3. Understanding is the 3. Reason of Contemplation. Faculty of _Reflection_. Reason indeed is much nearer to SENSE than to Understanding: for Reason (says our great HOOKER) is a direct aspect of Truth, an inward Beholding, having a similar relation to the Intelligible or Spiritual, as SENSE has to the Material or Phenomenal.
The Result is: that neither falls under the definition of the other. They differ _in kind_: and had my object been confined to the establishment of this fact, the preceding columns would have superseded all further disquisition. But I have ever in view the especial interest of my youthful readers, whose reflective _power_ is to be cultivated, as well as their particular reflections to be called forth and guided. Now the main chance of their _reflecting_ on religious subjects _aright_, and of their attaining to the _contemplation_ of spiritual truths _at all_, rests on their insight into the _nature_ of this disparity still more than on their conviction of its existence. I now, therefore, proceed to a brief analysis of the Understanding, in elucidation of the definitions already given.
The Understanding then (considered exclusively as an organ of human intelligence,) is the faculty by which we reflect and generalize. Take, for instance, any objects consisting of many parts, a house, or a group of houses: and if it be contemplated, as a Whole, that is, as many constituting a one, it forms what in the technical language of Psychology, is called a _total impression_. Among the various component parts of this, we direct our attention especially to such as we recollect to have noticed in other total impressions. Then, by a voluntary act, we withhold our attention from all the rest to reflect exclusively on these; and these we henceforward use as _common characters_, by virtue of which the several objects are referred to one and the same sort.[95] Thus, the whole process may be reduced to three acts, all depending on and supposing a previous impression on the senses: first, the appropriation of our Attention; second, (and in order to the continuance of the first) Abstraction, or the voluntary withholding of the Attention; and third, Generalization. And these are the proper Functions of the Understanding: and the power of so doing, is what we mean, when we say we possess Understanding, or are created with the faculty of Understanding.