OD NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



to perception, except in not being preceded by any sensation, that we 

 recognize the existence of God, of the soul, and other hyperphysical 

 reahties. 



These acts of perception, whatever be the conclusion ultimately 

 come to respecting their nature, must, I conceive, take their place 

 among the varieties of feelings or states of mind. In so classing them, 

 I have not the smallest intention of declaring or insinuating any theory 

 as to the law of mind in which these mental processes may be supposed 

 to originate, or the conditions under which they may be legitimate or 

 the reverse. Far less do I mean (as Mr. Wliewell seems to suppose 

 must be meant in an analogous case*) to indicate that as they are 

 ^'■merely states of mind," it is supei-fluous to inquire into their distin- 

 guishing peculiarities. I abstain from the inquiry as irrelevant to the 

 science of logic. In these so-called perceptions, or direct recognitions 

 by the mind of objects, whether physical or spiritual, which are ex- 

 ternal to itself, I can see only cases of belief; but of behef which 

 claims to be intuitive, or independent of external evidence. \Mien a 

 stone lies before me, I am conscious of certain sensations which I 

 receive from it; but when I say that these sensations come to me from 

 an external object which I perceive, the meaning of these words is, that 

 receiving the sensations, I intuitively helieve that an external cause of 

 those sensations exists. The laws of intuitive belief, and the conditions 

 under which it is legitimate, are a subject which, as we have already 

 so often remarked, belongs not to logic, but to the higher or transcen- 

 dental branch of metaphysics. 



To the same region of speculation belongs all that can be said re- 

 specting the distinction which the German metaphysicians and their 

 French and English followers, (among whom Mr. Whewell is one of 

 the inost distinguished,) so elaborately draw between the acts of the 

 mind and its merely passive states ; between what it receives from, 

 and what it gives to, the crude materials of its experience. I am aAvare 

 that with reference to the view which those writers take of the primary 

 elements of thought and knowledge, this distinction is fimdamental. 

 But for our purpose, which is to examine not the original groundwork 

 of our knowledge, but how we come by that portion of it which is not 

 original ; the difference between active and passive states of mind is of 

 secondary importance. For us, they all are states of mind, they all 

 are feelings; by which, let it be said once more, I mean to imply 

 nothing of passivity, but simply that they are psychological facts, facts 

 which take place in the mind, and to be carefully distinguished from 

 the external or physical facts with which they may be connected, either 

 as eifects or as causes. 



§ 5. Among active states of mind', there is, however, one species 

 which merits particular attention, because it fonns a principal part of 

 the connotation of some important classes of names. I mean volitions, 

 or acts of the will. Wlien we speak of sentient beings by relative 

 names, a large portion of the connotation of the name usually consists 

 of the actions of those beings ; actions past, present, and possible or pro- 

 bable future. Take, for instance, the words Sovereign and Subject. 

 What meaning do these words convey, but that of innumerable actions, 



* Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i. p. 40. 



