whether, as those who oppose me appear to assume, if they do not directly contend,-they are loosely and irregularly distributed, without reference to, or connexion with, any particular faculties, and without either method or order.

The system nearest to my own as regards the arrangement of the intellectual faculties, is that of Lord Bacon, who divides the mind into memory, reason, and imagination; making memory serve for the purposes to which I have applied the faculty of understanding, as well as for its own distinct and proper ends. Here therefore is asserted by this very great authority, the possession by the mind of independent faculties, and those of the precise kind which I have stated; and if we admit a capacity of imagination, we must surely admit those of wit and taste, which are of the same nature, and are as fully evinced. And if we allow distinct capacities of one faculty, why not allow distinct capacities also to belong to the faculties of understanding and reason?

Lord Bacon indeed further confirms the justness of my theory, at least as regards the foundation of it, by his threefold division of the branches of knowledge, and by his allotment of the studies proper for each faculty; by which moreover he evinces that in memory he includes understanding; and in imagination, at any rate, taste, if not wit; as also analysis in the faculty of reason.

5. Character of the Mind from the relative extent of its different Faculties and Capacities.

That which constitutes in reality the great and essential difference between various persons as regards their intellectual power and character, is the relative comparative variation in extent of the several faculties and capacities of these different individuals. The soul as well as the body, the mental as well as the medial part of our nature and constitution, has also its peculiar and special inclinations and instincts. Close and attentive observation and investigation will moreover convince us that men differ from one another, and are as essentially characterized by their particular intellectual faculties and capacities, as they are by their bodily organs, and their physical structure

Advancement of Learning, Book II.

• Ibid.

Burton's division and classification of the actions of the mind, to a large extent, correspond with the distribution of its faculties here effected; although the arrangement is totally different. According to this writer, the actions of the mind consist in apprehension, composition, division, discoursing, reasoning, memory, which some, he says, include in invention and judgment.-Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. 1. s. 1. p. 28.

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and endowments.' There is indeed in reality not only a greater, but even a greater perceptible difference, between the mental, than between the material constitution and powers of various men. The latter, although depending on a vast variety of causes, is exhibited only through the difference in size, shape, and colour, possessed by different persons. But the variety in intellectual character and capacity is shown in a number of different ways, and is evinced by almost every act that each individual performs, on which is impressed, in some way or other, the peculiar character of the mind that directed it.2

Not only indeed does the extent to which persons are respectively endowed with. the different intellectual capacities, constitute an intellectual difference between them; but a variety of character as regards their medial and moral endowments and properties, is also produced by this means, as I shall point out when considering in a future chapter the subject of the concurrent operation of the different faculties and capacities.3 Education itself also creates a vast difference between the intellectual character of different people, inasmuch as it serves to bring into exercise, and to develope, many capacities which

1 "Our excellence and our defects flow from the same common source." -Longinus on the Sublime, s. 5.

2 "There is, it is visible, great variety in men's understandings, and their natural constitutions put so wide a difference between some men in this respect, that art and industry would never be able to master; and their very natures seem to want a foundation to raise on it that which other men easily attain unto. Amongst men of equal education, there is great inequality of parts."-Locke. Conduct of the Understanding, s. 2. According to Hobbes, however, "the difference of wits hath its original, from the different passions, and from the ends to which the appetite leadeth them."-Human Nature, chap. x. s. 2.

Helvetius considers that, "among men animated by nearly an equal love of study, our success in measuring the greatness of their mental abilities, seems entirely to depend on the greater or fewer distractions occasioned by a difference of tastes, fortunes, and stations;" as also on the choice of subjects, and the people we converse with.-Essays on the Mind, c. iv.

In another work he remarks that "in children the difference of understanding and character is not always very obvious.”—Treatise on Man, sect. i. c. vii. And that talent is nothing more than "the produce of the attention applied to ideas of certain sorts."-Ibid. sect. v. c. ii. However, in another chapter of the same work he lays it down that, "all men have an equal aptitude to understanding."-Sect. iv. c. xxii. Although he subsequently inquires, " Whence then proceeds the extreme inequality of understanding?" c. xxiv.

Mr. F. Galton remarks that "there can hardly be a surer evidence of the enormous difference between the intellectual capacity of men, than the prodigious differences in the numbers of marks obtained by those who gain mathematical honours at Cambridge."-Hereditary Genius, p. 16. Allowance must of course here be made for the difference in application between different men.

• Vide post, chap. vi.

would otherwise have been comparatively dormant. It does not in the least essentially, although it does to a large extent practically, change the actual nature of the individual capacities; so that there is as much difference between an educated and an uneducated man, as between a grown-up person and a child. Not only moreover does education itself make a great difference between individual minds; but still further, the particular mode of that education very greatly, and in many respects, augments that difference.

Among the different kinds of animals of the same species, of which so extensive a variety exists widely differing one from another, by what is this distinction mainly caused? Does it not chiefly result from the various proportions of the limbs, and different parts of their bodies; and the particular habits and pursuits which they severally follow?

Exactly analogous to, and corresponding with, this difference, is the distinction among different men as regards their intellectual character, which is so very extensive: but which arises entirely from the different degrees in which they are severally endowed with the intellectual capacities that are possessed alike by each; and from the different modes in which these capacities have been cultivated, and the peculiar pursuits to which they have been devoted. In chemical compounds too, the greatest difference as to their effect and actual qualities may be produced solely by the various proportions in which the several ingredients they contain are contributed.

