THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES. 63 



quantity of the water and of the wine is tlie same. What is the real dis- 

 tinction between the two cases? It is not within the province of Logic to 

 analyze it ; nor to decide whether it is susceptible of analysis or not. For 

 us the following considerations are sufficient: It is evident that the sen- 

 sations I receive from the gallon of water, and those I receive from the 

 gallon of wine, are not the same, that is, not precisely alike ; neither are 

 they altogether unlike : they are partly similar, partly dissimilar ; and that 

 in which they resemble is precisely that in which alone the gallon of wa- 

 ter and the ten gallons do not resemble. That in which the gallon of wa- 

 ter and the gallon of wine are like each other, and in which the gallon 

 and the ten gallons of water are unlike each other, is called their quan- 

 tity. This likeness and imlikeness 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 sensations 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 drink- 

 ing 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 un- 

 dertake to say what the difference in the sensations is. Every body 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 ex- 

 cited by them. 



VI. Attributes Concluded. 



§ 13. 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 ex- 

 citing those sensations. And the same general explanation has been found 

 to apply to most of the attributes usually classed under the head of Rela- 

 tion. They, too, are grounded on some fact or phenomenon into Avhich the 

 related objects enter as parts; that fact or phenomenon having no mean- 

 ing and no existence to us, except the series of sensations or other states 

 of consciousness by Avhich 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 production of that series of sensa- 

 tions or states of consciousness. We have been obliged, indeed, to recog- 

 nize a somewhat different character in certain peculiar relations, those of 

 succession and simultaneity, of likeness and unlikeness. These, not being 

 grounded on any fact or phenomenon distinct from the related objects 

 themselves, do not admit of the same kind of analysis. But these relations, 

 though not, like other relations, grounded on states of consciousness, are 

 themselves states of consciousness : resemblance is nothing but our feeling 

 of resemblance ; succession is nothing but our feeling of succession. Or, 

 if this be disputed (and We can not, without transgressing the bounds of 

 our science, discuss it here), at least our knowledge of thes e refla tions, and 

 even our possibility of knowledge, is confined to those/<Pmtlftm^tesist be- 

 tween sensations, or other states of consciousness ; fov^fh,«rOg1T*>S^^cribe 

 resemblance, or succession, or simultaneity, to objects^^ajw to attribfmps, it 



