THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES. 69 



immediately excited not by anything 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 sensation thereby produced in our 

 minds, many writers admit a third link in the chain of 

 phenomena, which they term 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 sensation the mind 

 is passive, being merely acted upon by the outward 

 object. And according to some philosophers it is by 

 an act of the mind, similar to perception, except in 

 not being preceded by any sensation, that we recog- 

 nise the existence of God, of the soul, and other 

 hyperphysical realities. 



These acts of perception, whatever be the conclu- 

 sion ultimately 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 insinu- 

 ating 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 Mr. 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 distin- 

 guishing peculiarities. I abstain from the inquiry as 



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



