike the three organisms, I am not informed. Para- 
 lysis may affect all the organisms equally ; or one or 
 two may be affected, and the others not ; and the or- 
 ganisms which are simultaneously affected may suffer 
 in different degrees. The intellect was not involved 
 in the curse denounced on man's disobedience. Emo- 
 tional sorrow and physical subjection alone were im- 
 precated on the woman ; and on the man, emotional 
 sorrow and physical labor. 
 
 The triplicity of man impresses itself on our litera- 
 ture. Poetry and theology may be termed u the 
 literature of our emotional organism ; " philosophy, 
 astronomy, mathematics, and law, " the literature of 
 our intellect ; " and treatises on trade, manufactures, 
 arts, navigation, war, medicine, and surgery, "the 
 literature of our physical organism." Men like 
 poetry in proportion as their emotional organism 
 
10 man's triplicity. 
 
 preponderates over their intellectual; they delight 
 in philosophy as their intellectual organism pre- 
 ponderates over their emotional ; and they delight in 
 manual operations as their physical organism prepon- 
 derates over their intellectual and emotional parts. 
 Our triplicity accounts for a triplication in phraseology 
 that is too common to be casual ; as, for instance, our 
 forefathers pledged to the success of American inde- 
 pendence " their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred 
 honor." Honor was a pledge of their intellect ; for- 
 tune was a pledge of their physical possessions ; and 
 life typified their emotional organism. In the Epis- 
 copal marriage ceremony, the bride promises " to love, 
 honor, and obey" the husband. "Love" refers to 
 her emotional organism ; " honor " refers to her 
 intellectual appreciation of him ; and " obey " refers 
 to physical services. The bridegroom pledges, in 
 return, his three organisms ; but, instead of physical 
 obedience, he promises physical cherishment. Such 
 triplications are numerous in the Scriptures ; as, 
 " What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
 justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
 thy God ? " — " To do " refers to physical conduct ; 
 " to love " refers to emotional feelings ; and " to walk 
 humbly" refers to an intellectual abasement of our- 
 selves. Again : " Let not once be named among you, 
 neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting." 
 "We find, by the context, that " filthiness " means im- 
 pure emotions ; " foolish talk " is physical ; and 
 
' man's triplicity. 11 
 
 " jesting " is intellectual frivolity. Again : " Let 
 every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to 
 wrath." The first refers to the intellect ; the second 
 is physical ; and the third, emotional. The Episcopal 
 liturgy deprecates " the world, the flesh, and the 
 Devil." The " world," in scriptural metonymy, sig- 
 nifies physical possessions ; " the flesh," emotional en- 
 ticements ; and " the Devil," intellectual suggestions. 
 The expression, " I pray and beseech you," would be 
 tautological : but " to pray " addresses the intellect ; 
 and " beseech," the emotions. When King Hezekiah 
 was informed that he should die, he said, " I beseech 
 thee, O Lord ! remember how I have walked before 
 thee in truth, and with a perfect heart, and have done 
 that which is good in thy sight." Hezekiah's perfect 
 heart is his emotional purity; to walk before the 
 Lord in truth is intellectual rectitude ; and to do what 
 is good is physical rectitude. David said to Jonathan, 
 " What have I done ? what is mine iniquity ? and 
 what is my sin before thy father, that he seeketh my 
 life ? " — " What have I done ? " is physical action ; 
 "what is mine iniquity?" is intellectual intention; and 
 "what is my sin? " is emotional perversity. So Elka- 
 nah said, " Hannah, why weepest thou ? why eatest 
 thou not ? and why is thy heart grieved ? " Grieved 
 is emotional ; eating is physical action ; and weeping 
 denotes intellectual reflections. Man's triplicity may 
 also have relation to the thrice-repeated invocations 
 that are numerous in the Bible ; as when the Prophet 
 
12 man's triplicity. 
 
 Elijah stretched himself upon the widow's dead son 
 three times, and each time said, " O Lord, my God ! 
 I pray thee let this child's soul come unto him again." 
 Also when the Lord called Samuel three several 
 times, while Samuel was sleeping in the temple ; 
 Samuel each time awaking, and supposing he was 
 called by Eli. Again : when Azariah sent a captain 
 with fifty soldiers to bring Elijah to him, and Elijah 
 called down from heaven fire that destroyed the cap- 
 tain and his fifty. Then Azariah sent another captain 
 with fifty soldiers, and they were destroyed in like 
 manner. Then Azariah sent the third time a captain 
 with fifty soldiers ; and Elijah submitted, and went 
 with them. So, when Elijah was to be taken up alive 
 to heaven, he thrice attempted to escape from Elisha, 
 &c. ; and the oft-repeated "Alas ! alas! alas !" — 
 " Oh ! oh ! oh ! " Possibly, as the globosity of our 
 eyes shapes the field of our vision, our triformity 
 originates triplicates; as, present, past, and future; 
 heaven, earth, and hell ; war, pestilence, and famine ; 
 life, death, and immortality ; earth, sea, and air ; be- 
 ginning, middle, end, &c. : especially as each of our 
 three organisms usually supplies a meaning to one of 
 the three terms ; as, in the foregoing, " present " time 
 is physical performances ; Ci past " is intellectual recol- 
 lections ; and " future " is emotional expectations ; 
 — " life " is physical action ; " death " is emotion- 
 al extinction; and "immortality" is an intellectual 
 conception ; — " heaven " is an intellectual con- 
 
man's triplicity. 13 
 
 ception; "earth" is physical; and "hell" is emo- 
 tional, &c. 
 
 Man's triplicity impairs not his oneness ; the two 
 conditions belonging to different organisms. The 
 oneness is a conception of the intellect which deems 
 the emotions and the physical members as parts of a 
 mysterious ego that intellectually thinks, imagines, 
 conceives, judges, supposes, guesses, dreams, reckons, 
 calculates, recollects ; and emotionally hopes, fears, 
 loves, envies, believes, doubts, grieves, covets, dis- 
 believes, regrets, hates ; and physically sees, hears, 
 feels, tastes, smells, laughs, cries, jumps, walks, 
 dances, hops, fights, sleeps, eats, speaks, &c. The 
 Scriptures declare that man was created in the like- 
 ness of God ; and this is assumed to mean man's 
 physical form, though such an assumption is incom- 
 patible wdth God's filling all space, and with the 
 adaptation of man's physical form to only definite 
 purposes. The likeness finds a better solution in 
 man's triplicity and God's tri-unity. " No man hath 
 seen God at any time," and all his attributes are 
 intellections ; as, immortal, omnipotent, omniscient, 
 omnipresent, uncaused, uncreated, without beginning 
 and without end ; a Being to whom " a thousand 
 years are as one day, and one day as a thou- 
 sand years ; " and to whom " darkness and night are 
 both alike." God the Father is, therefore, all intel- 
 lect : but God the Son is physical, being manifested 
 in the flesh, — a man born of woman ; eating, drink- 
 
14 man's triplicity. 
 
 ing ; being crucified, dead, and buried. God the 
 Holy Ghost is all emotional. He is the Comforter ; 
 producing hope, joy, faith, gladness, and belief in 
 the hearts of man. The three are one. 
 
 " And the Lord God took the man, and put him 
 into the garden of Eden to dress and keep it." 
 This employed his physical nature. His emotional 
 nature (his forbearance and self-denial) was also 
 exercised : for " the Lord God commanded the man, 
 saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest 
 freely eat ; but of the tree of good and evil, thou 
 shalt not eat of it." Nor was the intellect of Adam 
 unemployed : for 6t the Lord God' formed every 
 beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and 
 brought them to Adam to see what he would call 
 them ; and whatsover Adam called every living 
 creature, that was the name thereof." Man's intel- 
 lect continues this employment ; and his emotions he 
 names "love, hope, anger, joy, envy, jealousy, belief, 
 faith, unbelief, vanity, pride," &c. His intellections 
 he names " thought, memory, idea, recollection, judg- 
 ment, knowledge, conception, contemplation, causa- 
 tion, effectuation, power, time, number," &c; and to 
 his sensible perceptions he has given names innu- 
 merable. The following diagram may denote more 
 clearly the triple division of our knowledge : — 
 
MAN S TR1PLIC1TY. 
 
 15 
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EYIL, 
 
 WITH SOME OF ITS GERMS AND FRUIT. 
 
16 man's triplicity. 
 
 THE TRIPLICITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Possessing three organisms, and deriving through 
 them all he knows, man's knowledge is tri-form. 
 This might have remained undiscovered, if Pro- 
 vidence had not manifested, that specific organic 
 defects, as blindness, deafness, and idiocy, occasion 
 specific deficiencies of knowledge. All that a man 
 sees, tastes, smells, hears, and feels, corporally, con- 
 stitutes his physical knowledge ; all he feels emo- 
 tionally constitutes his emotional knowledge ; and 
 all he knows otherwise is intellectual. If he take 
 the wings of the morning, and fly (in thought) to 
 the uttermost bounds of the sea, he is still within the 
 magic barriers of the intellect, the emotions, and 
 the senses ; if he ascend (in thought) to heaven, or 
 descend (in thought) to hell, the same barriers are 
 around him. He may enlarge the quantity of his 
 knowledge by employing his senses in new direc- 
 tions, his intellect in new speculations, and his emo- 
 tions in new experiences ; but he can gain no new 
 kind of knowledge, nor transmute what is intellect- 
 ual into physical, or what is physical into intellectual, 
 or what is emotional into any thing but emotions. 
 
 The heterogeneity of our knowledge as above, 
 and our indiscrimination of the heterogeneity when 
 we speak, have ever perplexed speculation, but not 
 
MAN S TRIPLICITY. 1 < 
 
 our practices ; man's three organisms continuing 
 their heterogeneous ministrations uninfluenced by 
 our speculations. For instance, Hume's speculative 
 denial of power, causation, and effectuation, pre- 
 vented not his emotional organism from responding 
 fear to any object that possessed power to cause 
 danger. The speculative scepticism of Pyrrho oc- 
 casioned a foolish tradition, that, to save him from 
 physical destruction, he needed friends to forcibly 
 remove him from danger : but a far more vigilant 
 and authoritative monitor in all such cases was his 
 emotional organism ; and it was ever present, and 
 incapable of being silenced. The speculations of 
 Hume and Pyrrho, being a product of their intel- 
 lect, satisfied it; and each philosopher's emotional 
 organism responded faiths and belief to the specula- 
 tions as logical conclusions, notwithstanding it re- 
 sponded fear in all cases of practical danger. This 
 evinces that our nature is adapted to both logical 
 speculation and physical practice, even when they 
 conflict ; and that neither can eradicate the other : 
 but, till a man understands the threefold heteroge- 
 neity of knowledge, his intellectual speculations be- 
 come often logical puzzles. For example, the oneness 
 of a man, and his inability to find the oneness phy- 
 sically, is a great puzzle till a man knows that the 
 oneness is intellectual, and not physical. Man's 
 identity through infancy to old age is another puzzle, 
 when it is sought physically ; but the mystery ceases 
 
 2 
 
18 man's triplicity. 
 
 when we know that the identity is not physical, but 
 a conception of the intellect. The spirit, also, that 
 animated Thomas before his death, and which no 
 scrutiny can at any time detect physically, constitutes 
 a puzzle till we know that the spirit is a conception 
 of the intellect, and not physical. Time is another 
 puzzle : our actions, thoughts, feelings, and sensa- 
 tions are all successive ; and, in contemplation of 
 this organic condition, the intellect conceives time. 
 We therefore need not wonder at our inability to 
 find time physically ; or that, with an omniscient 
 and omnipresent God, " a thousand years are as one 
 day, and one day as a thousand years; " or that, at 
 the termination of the world, and all the incidents 
 from which our intellect conceives time, an angel is 
 to stand with one foot on the earth, and another on 
 the sea, and, lifting up his hand to heaven, is to 
 swear "that there shall be time no longer." 
 
