CHAPTER IV. 



OF THE LAWS OF MIND. 



1. WHAT the Mind is, as well as what Matter is, or 

 any other question respecting Things in themselves, as dis- 

 tinguished from their sensible manifestations, it would be 

 foreign to the purposes of this treatise to consider. Here, as 

 throughout our inquiry, we shall keep clear of all speculations 

 respecting the mind's own nature, and shall understand by 

 the laws of mind, those of mental Phenomena ; of the various 

 feelings or states of consciousness of sentient beings. These, 

 according to the classification we have uniformly followed, 

 consist of Thoughts, Emotions, Volitions, and Sensations ; the 

 last being as truly states of Mind as the three former. It is 

 usual indeed to speak of sensations as states of body, not of 

 mind. But this is the common confusion, of giving one and 

 the same name to a phenomenon and to the proximate cause 

 or conditions of the phenomenon. The immediate antecedent 

 of a sensation is a state of body, but the sensation itself is a 

 state of mind. If the word mind means anything, it means 

 that which feels. Whatever opinion we hold respecting the 

 fundamental identity or diversity of matter and mind, in any 

 case the distinction between mental and physical facts, between 

 the internal and the external world, will always remain, as a 

 matter of classification : and in that classification, sensations, 

 like all other feelings, must be ranked as mental phenomena. 

 The mechanism of their production, both in the body itself and 

 in what is called outward nature, is all that can with any pro- 

 priety be classed as physical. 



The phenomena of mind, then, are the various feelings of 

 our nature, both those improperly called physical, and those 



