82 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



thoughts, emotions, and volitions, more or less nume- 

 rous and complicated. There is a something I call 

 Myself, or, by another form of expression, my mind, 

 which I consider as distinct from these sensations, 

 thoughts, &c. ; a something which I conceive to be 

 not the thoughts, but the being that has the thoughts, 

 and which I can conceive as existing for ever in a 

 state of quiescence, without any thoughts at all. But 

 what this being is, although it is myself, I have no 

 knowledge, further than the series of its states of 

 consciousness. As bodies manifest themselves to me 

 only through the sensations of which I regard them 

 as the causes, so the thinking principle, or mind, in 

 my own nature, makes itself known to me only by 

 the feelings of which it is conscious. I know nothing 

 about myself, save my capacities of feeling or being 

 conscious (including, of course, thinking and willing) : 

 and were I to learn anything new concerning myself, I 

 cannot with my present faculties conceive this new 

 information to be anything else, than that I have 

 some additional capacities, before unknown to me, of 

 feeling, thinking, or willing. 



Thus, then, as body is the unsentient cause to 

 which we are naturally prompted to refer a certain 

 portion of our feelings, so mind may be described as 

 the sentient subject (in the German sense of the term) 

 of all feelings ; that which has or feels them. But of 

 the nature of either body or mind, further than the 

 feelings which the former excites, and which the 

 latter experiences, we do not, according to the best 

 existing doctrine, know anything; and if anything, 

 logic has nothing to do with it, or with the manner 

 in which the knowledge is acquired. With this result 

 we may conclude this portion of our subject, and pass 

 to the third and only remaining class or division of 

 Nameable Things. 



