Classical literature; Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
A long-forgotten knowledge may be easily renewed and therefore is
very different from ignorance. Of the language learnt in childhood not
a word may be remembered, and yet, when a new beginning is made, the
old habit soon returns, the neglected organs come back into use, and the
river of speech finds out the dried-up channel.
e. 'Consciousness' is the most treacherous word which is employed in
the study of the mind, for it is used in many senses, and has rarely,
if ever, been minutely analyzed. Like memory, it accompanies all mental
operations, but not always continuously, and it exists in various
degrees. It may be imperceptible or hardly perceptible: it may be the
living sense that our thoughts, actions, sufferings, are our own. It
is a kind of attention which we pay to ourselves, and is intermittent
rather than continuous. Its sphere has been exaggerated. It is sometimes
said to assure us of our freedom; but this is an illusion: as there
may be a real freedom without consciousness of it, so there may be a
consciousness of freedom without the reality. It may be regarded as a
higher degree of knowledge when we not only know but know that we know.
Consciousness is opposed to habit, inattention, sleep, death. It may be
illustrated by its derivative conscience, which speaks to men, not only
of right and wrong in the abstract, but of right and wrong actions in
reference to themselves and their circumstances.
f. Association is another of the ever-present phenomena of the human
mind. We speak of the laws of association, but this is an expression
which is confusing, for the phenomenon itself is of the most capricious
and uncertain sort. It may be briefly described as follows. The simplest
case of association is that of sense. When we see or hear separately
one of two things, which we have previously seen or heard together, the
occurrence of the one has a tendency to suggest the other. So the sight
or name of a house may recall to our minds the memory of those who once
lived there. Like may recall like and everything its opposite. The parts
of a whole, the terms of a series, objects lying near, words having
a customary order stick together in the mind. A word may bring back a
passage of poetry or a whole system of philosophy; from one end of the
world or from one pole of knowledge we may travel to the other in an
indivisible instant. The long train of association by which we pass from
one point to the other, involving every sort of complex relation, so
sudden, so accidental, is one of the greatest wonders of mind...This
process however is not always continuous, but often intermittent: we can
think of things in isolation as well as in association; we do not mean
that they must all hang from one another. We can begin again after an
interval of rest or vacancy, as a new train of thought suddenly arises,
as, for example, when we wake of a morning or after violent exercise.
Time, place, the same colour or sound or smell or taste, will often
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