74: HUME ii 



consciousness,* Descartes gave the name of 

 " thoughts," f while Locke and Berkeley termed 

 them " ideas." Hume, regarding this as an im- 

 proper use of the word "idea," for which he 

 proposes another employment, gives the general 

 name of " perceptions " to all states of conscious- 

 ness. Thus, whatever other signification we may 

 see reason to attach to the word " mind," it is cer- 

 tain that it is a name which is employed to denote 

 a series of perceptions; just as the word "tune," 

 whatever else it may mean, denotes, in the first 

 place, a succession of musical notes. Hume, 

 indeed, goes further than others when he says 



" What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collec- 

 tion of different perceptions, united together by certain 

 relations, and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with 

 a perfect simplicity and identity." (I. p. 268.) 



With this "nothing but," however, he obviously 

 falls into the primal and perennial error of 

 philosophical speculators dogmatising from nega- 



* " Consciousness " would be a better name, but it is 

 awkward. I have elsewhere proposed psychoses as a sub- 

 stantive name for mental phenomena. 



f As this has been denied, it may be as well to give 

 Descartes's words: Par le mot de penser, j'entends tout ce 

 C[ue se fait dans nous de telle sorte que nous 1'apercevons 

 immediatement par nousmemes : c'est pourquoi non-seule- 

 ment entendre, vouloir, imaginer, mais aussi sentir, c'est le 

 meme chose ici que penser." Principes de PMlosophie. 

 Ed. Cousin, 57. 



"Toutes les proprietes que nous trouvons en la chose 

 qui pense ne sont que des fa^ons differentes de penser." 

 Ibid. 96. 



