34 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



Moreover, just as the intuition of the rationalist creates 

 nothing, but is merely a direction of attention to what was 

 already present implicity; so the infallible introspection of the 

 empiricist adds nothing, changes nothing, in the complex which 

 it analyzes, but simply emphasizes successively the elements 

 which there existed in combination. Each element, so far as its 

 own nature is concerned, is precisely the same in and out of the 

 combination; otherwise the analysis would be of questionable 

 validity. Such change as it may appear to undergo is wholly 

 to be ascribed to our shifting attention. 



We shall return to this subject very shortly. Here we are 

 concerned to show its relation to the empiricist criterion of sim 

 plicity. A remarkable passage occurring in Hume s criticism of 

 the doctrine of abstract ideas the absurdity of which lies in the 

 fact that they exceed the limits of possible simplicity will serve 

 to illustrate the point. &quot;We have observed, that whatever ob 

 jects are different are distinguishable, and that whatever objects 

 are distinguishable are separable by the thought and imagination. 

 And we may here add, that these propositions are equally true in 

 the inverse, and that whatever objects are separable are also distin 

 guishable, and that whatever objects are distinguishable are also 

 different. For how is it possible we can separate what is not 

 distinguishable, or distinguish what is not different? In order 

 therefore to know, whether abstraction implies a separation, we 

 need only consider it in this view, and examine, whether all the 

 circumstances, which we abstract from in our general ideas, be 

 such as are distinguishable and different from those, which we 

 retain as essential parts of them. But tis evident at first sight, 

 that the precise length of a line is not different nor distinguishable 

 from the line itself [i e., as the preceding sentence shows, from 

 the essential parts of the line itself] ; nor the precise degree of any 

 quality from the quality. These ideas, therefore, admit no more 

 of separation than they do of distinction and difference.&quot; 1 If 

 for the twentieth century reader these words need any commen- 



^Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part I, Section 7. 



