_Objections to the term Suggestion._--The name original suggestion has been commonly applied, of late, especially in this country, to designate the faculty now under consideration. It is so used by Professor Upham, and by Dr. Wayland. It is liable, however, to serious objections. The term suggestion does not seem to me to express the peculiar characteristic, the distinctive element and office of this faculty. It is not peculiar to the ideas now in question, that they are _suggested_ to the mind; many other ideas, all ideas, in fact, are suggested by something. This class of our thoughts, therefore, is no more entitled to that name than any other class. Nor is it peculiar to this class that they are _original_ suggestions. The mind has many other equally original ideas that are likewise suggestions from things without, or from its own operations--mere fancies many of them, imaginations. We need to distinguish, in this case, the merely fanciful, the ideal, from the real. The terms intuitive and intuition, while they imply the reality of the thing perceived, indicate, also, the immediateness of the process.
_More serious Objection._--But there is a still further and more serious objection to the term suggestion as thus employed. The word does not, and cannot, with propriety, be made to denote what is now intended. It has a transitive significance, and cannot be made to denote a purely subjective process. Objects external suggest certain ideas to my mind. I suggest ideas to other minds. The faculty of suggestion lies, properly, not with the mind that receives the suggestion, but with the mind or object that gives it. But when we say the mind has the faculty of original suggestion, we do not mean that it has the power of suggesting original ideas to other minds; we refer to that power of the mind by which, in virtue of its constitution, certain ideas, not strictly derived from sense, are awakened in it when the occasion presents itself. We intend not a power of suggesting, but rather of receiving suggestions, a power of _conceiving_ ideas, a power of original and intuitive conceptions. To say that the mind suggests to itself ideas of space, time, etc., is a singular use of terms. I understand what is meant by suggesting ideas to others, and what it is to receive suggestions from others, and to have ideas suggested by events, occurrences and objects without, and how one thought may, by some law of association, suggest another. But how the mind suggests ideas to _itself_, is not so clear. A man, in a fit of abstraction, talks to himself, but whether he suggests ideas to himself in that way, so that he finds his own conversation instructive and profitable, may admit of question. The truth is, the idea is suggested, not _by_ the mind, but _to_ the mind--suggested from without. The mind has the power of conceiving certain ideas, which are awakened or excited in it by the occasion which presents itself. To call this faculty a faculty of suggestion, is simply a misnomer.