PSYCHICAL ANTECEDENTS OF SCIENCE 145

each of these two kinds of mental affection. Those which

are allied to feelings and imaginations constitute our lower

mental faculties ; while those allied to our intellectual

perceptions are our higher ones. No one, probably, will

question that a process of conscious reasoning and a

perception of the truth of an axiom are higher mental

processes than mere feelings of colour, warmth, or sweet-

ness.

This distinction between our higher and lower mental

powers, though it has been so long and so generally

neglected, we believe to be one of the most profound and

important truths in Psychology, and one the recognition

of which is absolutely necessary for everyone who would

attain to a sound and reasonable philosophy.

But as we are intellectual and conscious beings, we should

expect that every lower mental process would, in us, be more

or less modified by our higher nature, through the existence

of which alone we can (through reflexion) ever become

aware of the existence of any such lower mental process.

As to animals, we can have no psychical experience of any

creature's mind but our own. Nevertheless, observation,

experiment, and inference, in combination, may suffice to

give us a trustworthy assurance that faculties like our lower

psychical powers exist in them, and that they are, or are not,

sufficient to account for all their actions, however rational

such actions may, at first sight, appear to be.

As a familiar illustration of this distinction we refer to

as existing in ourselves, may be mentioned a circumstance

which has, perhaps, happened to many of our readers as it

has repeatedly happened to ourselves. In walking along a

street with consciousness absorbed by some train of thought,

it may suddenly strike us that we had passed a house over

the shop-window of which there was a remarkable, or a

familiar, name, and then, turning back, find that our suspicion

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each of these two kinds of mental affection. Those which

are allied to feelings and imaginations constitute our lower

mental faculties ; while those allied to our intellectual

perceptions are our higher ones. No one, probably, will

question that a process of conscious reasoning and a

perception of the truth of an axiom are higher mental

processes than mere feelings of colour, warmth, or sweet-

ness.

This distinction between our higher and lower mental

powers, though it has been so long and so generally

neglected, we believe to be one of the most profound and

important truths in Psychology, and one the recognition

of which is absolutely necessary for everyone who would

attain to a sound and reasonable philosophy.

But as we are intellectual and conscious beings, we should

expect that every lower mental process would, in us, be more

or less modified by our higher nature, through the existence

of which alone we can (through reflexion) ever become

aware of the existence of any such lower mental process.

As to animals, we can have no psychical experience of any

creature's mind but our own. Nevertheless, observation,

experiment, and inference, in combination, may suffice to

give us a trustworthy assurance that faculties like our lower

psychical powers exist in them, and that they are, or are not,

sufficient to account for all their actions, however rational

such actions may, at first sight, appear to be.

As a familiar illustration of this distinction we refer to

as existing in ourselves, may be mentioned a circumstance

which has, perhaps, happened to many of our readers as it

has repeatedly happened to ourselves. In walking along a

street with consciousness absorbed by some train of thought,

it may suddenly strike us that we had passed a house over

the shop-window of which there was a remarkable, or a

familiar, name, and then, turning back, find that our suspicion

L