230 rSYCUOLOGT. 



Tlie cliauge which I have more particularly in view is that 

 which takes place in sensible intervals of time ; and the result 

 on which I wish to lay stress is this, that no state OTice gone 

 can recur and be identical with icliat it ivas before. Let ua 

 begin with Mr. Shadworth Hodgson's description : 



" I go straight to the facts, without saying I go to perception, or 

 sensation, or thought, or any special mode at all. What I find when I 

 look at my consciousness at all is that what I cannot divest myself of, 

 or not have in consciousness, if I have any consciousness at all, is a 

 sequence of different feelings. I may shut my eyes and keep perfectly 

 still, and try not to contribute anything of my own will ; but whether 

 I think or do not think, whether I perceive external things or not, I 

 always have a succession of different feelings. Anything else that I may 

 have also, of a more special character, comes in as parts of this suc- 

 cession. Not to have the succession of different feelings is not to be 

 •conscious at all. . . . The chain of consciousness is a sequence of 

 diff events.'''' * 



Such a description as this can awaken no possible pro- 

 test from any one. We all recognize as diflfereut great 

 classes of our conscious states. Now we are seeing, now 

 hearing ; now reasoning, now willing ; now recollecting, now 

 expecting ; now loving, now hating ; and in a hundred other 

 ways we know our minds to be alternately engaged. But 

 all these are complex states. The aim of science is always 

 to reduce complexity to simplicity ; and in psychological 

 science we have the celebrated ' theory of idea^ ' which, 

 admitting the great difference among each other of what 

 may be called concrete conditions of mind, seeks to show 

 how this is all the resultant effect of variations in the com- 

 bination of certain simple elements of consciousness that 

 always remain the same. These mental atoms or molecules 

 are what Locke called 'simple ideas.' Some of Locke's 

 successors made out that the only simple ideas were the 

 sensations strictly so called. Which ideas the simple ones 

 may be does not, however, now concern us. It is enough 

 that certain philosophers have thought they could see 

 under the dissoh^ng-view-appearance of the mind elemen- 

 :tary facts of any sort that remained unchanged amid the 

 flow. 



♦The Philosophy of Reflection, i. 248, 290. 



