CHAPTER II.
ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION OF THE MENTAL POWERS.
Importance of such a preliminary Investigation.—It is of the highest importance, as we approach a science like the one before us, to obtain, if possible, at the outset, a clear and comprehensive view of the field about to be explored. It is desirable that the traveller, before entering a new country, should learn something respecting its extent, its political and geographical divisions, its manners, its laws, its history. Even more necessary is it, in entering upon a new science, to know its boundaries and divisions, to obtain a clear idea, at the very commencement of our inquiries, of the number, nature, extent, and arrangement of the subject we are about to investigate. Otherwise we shall be liable to confusion and error, shall not know where, at any moment, in the wide field of investigation, we may chance to be, or what relation the topic of our immediate inquiry holds to the whole science before us; as a ship on the ocean, without observation and reckoning, loses her latitude and longitude. We shall be liable to confound those distinctions which are of less, with those which are of more importance, and to mistake the relation which the several topics of inquiry bear to each other. Especially is this previous survey and comprehension of the subject essential in a science like this, where so much depends on the clearness and accuracy with which we distinguish differences often minute, and on the definiteness with which we mark off and lay out the several divisions of our work. A thorough analysis and classification of the various faculties of the mind is necessary, in the first place, before we enter upon the special investigation of any one of them. Such a classification must serve as our guide-book and chart in all further inquiries.
Difficulty of such an Investigation.—The importance of such a preliminary investigation is scarcely greater than its difficulty. It would be easy, indeed, to mention, almost at random, a considerable number of mental operations, with whose names we are familiar; and a little thought would enable us to enlarge the list almost indefinitely. But such a list, even though it might chance to be complete, would be neither an analysis nor a classification of these several powers. It would neither teach us their relations to each other and to the whole, nor enable us to understand the precise nature and office of each faculty. We could not be sure that we had not included under a common name operations essentially different, or assigned distinct places and offices to powers essentially the same. Much depends, moreover, on the order in which we take up the several faculties.
It is evident at a glance that to form a clear, correct, and comprehensive arrangement of the powers of the mind, is no slight undertaking. A complete understanding of the whole science of the mind is requisite. It is one of the last things which the student is prepared to undertake, yet one of the first which he requires to know. Unfortunately for the science, perhaps no topic in the whole circle of intellectual investigation has been more generally neglected, by those who have undertaken to unfold the philosophy of the mind, than the one now under consideration.
§ I.—General Analysis.
A mental Faculty, what.—In making out any scheme of classification, the question at once arises, how are we to know what are, and what are not distinct faculties? In order to this, we must first determine what constitutes a mental faculty.
What, then, is a faculty of the mind? I understand by this term simply the mind's power of acting, of doing something, of putting forth some energy, and performing some operation. The mind has as many distinct faculties, as it has distinct powers of action, distinct functions, distinct modes and spheres of activity. As its capabilities of action and operation differ, so its faculties differ.
The Mind not complex.—Now mental activity is, strictly speaking, one and indivisible. The mind is not a complex substance, composed of parts, but single and one. Its activity may, however, be exercised in various ways, and upon widely different classes of objects; and as these modes of action vary, we may assign them different names, and treat of them in distinction from each other. So distinguished and named, they present themselves to us as so many distinct powers or faculties of the mind. But when this is done, and we make out, for purposes of science, our complete list and classification of these powers, we are not to forget that it is, after all, one and the same indivisible spiritual principle that is putting forth its activity under these diverse forms, one and the same force exerting itself—whether as thinking, feeling, or acting—whether as remembering, imagining, judging, perceiving, reasoning, loving, fearing, hating, desiring, choosing. And while we may designate these as so many faculties of the mind, we are not to conceive of them as so many constituent parts of a complex whole, which, taken together, compose this mysterious entity called the mind, as the different limbs and organs of the physical frame compose the structure called the body. Such is not the nature of the mind, nor of its faculties.