NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 313
mind at the opening of the Senses and Intellect, he could have marked exactly the points where I went out of the right path, in separating Feeling, Volition and Intellect, He would have seen that I was seriously oppressed with the difficulty of assigning the relationship of Feeling and Intellect, and, at all events, gave a perfectly unambiguous statement of that relationship in the following sentences : " In proportion as a mental experience contains the facts named dis- crimination, comparison and retentiveness, it is an Intellectual experience ; and in proportion as it is wanting in these, and shows itself in pleasure or pain, it is of the nature of Feeling. The very same state of mind may have both an intellectual side and an emotional side ; indeed, this is a usual occurrence. And, like many things that are radically contrasted, as day and night, these two distinct facts of our nature pass into one another by a gradual transition, so that an absolute line of separation is not always possible a circumstance that does not invalidate the genuineness of their mutual contrast." I can scarcely undertake to improve upon the clearness of this state- ment ; and if Mr. Ward had inserted his critical knife at the defective transitions, I should have been greatly obliged to him. Mr. Ward's remarks upon the misuse of Feeling in connexion with the germ of the Will, I cannot detach sufficiently from the doctrine itself, to say how far his cavil is well or ill-founded. My belief is that none of those mistakes that he dwells upon are really involved in the exposition. The whole subject has its difficulties, which will remain after the phras- eology is amended to Mr. Ward's heart's content. I should prefer being challenged upon the substance and meaning of the general doctrine of Will ; and will remain for the present under the accusation of having used improper and confusing language in relation to it. I shall of course take care, in any re-statement, to benefit by the criticisms now passed upon the wording of the illustration. A few words now upon the proposed use of Attention. * Granting that the meaning intended to be expressed has all the importance attributed to it, we must yet be aware of what is involved in inducing a hundred millions of people to surrender the negative word ' inattention ' when the situation occurs wherein it is at present employed. The name ' tempera- ture ' saves us from the awkwardness of employing ' heat ' for all degrees down to the bottom of the scale. It was some attempt of this nature, to use heat in connexion with snow, that drew out the Irishman's question
- How many snow-balls will it take to boil a kettle 1 ' So, a word corre-
sponding to Temperature for Heat and Cold, or to Magnitude for Large and Small, has to be adopted or invented, as the only way to avoid a hope- less collision with popular usage. We may of course have one meaning in general circulation, and another in the schools of Psychology. Such diver- sities are frequently unavoidable ; but there is a peculiar aggravation in the conflict of usage in this instance, and the sooner we get out of it the better. Mr. Ward repeatedly emphasises the want of coincidence between Attention, even in his enlarged view, and Consciousness. I should like, for my own satisfaction, that he would attempt a positive definition of the part or parts of consciousness excluded from Attention. "Attention," he says, " will cover part of what is meant by consciousness, so much of it, that is, as answers to being mentally active, active enough at least to receive impressions." Now this negative definition should be supplemented by something positive. At least, we might have a few exemplary or repre- sentative particulars, to give us a faint notion of the kind of consciousness that lies outside Attention. A. BAIN.