"These two latter kinds of action are deliberate operations,
performed, as they are, by means of representative ideas
implying the use of a _reflective representative_ faculty.
Such actions distinguish the _intellect_ or rational faculty.
Now, we assert that possession in perfection of all the first
four _(presentative)_ kinds of action by no means implies
the possession of the last two _(representative)_ kinds.
All persons, we think, must admit the truth of the following
proposition:--
"Two faculties are distinct, not in degree but _in kind_,
if we may possess the one in perfection without that fact
implying that we possess the other also. Still more will
this be the case if the two faculties tend to increase in
an inverse ratio. Yet this is the distinction between the
_instinctive_ and the _intellectual_ parts of man's nature.
"As to animals, we fully admit that they may possess all the
first four groups of actions--that they may have, so to speak,
mental images of sensible objects combined in all degrees of
complexity, as governed by the laws of association. We deny to
them, on the other hand, the possession of the last two
kinds of mental action. We deny them, that is, the power of
reflecting on their own existence, or of inquiring into the
nature of objects and their causes. We deny that they know
that they know or know themselves in knowing. In other words,
we deny them _reason_. The possession of the presentative
faculty, as above explained, in no way implies that of the
reflective faculty; nor does any amount of direct operation
imply the power of asking the reflective question before
mentioned, as to 'what' and 'why.'" _(Loc. cit_. pp. 67, 68.)
Sundry points are worthy of notice in this remarkable account of the
intellectual powers. In the first place the Reviewer ignores emotion
and volition, though they are no inconsiderable "kinds of action to
which the nervous system ministers," and memory has a place in his
classification only by implication. Secondly, we are told that the
second "kind of action to which the nervous system ministers" is "that
in which stimuli from without result in sensations through the agency
of which their due effects are wrought out.--Sensation." Does this
really mean that, in the writer's opinion, "sensation" is the "agent"
by which the "due effect" of the stimulus, which gives rise to
sensation, is "wrought out"? Suppose somebody runs a pin into me. The
"due effect" of that particular stimulus will probably be threefold;
namely, a sensation of pain, a start, and an interjectional expletive.
Does the Quarterly Reviewer really think that the "sensation" is the
"agent" by which the other two phenomena are wrought out?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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