42 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



thinks. It is unnecessary to give in the case of mind, as we gave in 

 the case of matter, a particular statement of the skeptical system by 

 which its existence as a Thing in itself, distinct from the series of what 

 are denominated its states, is called in question. But it is necessary 

 to remark, that on the inmost nature of the thinking principle, as well 

 as on the inmost nature of matter, we are, and with our human facul- 

 ties must always remain, entirely in the dark. All which we are 

 aware of, even in our own minds, is (in the words of Mr. Mill) a cer- 

 tain "thread of consciousness;" a series of feelings, that is, of sensa- 

 tions, thoughts, emotions, and volitions, more or less numerous and 

 complicated. There is a something I call Myself, or, by another form 

 of expression, my mind, which I consider as distinct fi-om these sensa- 

 tions, thoughts, &c. ; a something which I conceive to be not the 

 thoughts, but the being that has the thoughts, and which I can conceive 

 as existing for ever in a state of quiesence, without any thoughts at all. 

 But what this being is, although it is myself, I have no knowledge, 

 further than the series of its states of consciousness. As bodies mani- 

 fest themselves to me only through the sensations of which I regard 

 them as the causes, so the thinking principle, or mind, in my own 

 nature, makes itself known to me only by the feelings of which it is con- 

 scious. I know nothing about myself, save my capacities of feeling or 

 being conscious (including, of course, thinking and wilhng) : and were 

 I to learn anything new concerning myself, I cannot with my present 

 faculties conceive this new information to be anything else, than that I 

 have some additional capacities, before unknown to me, of feeling, 

 thinking, or willing. 



Thus, then, as body is the unsentient cause to which we are nat- 

 urally prompted to refer a certain portion of our feelings, so mind may 

 be described as the sentient stihject (in the German sense of the term) 

 of all feelings ; that which has or feels them. But of the nature of 

 either body or mind, liiither than the feelings which the former excites, 

 and which the latter experiences, we do not, according to the best 

 existing doctrine, know anything ; and if anything, logic has nothing 

 to do with it, or with the manner in which the knowledge is acquired. 

 With this result we may conclude this portion of our subject, and pass 

 to the third and only remaining class or division of Nameable Things. 



III. Attributes : and, first. Qualities, 



§ 9, From what has already been said of Substance, what is to be 

 said of Attribute is easily deducible. For if we know not, and cannot 

 know, anything of bodies but the sensations which they excite in us or 

 others, those sensations must be all that we can, at bottom, mean by their 

 attributes ; and the distinction which we verbally make between the 

 properties of things and the sensations we receive from them, must 

 originate in the convenience of discourse rather than in the nature of 

 what is denoted by the terms. 



Attributes are usually distributed under the three heads of Quality, 

 Quantity, and Relation. We shall come to the two latter presently : 

 in the first place we shall confine ourselves to the former. 



Let us take, then, as our example, one of what are termed the sen- 

 sible qualities of objects, and let that example be whiteness. When 

 we ascribe whiteness to any substance, as, for instance, snow ; when 



