50 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



of the bodily organs which precedes the sensation, and wliich constitutes 

 the physical agency by which it is produced. One of the sources of con- 

 fusion on this subject is the division commonly made of feelings into Bodily 

 and Mental. Philosophically speaking, there is no foundation at all for this 

 distinction : even sensations are states of the sentient mind, not states of 

 the body, as distinguished from it. What I am conscious of when I see 

 the color blue, is a feeling of blue color, which is one thing ; the picture on 

 my retina, or the phenomenon of hitherto mysterious nature which takes 

 place in my optic nerve or in my brain, is another thing, of which I am 

 not at all conscious, and which scientific investigation alone could have ap- 

 prised me of. These are states of my body; but the sensation of blue, 

 which is the consequence of these states of body, is not a state of body: 

 that which perceives and is conscious is called Mind. When sensations 

 are called bodily feelings, it is only as being the class of feelings which are 

 inmiediately occasioned by bodily states ; whereas the other kinds of feel- 

 ings, thoughts, for instance, or emotions, are immediately excited not by 

 any thing acting upon the bodily organs, but by sensations, or by previous 

 thoughts. This, however, is a distinction not in our feelings, but in the 

 agency which produces our feelings: all of them when actually produced 

 are states of mind. 



Besides the affection of our bodily organs from without, and the sensa- 

 tion thereby produced in our minds, many writers admit a third link in the 

 chain of phenomena, which they call a Perception, and which consists in 

 the recognition of an external object as the exciting cause of the sensation. 

 This perception, they say, is an act of the mind, proceeding from its own 

 spontaneous activity ; while in a sensation the mind is passive, being mere- 

 ly acted upon by the outward object. And according to some metaphysi- 

 cians, it is by an act of the mind, similar to perception, except in not being 

 preceded by any sensation, that the existence of God, the soul, and other 

 hyperphysical objects, is recognized. 



These acts of what is termed perception, whatever be the conclusion ul- 

 timately come to respecting their nature, must, I conceive, take their place 

 among the varieties of feelings or states of mind. In so classing them, 

 I have not the smallest intention of declaring or insinuating any theory 

 as to the law of mind in which these mental processes may be supposed 

 to originate, or the conditions under which they may be legitimate or the 

 reverse. Far less do I mean (as Dr. Whewell seems to suppose must be 

 meant in an analogous case*) to indicate that as they are ^^ merely states of 

 mind," it is superfluous to inquire into their distinguishing peculiarities. 

 I abstain from the inquiry as irrelevant to the science of logic. In these 

 so-called perceptions, or direct recognitions by the mind, of objects, wheth- 

 er physical or spiritual, which are external to itself, I can see only cases of 

 belief; but of belief which claims to be intuitive, or independent of exter- 

 nal evidence. When a stone lies before me, I am conscious of certain sen- 

 sations Avhich I receive from it; but if I say that these sensations come to 

 me from an external object which I perceive, the meaning of these words 

 is, that receiving the sensations, I intuitively believe that an external cause 

 of those sensations exists. The laws of intuitive belief, and the conditions 

 under which it is legitimate, are a subject which, as we have already so 

 often remarked, belongs not to logic, but to the science of the ultimate laws 

 of the human mind. 



* Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i., p. 40. 