As regards the difference in intellectual character occasioned by a difference in the relative extent of the different capacities, this will be at once observed and admitted. Thus, an individual who is largely endowed with origination, is in all respects quite as superior as regards the extent to which he is enabled to exercise this power, to a person of ordinary ability; as a man of vast physical strength and stature, is superior as regards his physical powers, to one of a diminutive feeble frame. Another man will, in a corresponding manner, be found naturally to excel as regards his reasoning capacity; another in the clearness and distinctness of his perceptions. Those who are gifted with only ordinary intellectual powers, whose faculties and capacities are but very moderate in extent, may doubtless do much to improve them by proper cultivation; yet, after all, they will still fall far short of persons who are naturally highly gifted as regards their intellectual constitution.

Versatility of capacity is a sure proof of real talent. On the other hand, universality as regards the undertaking of various pursuits and matters, is a sure proof of the want of it of a solid kind. The one is prompted by the conscious power of being able to excel in certain efforts which the individual is impelled to undertake. The other is prompted by the conscious

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ness that there is no one peculiar walk beyond another for which he is specially adapted, and therefore he attempts all alike. None of the great men that I have known were of universality in acquirement. Most of them were nevertheless endowed with versatility of talent.

The difference here pointed out is moreover perceivable, not only as regards its actual existence, but its active power. Thus, minds which are extensively gifted and highly endowed, exercise an influence over inferior ones, corresponding with that which in the animated world man exercises over the lower grades of creation. Nor is the dominion of the former less absolute because it is unseen. But although in higher matters the higher minds thus possess a supremacy over those which are lower; yet, in the common ordinary affairs of life, common and ordinary minds far exceed those gifted with higher capacities. This is especially seen in the pursuit of wealth, which is the ultimate end of so many persons; and whether or not the legitimate, it certainly seems to be the successful aim of lower minds mainly. It may be that the higher minds prosper less in worldly affairs, chiefly because they ordinarily soar too high to observe with sufficient accuracy the baser things of the earth; which those of a lower order, who only hover over its surface, are ever intent on watching, and keep close to them. Hence, moreover, as these loftier souls are less adapted for the present state of existence than are those of inferior capacities and inclinations, to whom it seems more natural, and more exactly fitted; we may reasonably from this state of things infer that there is, and must be, a higher condition, a state better adapted for the former, and to which they may ultimately aspire.

It will also appear from a close examination of the intellectual faculties, that those capacities of them which are of the most general utility, and most serviceable for the common purposes of life, such as apprehension and sense, are those with which the greater part of mankind are largely endowed; while those which are of less ordinary application, but serviceable only, to the few,-to those of distinguished talents and endowments, who must always form but a very small proportion of every community, such as the capacity of origination, and also the higher capacities in the faculties of understanding and reason, are the most rarely possessed in an extensive degree. Each of the faculties and capacities are nevertheless alike valuable, and are adapted in the best manner for the various occasions of those different persons endowed with them. This distribution of them in the way stated, has been wisely ordered for the general welfare of mankind, and the practical benefit of society; and is, indeed, an instance of the wisdom and foresight of Providence, which, among many others, affords an ample test

of an over-ruling dispensation being exerted in all such cases for our good.

We perhaps, however, occasionally unfairly depreciate the intellectual character of some persons, by attributing the results which they effect to their energy and perseverance,as though these qualities were something quite beyond, and independent of, their mental constitution,-instead of ascribing them to their superior ability: the real fact being that energy and perseverance are, in many instances, not so much independent qualities of themselves, as the proof, and the result, of the possession of great talents; and the consciousness that the person endowed with them feels of being able through them to achieve important ends, which induces him to apply them closely and arduously to whatever he undertakes.*

6. Cast, and Consortment together, of Faculties and Capacities to constitute a Mind of high Talent.

The essential ingredient in what is ordinarily and comprehensively understood to constitute a man of great and extensive intellectual ability, or talent; demands to be especially inquired into in a treatise, the object of which is to illustrate the real nature of the mind, and of the endowments by which it is distinguished and characterized.

It may appear at first sight that an individual is entirely. dependent for his eminence here, on the relative comparative extent to which he possesses the highest capacities of the mind. I must however premise that this does not always follow. Indeed, it will often happen that the extensive endowment with one particular capacity alone, when certain others are not possessed

4 Mr. Sopwith, F.R.S., the eminent engineer, whose scientific acquirements, combined with his extensive knowledge of the world, and acquaintance with men of science, render his opinion upon topics of this nature of peculiar value, while expressing his dissent from the sentiment here expressed, so far as it may imply that the exhibition of energy is to be deemed an evidence of the existence of " genius," -a doctrine which was not intended to be advocated; and remarking, with great truth, how often the existence of genius and great talent is found to be unaccompanied by perseverance,-bears me out in the opinion that the possession of energy and perseverance does of itself afford proof of the possession of ability to carry out projects of importance, which this endowment stimulates and invigorates the person possessing it to undertake. He says:-"In many, probably in by far the greater number of cases, genius does give birth' to ardour, which as here used, is only another name for energy, or great mental activity. Most commonly they are thus united, and separately they are of little use in promoting any really high or important result. Talent without energy, is little known; and energy without talent, is only suited for ordinary, or, it may be, trifling occupations."