Note 12 — THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED (ON ABSTRACTION)

So little has this principle of the unity of thought and consciousness been understood, that even Professor Stewart, the great champion of the intellectual philosophy, utterly rejects it, and supposes that the idea which the mind forms of any visible figure is nothing but a rapid succession of the ideas of the several parts. See his reasoning on this subject most ably confuted in a work lately published, entitled ‘An Essay on Consciousness, by John Fearn.’—This Essay, in spite of the disadvantage of the mechanical hypothesis with which it is encumbered, and the technical obscurity of the style, contains, I think, more close and original observation on the individual processes of the human mind, than any work published in this country in the last fifty years.