 Our emotional organism, also, is the occasion of 
 mysteries. " Man is born to sorrow as sparks to fly 
 upwards ; " and he is equally born to believe and 
 disbelieve, to hope, fear, love, hate, envy, revenge, 
 and to numerous other emotional feelings to which 
 our intellect has given names, and which, when 
 thus personified, seem like little sprites located in 
 the head or heart, but mysteriously undiscoverable 
 physically while we are alive, and by dissection 
 after death; and for the sufficient reason that they 
 are not physical. Properly discriminated into its 
 
man's triplicity. 19 
 
 organic classes, all our knowledge is free from mys- 
 tery, or equally mysterious if we prefer to esteem it 
 mysterious : but we add an unnecessary mystery at 
 our inability to discover sensibly what is not sensible. 
 Human knowledge can be analyzed no further than 
 into the organisms to which it pertains ; and all at- 
 tempts to delye below or beyond this boundary are 
 founded in ignorance of the inconvertibility, into 
 each other, of the information yielded by our several 
 organisms. 
 
 Chemistry finds that nearly all material substances 
 are compounds, and it analyzes them into elements. 
 Knowledge, on the contrary, is composed of ele- 
 ments, — sights, sounds, tastes, feels, smells, emo- 
 tions, and intellections ; and the intellect compounds 
 them into ideas, words, phrases, sentences, &c. We 
 analyze physical compounds when we would under- 
 stand their elementary ingredients ; so we must 
 analyze intellectual compounds when we would un- 
 derstand their sensible, intellectual, and emotional 
 ingredients : and thus only can we relieve ourselves 
 from the speculative puzzles like those we have been 
 considering, and which arise from deeming sensible 
 what is either emotional or intellectual. For further 
 information on this analysis, I refer to my two books, 
 — " The Meaning of Words analyzed into Words 
 and Unverbal Things, and Unverbal Things classi- 
 fied into Intellections, Sensations, and Emotions," 
 published in New York, by D. Appleton and Co., in 
 
20 
 
 MAN S TRIPLICITY. 
 
 1854; and "The Physiology of the Senses, or how 
 and what we See, Hear, Taste, Feel, and Smell," 
 published in the same city, in 1856, by Derby and 
 Jackson. 
 
 DIAGRAM B. 
 
 To exhibit, however, a specimen of the analysis 
 intended, let us admit that the earth is constantly 
 revolving from west to east. The word " revolve ?? 
 analyzes (as displayed in Diagram B) into a sight, 
 
man's tripltcity. 21 
 
 a feel, and an intellection. An artificial globe can 
 be made to exhibit the sight revolve and the feel 
 revolve : but the earth exhibits only the sight re- 
 volve ; and yet your intellect conceives, that were 
 you placed (as angels may be) externally of the 
 earth, as you are placed externally of the artificial 
 globe, you could feel the earth revolve as you feel 
 the artificial globe revolve. To this intellectually 
 conceived identity of the two revolutions, your emo- 
 tional organism may respond with a feeling of belief 
 therein exempt from any counter-feeling of unbelief 
 or doubt ; • though some persons may have simply a 
 feeling of faith that the two revolutions are physical- 
 ly identical, while other men may feel doubtful, and 
 others may feel unbelief in the physical homogene- 
 ity of the two revolutions. Anyway, the analysis 
 enables you to contemplate the earth's revolution in 
 its organic diversity, relieved from intellectually con- 
 ceived identities with other revolutions ; and in no 
 science is such an analysis so necessary to allay 
 ignorant wonder as in astronomy. 
 
 Now, suppose, by way of proving the physical 
 identity of the earth's revolution and the revolution 
 of an artificial globe, you adduce any number of con- 
 curring sensibly perceived facts, and found thereon 
 any number of intellectual conceptions ; yet, as the 
 feel revolve must ever remain unfelt in the earth, 
 the first analysis remains unaffected, except as your 
 new facts, &c, may influence my emotional organism 
 
22 MAN S TRIPLICITY. 
 
 to believe what otherwise I might not believe. But 
 no belief can change physical facts ; the information 
 of each of our three organisms being supreme within 
 its own intelligence, and each constituting a quasi 
 world which is a terra incognita to the other two 
 organisms : " around the things of each a great 
 gulf is fixed, so that the things of one organism, that 
 would pass to another organism, cannot." Finally, 
 we may say of human knowledge, as St. Paul says 
 of flesh, " All flesh is not the same flesh : but there 
 is one kind of flesh of men ; another flesh of beasts ; 
 another, of fishes ; another, of birds." So there is 
 one kind of knowledge of the senses, another know- 
 ledge of the emotions, and another of the intellect : 
 but they are all equally our knowledge ; just as 
 laughing and crying, sleeping and waking, dreaming 
 and acting, living and dying, are all equally our 
 humanity. We are, however, so constituted, that 
 our sensible perceptions are the most satisfactory 
 part of our knowledge, especially those that pertain 
 to the corporal sense of feeling. These are literally 
 real, substantial, tangible, solid, fixed, and so forth ; 
 but, when we know that these words name percep- 
 tions of the sense, of feeling, we need not wonder 
 that no other sense can yield us information that is 
 real, substantial, solid, fixed, &c, any more than we 
 need wonder that no sense but tasting can yield us 
 the knowledge of sweet and bitter. Still, our emo- 
 tional organism responds certainty and confidence in 
 
man's triplicity. 23 
 
 a greater degree to our corporal feelings than to any 
 other parts of our knowledge. This is a psycho- 
 logical fact, which our intellect may speculate about, 
 but cannot change. 
 
 THE TRIPLICITY OF THINGS KNOWABLE. 
 
 The Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, where light 
 never penetrates, contains waters inhabited by fish 
 that are formed without eyes. A like economy of 
 creative power pervades the universe ; aquatic ani- 
 mals being formed without feet, and terrestrial 
 animals without fins : hence the possession, by man, 
 of inlets for three essentially different kinds of know- 
 ledge, might alone lead a Cuvier* of some other 
 planet to assume that our world includes three differ- 
 ent kinds of phenomena, — a sensible world, which 
 can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted, but known 
 no other way ; an emotional world, that can be felt 
 emotionally, but known no other way ; and an intel- 
 lectual world, that can be recognized by the intellect 
 alone. In contemplating even my own person, my 
 senses can only perceive therein all that is sensible ; 
 and an anatomist, who should cut my body into 
 pieces,- can only increase thereby the number of 
 his sensible perceptions. None of the foregoing are 
 
24 man's triplicity. 
 
 recognized by my emotional organism ; but it recog- 
 nizes, in my person, hope, fear, love, hatred, desire, 
 envy, rage, expectation, faith, belief, reverence, piety, 
 scorn, pride, disdain, avarice, liberality, selfishness, 
 patriotism, cheerfulness, despondency, lust, satiety, 
 courage, and numerous other feelings to which names 
 have been given, and many feelings which have re- 
 ceived no name. My intellect recognizes, in my per- 
 son, things different from any of the two foregoing. 
 It discovers that all my sensible exhibitions are only 
 properties, or qualities, of a substratum which the 
 senses cannot see, but which constitutes my proper 
 physical personality : and, though this personality is 
 mortal and perishable, my intellect discovers it to be 
 animated by an immortal soul, to which my intellect 
 itself belongs, and my emotional feelings ; and that 
 the perishable body and imperishable soul make to- 
 gether one being, who has always been the same 
 person from infancy to old age, in sickness and in 
 health, in love and hate, in honor and dishonor, 
 sleeping or awake. My intellect discovers also, that 
 I, this mysterious unit, bear various relations to my 
 Creator, to society, to my neighbor, parents, friends, 
 wife, children, servants, country, &c. ; and that to 
 each of these relations I owe different duties, which 
 require some of my emotional feelings and bodily 
 actions to be restrained, some to be stimulated; and 
 that, to accomplish these and other purposes, I pos- 
 sess a circumscribed power of causation and effectua- 
 
 
man's triplicity. 25 
 
 tion ; and that I am only one of a numerous race of 
 beings similar to myself, who with other beings, 
 animate and inanimate, infinite in number and in 
 variety of form and habits, occupy severally a limited 
 portion of space, but only for a brief period of time, 
 which is momentarily converting a portion of an illi- 
 mitable future into present, and the present into an 
 illimitable past. 
 
 The three worlds of which I have thus spoken 
 are revealed to every man by only his own organisms. 
 Through each of his five external senses enter all 
 the items of the sensible w-orld that come within the 
 purview of the respective senses : hence men who 
 inhabit the same locality possess mainly the same 
 sensible knowledge. Man's emotional knowledge is 
 experienced in common by all persons to a greater 
 degree than his sensible knowledge ; for that varies 
 with localities, and may vary in different periods of 
 time : but his emotional knowledge is unvaried by 
 time or place ; and men differ therein from each 
 other only in degrees of its intensity, and in the 
 frequency with which different individuals indulge 
 given emotions. Our intellectual knowledge, like 
 our emotional, is common to all men, in all times 
 and places, so far as relates to its kind. All men, 
 for instance, know power, causation, effectuation, 
 quality, place, time, figure, relation, &c. ; but the 
 same items or manifestations of power, causation, 
 &c, are not known to all men, and are infinite in 
 
26 man's triplicity. 
 
 number and variety. Diagram C exhibits some of 
 the kinds of intellectual knowledge that are common 
 to all men. They are thus common, by reason that, 
 everywhere and at all periods, circumstances exist 
 that excite their conception by the intellect ; just as 
 circumstances everywhere exist to excite the emotions 
 of hope, fear, love, hate, &c, and to excite the sen- 
 sible perceptions of tastes, colors, odors, sounds, &c. 
 And as the eye needs no previous instruction to 
 perceive colors, or the emotions to feel fear ; so the 
 intellect needs no previous instruction to conceive, 
 under given circumstances, all the kinds of intellec- 
 tions that pertain to its organism. 
 
MAN S TRIPLICITY. 
 
 27 
 
 DIAGRAM C. 
 
28 THE ANALYSIS AND 
 
 IL- 
 
 THE ANALYSIS AND BOUNDARIES OF 
 IDEAS ; OR, THE CYCLES OF THE IN- 
 TELLECT. 
 
