1. DISCRIMINATION, or the consciousness of difference. When we are affected by the difference of two tastes or odors,. or sounds or colors—this is neither mere feeling nor volition, but an intelligent act, the foundation of all other exercises of our intelligence. We must recognize the impressions on our senses as differing, before we can be said to have the impression of anything; and the greater our powers of discrimination in any department, as color, for example, the more intellectual are we in that special region. We could have no memory if we did not first recognize distinctness of character in the objects that act on the senses, and in the feelings that we experience. In some of the senses, discrimination is more delicate than.in others; thus, sight and hearing give us a greater variety of impressions than taste or smell, and are therefore to that extent more intellectual in their nature. In the course of our education, we learn to discriminate many things that we confounded at first. Every craft involves acquired powers of discrimination as well as habits of manipulation. A man is in one respect clever or stupid, according as his perceptions of difference in a given walk are delicate or blunt.
2. The next great intellectual property is RETENTIVENESS. or the property whereby impressions once made persist after the fact, and can be afterwards recovered without the original cause, and by mental forces alone. When the ear is struck by a sonorous wave, we have a sensation of sound, and the mental excitement does not die away because the sound ceases; there is a certain continuing effect, generally, although not always, 'much feebler than the actual sensation. Nor is this the whole. After the sen sation has completely vanished, and been overlaid by many other states of mind, it is possible to evoke the idea of it by inward or mental links, showing that some abiding trace bred been left in the mental system. The means of operating this revival is to be found in the so-called forces of association. See ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.
3. The last great fundamental fact of intellect is agreement or SIMILARITY. See ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.
It is believed that these three properties. in combination with the other two powers of the mind (feeling and volition or will), are adequate to explain all the recognized intellectual faculties or processes—memory, reason, imagination, etc. Memory is
almost a pure case of retentiveness, or contiguity, aided occasionally by similarity. Perception by the senses is only another name for discrimination, the basis of all char acteristic mental appreciation of matter or mind. Judgment is either discrimination or similarity, according as it discovers difference or agreement in the things judged of.
Sir W. Hamilton, in departing from the common classifications of the intellect, adopted the following division into six faculties or powers: 1. The presentative faculty, by which he meant the power of recognizing the various aspects of the world without and the mind within, called in the one case external perception; in the other, self-con sciousness, and sometimes reflection. 2. The conservative faculty, or memory proper, meaning the power of storing up impressions, to be afterwards reproduced as occasion requires. 3. The reproductive faculty, or the means of calling the dormant impressions up into consciousness again. These means are, as stated above, the associating princi ples. 4. The reprrsenktive faculty, for which imagination is another name, which determines the greater of the impressions pr ideas thus reproduced. G. The elaborative- -or the 10 0 olcomparisOn, 'by general ization, abstraction, and reasoning are performed. This, in fact, is one (not the only) application of the general power of similarity. Lastly, 6. The regulative faculty, or the cognition of the a priori or supposed instinctive notions of the intellect, as space, time, causation, necessary truths, etc. This corresponds to what in German philosophy is called the "reason," as contrasted with "understanding," which deals with expert.. enced or contingent truth.
On examining the above distribution, it will appear that while the first faculty, the presentative, coincides with the primary fact of discrimination, the three subsequent— conservation, reproduction, representation—are merely modes or distinct aspects of retentiveness. All the three must concur in every case of the effective retention or recollection of anything. The last power, the regulative, is of course disputed by the opposite sehool, who refuse to recognize a primary or distinct faculty as giving birth to the ideas in question. See CONSCIOUSNESS, CAUSE.