different as those of identity and undistinguishable resemblance. Among modern writers, Archbishop Whately stands almost alone in having drawn attention to this distinction, and to the ambiguity connected with it. Several relations, generally called by other names, are really cases of resemblance. As, for example, equality; which is but another word for the exact resemblance commonly called identity, considered as subsisting between things in respect of their quantity. And this example forms a suitable transition to the third and last of the three heads under which, as already remarked, Attributes are commonly arranged. V. QUANTITY. § 12. Let us imagine two things, between which there is no difference, (that is, no dissimilarity,) except in quantity alone: for instance, a gallon of water, and more than a gallon of water. A gallon of water, like any other external object, makes its presence known to us by a set of sensations which it excites. Ten gallons of water are also an external object, making its presence known to us in a similar manner; and as we do not mistake ten gallons of water for a gallon of water, it is plain that the set of sensations is more or less different in the two cases. In like manner, gallon of water, and a gallon of wine, are two external objects, making their presence known by two sets of sensations, which sensations are different from each other. In the first case, however, we say that the difference is in quantity; in the last there is a difference in quality, while the quantity of the water and of the wine is the same. What is the real distinction between the two cases? It is not within the province of Logic to analyse it; nor to decide whether it is susceptible of analysis or not. For us the following considerations are sufficient. It is evident that the sensations I receive from the gallon of : water, and those I received from the gallon of wine, are not the same, that is, not precisely alike; neither are they altogether unlike they are partly similar, partly dissimilar; and that in which they resemble is precisely that in which alone the gallon of water and the ten gallons do not resemble. That in which the gallon of water and the gallon of wine are like each other, and in which the gallon and the ten gallons of water are unlike each other, is called their quantity. This likeness and unlikeness I do not pretend to explain, no more than any other kind of likeness or unlikeness. But my object is to show, that when we say of two things that they differ in quantity, just as when we say that they differ in quality, the assertion is always grounded on a difference in the sensations which they excite. Nobody, I presume, will say, that to see, or to lift, or to drink, ten gallons of water, does not include in itself a different set of sensations from those of seeing, lifting, or drinking one gallon; or that to see or handle a foot-rule, and to see or handle a yard-measure made exactly like it, are the same sensations. I do not undertake to say what the difference in the sensations is. Everybody knows, and nobody can tell; no more than any one could tell what white is to a person who had never had the sensation. But the difference, so far as cognizable by our faculties, lies in the sensations. Whatever difference we say there is in the things themselves, is in this, as in all other cases, grounded, and grounded exclusively, on a difference in the sensations excited by them. sations. And the same general ex- well as those of bodies, are grounded planation has been found to apply to on states of feeling or consciousness. most of the attributes usually classed But in the case of a mind, we have to under the head of Relation. They, consider its own states, as well as too, are grounded on some fact or those which it produces in other phenomenon into which the related minds. Every attribute of a mind objects enter as parts; that fact or consists either in being itself affected phenomenon having no meaning and in a certain way, or affecting other no existence to us, except the series of minds in a certain way. Considered sensations or other states of conscious in itself, we can predicate nothing of ness by which it makes itself known; it but the series of its own feelings. and the relation being simply the When we say of any mind, that it is power or capacity which the object devout, or superstitious, or meditative, possesses of taking part along with or cheerful, we mean that the ideas, the correlated object in the production emotions, or volitions implied in those of that series of sensations or states words, form a frequently recurring of consciousness. We have been part of the series of feelings, or states obliged indeed, to recognise a some- of consciousness, which fill up the what different character in certain sentient existence of that mind. peculiar relations, those of succession In addition, however, to those attriand simultaneity, of likeness and un-butes of a mind which are grounded likeness. These, not being grounded on its own states of feeling, attributes on any fact or phenomenon distinct may also be ascribed to it, in the same from the related objects themselves, manner as to a body, grounded on the do not admit of the same kind of feelings which it excites in other analysis. But these relations, though minds. A mind does not, indeed, not, like other relations, grounded on like a body, excite sensations, but it states of consciousness, are themselves may excite thoughts or emotions. states of consciousness: resemblance The most important example of attriis nothing but our feeling of resem-butes ascribed on this ground, is the blance; succession is nothing but our employment of terms expressive of feeling of succession. Or, if this be approbation or blame. When, for disputed, (and we cannot, without example, we say of any character, or transgressing the bounds of our (in other words) of any mind, that it science, discuss it here,) at least our is admirable, we mean that the