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The Sixth Lesson: Cultivation of Perception.577
does not attain to them. They are to sensations what secondary molecules
and primitive molecules are to bodies. We get a glance here and there
at obscure and infinite worlds extending beneath our distinct sensations.
These are compounds and wholes. For their elements to be perceptible
to consciousness, it is necessary for them to be added together, and so to
acquire a certain bulk and to occupy a certain time, for if the group does not
attain this bulk, and does not last this time, we observe no changes in our
state. Nevertheless, though it escapes us, there is one.”
But we must postpone our consideration of this more than interesting
phase of the subject, until some future lesson, when we shall take a trip
into the regions of Mind, under and above Consciousness. And a most
wonderful trip many of us will find it, too.
For the present, we must pay our attention to the channels by which
the material for knowledge and thought enter our minds. For these sense
impressions, coming to us from without, are indeed “material” upon which
the mind works in order to manufacture the product called “Thought.”
This material we obtain through the channels of the senses, and then
store in that wonderful storehouse, the Memory, from whence we bring out
material from time to time, which we proceed to weave into the fabric of
Thought. The skill of the worker depends upon his training, and his ability
to select and combine the proper materials. And the acquiring of good
materials to be stored up is an important part of the work.
A mind without stored-up material of impressions and experiences
would be like a factory without material. The machinery would have nothing
upon which to work, and the shop would be idle. As Helmholtz has said,
“Apprehension by the senses supplies directly or indirectly, the material of
all human knowledge, or at least the stimulus necessary to develop every
inborn faculty of the mind.” And Herbert Spencer, has this to say of this
phase of the subject, “It is almost a truism to say that in proportion to the
numerousness of the objects that can be distinguished, and in proportion to
the variety of coexistences and sequences that can be severally responded