THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES. 63 



thinkers, would remain. For of what nature, they ask, could 

 be the residuum ? and by what token could it manifest its pre 

 sence ? To the unreflecting its existence seems to rest on the 

 evidence of the senses. But to the senses nothing is apparent 

 except the sensations. We know, indeed, that these sensations 

 are bound together by some law ; they do not come together 

 at random, but according to a systematic order, which is part 

 of the order established in the universe. When we experience 

 one of these sensations, we usually experience the others also, 

 or know that we have it in our power to experience them. 

 But a fixed law of connexion, making the sensations occur 

 together, does not, say these philosophers, necessarily require 

 what is called a substratum to support them. The conception 

 of a substratum is but one of many possible forms in which 

 that connexion presents itself to our imagination ; a mode of, 

 as it were, realizing the idea. If there be such a substratum, 

 suppose it this instant miraculously annihilated, and let the 

 sensations continue to occur in the same order, and how would 

 the substratum be missed ? By what signs should we be able 

 to discover that its existence had terminated ? Should we not 

 have as much reason to believe that it still existed as we now 

 have ? And if we should not then be warranted in believing it, 

 how can we be so now ? A body, therefore, according to these 

 metaphysicians, is not anything intrinsically different from 

 the sensations which the body is said to produce in us ; it is, 

 in short, a set of sensations, or rather, of possibilities of sen 

 sation, joined together according to a fixed law. 



The controversies to which these speculations have given 

 rise, and the doctrines which have been developed in the 

 attempt to find a conclusive answer to them, have been fruitful 

 of important consequences to the Science of Mind. The sensa 

 tions (it was answered) which we are conscious of, and which 

 we receive, not at random, but joined together in a certain 

 uniform manner, imply not only a law or laws of connexion, 

 but a cause external to our mind, which cause, by its own 

 laws, determines the laws according to which the sensations 

 are connected and experienced. The schoolmen used to call 

 this external cause by the name we have already employed, a 



