SIR WILLIAM Hamilton's philosophy. 77 



qualifies his statement by the admission that " our notion of mind is 

 the notion of a permanent something," which we '* figure" as remain- 

 ing the same while our feelings change. But this admission is wholly 

 eviscerated of its import by its explanation. The permanent something, 

 which we name the mind or self, is merely a permanent possibility ; and 

 our notion of mind is accordingly explained as being a notion not only 

 of an actual series, but of an infinite (indefinite ?) possible series of 

 feelings. Now, I am indeed conscious of myself as permanent and 

 absolutely invariable amid all the changes of which I am conscious ; 

 but that very fact excludes the conception of myself as a series, how- 

 ever permanent may be succession of phenomena of which the series is 

 constituted ; and such a conception does not become a whit more intel- 

 ligible or true to the facts by explaining the series as one that is not " 

 merely actual, but infinite in its possibilities. 



There is indeed a sense in which Mr. Mill's words might be under- 

 stoed, in which they might also be regarded as but an awkward expres- 

 sion of a truth. A feeling, considered as a concrete fact, is but a mind 

 or self existing in a certain state. The description of the mind, there- 

 fore, as a succession of feelings, might be regarded as amounting to no 

 more than the assertion, that the mind is the mind in the successive 

 states in which it exists or is capable of existing. One may well be 

 justified in thinking that this could not have been Mr. Mill's meaning, 

 not only because no one is at liberty to reduce any of his statements to 

 such a truism, but because such an interpretation of his language is 

 wholly inconsistent with the drift of his discussion on this subject. Mr. 

 Mill's object is to explain how a series of feelings generate the notion 

 of a permanent something to which they belong. Now, this object 

 implies that he starts from the conception of feelings as phenomena in 

 which there is, as yet, developed no consciousness of a permanent self 

 that feels. Mr. Mill, therefore, in reality forces us back on the question, 

 whether mental phenomena are, in their primitive form, undefined by 

 any consciousness of self, and yet governed by such laws as to originate 

 this consciousness sooner or later in all men. 



The affirmative answer to this question, according to Mr. Mill, makes 

 two postulates, (1) that the human mind is capable of expectation, 

 (2) that there are certain laws of association among mental phenomena. 

 To these postulates reference will require to be made again in different 

 connections, and therefore they need only be stated here. It is, how- 

 ever, worth while to notice that there is also postulated, as will appear 



