206 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



sciousness is the peculiar problem of the higher or 

 transcendental metaphysics. But after excluding all 

 questions on which metaphysicians differ, it remains 

 true that for most purposes the discrimination we are 

 called upon practically to exercise is between sensa- 

 tions or other feelings, of our own or of other people, 

 and inferences drawn from them. And on the theory 

 of Observation this is all which seems necessary to be 

 said in this place. 



3. If, in the simplest observation, or in what 

 passes for such, there is a large part which is not 

 observation but something else ; so in the simplest 

 description of an observation, there is, and must always 

 be, much more asserted than is contained in the per- 

 ception itself. We cannot describe a fact without 

 implying more than the fact. The perception is only 

 of one individual thing ; but to describe it is to 

 affirm a connexion between it and every other thing 

 which is either denoted or connoted by any of the 

 terms used. To begin with an example, than which 

 none can be conceived more elementary: I have a 

 sensation of sight, and I endeavour to describe it by 

 saying that I see something white. In saying this, I 

 do not solely affirm my sensation; I also class it. I 

 assert a resemblance between the thing I see, and all 

 things which I and others are accustomed to call 

 white. I assert that it resembles them in the circum- 

 stance in which they all resemble one another, in that 

 which is the ground of their being called by the name. 

 This is not merely one way of describing an observa- 

 tion, but the only way. If I would either register my 

 observation for my own future use, or make it known 

 for the benefit of others, I must assert a resemblance 

 between the fact which I have observed and some- 



