JOJIX STUART MILL'S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. 



325 



we feel them to be alike together, though in dif- 

 ferent degrees. When, therefore, I say, ' The col- 

 or I saw yesterday was a white color ; ' or, ' The 

 sensation l feel is one of tightness,' in both cases 

 the attribute I affirm of the color or of the sensa- 

 tion is mere resemblance— simple likeness to sen- 

 sations which I have had before, and which have 

 had those names bestowed upon tbem. The names 

 of feelings, like other concrete general names, are 

 connotative ; but they connote a mere resemblance. 

 When predicated of any individual feeling, the in- 

 formation they convey is that of its likeness to the 

 other feelings which we have been accustomed to 

 call by the same name. Thus much may suffice 

 in illustration of the kind of propositions in which 

 the matter of fact asserted (or denied) is simple 

 resemblance." 



Such a paragraph as the above is likely to 

 produce intellectual vertigo in the steadiest 

 thinker. In an off-hand manner we are told that 

 this much may suffice in illustration of an excep- 

 tional case in which resemblance happens to be 

 predicated. This resemblance is mentioned slight- 

 ingly as mere resemblance, or general unanalyzable 

 resemblance. Yet, when we come to inquire seri- 

 ously what this resemblance is, we find it to be 

 that primary relation of sensation to sensation, 

 which lies at the basis of all thought and knowl- 

 edge. Prof. Alexander Bain is supposed to be, 

 since Mill's death, a mainstay of the empirical 

 school, and, in his works on " Logic," he has un- 

 fortunately adopted far too much of Mill's views. 

 But, in Prof. Bain's own proper writings, there is 

 a vigor and logical consistency of thought for 

 which it is impossible not to feel the greatest re- 

 spect. 



Now we find Mr. Bain laying down, at the 

 commencement of his writings on the intellect, 1 

 that the primary attributes of intellect are : 1. 

 Consciousness of difference ; 2. Consciousness of 

 agreement ; and, 3. Retentiveness. He goes on 

 to say with admirable clearness that discrimina- 

 tion or feeling of difference is an essential of in- 

 telligence. The beginning of knowledge, or ideas, 

 is the discrimination of one thing from another. 

 As we can neither feel nor know without a tran- 

 sition or change of state, every feeling, and every 

 cognition, must be viewed as in relation to some 

 other feeling or cognition. There cannot be a 

 single or absolute cognition. 



Then, again, Mr. Bain proceeds to say that 



i " Mental and Moral Science. A Compendium of 

 Psychology and Ethics," 1868, pp. 82, 83. The same 

 doctrine of the nature of knowledge is stated in the 

 treatise on " The Senses and the Intellect," second edi- 

 tion, pp. 325-331 ; in the '-Deductive Logic," pp. 4, 5, 

 9, and elsewhere. 



the conscious state arising from agreement in the 

 midst of difference is equally marked and equally 

 fundamental : 



" Supposing us to experience, for the first time, 

 a certain sensation, as redness ; and, after being en- 

 gaged with other sensations, to encounter redness 

 again ; we are struck with the feeling of identity, or 

 recognition ; the old state is recalled at the instance 

 of the new by the fact of agreement, and we have 

 the sensation of red, together with a new and pe- 

 culiar consciousnes, the consciousness of agreement 

 in diversity. As the diversity is greater, the shock 

 of agreement is more lively." 



Then Prof. Bain adds, emphatically : 



" All knowledge finally resolves itself into dif- 



ferences and agreements. To define anything, as 

 a circle, is to state its agreements with some things 

 (genus) and its difference from other things (dif- 

 ferentia)." 



Prof. Bain then treats as the fundamental act 

 of intellect the recognition of redness as identi- 

 cal with redness previously experienced. This is 

 changing red for white, exactly the same illustra- 

 tion as Mill used in the example, " The color I 

 saw yesterday was a white color." Now Mr. Bain 

 says, and says truly, that all knowledge finally 

 resolves itself into differences and agreements. 

 Propositions, accordingly, which affirm these ele- 

 mentary relations, must really be the most impor- 

 tant of all classes of propositions. They must be 

 the elementary propositions which are presup- 

 posed or summed up in more complicated ones. 

 Yet such is the class of propositions which Mill 

 dismisses in an off-hand manner in one paragraph 

 as " still another exceptional case." 



If we look into the details of Mill's para- 

 graph, perplexity only can be the result. He 

 speaks of " the class being founded not on resem- 

 blance in any given particular, but on general un- 

 analyzable resemblance^ The classes in question 

 are those into which " our simple sensations, or 

 rather simple feelings, are divided." Now, what 

 can he possibly mean by any given particular? 

 If the color I saw yesterday was a white color, 

 that was the given particular in which resem- 

 blance existed. No doubt the resemblance is un- 

 analyzable, because analysis has done its best, 

 and the matter refers, Mill states, to a simple sen- 

 sation. When we are dealing with the elements 

 of knowledge, of course analysis is no longer ap- 

 plicable. But I confess myself unable to under- 

 stand why he calls it general unanalyzable resem- 

 blance. If I understand the matter aright, Mill 

 should have said specific analyzed resemblance. 

 When one red flower is noticed to resemble an- 



