PART VI. SUMMARY OF THE COMPARATIVE DEGREES OF FAINTNESS, VIVIDNESS, OR INTENSITY SUBSISTING BETWEEN SENSATIONS AND IDEAS, DURING THEIR VARIOUS EXCITEMENTS AND DEPRESSIONS. PART VI. INTRODUCTION. SUMMARY OF THE COMPARATIVE DEGREES OF FAINTNESS, VIVIDNESS, OR INTENSITY SUBSISTING BETWEEN SENSATIONS AND IDEAS, DURING THEIR VARIOUS EXCITEMENTS AND DEPRESSIONS. My last object is, for the sake of more complete elucidation, to give a summary of those phenomena relative to consciousness, which are manifested during the excitements and depressions to which the feelings of the mind are constantly subject. The success of this investigation, however, must essentially depend upon a full statement of the proportional difference which subsists between sensations and ideas during their various transitions from faintness to intensity, or from intensity to faintness. But it is almost unnecessary to add, regarding a physiological inquiry of this kind, that it is a problem which can never be satisfactorily accomplished: yet if, after all, for the mere sake of greater perspicuity, I should be induced to attempt a sort of tabular view of the various degrees of vividness to which our mental feelings are liable, it can have no other claim to re gard than as a formula which, in the language of mathematicians, is empirical, or purely experimental. It is, in fact, a result obtained by repeated trials, the effect of which is rather to give an artificial consistency to certain successions of mental phenomena, than to produce the conviction that the formula is in every respect agreeable to truth and to nature. In reference, then, to the annexed tabular sketch of the various proportional degrees of vividness subsisting among sensations and ideas, no fewer than fifteen of such degrees are supposed to exist; these being represented on an ascending scale by horizontal lines. The lowest of such lines, marked 1, denotes the faintest state of our mental feelings, while the highest in the series, marked 15, represents the most excited condition of them. The vertical lines by which the horizontal ones are intersected dispose the various degrees of vividness thus represented into eight columnar divisions, each of these including a distinct transition of the feelings of the mind from faintness to intensity, or from intensity to faintness. These several transitions will be next described, though not in the exact order which is represented in the general table now given. |
