THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES. 79 



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 sensa 

 tions 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. 



VI. ATTRIBUTES CONCLUDED. 



J 3. Thus, then, all the attributes of bodies which are 

 classed under Quality or Quantity, are grounded on the 

 sensations which we receive from those bodies, and may be 

 defined, the powers which the bodies have of exciting those 

 sensations. And the same general explanation has been found 

 to apply to most of the attributes usually classed under the 

 head of Kelation. They, too, are grounded on some fact 

 or phenomenon into which the related objects enter as parts; 

 that fact or phenomenon having no meaning and no existence 

 to us, except the series of sensations or other states of con 

 sciousness by which it makes itself known; and the relation 

 being simply the power or capacity which the object possesses 

 of taking part along with the correlated object in the produc 

 tion of that series of sensations or states of consciousness. 

 We have been obliged, indeed, to recognise a somewhat 

 different character in certain peculiar relations, those of sue- 