 As man can articulate only about forty different ele- 
 mentary sounds, the alphabets of all languages are 
 necessarily much alike ; but we may well feel sur- 
 prise, that these few elementary sounds can be so 
 variously combined and modulated as to make the 
 several thousand different languages which compose 
 human speech. The analysis of all articulate sounds 
 into a few elements termed an " alphabet " was accom- 
 plished at a time reaching back into fabulous anti- 
 quity ; but succeeding ages have been unable to much 
 improve the original great achievement. That dif- 
 ferent languages should contain similar words is a 
 natural consequence of the foregoing considerations, 
 without the common assumption of a communication 
 between the several nationalities ; and even an occa- 
 sional similarity of meaning, in different countries, 
 among words similar in sound, is within the compass 
 of ordinary casualty, — all men being organized alike 
 physically, emotionally, and intellectually ; and hence 
 what induced one /people to apply a given name to 
 
BOUNDARIES OF IDEAS. 29 
 
 any thing may have induced another people. Whe- 
 ther language is a human invention or an inculcation 
 of God is often mooted ; but God made our hands, 
 feet, heart, and lungs so cunningly as to develop 
 their own capacity, — and why not our organs of 
 speech also ? 
 
 As alphabets teach us indirectly the capacity of 
 our organs of speech, so grammars teach us also in- 
 directly the capacity of our intellect. By classifying 
 all words according to the respective ideas which 
 words signify, only, at most, ten essentially different 
 kinds of ideas are found. They are called " parts of 
 speech," and ordinarily named " articles, nouns, pro- 
 nouns, verbs, participles, adjectives, adverbs, preposi- 
 tions, conjunctions, and interjections." In neither 
 grammars nor alphabets is the analysis merely con- 
 ventional ; but the parts of speech are founded in the 
 organism of the intellect, and the letters of the alpha- 
 bet in our vocal organism : hence the grammars of all 
 languages are essentially alike, as are the alphabets. 
 Indeed, grammars are more alike than alphabets, — 
 some languages containing a few sounds that are not 
 of universal utterance, w r hile every language contains 
 the same parts of speech, though words are not 
 always classified alike therein by grammarians of 
 even the same language ; some grammarians making 
 as few classes of words as they deem compatible with 
 the inculcation of syntax, while other grammarians 
 make as many classes as they can find classifiable 
 
30 THE ANALYSIS AND 
 
 differences in our ideas. But no ingenuity can in- 
 vent an articulate sound that alphabets cannot spell, 
 nor can it invent a significant idea that the parts of 
 speech cannot classify ; and so definitely, that, the 
 first time we meet in a sentence any new word, its 
 meaning will suggest the part of speech to which it 
 belongs, just as the structure of a newly discovered 
 plant will suggest the botanical class to which it 
 belongs. 
 
 That all ideas are susceptible of such a classifica- 
 tion must be consequent upon an organic inability of 
 the intellect to think ideas out of the range of the 
 parts of speech; or else the limitation is consequent 
 upon an absence, in the universe, of any subject out 
 of the range of the said parts of speech. Either 
 alternative leaves the important and pregnant fact, 
 that, how discursive soever may be verbal specula- 
 tions and contemplations, our intellect is restrained 
 to a given circle of ideas, just as our lungs can inhale 
 only certain gases, our stomachs digest only given 
 substances, and our hands clutch only objects of a 
 given consistency. 
 
 Our intellect is limited not only to the ideas which 
 compose the parts of speech, but the ideas are seve- 
 rally capable of sustaining only definite characters : 
 as, for instance, nouns sustain a difference of gender, 
 number, and case ; adjectives, of positive, compara- 
 tive, and superlative ; and each of the remaining 
 classes of ideas possesses well-defined characters, in 
 
BOUNDARIES OF IDEAS. 31 
 
 which alone they can act : while the rules of syntax 
 are the cycles in which alone our ideas can intelligi- 
 bly revolve ; for, even when syntax is violated, the 
 violation affects not substantially the sequences of 
 ideas to which the rules refer. Grammars, there- 
 fore, exhibit the intellect turned inside out, so far at 
 least as ideas can be expressed in words ; but the 
 intellect will not be satisfied with this outside inspec- 
 tion of its inner mysteries, and will fain discover w T hy 
 it is thus limited, and especially what constitutes its 
 own personality : but, alas ! we possess no means for 
 such introspection, except by evolving outwardly 
 some more cycles of the intellect, of the same kind 
 as the former. If these will satisfy a man, few per- 
 sons are so dull as to be unable to make, on the 
 subject, some theory satisfactory at least to his own 
 intellect, and possibly satisfactory to his own alone. 
 
32 THE PREDESTINATE IDEAS 
 
 III. 
 
 THE PREDESTINATE IDEAS OF THE 
 INTELLECT. 
 
 When a lighted match is applied to gunpowder, and 
 a flash ensues, with an explosion, every person present 
 sees the flash and hears the explosion ; his senses 
 requiring therefor no preliminary instruction : and 
 simultaneously his intellect will, without any previous 
 instruction, conceive power and causation in the match, 
 and effectuation in the flash and explosion ; the intel- 
 lect conceiving thus by its instinct, as the eyes by their 
 instinct see the flash, and the ears hear the explosion. 
 Accident may regulate what shall transpire momenta- 
 tarily within the purview of a man's senses ; but how 
 each sense shall be affected thereby is not accidental, 
 but predestined by the organism of each sense respec- 
 tively. Hence men converse together about their 
 common sensible experience, with confidence that the 
 senses of all men respond identically. Accident regu- 
 lates, in the same degree, what shall transpire within 
 the purview of a man's intellect : but how his intellect 
 shall be affected thereby is predestined by the organ- 
 ism of his intellect, just as the organism of every vege- 
 
OF THE INTELLECT. 33 
 
 table predestines what it shall extract from the earth ; 
 the tobacco plant extracting only what produces 
 tobacco, and the plant of corn extracting what pro- 
 duces corn. 
 
 The above recital manifests the existence of two 
 different principles in the acquisition of knowledge : 
 a principle of casualty, which determines what shall 
 momentarily come to pass within the purview of a 
 man's senses and intellect ; and a principle of fixation, 
 which determines what a man's sensible and intellec- 
 tual organisms shall respectively respond to what 
 comes to pass. A man may every day, during a long 
 life, see some object — an elephant, a comet, a plant 
 — which he never saw before ; but the visibility which 
 is new is only some new arrangement or modification 
 of color, light, and shade, which are fixed, predestinate 
 impressions produced on every man's eyes by all visi- 
 ble objects. Without intending to insist that sight 
 can take cognizance of only color, light, and shade, 
 I adopt the definition because it answers my design of 
 discriminating between the knowledge which is or- 
 ganic in the sense of sight, and the knowledge which 
 we acquire casually of objects that are visible. The 
 like may be repeated of the intellect : its predestinate 
 ideas are few, though the number and variety of their 
 applications seem illimitable. But we have not ana- 
 lyzed into their elements the predestinate ideas of the 
 intellect, as we have the predestinate perceptions of 
 the eyes into color, light, and shade. What ideas, 
 
34 THE PREDESTINATE IDEAS 
 
 then, are predestinate, and which the intellect must 
 conceive, and to which its organism is restricted ? A 
 preceding essay has shown that they are articles, 
 nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, participles, ad- 
 verbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections ; 
 but this classification makes no distinction between 
 nouns, &c, that are predestinate, and other nouns, &c, 
 that are not predestinate. As, for instance, let us 
 assume that the noun " power " is one of the predes- 
 tinate ideas which the intellect must conceive, when- 
 ever any thing capable of exciting it comes within the 
 purview of the intellect : yet, after the idea of power 
 has been thus acquired by the intellect, it need not 
 know that cold has power to solidify water, and heat 
 to evaporate it ; that fire has power to explode gun- 
 powder, and gunpowder to rend a rock, &c. These, 
 and innumerable other manifestations of power, are 
 not predestinate ideas ; but every man is continually 
 learning them, casually or otherwise ; and the mani- 
 festations thus learned may be different in different 
 men : w T hile power itself has ever been known to all 
 men alike ; and the same may be said of every other 
 of the intellect's predestinate ideas. They are not 
 'innate, so as to develop themselves spontaneously; 
 but every part of the earth possesses excitants to the 
 conception of all the predestinate ideas : and thus is 
 preserved the identity of man's intellectual knowledge, 
 so far as relates to its kind; just as the identity of 
 man's muscular performances is preserved through all 
 
OF THE INTELLECT. 35 
 
 periods by the identity which exists in man's muscular 
 organism, and by a universality of the excitants which 
 call the muscles into action. The predestinate ideas 
 of the intellect are discriminable, therefore, from the 
 casual or experimental ideas, as the fundamental rules 
 of algebra are discriminable from the equations and 
 problems which the rules evolve, and as the predes- 
 tinate movements of man's hands and finders are dis- 
 criminable from the paintings and sculptures which the 
 predestinate movements evolve. 
 
 But, after we admit that the intellect's conceptions 
 are limited in kind to certain fundamental or predes- 
 tinate ideas, the limit may be consequent to either the 
 organism of the intellect, or to an absence in the sur- 
 rounding universe of any things except what the in- 
 tellect can take cognizance of. The practical result 
 will be alike under either alternative ; and we possess 
 no means of deciding between them. Still, the fact 
 is interesting, that how much soever physical expe- 
 rience, intellectual reflections, and emotional manifes- 
 tations, may increase our intellectual knowledge, it 
 must all be composed of a limited number of different 
 predestinate ingredients : just as our houses, how 
 much soever varied in form or structure, must all be 
 composed of materials whose variety of kinds is pre- 
 destinate and few ; our industry being able usually to 
 increase the quantity, but not the kinds. What then, 
 in detail, are the predestinate ideas to which our intel- 
 lect is- restricted ? My design includes no settlement 
 
36 THE PREDESTINATE IDEAS 
 
 of the question, but to assert the less debatable propo- 
 sition, — that our intellectual speculations are like a 
 game of chess, wherein the pieces are limited in num- 
 ber and definite in character, while the mode of play- 
 ing them may be infinite. The wisest philosopher, 
 therefore, like the most skilful chess-player, must still 
 employ the same instruments ; and he will differ from 
 less wise persons in only the use he will make of the 
 common instruments : as, for instance, the cause which 
 sustains the world is no longer the shoulders of Atlas ; 
 but the intellect, constrained as originally by its or- 
 ganism to impute a cause, has conceived, from its pre- 
 sent knowledge of casually acquired causes, a better 
 cause than Atlas. Light and darkness are no longer 
 deemed effects of a revolution of the sun around the 
 earth; but the intellect, organically constrained, as 
 originally, to deem them effects, has, from its present 
 knowledge of casually acquired efficients, selected a 
 better efficient. Earthquakes are no longer connected 
 with the struggles of imprisoned Titans; but the 
 intellect, organically constrained, as in all past time, 
 to connect them with some precedent, has frequently 
 changed the precedent as its store of casually acquired 
 knowledge supplied one that was more satisfactory 
 than the others. Problems like the foregoing, in 
 which power, causation, effectuation, time, place, re- 
 semblance, number, quality, relation, connection, and 
 the intellect's other organically predestinate ideas, are 
 the staple, have ever engrossed men's speculations ; 
 
OF THE INTELLECT. 37 
 
 though new answers are continually superseding old 
 ones, by reason that man's acquired knowledge is ever 
 supplying new analogies : so that every generation of 
 men have smiled at the simplicity of the past, and 
 some future generation will smile at the best specula- 
 tions of the present : and so onwards, world without 
 end. 
 
