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BOOK I.

CH. IV.

$ 60. Influences operative on

harmonises well with the other unphilosophical assumption of a tabula rasa, since the formed character of the second period appears to be the mere result of the external influences forming the character in the character. the first period. But the untenability of this view is shown, I think, by the wide differences constantly met with between characters which have been subjected to very similar influences of educational circumstances, even when the physical organisation of the body is similar also. Yet we must remember that the analysis of character, in respect of the different effects produced in it by different external influences, is the most intricate of questions, and the necessary inductions very far from complete; indeed there has hitherto been no preliminary logic of the subject at hand, no scientific hypothetical framework, to serve as a guide in instituting such inductions.

3. The remaining classes of influences upon the character, which nevertheless cannot be all of them sharply distinguished from those now classed as educational, may be grouped under two heads, according as they include or do not include a redintegrating combination of sensations, as in perception of remote objects for instance. To the head of those which do not include redintegration belong:

1st, All modification of the nervous organism influencing the cerebral functions by means of the bodily organisation, or external circumstances acting upon and through it, but without itself immediately producing sensation. This includes the influences of the different temperaments, of climate, diet, regimen, difference of age, and difference of sex, except so far as will afterwards appear in § 74; all in short that is included in the "influence of the body on the mind;"

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a subject of immense importance, first treated systematically and philosophically, I believe, by Cabanis, in his Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme.

2nd, The particular sensations or perceptions arising from time to time from particular causes in each group of the systemic sensations; e.g. states of hunger, thirst, heat, cold, melancholy, cheerfulness, sensations of the reproductive organs, pains of ache, lesion, and so on. Each sensation has its own specific character, and its own specific pleasure or pain; and these cannot be sundered from each other by any effort of imagination or volition.

3rd, The particular sensations or perceptions of the special senses, with their specific pleasures or pains; such as sweet and bitter tastes, soft and harsh sounds, bright and dim colours, and so on. The same remark as to fixity of each specific sensation and its pain or pleasure applies to these also.

To the head of those which include redintegration belong:

1st, The combinations of perceptions into complex fixed bundles, or remote objects of perception. But of these it is only the kernel of each that is proof against decomposition by efforts of redintegration; the kernel consisting of perceptions of sight and of touch combined together in space of three dimensions. Nevertheless other sensations are often the essential circumstance indicated by the names of objects; e. g. fire necessarily involves the sensation of heat, snow that of cold. Other qualities are not so necessarily involved in the objects, e. g. odour in flowers. But generally speaking names of objects denote remote objects of perception, and have a connotation which we accept as the constitution or na

ture of those objects. The pleasures and pains of these remote objects are inseparable from the sensations which compose them, and therefore practically also from the objects themselves.

2nd, The combination of appetites with the representation of the objects which are accustomed or fitted to satisfy them; for instance, hunger with that of something to eat, thirst with that of something to drink, sexual appetite with that of a person of the opposite sex. It must be remarked that the appetite usually involves much more than the bare representation of the thing requisite to satisfy it. Hunger involves also the representation of delicate and pleasant dishes, thirst of agreably tasting liquids. The converse holds good also; a pleasant or a favourite meat stimulates the appetite; and the less appetite there is, the more dainty must be the meat in order to rouse it. In other words, the connection between appetite and object extends itself into neighbouring provinces, that is, into the special sense of Taste. Since the two pleasures, that of satisfying hunger in systemic sensation, and that of gratifying taste in special sensation, are given in combination by a single object, the food, these two sensations are found to combine into one state of consciousness, in a manner analogous to that in which sensations combine to form remote objects. More remarkable still is the case of the sexual appetite. There the parallel to pleasures of taste in hunger is admiration of beauty or grace in parts of the object quite unconnected otherwise with the sexual appetite; but this is a pleasure of direct emotion, and not a pleasure of sense at all. Sometimes the combination extends to far more remote representations than these; for instance,

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CH. IV.

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CH. IV.

$ 60. Influences operative on

to that of high birth. This appetite, then, in systemic sensation carries us up far into the region of pure representation; and the line of demarcation between the character. character and influences on it will not in such cases run quite evenly, since it does not clearly, and for all men alike, coincide with the line between remote objects of perception and pure representations. In other words, the line is difficult to fix in detail, because different individuals will find different pure representations more or less separable, more or less inseparable, from the same remote objects of perception; and what are pure representations to one man are parts of remote objects of perception to another. Pure representations which are entirely inseparable from particular remote objects of perception, if any such there be, should be treated as parts of such objects, and included among the influences on character, not in the character itself.

4. These influences taken together, or some of them when exceptionally powerful in some individuals, or in the same individual at different times, often exert so potent a dominion over the character itself, that they seem to abolish its reaction altogether, and in fact to take its place and become the character. But this is not possible so long as there is activity in the cerebral hemispheres at all; it must always be upon and through the action of the cerebral hemispheres that these influences act, even when in the total result, the modes of thought and feeling of the individual in life, we can trace only such characters as are plainly due to these influences. A man, for

instance, is never entirely the creature of his education; some features impressed upon him by parents, teachers, or experience of life, are omitted in the

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CH. IV.

§ 60. Influences operative on

rescript; of two contradictory features either one is dropped, or both are carried up into a wider one, and thus come out in the shape of new features or traits of character. In short they undergo a mould- the character. ing in spontaneous and voluntary redintegration, and this remoulding must itself be of a certain character, in dependence on the constitution of the organ which displays it. The cerebral hemispheres cannot escape, any more than any other bodily or nervous organ, from the law of the influence of hereditary accumulations of endowment which are their constitution. These endowments and this constitution, thus become innate in them, cannot be neglected in estimating the ingredients or constituting elements of the total result, although they are never seen separate from that result; while the influences of education, bodily organisation, sensation, temperament, climate, and so on, are seen and classified apart from it. There is, then, reason enough to assure us of the existence of such a constitution in the cerebral hemispheres, the organ of character; and the impossibility of accounting for peculiarities in character, in most persons at least, solely from circumstances of education and the other influences which have been enumerated, is sufficient ground for warranting an attempt to analyse that constitution, and to classify the tendencies of it in different cases. And for this attempt the analysis and classification of the emotions, considered as products of the functions of this organ, supply the basis. The enquiry, then, is distinctly a metaphysical one; while that into the influences of education and the rest upon the character belongs to the physiologist and the psychological historian.

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