Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVI., December, 1880.Various
History
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVI., December, 1880.
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
the higher will. Without further demonstration, it is clear that emotion
is distinct from conscious will, and is automatic in the sense in which
the term has been used in this article.
Imagination also is plainly distinct from consciousness. It acts during
sleep. Often, indeed, it runs riot during the slumbers of the night, but
at times it works with an automatic regularity exceeding its powers
during the waking moments. It is also true that judgment is exercised in
sleep, and that reason sometimes exerts its best efforts in that state.
But not only do the intellectual nets go on without consciousness during
sleep, but also while we are awake. Some years since I was engaged in
working upon a book requiring a good deal of thought. Very frequently I
would be unable to solve certain problems, but leaving them would find a
day or two afterward, on taking pen in hand, that the solution traced
itself without effort on the paper clearly and logically. During the
sleeping hours, or during the waking hours of a busy professional life,
the brain had, without my consciousness, been solving the difficulties.
This experience is by no means a peculiar one. Many scientific workers
have borne testimony to a similar habit of the cerebrum. The late Sir W.
Rowan Hamilton, the discoverer of the mathematical method known as that
of the quaternions, states that his mind suddenly solved that problem
after long work when he was thinking of something else. He says in one
place: "Tomorrow will be the fifteenth birthday of the quaternions. They
started into life or light full grown on the 16th of October, 1843, as I
was walking with Lady Hamilton to Dublin and came up to Brougham Bridge;
that is to say, I then and there felt the galvanic circle of thought
closed, and the sparks which fell from it were the fundamental equations
between _I, F_ and _K_ exactly as I have used them ever since. I felt
the problem to have been at that moment solved--an intellectual want
relieved which had haunted me for at least fifteen years before." Mr.
Appolo, a distinguished scientific inventor, stated in the Proceedings
of the Royal Society that it was his habit to get the bearings and facts
of a case during the day and go to bed, and wake the next morning with
the problem solved. If the problem was a difficult one he always passed
a restless night. Examples might be multiplied. Sir Benjamin Brodie,
speaking of his own mental action, states that when he was unable to
proceed further in some investigation he was accustomed to let the
matter drop. Then "after an interval of time, without any addition to my
stock of knowledge, I have found the obscurity and confusion in which
the subject was originally enveloped to have cleared away. The facts
have seemed all to settle themselves in their right places, and their
mutual relations to have become apparent, although I have not been
sensible of having made any distinct effort for that purpose."
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