 This view of intellectual speculations w T as taken by 
 Aristotle, whose categories were an attempt to ana- 
 lyze into a few predestinate ideas all that the intellect 
 can conceive ; and now, after the lapse of twenty- 
 three hundred years, the chessmen (to continue the 
 metaphor) remain unincreased in number and un- 
 changed in character. We mav not ao-ree with Aris- 
 totle in the number of the intellect's predestinate 
 ideas, or in the naming of them ; and, twenty-three 
 hundred years hence, these questions will be as un- 
 settled as they are at present ; though in relation to 
 a limit in the kind of our ideas, and that the varie- 
 ties are few, no difference can at any time exist 
 among reflective men who will take the trouble of 
 analyzing into specifically different ideas any mass 
 of intellectual speculations. We often complain that 
 novels are but a new adjustment of old topics ; but 
 we may make the same complaint of landscapes, 
 when we travel : we can see only new combinations, 
 and but rarely new components. We may make the 
 same complaint of our food : the bills of fare are only 
 repetitions of the same materials differently prepared. 
 
38 PREDESTINATE IDEAS OF THE INTELLECT. 
 
 In short, novelty of ingredients, in any department 
 of art or nature, is enjoyed by only the young ; and 
 a man need not attain any great age, before he may 
 say with Solomon, " The thing that hath been is that 
 which shall be, and that which is done is that which 
 shall be done ; and there is no new thing under the 
 sun," — nothing new, because created ingredients are 
 either limited in variety, or our organisms, intellec- 
 tual, physical, and emotional, are limited in their 
 apprehension. 
 
RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 39 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS 
 TO EACH OTHER. 
 
 Most animals, certainly all the most perfect in forma- 
 tion, possess a physical personality, an emotional 
 personality, and a quasi-intellectual personality, and 
 are thus essentially triune. The physical personality 
 includes the corporal senses, which, with other cor- 
 poral organs, evince an adaptation to the external 
 universe replete with suggestive interest ; but the 
 adaptation has been often shown, and my theme is 
 only the relation of the three personalities to each 
 other. The emotional and intellectual personalities 
 of every animal seem subsidiary to the physical per- 
 sonality and complements thereof; for they gradually 
 subside on the subsidence of the physical powers, 
 whose total extinction by death always occasions the 
 evanition of both the other organisms ; though occa- 
 sionally the physical powers outlive the intellect and 
 the emotions. 
 
 The Relation of the Emotional Organism to the 
 Physical. 
 The relation of the emotional organism to the 
 physical is seen in the emotional change produced 
 
40 RELATION OF OUR THREE OKGANISMS. 
 
 in all male animals by physical emasculation. Ani- 
 mals, also, that generate without physical intercourse 
 with others of their kind, are devoid of various emo- 
 tions discoverable in copulatory animals, and useful 
 to their copulatory functions ; just as web-footed 
 birds desire immersion in water, and claw-footed birds 
 fear immersion. Longevity diminishes the physical 
 powers of man, and impairs in an equal degree his 
 correlative irascibility, ambition, restlessness, and im- 
 patience ; but, wealth being more necessary to the 
 feeble than the strong, avarice is rather increased 
 than impaired by physical weakness. So subservient, 
 indeed, to our physical requirements, are our emo- 
 tional cravings, that they are deemed by some phy- 
 sicians remedial indications : hence cold water and 
 cold air are no longer withheld from fevered patients, 
 and inappetency is indulged on the same principle. 
 Contrast also the emotions accompanying different 
 physical formations. Man requires society ; and so 
 controlling thereto are his emotions, that solitary 
 confinement is the most cruel of inflictions : but 
 beasts of prey are best sustained by roaming singly, 
 and they are emotionally solitary. Emotional fear is 
 as universal in animals as physical danger : but emo- 
 tional courage is restricted to animals that possess 
 powers of physical resistance, and usually is propor- 
 tioned thereto ; though, when fear cannot secure an 
 animal's safety by retreat, courage rises in even the 
 most timid, as a last remedy against unavoidable dan- 
 
RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 41 
 
 ger. Analogous to this is the courage which hunger 
 develops, and which augments with increasing neces- 
 sity, and diminishes with satiety ; so that lions and 
 tigers are occasionally pacific, and timid animals fero- 
 cious. The rhinoceros possesses enormous strength 
 and aggressive resources ; but, incased within an 
 almost impenetrable skin, it needs no defensive cou- 
 rage, and is, accordingly, destitute thereof; while a 
 wasp, exposed all over to destruction, is so proverb- 
 ially irritable, that contact with its petty weapon is 
 carefully avoided. 
 
 The Relation of the Intellect to the Physical Organism. 
 
 That man's physical organism is worthless without 
 an intellect, is seen experimentally in idiots ; and a 
 like defect would produce a like result in all animals. 
 In matters within their physical power, they all 
 evince intellectual capacity ; but, in matters beyond 
 their physical powers, all animals seem equally inca- 
 pacitated intellectually. A spider, when pursued, 
 will roll his body into the form of a ball, and thus 
 elude detection by enemies not acquainted with the 
 trick ; and, in playing with a captured mouse, a cat 
 will avert her eyes therefrom to encourage an attempt 
 to escape, whereby to enjoy a recapture. Birds al- 
 lure a pursuer from their nests and their young by 
 alighting at some distance therefrom. A coach-horse 
 will walk to his stable when he becomes unharnessed, 
 
42 RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 
 
 and, at the proper time, will retake his position be- 
 fore the coach ; but, the adjustment of his harness 
 being beyond his physical powers, it is to him an 
 inextricable mystery, as the periodical migration of 
 birds and fish are mysterious to us. From some rat- 
 traps an exit would be easy to an animal organized 
 to lift a fallen door ; but, should the confined rat see 
 you lift the door, the escape thitherward will be 
 obvious to him : but how to cause such a means will 
 remain as inscrutable to his intellect as it is imprac- 
 ticable to his physical powers ; just as a man confined 
 within four insurmountable stone walls may see them 
 suddenly opened by an earthquake, and the means of 
 escape become apparent to him ; but, the production 
 of an earthquake being beyond his physical powers, 
 its production is an inexplicable mystery to his intel- 
 lect. When our Saviour says to the impotent man, 
 " Take up thy bed, and walk," the intellect conceives 
 curative efficiency in the mandate ; but, a recovery by 
 mandate being beyond man's physical powers, the 
 effect of the Saviour's mandate is mysterious. I once 
 saw a farce enacted, entitled "Harlequin Miller." 
 Old men and women were placed in a mill, and, 
 after being mysteriously ground, came out young 
 and blooming. Gross as is the analogy on which the 
 farce is founded, the intellect can conceive no mode 
 of rejuvenation but what will be equally monstrous ; 
 thus manifesting the impotence of the intellect, except 
 in subservency to man's physical powers. When a 
 
RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 43 
 
 man's leg becomes broken or dislocated, the means 
 of relief, being within his physical powers, are within 
 the purview of his intellect : but, when a horse breaks 
 one of his legs, no reparation is within his physical 
 capabilities, except to refrain from resting his limb 
 on the earth ; and his intellect conceives that remedy 
 alone. A dog, when wounded, is incapable of any 
 physical appliance, except with his tongue to lick the 
 wound ; and his intellect suggests this process, and can 
 conceive no better. "We sometimes think revelation 
 might properly have gratified our curiosity by inform- 
 ing us how the creation of light followed the fiat, 
 " Let there be light ; " how u God formed man of 
 the dust of the ground ; " and how " the rib, which 
 the Lord God had taken from man, made he a wo- 
 man : " but, unless the modes were wnthin our phy- 
 sical capabilities, — as we know they are not, — our 
 intellect could not have understood the information, 
 had it been attempted. By analogizing the unknow- 
 able to something within our physical powers, we 
 learn all we are capable of knowing ; and this is ac- 
 complished in the foregoing cases by the above narra- 
 tives : we being accustomed to fashion pottery out of 
 clay, as, we are told, Adam was made ; and to fashion 
 images out of bone and other materials, as, we are told, 
 Eve was formed ; and accustomed " to say to this 
 man, Go, and he goeth ; and to another, Come, and he 
 cometh," — as, we are told, light was created. Every 
 biblical miracle is made intelligible to us by means 
 
44 RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 
 
 like the foregoing ; as, when our Saviour opened the 
 eyes of the blind, " he spat on the ground, and made 
 clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the 
 blind man with the clay." 
 
 That our physical powers limit our intellect's com- 
 prehension, may be further manifested by our intel- 
 lect's inability to conceive that two apples added to 
 two other apples make either more or less than four 
 apples. The inability is only a consequence of the 
 physical inability, and hence is not apparent to a 
 child or man till he knows experimentally or analo- 
 gously the physical inability. Why, on the contrary, 
 can the intellect conceive that one drop of quick- 
 silver added to another drop will make only one 
 drop ? Because such a result is physically attainable. 
 Why cannot the intellect conceive that a billiard-ball 
 can be both very hot and very cold at the same time ? 
 Because we find the combination physically impracti- 
 cable. But why can the intellect conceive that the 
 same ball can be, at the same time, very hot and very 
 black ? Because we find that such a result is physi- 
 cally attainable. 
 
 The Relation of the Intellect to the Emotional 
 Organism. 
 
 But the intellect is subsidiary to the emotional 
 organism as well as to the physical. Our amusive 
 literature, and our theories, hypotheses, conjectures, 
 
RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 45 
 
 guesses, deductions, and inductions, are responses of 
 our intellect to our emotional curiosity, inquisitive- 
 ness, expectations, hopes, fears, doubts, beliefs, and 
 unbeliefs, &c. Theological doctrines are responses 
 of the intellect to our emotional piety, superstition, 
 reverence, fear, hope, &c. ; and hence theology is as 
 old as man. Rage and revenge have always created 
 some intellectual system of warfare ; curiosity has 
 always supplied an astronomy and cosmogony; the 
 desire of life, and the fear of death, have always 
 originated some hygiene and therapeutics ; love and 
 jealousy, some system of marriage to appropriate par- 
 ticular women to particular men : just as dams have 
 always been constructed by beavers, nests been built 
 by. birds, and burrows made by rabbits. 
 
