THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES. 75 



we will suppose them to be simple ones; two sensations of 

 white, or one sensation of white and another of black. I call 

 the first two sensations like ; the last two unlike. What is 

 the fact or phenomenon constituting the fundamentum of this 

 relation ? The two sensations first, and then what we call a 

 feeling of resemblance, or of want of resemblance. Let us 

 confine ourselves to the former case. Kesemblance is evidently 

 a feeling ; a state of the consciousness of the observer. Whether 

 the feeling of the resemblance of the two colours be a third 

 state of consciousness, which I have after having the two sen 

 sations of colour, or whether (like the feeling of their succes 

 sion) it is involved in the sensations themselves, may be a 

 matter of discussion. But in either case, these feelings of 

 resemblance, and of its opposite dissimilarity, are parts of our 

 nature ; and parts so far from being capable of analysis, that 

 they are pre-supposed in every attempt to analyse any of our 

 other feelings. Likeness and unlikeness, therefore, as well 

 as antecedence, sequence, and simultaneousness, must stand 

 apart among relations, as things sui generis. They are 

 attributes grounded on facts, that is, on states of conscious 

 ness, but on states which are peculiar, unresolvable, and 

 inexplicable. 



But, though likeness or unlikeness cannot be resolved into 

 anything else, complex cases of likeness or unlikeness can be 

 resolved into simpler ones. When we say of two things which 

 consist of parts, that they are like one another, the likeness of 

 the wholes does admit of analysis ; it is compounded of like 

 nesses between the various parts respectively, and of likeness 

 in their arrangement. Of how vast a variety of resemblances 

 of parts must that resemblance be composed, which induces 

 us to say that a portrait, or a landscape, is like its original. 

 If one person mimics another with any success, of how many 

 simple likenesses must the general or complex likeness be 

 compounded : likeness in a succession of bodily postures ; 

 likeness in voice, or in the accents and intonations of the 

 voice ; likeness in the choice of words, and in the thoughts 

 or sentiments expressed, whether by word, countenance, or 

 gesture. 



