DEFINITIONS AND FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS. 475 
or conceived in the understanding. It is therefore to be remarked, that in most if not all 
operations of the mind, both faculties concur, and we range the operation under that 
faculty which has the largest share in it.”* 
42. An arrangement of faculties baSed upon this view, would appear to be quantitative, 
and the order of the symbols would indicate the supposed relative degrees of influence, 
exerted by Motivity, Spontaneity, and Rationality in mutual action. Nor would the re- 
sults of such a hypothesis be altogether unsatisfactory, for in every mental operation, we 
could trace predominant traits, and secondary and subordinate characteristics, sufficiently 
marked to enable us to assign symbols in such order, as would fix its position in the 
schema we have adopted, and thus indicate the meaning that we attached to the name by 
which we described the operation. But according to our explanation of the symbols, the 
first letter indicates a modification of simple Consciousness, and the subsequent letters, 
analogous (not identical), modifications of the subordinate forms of Consciousness. By 
the former hypothesis, the symbol RM (Rationality-motive), would indicate a faculty in 
which Rationality was principally concerned, and Motivity in a smaller degree; by the 
latter, it would denote that form of Rationality which is modified by relation, in a manner 
similar to the modification of Consciousness in Motivity. The difference may be slight, 
and in the present state of Mental Science, perhaps inappreciable, still there is a difference. 
* To this passage, Sir William Hamilton appends the following note: “It should be always remembered that 
the various mental energies are all only possible in and through each other”’ [should we not rather say, in and 
through Consciousness ’] ‘and that our psychological analyses do not suppose any real distinction of the opera- 
tions which we discriminate by different names. .Thought and volition can no more be exerted apart, than the 
sides and angles of a square can exist separately from each other.” eid, p. 242. This fundamental character- 
istic of mental manifestation facilitates our analysis, by rendering a system that would otherwise appear arbitrary 
and artificial, perfectly philosophical and natural. 
We might suppose, for instance, a classification of physical phenomena, based on the three dimensions, length, 
breadth, and thickness, that should represent all the facts of natural philosophy by combinations and permutations 
of the symbols L, B, T. Or we might undertake to explain the functions of civil government, by similarly com- 
bining the symbols M, A, D, which would severally represent monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. But would 
those symbols, in either instance, denote necessary relations, the on/y necessary relations, and relations that are 
necessarily repeated and continued at each successive step of subdivision? We have seen that all this is true of 
the symbols M, S, R. Relativity is essential to Consciousness, and in whatever way we suppose Consciousness to 
be modified, it is Consciousness still, with a capacity for action under three and only three general relations. 
