34 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



I. Feelings, or States of Consciousness. 



§ 3. A Feeling and a State of Consciousness are, in the language of 

 philosophy, equivalent expressions : everything is a Feeling, of which 

 the mind is conscious : everything which it feels, or, in other words, 

 which forms a part of its own sentient existence. In popular language 

 Feeling is not always synonymous with State of Consciousness ; being 

 often taken more peculiarly for those states which are conceived as 

 belonging to the sensitive, or to the emotional, phasis of our nature, 

 and sometimes, with a still naiTower resti'iction, to the emotional 

 alone : as distinguished from what are conceived as belonging to the 

 percipient, or intellectual phasis. But this is an admitted departure 

 from correctness of language ; just as, by a popular perversion the 

 exact converse of this, the word Mind is withdrawn from its rightful 

 generality of signification, and restricted to the intellect. The still 

 gi'eater perversion by which Feeling is sometimes confined not only 

 to bodily sensations, but to the sensations of a single sense, that of 

 touch, needs not be more particulai'ly adverted to. 



Feeling, in the proper sense of the term, is a genus, of which 

 Sensation, Emotion, and Thought, are subordinate species. Under the 

 word Thought is here to be included whatever we are internally con- 

 scious of when we are said to think ; from the consciousness we have 

 when we think of a red color wdthout having it before our eyes, to the 

 most recondite thoughts of a philosopher or poet. Be it remembered, 

 however, that by a thought is to be understood what passes in the mind 

 itself, and not any object external to the mind, which the person is 

 commonly said to be thinking of He may be thinking of the sun, or 

 of God, but the sun and God are not thoughts ; his mental image, 

 however, of the sun, and his idea of God, are thoughts ; states of his 

 mind, not of the objects themselves: and so also' is his belief of the 

 existence of the sun, or of God ; or his disbelief, if the case be so. 

 Even imaginary objects, (which are said to exist only in our ideas,) 

 are to be distinguished from our ideas of therri. I may think of a 

 hobgoblin, as I may think of the loaf which was eaten yesterday, or 

 of the flower which will bloom to-moiTow. But the hobgoblin which 

 never existed is not the same thing with my idea of a hobgoblin, any 

 more than the loaf which once existed is the same thing ^vith my idea 

 of a loaf, or the flower which does not yet exist, but which will exist, 

 is the same with my idea of a- flower. They are all, not thoughts, 

 but objects of thought ; thougli at the present time all the objects are 

 alik.e non-existent. 



In like manner, a Sensation is to be carefully distinguished from 

 the object which causes the sensation ; our sensation of white from a 

 w'hite object; nor is it less to be distinguished fi'om the attribute 

 whiteness, which we ascribe to the object in consequence of its exci- 

 ting the sensation. Unfortunately for clearness and due discrimination 

 in considering these subjects, our sensations seldom receive separate 

 names. We have a name for the objects which produce in us a 

 certain sensation ; the word white. We have a name for the quality 

 in those objects, to which we ascribe the sensation; the name tvJiite- 

 ness. But when we speak of the sensation itself, (as we have not 

 occasion to do this often except in our philosophical speculations,) 

 language, which adapts itself for the most part only to the common 