conknowledge of these relations, and even templation of it excites the sentiment our possibility of knowledge, is con- of admiration; and indeed somewhat fined to those which subsist between more, for the word implies that we sensations, or other states of con- not only feel admiration, but approve sciousness; for, though we ascribe that sentiment in ourselves. In some resemblance, or succession, or simul- cases, under the semblance of a single taneity, to objects and to attributes, attribute, two are really predicated: it is always in virtue of resemblance one of them, a state of the mind itor succession or simultaneity in the self; the other, a state with which sensations or states of consciousness other minds are affected by thinking which those objects excite, and on of it. As when we say of any one which those attributes are grounded. that he is generous. The word generosity expresses a certain state of mind, but being a term of praise, it also expresses that this state of mind excites in us another mental state, called approbation. The assertion made, therefore, is twofold, and of the following purport: Certain feelings form §14. In the preceding investigation we have, for the sake of simplicity, considered bodies only, and omitted minds. But what we have said is applicable, mutatis mutandis, to the latter. The attributes of minds, as habitually a part of this person's sentient existence; and the idea of those feelings of his, excites the sentiment of approbation in ourselves or others. As we thus ascribe attributes to minds on the ground of ideas and emotions, so may we to bodies on similar grounds, and not solely on the ground of sensations: as in speaking of the beauty of a statue; since this attribute is grounded on the peculiar feeling of pleasure which the statue produces in our minds; which is not a sensation, but an emotion. VII. GENERAL RESULTS. § 15. Our survey of the varieties of Things which have been, or which are capable of being, named-which have been, or are capable of being, either predicated of other Things, or themselves made the subject of predica tions-is now concluded. Our enumeration commenced with Feelings. These we scrupulously distinguished from the objects which excite them, and from the organs by which they are, or may be supposed to be, conveyed. Feelings are of four sorts Sensations, Thoughts, Emotions, and Volitions. What are called Perceptions are merely a particular case of Belief, and belief is a kind of thought. Actions are merely volitions followed by an effect. After Feelings we proceeded to Substances. These are either Bodies or Minds. Without entering into the grounds of the metaphysical doubts which have been raised concerning the existence of Matter and Mind as objective realities, we stated as sufficient for us the conclusion in which the best thinkers are now for the most part agreed, that all we can know of Matter is the sensations which it gives us, and the order of occurrence of those sensations; and that while the substance Body is the unknown cause of our sensations, the substance Mind is the unknown recipient. The only remaining class of Nameable Things is attributes; and these are of three kinds, Quality, Relation, and Quantity. Qualities, like substances, are known to us no otherwise than by the sensations or other states of consciousness which they excite : and while, in compliance with common usage, we have continued to speak of them as a distinct class of Things, we showed that in predicating them no one means to predicate anything but those sensations or states of consciousness, on which they may be said to be grounded, and by which alone they can be defined or described. Relations, except the simple cases of likeness and unlikeness, succession and simultaneity, are similarly grounded on some fact or phenomenon, that is, on some series of sensations or states of consciousness, more or less complicated. The third species of Attribute, Quantity, is also manifestly grounded on something in our sensations or states of feeling, since there is an indubitable difference in the sensations excited by a larger and a smaller bulk, or by a greater or a less degree of intensity, in any object of sense or of consciousness. All attributes, therefore, are to us nothing but either our sensations and other states of feeling, or something inextricably involved therein; and to this even the peculiar and simple relations just adverted to are not exceptions. Those peculiar relations, however, are so important, and, even if they might in strictness be classed among states of consciousness, are so fundamentally distinct from any other of those states, that it would be a vain subtlety to bring them under that common description, and it is necessary that they should be classed apart.* or states of consciousness considered as such, is often called a Psychological or Subjective fact; while every fact which is composed, either wholly or in part, of something different from these, that is, of substances and attributes, is called an Objective fact. We may say, then, that every objective fact is grounded on a corresponding subjective one; and has no meaning to us, (apart from the subjective fact which corresponds to it,) except as a name for the unknown and inscrutable process by which 3rd. The Bodies, or external objects which excite certain of those feelings, together with the powers or properties whereby they excite them; these latter (at least) being included rather in compliance with common opinion, and because their existence is taken that subjective or psychological fact for granted in the common language is brought to pass. from which I cannot prudently deviate, than because the recognition of such powers or properties as real existences appears to be warranted by a sound philosophy. 