 But, while our intellect is organized to respond 
 thus to our emotions, its responses are changeful; 
 they being limited at every period to the physical 
 knowledge of the period, — the intellect knowing 
 only such agencies as it acquires through the exter- 
 nal senses : therefore, before the invention of gun- 
 powder, the intellect could not account for earthquakes 
 on any theory of explosion ; before the discovery of 
 steam-power, it could not account for them on any 
 theory of steam-expansion ; before the discovery 
 of magnetism, it could not account for tides on 
 any theory of lunar attraction ; before the discovery 
 of electricity, it could not account for the aurora 
 borealis and lightning on any theory of electricity, 
 
46 RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 
 
 &c. The sun, which is first seen in the east, disap- 
 pears in the west : and, when curiosity seeks an 
 explanation thereof, the intellect can give only two 
 intelligible responses, — either the sun moves round 
 the earth from east to west, or the earth around the 
 sun from west to east ; and simply because our phy- 
 sical organism has supplied the intellect with no 
 other analogous modus operandi. Possibly at some 
 future time, and by some physical experience now 
 unknown, the above explanations may be deemed as 
 childish as the fabled theory of old, that the earth 
 is sustained on the shoulders of Atlas, — a fable only 
 noteworthy as manifesting the dependence of our 
 intellect on the physical knowledge of the period. 
 " How are the dead raised up ? and with what body 
 do they come ? " St. Paul's intellect answered these 
 questions in the only way they can ever be answered, 
 — by some physical experience analogous to the 
 questions : " Thou fool ! that which thou sowest is 
 / not quickened, except it die : and thou sowest not the 
 body that shall be, but bare grain ; it may chance of 
 wheat, or some other grain. But God giveth it a 
 body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his 
 own body." The more unique, therefore, the subject 
 is that our curiosity would investigate, the more 
 unanalogous thereto must be our sensible experience, 
 and ratably anomalous and wonderful must be the 
 theoretical solutions thereof by our intellect : hence 
 some of the startling speculations of astronomy may 
 
RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 4* 
 
 possibly originate in a want of analogy between ter- 
 restrial and celestial objects and operations ; and may 
 we not reasonably suspect such a diversity, when, by 
 assuming the contrary, we prove mathematically that 
 the nearest fixed star is so distant, that a cannon-ball 
 projected therefrom with the greatest known velocity 
 of such a projectile, and moving towards the earth, 
 would not reach it in less time than seven millions of 
 years ; and that suns probably exist, whose light has 
 been travelling towards the earth many millions of 
 miles every minute since the creation of the universe, 
 and it has not yet arrived ? Subject to a like defect, 
 all the intellect's solutions of vital operations, genera- 
 tion, sustentation, disease, growth, &c, have been but 
 little improved since the earliest ages, and they never 
 can improve essentially : therefore physicians no 
 longer elaborate remedial theories from physical ana- 
 logies, but rely for success on analogies from success- 
 ful remedial experiences. 
 
 The Two different Organic Powers of the Intellect. 
 
 Our intellect possesses, therefore, two distinctly 
 different powers, which have not been heretofore 
 discriminated, — a power responsive to our physical 
 organism, and on which is founded all our arts ; and 
 a power responsive to our emotional organism, and on 
 which is founded all our speculations. Providence 
 would hardly have thus organized us, if the responses 
 
48 RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 
 
 in either branch were merely illusory; though our 
 intellect (which includes our judgment) often with- 
 holds its full approval of many of the intellect's 
 responses to the emotions ; while, on the contrary, 
 our emotional organism (which includes the feelings 
 of belief and unbelief) yields belief equally to both 
 classes of the intellect's responses : hence the expec- 
 tations of Rationalists will never be realized, that a 
 period will arrive when nothing shall be believed, 
 unsanctioned by the judgment. Speculations change 
 their form ; but speculation as a process is as per- 
 manent as sensible knowledge. We shall, therefore, 
 always possess and believe a theology revealing to 
 us the everlasting future, a geology revealing to us 
 the pre-Adamitic past, and an astronomy which in- 
 cludes more wonders of the present time than theo- 
 logy and geology yield of the future and the past : 
 still, theology, geology, astronomy, and all other 
 speculations, must be fashioned at any given time 
 by our then physical knowledge ; and thereout our 
 speculations cannot wander, any more than our feet 
 can wander beyond the boundaries of the earth. 
 
THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 49 
 
 THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 
 
 No blind person can recognize either darkness or 
 blackness, though both are ever present to him ; nor 
 can the deaf recognize silence. Hence recognition 
 requires more than the presence of recognizable 
 things ; and this requirement the following postulate 
 supplies : namely, every intellection includes the re- 
 cognition of a negative as well as a positive ; and the 
 two poles must concur to produce in any person an 
 intellection. Darkness cannot be recognized by the 
 blind ; they knowing only the positive, but not 
 the negative, — not darkness : and, if light were as 
 unintermitted to us as darkness is to the blind, light 
 would be a positive without a negative, and there- 
 fore it would be as unrecognized by us as darkness 
 is by the blind. We should enjoy all the benefits 
 of light as we now enjoy them ; but we could not 
 recognize it, by reason of our not knowing what 
 not light is, — just as the blind suffer all the in- 
 conveniences of darkness, but they cannot recognize 
 it. If death were unknown, and immortality were 
 the condition of all things, life would be a positive 
 without a negative, and therefore unknown to us : 
 
 4 
 
50 THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 
 
 just as a statue is undiscoverable in a block of marble, 
 till all the marble is cut from the statue, so as to 
 make a negative thereto ; and just as a man's face is 
 undiscoverable on a painted canvas, till all but the 
 face is negatived by being colored differently from 
 the face ; and, the more we contrast the positive and 
 negative descriptions, the more distinct becomes the 
 face. A sheet of white paper contains various pro- 
 files of man and animals ; but they are severally 
 indiscoverable till we make a negative to each posi- 
 tive by cutting from the paper (or manifesting other- 
 ways) the parts of the paper not included in the 
 respective profiles. If the atmosphere was not occa- 
 sionally agitated into winds, a man might live to old 
 age without recognizing the presence of air. The 
 facility we experience in detecting fish in water, 
 or a bird or an insect amid foliage, is -propor- 
 tioned to the contrast in color that exists between 
 the object and its surroundings. Writing is legible 
 in proportion as the written and unwritten parts 
 negative each other : ink and writing - paper are 
 good in proportion as they best accomplish these 
 purposes. Darkness produces invisibility only as it 
 prevents any negative to the enveloped positives ; 
 but snow can be recognized almost as distinctly in 
 darkness as in light ; both being equally a negative 
 to the appearance of snow. Darkness increases the 
 visibility of the moon ; for darkness, better than 
 light, negatives all that is not moon. Could we see 
 
THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 51 
 
 the sun, with, the surrounding light negatived, as we 
 see the moon in a dark night, the sun's positivity 
 would be enhanced ratably with the negativity. A 
 smoked glass produces the result partially ; but, 
 while it negatives the sun's surroundings, it im- 
 pairs the sun's brightness. The sun shining on 
 fire and flame seems to deaden them, but only by 
 impairing the surrounding negative. An opposite 
 effect is produced on the furniture of a room ; for, 
 when shined on by the sun, it will often appear 
 covered with dust that was invisible previously, from 
 the absence of a negative thereto. A fog produces 
 obscuration by obliterating all negatives to the objects 
 it envelops ; but this is sometimes partially obviated 
 by an increased blackness with which some objects 
 tinge an enveloping fog, and to which the untinged 
 fog becomes a negative. A surrounding daylight is 
 as obscuring to the moon as a surrounding fog : both 
 yielding an equally imperfect negative to the moon. 
 A telescope transforms the galaxy into separate stars, 
 not by merely magnifying them, as is usually alleged 
 (for that alone would not effect the intent), but by 
 surrounding each with a negative. The common 
 spectacles that are worn to correct impaired vision 
 act on the same principle ; increasing the negative 
 surroundings of an object, rather than magnifying the 
 size of the object. 
 
 The omnipresence of God must remain unperceived 
 by us, though it may possess more positivity around us 
 
52 THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 
 
 than a noonday sun ; the premised omnipresence per- 
 mitting no negative of the positive presence. The 
 revolutions of the earth are unfelt by us, how violent 
 soever may be the gyrations; no negatives making 
 the positives perceptible. If we can suppose a man 
 to be on shipboard from his birth, and the ship to be 
 unceasingly rocked with any unvariable motion, he 
 would be unable to recognize the motion : nor could 
 it be manifested to him by any instruction from other 
 men differently conditioned, any more than a blind 
 man can be instructed to recognize darkness ; the in- 
 struction requiring for its removal the knowledge of 
 a negative. The pressure of the atmosphere is unfelt 
 on our body ; the pressure being uniform and unre- 
 mitting, a positive without a negative. Fish can have 
 no consciousness of being wet; as our constant im- 
 mersion in air renders us unconscious of any effect 
 therefrom on our skin. When, however, our cuticle 
 is wounded, the air produces thereon a feeling evin- 
 cive that our former insensibility was owing to only 
 the universality of the air's action on us and the ab- 
 sence of a negative. How many positives exist around 
 us and within us, that are unrecognizable by reason 
 of their unremitted presence and the consequent ab- 
 sence of a negative, we possess no means of conjectur- 
 ing ; but they may be numerous. 
 
 The polarity of intellections is indicated in every 
 language by a responsive verbal negative to almost 
 every affirmed positive ; as, light and darkness, sa- 
 
THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 53 
 
 pidity and insapidity, colored and uncolored, above 
 and below, in and out, hot and cold, light and heavy, 
 high and low, soft and hard, long and short, easy and 
 uneasy, rough and smooth, straight and crooked, hand- 
 some and ugly, &c, &c. ; and in each case the positive 
 would be unrecognizable without the negative. Hence 
 the common paradoxes, that without pain there would 
 be no pleasure ; without disease, no health ; without 
 cowardice, no courage ; without poverty, no riches ; 
 without pride, no humility ; without vice, no virtue ; 
 and, without the existence of an exception, we should 
 have no rule, &c. 
 
 Some positives seem to conflict with the foregoing 
 doctrine. All visible objects are said to be colored ; 
 hence color is a positive without a negative : and 
 this should make color unrecognizable, and the word 
 " uncolored " meaningless. But " color " is used in a 
 sense that makes its universality untrue, white being 
 a negative of color ; and other negatives exist, as 
 water, and the glair of eggs. Figure and shape are 
 said to be attributes of every visible object ; and there- 
 fore, being positives without a negative, they should be 
 unrecognizable. The premises are, however, untrue, 
 as is evinced by the words "shapeless" and "form- 
 less," which denote practical negatives to figure and 
 shape. Philosophers have long been divided in 
 opinion as to the existence of a vacuum ; some affirm- 
 ing that the universe is a plenum : but a plenum is 
 significant only as the negative of a vacuum, and vice 
 
54 THE POLARITY OF. INTELLECTIONS. 
 
 versa ; hence, without both, neither is significant. The 
 like may be said of externality ; which some philoso- 
 phers deny, insisting that all we know is internal of 
 our mind : but externality and internality are recipro- 
 cal conditions, and neither is significant without the 
 other. 
 
