Cobwebs of Thought | Page 5

or quickly than at present, we should not feel any change at all. But if our objective measures of time moved twice as fast, whilst physiological movements and mental processes went on at the same rate as now, the days of our years would be seven score, instead of three score years and ten, yet we should not be any the older, or live any the longer. If on the other hand the rate of our physiological and mental motions was doubled and we lived exactly as many years as before, we should feel as if we lived twice as long and were twice as old as now." This is a suggestion for Mr. Well's "Anticipations" Is evolution leading us in this direction or the other? Is it retarding or "quickening the molecular arrangements of the nervous system?" Are we becoming "more delicately balanced so that physical changes proceed more quickly as thoughts become more comprehensive, feelings more intense, and will, stronger." Does the time it needs to think, feel, and will become less? And we may add are the physical and mental processes of the intelligent brain, quicker, or slower than the unintelligent? For if it is the sensitive quick witted organisation, which is destined to live twice as long as it does now, how will it bear the burden of such added years? Leaving aside inquiries into Time, and Space Sense--(and what enormous faculty our minds must have that can supply these)--let us go on to Mr. J. McKeen Cattell's analysis of memory--which is perhaps the most interesting of all to the student of mind--the analysis of memory, attention and association of ideas. Just as the eye can only see (attend to) a certain number of vibrations, for if the requisite amount is added to, the result is blankness, darkness, so the mind can only attend to a certain amount of complexity--add to the complexity and attention ceases, but, a certain degree of complexity is necessary to produce any conscious attention at all. In experiments with a Metronome and the ticking of a watch, it is found the attention at certain intervals gets weaker--from 2 to 3 seconds. The impression produced by the ticking of the watch is less distinct, it seems to disappear and then is heard again. "This is not from fatigue in the sense organ," but apparently represents "a natural rhythm in consciousness or attention," which interferes with the accuracy of attention. What a suggestive fact this is! Have we not all at times, felt an inexplicable difficulty in listening and attending to certain speakers, which may perhaps be explained by a difference between the rhythm of our own consciousness, and that of the voice of the speaker. In Association of Ideas the time that it takes for one idea to suggest another has been determined, but of course, it must be the average time, for people differ enormously in the speed in which ideas occur to them. It is impossible to allude here to more points, but in the same interesting article Mr. Mck Cattell considers it proved that "experimental methods can be applied to the study of mind, and that the positive results are significant," and he hopes, "one day, we shall have as accurate and complete a knowledge of mind as we have of the physical world." Beyond this knowledge of mind as a machine, the Psychologist goeth not. He ends, and what do we know more as to what mind is? Philosophy properly so-called, begins here or ought to begin. In science we experiment widely and constantly with mind and arrive at some knowledge of its workings and capacities; we learn occupation with the mind itself as a subject for observation, and we practise a self-analysis, which adds to the sum of general knowledge. Through this study we know more about our senses and their faculties, more of our own tendencies and idiosyncrasies, and in what direction they tend. We are on the way to solve some such problems as: "the influences of early impressions, the ingredients of character, the varying susceptibility to mental anguish, the conquest of the will," and many another. These are beginnings--there is much more to attain to, if we would know mind even scientifically, for we have only attacked its breast works, but we are on the right road, as we believe, towards this most interesting of all sciences--Mind Science. From Philosophy we do not as yet know definitely that mind is, or what it is, or why it is. The psychologist accepts the word mind, but it is not accepted as a philosophical term; it is called Consciousness, Being, Ego, and anything else but mind. Notwithstanding, we all feel what we mean by the word. Though the senses divide the non-ego, the world outside us,