Laws ot mind. 



555 



etopirical laws, should be connected 

 deductively with the laws of nature 

 from which they result — should be 

 resolved into the properties of the 

 causes on which the phenomena de- 

 pend. In other words, the science of 

 Human Nature may be said to exist in 

 proportion as the approximate truths 

 which compose a practical knowledge 

 of mankind can be exhibited as 

 corollaries from the universal laws of 

 human nature on which they rest, 

 whereby the proper limits of those ap- 

 proximate truths would be shown, and 

 we should be enabled to deduce others 

 for any new state of circumstances, in 

 anticipation of specific experience. 



The proposition now stated is the 

 text on which the two succeeding 

 chapters will furnish the comment. 



CHAPTER IV. 



OF THE LAWS OF MIND. 



§ I. What the Mind is, as well as 

 what Matter is, or any other question 

 respecting Things in themselves, as 

 distinguished from their sensible mani- 

 festations, it would be foreign to the 

 purposes of this treatise to consider. 

 Here, as throughout our inquiry, we 

 shall keep clear of all speculations re- 

 specting the mind's own nature, and 

 shall understand by the laws of mind 

 those of mental phenomena — of the 

 various feelings or states of conscious- 

 ness of sentient beings. These, accord- 

 ing to the classification we have uni- 

 formly followed, consist of Thoughts, 

 Emotions, Volitions, and Sensations ; 

 the last being as truly states of Mind 

 as the three former. It is usual, in- 

 deed, to speak of sensations as states 

 of body, not of mind. But this is the 

 common confusion of giving one and 

 the same name to a phenomenon and 

 to the proximate cause or conditions 

 of the phenomenon. The immediate 

 antecedent of a sensation is a state of 

 body, but the sensation itself is a state 

 of mind. If the word mind means 

 anything, it means that which feels. 



Whatever opinion we hold respecting 

 the fundamental identity or diversity 

 of matter and mind, in any case the 

 distinction between mental and physi- 

 cal facts, between the internal and 

 the external world, will always re- 

 main as a matter of classification ; 

 and in that classification, sensations, 

 like all other feelings, must be ranked 

 as mental phenomena. Themechanism 

 of their production, both in the body 

 itself and in what is called outward 

 nature, is all that can with any pro- 

 priety be classed as physical. 



The phenomena of mind, then, are 

 the various feelings of our nature, 

 both those improperly called physical 

 and those peculiarly designated aa 

 mental ; and by the laws of mind I 

 mean the laws according to which 

 those feelings generate one another. 



§ 2. All states of mind are imme- 

 diately caused either by other states 

 of mind or by states of body. When 

 a state of mind is produced by a state 

 of mind, I call the law concerned in 

 the case a law of Mind When a 

 state of mind is produced directly by 

 a state body, the law is a law of Body, 

 and belongs to physical science. 



With regard to those states of mind 

 which are called sensations, all are 

 agreed that these have for their im- 

 mediate antecedents states of body. 

 Every sensation has for its proximate 

 cause some afifection of the portion of 

 our frame called the nervous system, 

 whether this affection originate in the 

 action of some external object, or in 

 some pathological condition of the 

 nervous organisation itself. The laws 

 of this portion of our nature — the 

 varieties of our sensations and the phy- 

 sical conditions on which they proxi- 

 mately depend — manifestly belong to 

 the province of Physiology. 



Whether the remainder of our men- 

 tal states are similarly dependent on 

 physical conditions, is one of the vexa- 

 tcB questiones in the science of human 

 nature. It is still disputed whether 

 our thoughts, emotions, and volitions 

 are generated through the intervene 