 But if we can recognize no positive till we know 
 a negative thereto, and vice versa, how can we com- 
 mence the acquisition of knowledge ? Nature has 
 provided for the occasion ; the normal condition of 
 each sense constituting a negative thereto : hence his 
 saliva is the natural negative by which an infant will 
 recognize a taste in the first drop of his food, and the 
 normal temperature of his body is the negative by 
 which he will recognize heat and cold. A child born 
 in a prison, surrounded by fetor, will, by the forego- 
 ing principle, be unconscious of the odor ; for, while 
 any fetor continues uniform and incessant, it will con- 
 stitute his olfactory negative. A man's normal state 
 of health constitutes his negative of pain ; and the 
 negative differs in different men : well-formed men 
 differ therein from men who are congenitively blind, 
 deaf, humpbacked, or deformed in any other manner. 
 
 The foregoing examples may never occur in the 
 degree assumed : but the principle they enunciate is 
 true ; and any man's normal negative may change 
 temporarily or permanently. The operatives in a 
 factory, where the clang of machinery is uniform and 
 incessant, and the inhabitants of a populous city, and 
 
THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 55 
 
 the mother of a group of clamorous children, soon 
 deem the accustomed sounds a negative of noise, while 
 it would be distracting to persons unaccustomed there- 
 to. Men can so familiarize themselves thereto, that 
 the taste of tobacco may become a negative ; furnace- 
 men may come, by habit, to deem as a negative a de- 
 gree of heat insufferable to persons unused thereto ; 
 and persons long diseased become unconscious of pains 
 that originally were very afflictive. When green 
 spectacles are first worn by any person, all objects 
 seen therethrough are tinged with green ; but, after 
 a certain persistency in such glasses, their color be- 
 comes a negative, by which other colors are perceived, 
 the same as if the spectacles were made of uncolored 
 glass. Men afflicted with strabismus possess a nega- 
 tive condition of sight that differs from the negative 
 of other men ; but all men recognize objects equally 
 well, though with different negatives. 
 
 On the foregoing principles, every man's locality 
 is his negative of distance ; and his muscular strength, 
 the negative of weakness : all persons are young who 
 are younger than himself, and all old who are older. 
 By a like standard, he determines who is rich, and 
 who poor ; who is short, and who tall ; who is fat, 
 and who lean ; who is quick in motion and intel- 
 lect, and who slow ; who is witty, and who dull. 
 What promotes his health is healthful ; what is pre- 
 judicial to him is hurtful; what administers to his 
 wants is useful ; what is not serviceable to him is 
 
56 THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 
 
 useless ; what man cannot bound, he deems bound- 
 less ; what he cannot fathom, becomes unfathomable ; 
 what he cannot understand, becomes incomprehensi- 
 ble ; and what he cannot enumerate, becomes innu- 
 merable. In relation to this particular positive, some 
 Indian nations cannot number beyond the aggregate 
 of their fingers ; and then innumerable commences. 
 This probably exaggerated example shows how men 
 differ in estimating qualities ; but men's predilections 
 and capacities are enough alike to obviate much mis- 
 understanding in our intercourse with each other. 
 Still, the better we understand the criterion by which 
 individuals form their judgments, the less we shall be 
 irritated by deviations from uniformity. 
 
 I cannot satisfactorily say more on the polarity of 
 intellections ; though I see indistinctly that the as- 
 sumed polarity, perhaps a bi-polarity, underlies the 
 comparison of adjectives ; underlies also the meta- 
 physical necessity, that " a whole must ever be greater 
 than a part ; " and underlies the intellect's tendency 
 to reject the " golden mean," and to vibrate in medi- 
 cal treatment from heating to cooling, from exhausting 
 to stimulating, from allopathy to homoeopathy, and to 
 vibrate in criminal legislation from the execution 
 of criminals with the utmost publicity to their exe- 
 cution with the utmost privacy, from the infliction 
 of death for slight offences to the abolishment of capi- 
 tal punishments for the highest, from democracies in 
 government to despotisms, and from despotisms to 
 
THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 57 
 
 licentiousness ; and underlies all disputation, every 
 assertion exciting in the person addressed a negative 
 response, and every negative exciting a positive ; and 
 underlies all the antithesis of literature, as in the Bi- 
 ble, " I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the 
 end, the first and the last ; " and in Shakspeare, — 
 
 " Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned; 
 Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell; 
 Be thy intents wicked or charitable; " &c, &c. 
 
 I will close the topic of polarity by adverting to 
 eternity, infinity, omnipotence, &c. ; of which we 
 usually say, that their full meaning is unknown to us. 
 And why is it? Because they are severally only 
 negatives. We, for instance, know time as a positive, 
 but eternity (time without end) we know as only a 
 negative of time with an end ; we know space as 
 a positive, but infinity (space without bounds) we 
 know as only a negative of space with bounds ; 
 we know power as a positive, but omnipotence (power 
 without limitation) we know as only a negative of 
 power with limits. Our knowledge of death is like 
 the foregoing ; it consisting mainly of negatives. 
 The same may be said of sleep. Nor can we find 
 out God to perfection, says the Bible : and the or- 
 ganic obstruction consists in polarity, which limits 
 our knowledge of God to negatives, as in the above 
 example of his omnipotence ; the like obstruction 
 applying to all his attributes. 
 
58 WHAT we think; 
 
 VI. 
 
 WHAT WE THINK, HOW WE THINK, WHAT 
 WE CANNOT THINK, AND THE ORDER IN 
 WHICH WE THINK. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHAT WE THINK ; OR, THE ANALYSIS OF THOUGHTS. 
 
 Thoughts are divisible into six kinds, as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 Class 1. — Visual Thoughts. 
 
 If I think of the moon as a sight, it is a visual 
 thought. When Hamlet exclaims that he can see his 
 father "in his mind's eye," the exclamation refers to 
 a visual thought. We can think thus of much that 
 we ever saw ; and such thoughts will often be almost 
 as vivid as actual vision, others will be indistinct, 
 but each will endure only momentarily. Many per- 
 sons court sleep by thinking visually of sheep, and 
 counting them as they leap successively over a gate 
 from one field into another. 
 
 Class 2. — Verbal Thoughts. 
 
 We can talk in thought as distinctly as we talk 
 audibly. When the Bible commands us " to com- 
 
OR, THE ANALYSIS OF THOUGHTS. 59 
 
 mune with our hearts upon our bed, and be silent/ 5 
 we recognize the verbal thinking to which the pre- 
 cept refers. Hannah spake thus " in her heart : her 
 lips moved, but her voice was not heard." An 
 accountant can reckon in verbal thought ; a mathe- 
 matician can demonstrate therein a problem ; an 
 orator can declaim in the same way ; and a Christian 
 can thus pray, or repeat the Decalogue. A French- 
 man thinks French words ; a vulgar man, vulgar 
 words ; an uneducated man thinks solecisms ; and 
 a profane man thinks blasphemy. Indeed, verbal 
 thinking needs for its recognition only remarks 
 enough to manifest the process referred to. 
 
 Class 3. — Auricular Thoughts. 
 
 We can think of thunder as a word, and it will be 
 a verbal thought ; or we can think of it as a sound, 
 and it will be an auricular thought. When we listen 
 to conversation in a language unknown to us, the 
 intonation constitutes what we chiefly recall in 
 thought. A musician can recall in auricular thoughts 
 the sounds of his accustomed instrument, and the 
 sounds will be as distinct to him as in actual hear- 
 ing. Written music, such a person reads in auricular 
 thoughts as he reads written words in verbal thoughts ; 
 a violinist reads the written music as sounds of a 
 violin ; an organist, as sounds of an organ ; just as 
 Arabic numerals are read by a Frenchman in French 
 words, and by an Englishman in English. The ability 
 
60 WHAT we think; 
 
 to read in auricular thoughts the written notes that 
 he sees, enables a musician to judge thereby the 
 melody of the tune, about as well as he can by hear- 
 ing when the tune is played instrumentally. Mu- 
 sicians occupy themselves with music in auricular 
 thoughts as importunately as other men occupy 
 themselves with words in verbal thoughts. Auricular 
 thoughts are, of course, absent in persons void of the 
 sense of hearing, as verbal thoughts are absent in a 
 mute who has not learned to articulate words. Ver- 
 bal thoughts are absent also in infants before they ac- 
 quire speech, though they possess auricular thoughts. 
 Bell-ringers and chimers think vividly the accus- 
 tomed sounds ; and, in mania, the sufferer, in some 
 cases, mistakes his auricular thoughts for audibly 
 uttered sounds and words. Indeed, every person 
 occasionally mistakes for the sound of a bell or a 
 clock, &c, some auricular thought thereof which is 
 excited in him by surrounding circumstances. 
 
 Class 4. — Sapid Thoughts. 
 
 When we recall in thought the taste of sugar, we 
 are thinking a sapid thought. Every time a deaf 
 mute thinks of sugar, he probably thinks of it in 
 sapid thought. The emotional feelings of disgust 
 or delight that accompany any taste, accompany 
 usually, in a modified manner, our thought of the 
 taste : hence conversation that excites the recollec- 
 tion of disgustful tastes is avoided by delicate people, 
 
OR, THE ANALYSIS OF THOUGHTS. 61 
 
 especially during periods of eating. In some men, 
 you can at any time excite nausea by speaking to 
 them of Glauber salts. Many persons experience 
 a flow of saliva by thinking of lemon-juice ; and a 
 like effect is often produced by the recollection of 
 some food of which we are particularly fond : and 
 from this arises the expression of making a hearer's 
 " mouth water " by some narrative of delicacies. 
 Phraseology daguerreotypes thus our organic powers, 
 and constitutes a common -sense philosophy, that 
 merits more consideration than it has received. We 
 recall more readily, in sapid thought, the taste of 
 sugar, salt, and vinegar, than we can insipid tastes. 
 Much, however, depends on cultivation : connois- 
 seurs of wines taste distinctions therein unobserved 
 by ordinary drinkers, and recall them vividly in 
 sapid thoughts. The like may be said of connois- 
 seurs of tea ; but, generally, men so habituate them- 
 selves to verbal thoughts, that the other classes are 
 comparatively indistinct from unfrequency of use. 
 A man who is deficient of any sense becomes more 
 than ordinarily acute in the senses which he pos- 
 sesses, and their sensations are recalled in thought 
 with a vividness ratably unusual. 
 
 Class 5. — Nasal Thoughts. 
 
 The odor of a rose most persons can readily recall 
 in thought; and I term it a " nasal thought." Laura 
 Bridgman is deficient of hearing, seeing, and tasting ; 
 
62 WHAT WE THINK. 
 
 but her sense of smell remedies remarkably these 
 deficiencies, her nasal thoughts possessing great vivid- 
 ness. A person who visits a hospital while he is 
 under fear of any contagion, will think so vividly, in 
 nasal thoughts, of any odors he encountered at the 
 hospital, as to complain that he cannot rid himself 
 thereof; and hence the employment, in such cases, of 
 Camphor, by which the unwelcome nasal thought is 
 superseded. From this organic consequence proba- 
 bly arises the notion, that the odor of camphor is 
 antidotal. That dogs and cats recall in thought 
 their sensations, we can hardly doubt, from the 
 uneasiness they often exhibit while asleep. Hounds 
 who follow game by a scent undiscoverable to men, 
 experience, probably, nasal thoughts with a vividness 
 unknown to us. 
 
