72 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



kind of attributes called Relations, I shall term the sensation 

 of white the foundation of the quality whiteness. For logical 

 purposes the sensation is the only essential part of what is 

 meant by the word ; the only part which we ever can be con- 

 cerned in proving. When that is proved, the quality is proved ; 

 if an object excites a sensation, it has, of course, the power of 

 exciting it. 



IV. RELATIONS. 



10. The qualities of a body, we have said, are the 

 attributes grounded on the sensations which the presence of 

 that particular body to our organs excites in our minds. But 

 when we ascribe to any object the kind of attribute called a 

 Relation, the foundation of the attribute 'must be something 

 in which other objects are concerned besides itself and the 

 percipient. 



As there may with propriety be said to be a relation be- 

 tween any two things to which two correlative names are or 

 may be given, we may expect to discover what constitutes a 

 relation in general, if we enumerate the principal cases in which 

 mankind have imposed correlative names, and observe what 

 these cases have in common. 



What, then, is the character which is possessed in common 

 by states of circumstances so heterogeneous and discordant as 

 these : one thing like another ; one thing unlike another ; one 

 thing near another ; one thing far from another ; one thing 

 before, after, along with another ; one thing greater, equal, 

 less, than another; one thing the cause of. another, the effect 

 of another; one person the master, servant, child, parent, 

 debtor, creditor, sovereign, subject, attorney, client, of another, 

 and so on ? 



Omitting, for the present, the case of Resemblance, (a re- 

 lation which requires to be considered separately,) there seems 

 to be ons thing common to all these cases, and only one ; that 

 in each of them there exists or occurs, or has existed or 

 occurred, or may be expected to exist or occur, some fact or 

 phenomenon, into which the two things which are said to be 



