certain Processes of the Human Understanding. 93 



tion of a process which we can trace, to further phenomena of the same appa- 

 rent nature in which it cannot be so easily traced : but from which there seems 

 no reason to exclude it, unless one which should be noticed before I venture to 

 extend my theory to the explanation of some of the more complex operations of 

 the intellect. This objection consists in the difficulty of attributing so many 

 varied and continuous acts to one single conception, or moment of time. My 

 answer to this objection (here) shall be very brief indeed, being no more than 

 this, — that the self-same objection applies to Mr. Stewart's explanation of every 

 example he adduces. If twenty acts of will, or attention, or reason, or any other 

 mental process, take place in the time of one, the difficulty is not much dimi- 

 nished by saying they are successive, instead of simultaneous. In truth, no 

 power of intellectual comprehension or resolution can distinctly conceive either 

 one or the other ; they are creatures of reason only. I am aware of the infinite 

 divisibility of time, which is easily proved by the same argument which demon- 

 strates the same proposition of a line, on the parts of which it is only necessary to 

 conceive the idea of motion. I am also willing to assent to any proposition assert- 

 ing the infinite velocity of the thoughts ; I do not pretend to deny any thing on 

 the mere ground of not being able to explain it ; but I say that, so far as I can 

 venture to assert, the proof has entirely failed. The necessitas rei of Mr. Stewart 

 has no existence ; and if any solution is to be tolerated of those processes of the 

 mind which are so subtle, or so compounded, as to escape all direct analysis, there 

 is none more likely to apply, than that which, in simpler cases, is plainly and mani- 

 festly applied to the same offices. On this point, let me recal your attention to 

 Mr. Stewart's own argument against Hartley's theory, as I think we may now be 

 better enabled to perceive that it equally destroys his own, while it is not applica- 

 ble to that here offered. Hartley supposes the same processes, which are volun- 

 tary up to a certain rate of velocity, then to become automatic. Stewart very 

 justly remarks the disadvantage of assuming two wholly different laws of action 

 for the same processes, in different degrees of action. Now Mr. Stewart only 

 escapes the same objection, by giving the same name to different things ; this I 

 have already shown. But in my own solution alone the same law is manifestly 

 carried through, without the least abatement of its identity. Not being a sum- 

 mary operation, but the result of numerous operations, it does not in any way 

 involve the principle of consciousness, more than the growth of the body involves 



