NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

the mind must be disengaged from conflicting states and considerations, and be left to the unobserved and spontaneous action of the connections and impulses peculiar to the mental movement.

This inability to hold directly the state considered before the mind, as the plant or mineral is watched and retained by the eye, is connected with another difficulty; no one can join us in our investigation with the directness and certainty which pertain to other inquiries. The object before the mind of each observer is hidden from the other, may not be of exactly the same character as that with which he is occupied, nor looked at in the same direction. This confusion of objects and observations is most perplexing. It is as if the eye were turned a little askance, and the movement and the blow, therefore, directed at an image before it, and not at the very thing itself. Much skill and time are thus consumed between different observers in drawing attention to exactly the same facts. They often, through the deceptive effect of agreeing words, seem to have reached this result, when they have not attained it, and thus fall into inextricable confusion and contradiction. The feebleness of direction and construction is akin to that experienced, when, by the sense of touch alone, groping in the darkness, we strive to understand the parts, proportions and relations of even a familiar room.

It is also incident to this search of consciousness, that no one observes more than the phenomena of his own mind, and those, too, of a comparatively recent period. It is difficult, therefore, to determine how far a peculiar balance of faculties, as individual habits and associations, may have modified the mind's action, giving prominence to certain forms and connections of thought, and obscuring others. This fact also embarrasses us in deciding how far the mind's later convictions are due to protracted association,