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Show 36 THOUGHT AND EXPRESSION. mote. It has been already said that we ~an have no knowleuge of what the state of the mmd may or may not be when apart and separated fro~ the bod!; but of this there can be no doubt, that If we lud been wholly without sensatioJ?-, we never could ~y possibility have known any thn:g a~out the matenal world-about that creation whlCh IS the source of so much knowledge, and the fountain of so many enjoyments. ;fry to recollect or call to memory any. thou~ht, whether that thought related to the depa1ted past, or to the future which did not then or does not yet exist ; and you cannot help feeling as if you ~ere present bodily on the spot, and saw all the partiesall the subjects of that thought, whoever, whatever, or wherever they may be. No matter whether the thouo-ht is ·eal that is, of realities, or not ; no matter whether it is ~ven possible : still it comes as if it were both real and present. What Sha~~peare ~a~s of " the poRt's eye" is partly true of ~he mmd s eye " in the most unpoetlcal man that hves: that alwa' ys gives to the ":u. ry noth .m g" o f th oug1 1 t " a local habitation;" and there wants only the power of expression in order to give it "a name." To give that name is, however, no necessary pa~t of the thought. It is another and a separate operatiOn, ~nd may be inferior _in men 'Yh~ thmk well, or supenor \n those who thmk but mdifferently. But thought stands nearly in the same relation to expression, that the exercise of the senses does to thought; where there is no thought there ?an be no exp~ession · and if both faculties have therr proper exerctse, the ~an who thinks most correctly always expresses himself in the clearest and most agreeable mann~r; and if he had the hand of a painter, he c?uld easily and correctly make a picture of any subject of hts thoughts. However long the proce~ of thinking may be, the subjects are present, as If they we~e before the eyes all the time; and one can alter their C:ONTRIVANCE. 37 relations to each other, just as if one were moving them abo_ut. by ~echanical force, and yet they preserve their Identity, or are the very same parties amid all their changes of relation, just as the mind itself remains the same amid all its changes of tlwuo-ht. This changing of the relations of subjects of thought, to which we give the name of H invention" or "contrivance," is very valuable. It is done in very little time, and with no labour, for there is no weight to be moved, and no resistance to be overcome. A skilful architect will, in his own mind, rear a palace, before a brickmaker can mould and burn a single brick, a mason fetch a stone from tho quarry, or a woodman fell a tree; and he will feel none of the fatigue and exhaustion which they feel. We are, indeed, accustomed to say that the mind is fatigued; and when we long continue thinking on the same subjects, especially if there is any thing dispiriting in them, we do feel a sort of languor, and pass into a revery, or dreamy state, in which we not only lose the commaml of our bodies, as we do during slumber, but in the end lose the memory of our thoughts, just as ·we do in profound sleep, durin!! which we have no dreams. Everybody must recof. lect instances of having thought upon subjects till the memory of all the particulars was gone ; and when an author writes an original book upon any subject that requires close and profound thinkin(.r the chance is that he shall know less of what is ~~ the book ~fter _he has just finished the writing of it. than an mtelhgent reader after he has glanced it over. "Don't ask me about that, for I have written upon it," was an habitual saying with a veteran both in science and literature; and Abernethy's constant referring; ?f his patients to "My book" had philosophy m1t, whether he understood that philosophy or not. This fact, that we not on1y r.nn, bnt actually and |
