THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES. 97 



VI. ATTRIBUTES CONCLUDED. 



13. Thus, then, all the attributes of bodies 

 which are classed under Quality or Quantity, are 

 grounded upon the sensations which we receive from 

 those bodies, and may be defined, the powers which 

 the bodies have of exciting those sensations. And 

 the same general explanation has been found to 

 apply to most of the attributes usually classed under 

 the head of Relation. They, too, are grounded 

 upon some fact or phenomenon into which the related 

 objects enter as parts ; that fact or phenomenon 

 having no meaning and no existence to us, except 

 the series of sensations or other states of con- 

 sciousness by which it makes itself known : and the 

 relation being simply the power or capacity which the 

 object possesses, of taking part along with the cor- 

 related object in the production of that series of 

 sensations or states of consciousness. We have been 

 obliged, indeed, to recognise a somewhat different 

 character in certain peculiar relations, those of suc- 

 cession 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 

 upon 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 cannot, 

 without transgressing the bounds of our science, 

 discuss it here,) at least our knowledge of these 

 relations, and even our possibility of knowledge, is 

 confined to those which subsist between sensations or 

 other states of consciousness : for, though we ascribe 



VOL. I. H 



