Too Long; Didn't Read

To understand clearly the nature of the mental phenomena called attention and abstraction, two facts in our mental history need definitely to be understood—facts which have a decided bearing on the nature and character of almost all the operations of mind. The first is, that the objects of our conceptions are seldom, if ever, isolated, disconnected objects. On the contrary, there is an extended and complex picture before the mind, including often a great variety of objects, with their several qualities, relations, and changes. In this mental picture some objects are clear and distinct, while others seem to float along in shadowy vagueness. This fact must be evident to any mind that will closely examine its own mental operations. It is also equally evident when we consider the mode in which our ideas are gained by perception. We never acquire our ideas in single disconnected lineaments. We are continually viewing complex objects with numerous qualities and surrounded by a great variety of circumstances, which unitedly form a whole in one act of perception. Indeed, there are few objects, either of perception or conception, which, however close the process of abstraction, do not remain complex in their nature. The simplest forms of matter are combined ideas of extension, {84}figure, color, and relation. These different ideas we gain by the aid of the different senses. Of course, our conceptions are combinations of different qualities in an object which the mind considers as one, and as distinct from other objects. Each item, then, in any mental picture is itself a complex object, and each mental picture is formed by a combination of such complex objects. It will be found very difficult, if not impossible, to mention a name which recalls any object of sense in which the conception recalled by the word is a single disconnected thing, without any idea of place or any attendant circumstances, and, as before remarked, almost all objects of sense are complex objects, combining several ideas, which were gained through the instrumentality of different senses. The idea of color is gained by one sense, of position, shape, and consistency by another, and other qualities and powers which the mind associates with it by other senses.