 Class 6. — Tactile Thoughts. 
 
 The foregoing classific names indicate the analysis 
 which thoughts are susceptible of: so, when sensa- 
 tions of feeling are recollected, I name them " tactile 
 thoughts." A sufferer from gout, toothache, or any 
 pain, will often think thereof in tactile thoughts, not 
 in words. Such thoughts partake moderately of the 
 physical painfulness of the original feelings : conse- 
 quently, topics that will excite the thoughts are 
 avoided by considerate companions of the sick. A 
 subsided toothache may be reproduced in a man by 
 an inquiry as to his present feelings. Thoughts of 
 
HOW WE THINK. 63 
 
 every class are vivid in proportion to the acuteness 
 of the original sensation. To smooth with our hand 
 a piece of velvet, or to pass our hand over a rasp, 
 produces feelings which we can recall with much 
 vividness ; and the like may be said of any peculiar 
 feeling. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOW WE THINK. 
 
 Every thought possesses the characteristic of the 
 sense or organ to which the thought pertains. 
 
 § 1. _ Of Verbal Thoughts. 
 
 " Our Father who art in heaven " must be uttered 
 in thought as consecutively as in oral speech ; and all 
 verbal thinking is equally consecutive. Indeed, ver- 
 bal thoughts are words ( spoken inaudibly ; and in 
 most cases we can detect a movement of the tongue 
 or the breath, as any person can discover if he will 
 pronounce in thought the alphabet When a man 
 moves his organs of speech forcibly while thinking 
 words, we say he is talking to himself. Men influ- 
 enced by any strong passion often articulate their 
 thoughts, and think aloud, especially when secluded 
 from observation : but the tendency is difficult to 
 resist, even in public ; and hence proceed the profane 
 colloquies with which enraged people encounter each 
 other, and which they usually regret on the subsi- 
 
64 HOW WE THINK. 
 
 dence of the emotions that caused the outbreak. 
 The Emperor of Germany's ambassador endeavored 
 to ingratiate himself with the King of Prussia by 
 speaking disrespectfully of George the First of Eng- 
 land, with whom Prussia was at enmity ; but the 
 Queen of Prussia, a daughter of George, was present 
 at the conversation, and immediately exclaimed that 
 " none but a scoundrel would speak thus of a sove- 
 reign person." This was her thought, and anger 
 caused her to think aloud ; the normal vigor of the 
 intellect being often insufficient to control, in the 
 wisest persons, the abnormal impulse of unusual 
 emotions. That truth is elicited by wine is a pro- 
 verbial admission of the effect of emotional excite- 
 ment on verbal thinking ; especially as alcoholic 
 drinks, though they greatly affect our emotional and 
 physical organisms, leave the intellect measurably 
 unimpaired. Early in life, verbal thinking is not 
 performed with the slight agency of the organs of 
 speech about which we have been speaking ; but 
 children think aloud : hence the incessant prattle of 
 infants, and their proneness to articulate in sleep. 
 
 Verbal thinking is usually deemed the most mys- 
 terious manifestation of our intellect ; but my verbal 
 thoughts seem as evidently the production of my 
 organs of speech as articulated words, and neither 
 more mysterious nor less. A paralysis of the tongue 
 impairs verbal thinking as much as it impairs arti- 
 culation ; but it leaves other thoughts unimpaired. 
 
HOW WE THINK. 65 
 
 How an abscission of the tongue would affect verbal 
 thinking, I should like to know. Persons slow of 
 speech are, I suppose, ratably slow in verbal think- 
 ing ; and rapid speech is connected with a ratable 
 rapidity of verbal thoughts. How far stammering 
 affects verbal thinking, I have never ascertained ; but 
 the stammerer can probably think verbally without 
 impediment. No man can speak fluently, who adopts 
 the adage of thinking twice before he speaks : the 
 pre- occupation of his organs of speech by thinking 
 will prevent fluency of utterance. A fluent speaker 
 must think aloud. We all think fluently. 
 
 § 2. — Visual Thoughts. 
 
 Sights are remote from the eye that sees them ; 
 and equally remote therefrom seem visual thoughts. 
 When the moon is recognized in visual thought, its 
 position in the heavens is part of the thought. The 
 face of an absent friend, when seen in our " mind's 
 eye," is seen at a distance from the eye. The mind's 
 eye and' the eye of the body seem a modification of 
 the same identity. When a person endeavors to 
 recall any appearance, he watches his eyes for the 
 thought he is endeavoring to excite : he will shut 
 his eyes, or cast them towards vacancy, and nicta- 
 tions of the eye-lids will be suspended. Morphy, 
 who plays blindfolded several games of chess simul- 
 taneously, can see distinctly, in visual thought, the 
 board and the moves. 
 
 5 
 

 66 HOW WE THINK. 
 
 After looking persistently at any bright object, we 
 experience, if we close our eyes, a secondary vision, 
 that is analogous to visual thinking. The pheno- 
 menon which results from a rather painful pressure 
 on the eye is of a similar character; also the gro- 
 tesque images which occasionally appear when a 
 person closes his eyes, and solicits the representation. 
 Ordinary blindness may not impair our power to 
 recall former sights, nor even an extirpation of both 
 the eyes ; but a paralysis of the organs of sight 
 would, I believe, impair visual thinking. Experi- 
 ments have never been instituted in the above direc- 
 tions, the analysis of thought not being sufficiently 
 understood. 
 
 § 3. — Auricular Thoughts. 
 
 We can hear the hum of fifty persons speaking 
 together, or the mingled sound of fifty musical in- 
 struments ; and we can think in auricular thought 
 whatever we can hear. In this comprehensiveness, 
 auricular thinking differs from verbal thinking (which 
 is consecutive, word by word) ; the difference of the 
 two cases conforming to the powers of the organs 
 of speech and hearing. As Hamlet saw his father 
 in his mind's eye, he could have heard his father's 
 voice in his mind's ear, had he endeavored to recall 
 the voice in auricular thought. All of us can thus 
 recall thunder, or any other familiar sound ; and the 
 agency therein of the sense of hearing is so well 
 
HOW WE THINK. 67 
 
 recognized, that I have known musicians to listen, 
 and enjoin silence, when they were endeavoring to 
 recollect a partially forgotten tune. 
 
 § 4. — The remaining Three Classes of Thoughts. 
 
 The smell of a rose, when recalled in nasal 
 thought, is accompanied by an inhalation of air, as 
 in the act of smelling ; and, in both processes, at- 
 tention is directed to the nasal organ. So sapid 
 thoughts are often accompanied by a flow of saliva, 
 as in actual tasting. The homely phrase, " He 
 smacks his lips in recollection of what he has eaten," 
 evinces, that, in thinking, we not only see with our 
 mind's eye, hear with our mind's ear, smell with 
 our mind's nose, but taste with our mind's palate. 
 
 When any feel is recalled in tactile thought, the 
 thought is located where the feel was experienced. 
 An indolent woman who arises in the morning, from 
 her bed, with a headache, may preserve it through 
 the day by continually thinking of it in tactile 
 thought ; while a physically active man, who should 
 arise with such a pain, would solicit other thoughts, 
 and the pain would subside. A surgeon told me, 
 that, by the continued application of cotton batting 
 to the breast of a woman who feared an incipient 
 cancer, she became cured ; though, had she nursed 
 the pain by constant thoughts thereof, the result 
 might have been different. The only effect of the 
 
68 HOW WE THINK. 
 
 cotton was to induce a cessation of the injurious 
 tactile thoughts. Strengthening plasters, and other 
 topical applications, operate beneficially by the same 
 means. Whether a woman, who has suffered from a 
 cancerous breast, can recall, in tactile thought, the 
 cancerous pains after an excision of the breast, I 
 should doubt ; but, if they can be thus recalled, their 
 location will seem to be where she formerly felt the 
 pains. 
 
 The information of our several senses can be re- 
 collected by different persons with different degrees 
 of facility. A musician may recollect sounds in 
 auricular thoughts with more facility than he can 
 recall any other species of his sensible knowledge, 
 while a painter may recall sights more readily than 
 sounds. Verbal thoughts are the only class that we 
 systematically cultivate the recollection of; and this 
 cultivation commences usually at childhood, and con- 
 tinues to the end of our college course. Whether 
 we could not beneficially cultivate the recollection 
 of other classes of thought, may be worth an ex- 
 periment : geometry cultivates, to some extent, visual 
 thinking. My memory is more tenacious of sights 
 than of any other part of my knowledge ; and much 
 that I think of absent persons and places is in visual 
 thoughts. To most persons, a recollection by ver- 
 bal thoughts is better than any other ; and therefore, 
 for the purpose of subsequent communication, a tra- 
 veller should, while objects are before him, utter 
 
HOW WE THINK. 69 
 
 or think verbally of the detail that he wishes to 
 remember, and he will subsequently recall in thought 
 the words more readily than he can the sights. To 
 this principle is owing the advantage of viewing ob- 
 jects in company with friends ; the comments made 
 to each other being subsequently recallable easily in 
 verbal thoughts. While travelling in a stage-coach, 
 the late Hannah Adams kept repeating, "Trunk, 
 band - box, carpet - bag, and satchel." A person 
 asked her if she wanted any thing. She said, 
 no ; but she was afraid of forgetting some of her 
 baggage if she did not commit to memory the 
 words. 
 
 Our physical feelings are less easily recalled in 
 thought than our other sensations ; and this provi- 
 dential dispensation exposes us to the evil of only 
 actual pains, except rarely, and in the mitigated form 
 of tactile thoughts. Emotional feelings are renewa- 
 ble, but they are not recallable in thought ; nor are 
 emotional feelings evanescent, as all thoughts are. 
 The same melancholy, or other emotional feeling, 
 may pervade a man continuously for many days in 
 succession. 
 
70 WHAT WE CANNOT THINK. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WHAT WE CANNOT THINK. 
 
 The blind know nothing of colors, nor of any other 
 sight, and consequently they can think no -visual 
 thoughts ; and no man, possessed of vision, can think 
 visually of any sight that is visually unknown to him : 
 his disability therein is precisely like the disability 
 of the blind. This limitation of visual thoughts 
 is organic, and of course insurmountable. I once 
 heard a gentleman refuse to look at the dead body 
 of his friend ; assigning as a reason, that he wished to 
 think of his friend as he knew him in life, and not 
 as he appeared when dead. Every man understands 
 the principle alluded to. With verbal thoughts, the 
 person could think of his deceased friend in any 
 phrases that language can supply ; but, with visual 
 thoughts, he could think of him only as he had seen 
 him. Still, unless a man understands the six differ- 
 ent manifestations that are confounded under the one 
 general name of " thought," he may be puzzled when 
 he is told of a blind man who once discoursed accu- 
 rately on light and colors. The blind man's thoughts 
 thereon were but verbal. A traveller in new and 
 distant countries may publish in a book all he wit- 
 nessed ; but a reader thereof will acquire therefrom 
 only verbal thoughts, while the traveller's thoughts 
 
WHAT WE CANNOT THIXK. 71 
 
 will be the sights and other revelations that were 
 made to him by his senses. 
 
