THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES. 89 



so an attribute grounded upon some fact into which 

 the object enters jointly with another object, is a rela- 

 tion between it and that other object. But the fact in 

 the latter case consists of the very same kind of ele- 

 ments as the fact in the former : namely, states of 

 consciousness. In the case last cited, for example, 

 the relation of husband and wife ; the fundamentum 

 relationis consists entirely of thoughts, emotions, sen- 

 sations, and volitions (actual or contingent), either of 

 the parties themselves or of other parties concerned 

 in the same series of transactions, as, for instance, 

 the intentions which would be formed by a judge in 

 case a complaint were made to his tribunal of the in- 

 fringement of any of the legal obligations imposed by 

 marriage ; and the acts which the judge would per- 

 form in consequence ; acts being (as we have already 

 seen) another word for intentions followed by an 

 effect, and that effect (again) being but another word 

 for sensations, or some other feelings, occasioned 

 either to oneself or to somebody else. There is no 

 part whatever of what the names expressive of the 

 relation imply, that is not resolvable into states of con- 

 sciousness ; outward objects being, no doubt, supposed 

 throughout as the causes by which some of those 

 states of consciousness are excited, and minds as the 

 subjects by which all of them are experienced, but 

 neither the external objects nor the minds making 

 their existence known otherwise than by the states of 

 consciousness. 



Cases of relation are not always so complicated as 

 that to which we last alluded. The simplest of all 

 cases of relation are those expressed by the words 

 antecedent and consequent, and by the word simul- 

 taneous. If we say, for instance, that dawn preceded 

 sunrise, the fact in which the two things, dawn and 