4th, and last. The Successions and Co-existences, the Likenesses and Unlikenesses, between feelings or states of consciousness. Those relations, when considered as subsisting between other things, exist in reality only between the states of consciousness which those things, if bodies, excite, if minds, either excite or experience. This, until a better can be suggested, may serve as a substitute for the Categories of Aristotle considered as a Classification of Existences. The practical application of it will appear when we commence the inquiry into the Import of Propositions; in other words, when we inquire what it is which the mind actually believes when it gives what is called its assent to a proposition. These four classes comprising, if the classification be correct, all Nameable Things, these or some of them must of course compose the signification of all names; and of these, or some of them, is made up whatever we call a fact. For distinction's sake, every fact which is solely composed of feelings admit of, and require, further analysis; and Mr. Bain does analyse them into re semblance in the sensations, or other states of consciousness excited by the object. CHAPTER IV. OF PROPOSITIONS. § 1. IN treating of Propositions, as already in treating of Names, some considerations of a comparatively elementary nature respecting their form and varieties must be premised, before entering upon that analysis of the import conveyed by them, which is the real subject and purpose of this preliminary book. A proposition, we have before said, is a portion of discourse in which a predicate is affirmed or denied of a subject. A predicate and a subject are all that is necessarily required to make up a proposition: but as we cannot conclude from merely seeing two names put together, that they are a predicate and a subject, that is, that one of them is intended to be affirmed or denied of the other, it is necessary that there should be some mode or form of indicating that such is the intention; some sign to distinguish a predication from any other kind of discourse. This is sometimes done by a slight alteration of one of the words, called an inflection; as when we say, Fire burns; the change of the second word from burn to burns showing that we mean to affirm the predicate burn of the subject fire. But this function is more commonly D fulfilled by the word is, when an affirmation is intended, is not, when a negation; or by some other part of the verb to be. The word which thus serves the purpose of a sign of predication is called, as we formerly observed, the copula. It is important that there should be no indistinctness in our conception of the nature and office of the copula; for confused notions respecting it are among the causes which have spread mysticism over the field of logic, and perverted its speculations into logomachies. It is apt to be supposed that the copula is something more than a mere sign of predication; that it also signifies existence. In the proposition, Socrates is just, it may seem to be implied not only that the quality just can be affirmed of Socrates, but moreover that Socrates is, that is to say, exists. This, however, only shows that there is an ambiguity in the word is; a word which not only performs the function of the copula in affirmations, but has also a meaning of its own, in virtue of which it may itself be made the predicate of a proposition. That the employment of it as a copula does not necessarily include the affirmation of existence, appears from such a proposition as this: A centaur is a fiction of the poets; where it cannot possibly be implied that a centaur exists, since the proposition itself expressly asserts that the thing has no real existence. diffused itself at an early period over the whole surface of metaphysics. Yet it becomes us not to triumph over the great intellects of Plato and Aristotle because we are now able to preserve ourselves from many errors into which they, perhaps inevitably, fell. The fire-teazer of a modern steam-engine produces by his exertions far greater effects than Milo of Crotona could, but he is not therefore a stronger man. The Greeks seldom knew any language but their own. This rendered it far more difficult for them than it is for us, to acquire a readiness in detecting ambiguities. One of the advantages of having accurately studied a plurality of languages, especially of those languages which eminent thinkers have used as the vehicle of their thoughts, is the practical lesson we learn respecting the ambiguities of words, by finding that the same word in one language corresponds, on different occasions, to different words in another. When not thus exercised, even the strongest understandings find it difficult to believe that things which have a common name have not in some respect or other a common nature; and often expend much labour very unprofitably (as was frequently done by the two philosophers just mentioned) in vain attempts to discover in what this common nature consists. But, the habit once formed, intellects much Many volumes might be filled with inferior are capable of detecting even the frivolous speculations concerning ambiguities which are common to the nature of Being, (πo ov, ovcía, many languages: and it is surprising Ens, Entitas, Essentia, and the like,) that the one now under consideration, which have arisen from overlooking though it exists in the modern lanthis double meaning of the word to guages as well as in the ancient, be; from supposing that when it should have been overlooked by signifies to exist, and when it signifies almost all authors. The quantity of to be some specified thing, as to be a futile speculation which had been man, to be Socrates, to be seen or caused by a misapprehension of the spoken of, to be a phantom, even to nature of the copula was hinted at by be a nonentity, it must still, at bottom, Hobbes; but Mr. James Mill was, answer to the same idea; and that a | I believe, the first who distinctly meaning must be found for it which characterized the ambiguity, and shall suit all these cases. The fog * Analysis of the Human Mind, i. 126 et which rose from this narrow spot seq. * |