 That a man's sensible knowledge is limited to his 
 sensible experience, constitutes the organic barrier 
 which hides from us futurity. Verbal thoughts may 
 overleap the barrier ; but it is not overleaped sensi- 
 bly. If any person believes he can think visually 
 what he never saw, let him endeavor to think visu- 
 ally of some color that he never saw, and he will find 
 himself unable. You can see, in visual thought, an 
 angle, a globe, a plain ; but you will be unable to 
 thus see some shape which you never saw. The 
 limitation imputed thus to visual thoughts pertains to 
 all the other classes. You can think, in auricular 
 thought, the sound of thunder, of a flute, a drum, the 
 neighing of a horse, the bleating of a sheep ; but you 
 are unable to think thus of some sound you never 
 heard. To make the limitation evident, think of 
 some sound that shall differ from any you have heard, 
 — not in degree, but in kind, — and you will find 
 such thinking impracticable. 
 
 But persons may believe, that by combining what 
 our senses have informed us of, or by subtracting 
 therefrom, we may, in thought, create a centaur. 
 We can think verbally a centaur, and we can think 
 visually a man's head, and, in another visual thought, 
 a horse's body ; but we cannot form the two sights into 
 one visual thought. A man can combine black and 
 white in one visual thought, if he has ever seen the 
 
72 WHAT WE CANNOT THINK. 
 
 two colors in juxtaposition ; but, never having seen 
 meridian daylight and midnight darkness in juxtaposi- 
 tion, he cannot combine the two in one visual thought. 
 Locke says, "We can place two lengths together, and 
 think of increased length as resulting from the union ; 
 but, if we place together two parcels of snow, we 
 cannot think of the aggregation as increasing the 
 whiteness." Both results depend on the principle, 
 that our thoughts of sensible things conform to sensi- 
 ble archetypes. A man cannot bite his own nose off; 
 nor can he think the operation, except in words. 
 
 Water and vinegar will fuse into one taste, modi- 
 fied by the union ; nor can the two constitute one 
 sapid thought, except in the manner they can be 
 tasted. On tasting brandy, a person may say he 
 will try it mixed with water. Why not test the mix- 
 ture in thought ? Because we can think sapidly of 
 only the tastes we have experienced. A perfume is 
 usually a combination of several odors ; but, how 
 familiar soever the separate odors may be to you, the 
 perfume can be experienced in nasal thought only 
 after you have scented the compound. The instru- 
 ments that compose a band, you may have often heard 
 separately : but you cannot combine their sounds in 
 auricular thought, unless you have heard them toge- 
 ther ; nor can you, in auricular thought, resolve the 
 compound into its separate sounds, unless you have 
 heard them separately. The Bourse at Paris, during 
 "high change," resounds with a clamor which no 
 
THE ORDER IN WHICH WE THINK. 73 
 
 previous acquaintance with the human voice would 
 enable a man to think in auricular thought ; but, 
 having heard the sound, he will thereafter be able to 
 recall it. 
 
 Verbal thoughts differ from all the foregoing. 
 They are not limited to sentences previously uttered : 
 but we can think verbally whatever we can speak ; 
 the two processes differing only in audibility. Hence 
 we can think, in words, of fifty noonday suns blazing 
 together in the heavens, or lying scattered on the 
 earth ; of grottoes at the bottom of the sea, and fires 
 in the centre of the earth ; and of any other thing that 
 language can express. Had we the same control over 
 our sensuous thoughts that we have over our verbal 
 thoughts, curiosity would no longer compel us to 
 travel ; but, wandering only in imagination, fiction 
 and reality would glide before us in thought like the 
 images of a phantasmagoria, and we would soon lose 
 the power of discriminating intellectual creations from 
 physical realities. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ORDER IN WHICH WE THINK. 
 
 Thoughts succeed each other in the order that the 
 objects thought of became known to us. 
 
 § 1. — The Recollection of Words. 
 
 What letter follows R, in the English alphabet ? 
 Every man will immediately name S ; but, if you ask 
 
74 THE OKDER IN WHICH WE THINK. 
 
 him what letter precedes R, he will usually be unable 
 to recollect Q till he has first thought of some letter 
 that precedes Q, and then remembers downwards to 
 R. So a person, who has learned multiplication by a 
 table in which the multiplier is never larger than the 
 multiplicand, will not know the sum of nine times 
 eight till he has reversed it into eight times nine. 
 This difficulty may continue with a man during his 
 life ; and it illustrates the order in which we think. 
 A child who knows by memory the alphabet will be 
 unable to proceed if you stop him in any part, and 
 thus break the continuity of his thoughts. He will 
 say, you have put him out. We remedy such a break 
 by repeating the letter which the child last uttered, 
 and thus restoring the continuity. All prompting 
 proceeds on this principle. A child, in repeating from 
 memory any formula, will pronounce the words rapid- 
 ly ; for he knows, that, in a slow utterance, some extra- 
 neous thought may intervene, and put him out. 
 
 To learn by rote any series of words, you must 
 read or repeat the words till your organs of speech 
 become so accustomed to the series, that every word 
 of it excites a recollection of its successor. Children 
 soon acquire experimentally this mode of committing 
 to memory, and also that to repeat audibly the words 
 which they desire to remember is more effectual than 
 to repeat the words in thought. Before a child can 
 add two and two, he must recollect the phrase " two 
 and two are four," and so of every other two numbers 
 
THE ORDER IX WHICH WE THINK. 75 
 
 to the extent of his knowledge of addition ; but, as 
 we commence a new series of addition, every time we 
 attain the sum of a hundred we are relieved from bur- 
 dening our memory beyond every binary permutation 
 of figures that can make the sum of a hundred. The 
 number of such permutations, in every possible series 
 of figures in a single column whose aggregate shall 
 not exceed the number of one hundred, is, I believe, 
 nine hundred. Whether a table of these permuta- 
 tions, to be learned abstractly, by memory, as we 
 learn multiplication, would assist the acquisition of 
 , addition, I know not. Some accountants can add two 
 columns at once ; and I have heard of three columns 
 being thus summed up. But, before two columns can 
 be thus added, some ninety-nine hundred binary per- 
 mutations must be leailied by memory ; while, to add 
 three columns, requires, I believe, ninety-nine thou- 
 sand nine hundred permutations. The addition of 
 two columns together is, therefore, about ten times 
 more difficult to learn than the addition of a single 
 column. Most people limit their memoriter multipli- 
 cation to twelve, both as relates to the multiplier and 
 the multiplicand ; but no natural limit exists therein, 
 but the capacity of man's memory. A memoriter mul- 
 tiplication up to twenty, for both multiplier and mul- 
 tiplicand, is easily acquired ; and to add up two 
 columns of figures simultaneously is not difficult. 
 
76 THE ORDER IN WHICH WE THINK. 
 
 § 2. — The Recollection of Sights. 
 
 If I have frequently seen four coaches pass my win- 
 dow in succession, the first black, the second red, the 
 third yellow, the fourth green, my visual recollection of 
 the carriages will present them in the same order; and, 
 were I called to testify in a court of justice as to the 
 succession of the coaches, the order could be recalled 
 in visual thought, with little chance of misplacing the 
 sequence. Should a person, however, testify falsely 
 of such a sequence, he would be in constant peril of 
 forgetting the order to which he had testified ; pos- , 
 sessing no monitor thereof but a recollection of his 
 previous words. Hence the proverb, that liars should 
 have good memories. Witnesses are often embar- 
 rassed when counsel will not let them testify to events 
 in the order of their occurrence. The narration de- 
 sired by the witness may contain much that is irrele- 
 vant to the issue on trial ; but it is necessary to his 
 recollection of the parts which are relevant. 
 
 § 3. — The Recollection of Sounds. 
 
 A musician is frequently unable to recollect a tune ; 
 but, when another person will commence it, the mu- 
 sician can sing the rest without prompting. The 
 cuckoo is a bird very common in England, and it 
 issues a cry from which the bird's name is derived, — 
 " Cook-oo." The cry is easily imitated by the hu- 
 man voice ; and whoever is familiar with the cry, will 
 
THE ORDER IN WHICH WE THINK. 77 
 
 recollect, in auricular thought, the second syllable as 
 soon as he hears the first : but, should any person 
 utter only the second syllable, it will probably be 
 unintelligible to the hearer. The like may be said 
 of the " whip-poor-will " of America, or the " katy- 
 did." The principle is more than the association of 
 ideas ; the first syllable of cuckoo being as much asso- 
 ciated with the second as the second is with the first. 
 Still the association aids not memory, except in the 
 sequence to which the senses are accustomed. 
 
 § 4. — Tastes, Feels, and Smells 
 
 Are all recollected in the order that our senses have 
 manifested to us the originals. The order is inde- 
 pendent of the will, and providentially prevents our 
 remaining absorbed in the contemplation of any single 
 thought ; our thoughts flowing onward unceasingly, 
 whereby any painful recollection is soon left behind 
 till it is again recalled by some of its antecedents. A 
 principle of succession, kindred to the foregoing, 
 regulates our muscular recollections or repetitions. 
 A person, after having played a tune frequently on 
 the piano, will unpremeditatedly move his fingers 
 on the correct keys ; but he will be as unable to move 
 the keys in a reverse order, till practice has familiar- 
 ized him to such moves, as he is to spell his name in 
 an inverted order. 
 
78 CONCLUSION. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 I designed to end -with a summary of what the fore- 
 going pages discuss ; but I find myself unable to 
 epitomize what together is little more than a very brief 
 epitome of several books heretofore published by me. 
 I therefore, in conclusion, only iterate what the title 
 promised, — that the contents are explorations into 
 the depths of intellectual knowledge by means of an 
 ultimate analysis thereof. Our physical possessions, 
 though illimitable in variety, are, in their essence, 
 unknowable beyond the few elements into which they 
 are analyzable ; and the like is true of our intellectual 
 possessions. Curiosity desires to delve below, soar 
 above, and advance beyond, these mysterious barriers ; 
 but the end is unattainable. 
 
 I have devoted an unusually long life to specula- 
 tions which the present terminate ; and I claim, that 
 they constitute a better intellectual philosophy than 
 can be found elsewhere, and more intelligible. This 
 may not be saying much ; and succeeding investi- 
 gators will, I hope, accomplish more. For no person 
 is better assured than I, that an abundant scope exists 
 for a fruition of the hope. But I have attained my 
 own purpose ; for — 
 
 While some in war and some in trade delight, 
 My pleasure is to sit alone, and write. 
 
 INSTITU" THE END. 
 
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