Locke (Book II, c. Ix, and following), speaks of the primary or first "faculties" as six in number, (1) perception, (2) retention or memory, (3) discrimination, (4) comparison, (5) composition, (6) abstraction, which he seems to regard as a step towards reasoning, if indeed it be not reasoning itself. Then he speaks of other faculties.

He however calls attention to the misuse of the word faculties, or rather the false inference that had been drawn from it in his day. (B. II, c. xxI, § 6,) "The ordinary way of speak"ing is, that the understanding and the will are two faculties "of the mind; a word proper enough if it be used as all words "should be, so as not to breed any confusion in men's thoughts, "by being supposed (as I suppose it has been) to stand for "some real beings in the soul, that performed those actions of "understanding and volition."

Again (§ 17,) "However, the name faculty, which men have given to this power called the will yet the will, in truth, signifies nothing but a power or ability to prefer or "choose If it be reasonable to suppose and talk of "faculties as distinct things, that can act (as we do when we

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say the will orders and the will is free) it is fit that we should "make a speaking faculty and a walking faculty and a dancing "faculty, by which those actions are produced, which are but "several modes of motion; as well as we make the will and "understanding to be faculties, by which the actions of choos"ing and perceiving are produced, which are but several modes "of thinking; and we may as properly say, that it is the sing"ing faculty sings and the dancing faculty dances, as that the "will chooses or that the understanding conceives."

"This way of talking, nevertheless, has prevailed and, as I "guess, produced great confusion." He thinks, however, that "it looks too much like opposition wholly to lay them [these words] by, . But the fault has been," he says, (§

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20,) that faculties have been spoken of and represented as so

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And then he points out an analogy, which is striking and suggestive. Before his day "it being asked what it was that digested the meat in the stomach? It was a ready and a very satisfactory answer to say that it was the digestive faculty. What moved? The motive faculty; and so in "the mind the intellectual faculty understood, and the elective "faculty or the will, willed. This is in short, to say, that the "ability to digest digested, the ability to move moved, and the "ability to understand understood.".

In the physiological

I say this is suggestive and instructive. cases science has abandoned the abstractions and tells us that the stomach or the gastric juice digests, etc.; in all cases discovering and now naming as the agent or cause of each particular kind of action or function in the body, some muscle, organ or tissue that performs the act.

16. Use of the Word Faculty by Locke and Others.

But in mental science the old fallacy has been retained. We have discovered no perceiving organ in the mind, no separate part or organ for reasoning, inventing or willing, and yet we continue to speak of perception, reason, memory, will, etc., as faculties of the mind or mental faculties, in a way that produces an impression in regard to the mind wholly unjustified by anything we know of it, and most likely untrue in fact.

Reid, who is in many respects the most important writer next to Locke in the order of philosophic development, avoided the word "Faculty" to a considerable extent. But he used in its place the word "Power," and introduced a way of thinking and speaking of the "Mental Powers" or Faculties which has not only prevailed extensively, but has also, as I think, done much harm. It has preoccupied the minds of all students with a false idea of mind, which leads to many misconceptions and takes much time and effort to overcome.

Reid says Intellectual Powers, (Ess. 1, c. 7,) "the powers of

"the mind are so many, so varied and so connected and complicated in most of its operations, that there never has been

any division of them proposed which is not liable to consid"erable objection. We should therefore take that general di"vision, which is the most common, into the powers of under"standing and those of will. Under the will we comprehend

our active powers, and all that lead to action, or influence the "mind to act, such as appetites, passions, affections. The un"derstanding comprehends our contemplative powers; by which

we perceive objects; by which we conceive or remember "them; by which we analyze or compound them; and by "which we reason and judge concerning them."

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Although this general division may be of use in order to "our proceeding more methodically in our subject, we are not "to understand it as if in those operations which are ascribed "to the understanding, there were no exercise of will or ac"tivity, or as if the understanding were not employed in the "operations ascribed to the will."

Now in all this the mind is spoken of as a complex whole, as the body is, the one made up of organs working, while in health at least, harmoniously, each doing its own work, sometimes hindering and in antagonism to each other, but for the most part harmonious and co-operative. So the mind is conceived as made up of powers, each having its work to do, its functions to perform.

It is true Reid avoids for the most part, the use of the word Faculty; perhaps out of deference to Locke's authority, perhaps out of regard to the feeling of disapproval or the sense of absurdity of so using it which Locke had produced. But he only replaces it by the word "Powers," and fell into the very error Locke warned him against. And through his influence more perhaps than from any other cause, that error has come to be almost universally prevalent-the term Faculty having been restored to its old place and use--or abuse rather, notwithstanding Locke's warning and protest.

17. Results of This Use of Words.

Hence these so-called Faculties or Powers are no longer regarded as merely different modes in which the one, undivided and indivisible mind acts. They are spoken of and thought of as separate organs or agents, each acting by itself, by its own appropriate power, and by its appropriate and peculiar laws, as much so as the various organs of the body.

Thus Coleridge, about half a century ago, made himself conspicuous as a writer, and thought to accomplish great things for philosophy and religion by pointing out and emphasising the difference and even the conflict between "the" Reason and "the" Understanding.

Kant also seems to have thought that most of the mysteries of philosophy could be solved by recognizing and allowing its proper influence to the difference between the Theoretical, or Pure Reason and the Practical Reason. With the latter, man would be a believer in Religion and act with practical common sense; while in obedience to and under the guidance of the former, he could see nothing better for us, as a result, than atheism and the most utter distrust and disbelief of everything.

The same distinction also enters largely into Cousin's theory of the foundation of knowledge and the test of absolute Truth."The " Reason he held to be infallible. "Whence "comes this wonderful quest in us." He asks, (p, 229,) “and "what is the principle of this Reason which enlightens without belonging to us? This principle is God." But "the" understanding is, he thinks, the source, fons et origo of all

error.

Dr. Porter, who as we have said is in some sense the last of the catena, and who with great fulness and most admirable impartiality, sums up the opinions and arguments of all that had preceeded him, says, (§ 26,) "The inquiry which comes first in order is the following: Do we find by con

"sciousness that the soul is endowed with separate qualities or powers?"

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He defines "faculty" and powers, as I have done, as being used too often to imply "separable organs or parts of the soul's substance, any one of which might act for itself, . some"times apart from the conscious soul itself." But he answers in the negative, 66 we do not find that the soul is divided into "separate parts or organs, of which one may be active while "the others are at rest."

He continues, (§ 28,) we ask next, what is true and how "far is the conception and use of the term faculty authorized "by what consciousness discovers or attests? We assume that "the identical ego or I is not only distinguishable from its own states, but that each of these states is separated or individualized from each other."

He then points out the characteristics by which we can or ought to divide these states into groups, and then adds, (§ 29,) "the capacity of the soul for any one of these special kinds of

activity, we call a faculty. If it be asked, On what ground "and by what authority? we reply, For the same reason that "we ascribe or refer any material effect or phenomenon to a special power, as its source or cause."

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We have then three words, faculty," "power," "capaci"ty," which have had a similar experience in this matter-although each author, Locke, Reid and Porter, introduces them with a foresight of the misuse that might ensue, and a warning against it.

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The words are at first abstract, We speak of a man as having the power to do so and so. Then by a sort of metonymy, we speak of him as the power that does it; and we use the word constantly as a concrete term, to denote the agents or pow"ers that be" and do things, and the old evil is back upon us, and we have another example of what the German writer Medical Psychology, Feuchtersleben, complained of, most psychologists warn us at the outset against regarding

on