THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 247 



if of simple objects, we call 'sensations' or 'images,' ac- 

 cording as they are vivid or faint ; if of complex objects, 

 we call tliem ' percepts ' when vivid, ' concepts ' or 

 ' thoughts ' when faint. For the swift consciousnesses we 

 have only those names of ' transitive states,' or ' feelings of 

 relation,' which we have used.* As the brain-changes 



* Few writers have admitted that we cognize relations through feeling. 

 The intellectualists have explicitly denied the possibility of such a thing— 

 e.g., Prof. T. H. Green ('Mind,' vol. vii. p. 28): "No feeling, as such 

 or as felt, is [of ?] a relation. . . . Even a relation between feelings is not 

 itself a feeling or felt." On the other hand, the sensationists have either 

 smuggled in the cognition without giving anj^ account of it, or have denied 

 the relations to be cognized, or even to exist, at all. A few honorable ex- 

 ceptions, however, deserve to be named among the sensationists. Destutt 

 de Tracy, Laromiguiere, Cardaillac, Brown, and finally Spencer, have ex- 

 plicitly contended for feelings of relation, consubstantial with our feelings 

 or thoughts of the terms ' between ' which they obtain. Thus Destutt de 

 Tracy says (Elements d'Ideologie, T. ler, chap, iv); " The faculty of 

 judgment is itself a sort of sensibility, for it is the faculty of feeling the 

 relations among our ideas; and to feel relations is to feel." Laromiguiere 

 writes (Le9ons de Philo.sophie, lime Partie, 3me Le^ou): 



" There is no one whose intelligence does not embrace simultaneously 

 many ideas, more or less di.stiuct, more or less confused. Now, when we 

 have mau}^ ideas at once, a peculiar feeling arises in us : Ave feel, among 

 these ideas, resemblances, dilferences, relations. Let us call tliis mode of 

 feeling, common to us all, the feeling of relation, or relation-feeling 

 {sentiment raj)port). One sees immediately that these relation-feelings, re- 

 sulting from the propinquity of ideas, must be infinitely more numerous 

 than the sensation-feelings (sentiments-sensations) or the feelings we have 

 of the action of our faculties. The slightest knowledge of the mathemat- 

 ical theory of combinations will prove this. . . . Ideas of relation origi- 

 nate in feelings of relation. They are the effect of our comparing them and 

 reasoning about them." 



Similarly, de Cardaillac (fitudes tllementaires de Philosophic, Section I. 

 chap, vii): 



" By a natural consequence, we are led to suppose that at the same time 

 that we have several sensations or several ideas in the mind, we feel the rela- 

 tions which exist between these sensations, and the relations which exist be- 

 tween these ideas. ... If the feeling of relations exists in us, ... it is 

 necessarily the most varied and the most fertile of all human feelings: 

 1° the most varied, because, relations being more numerous than beings, 

 the feelings of relation must be in the same proportion more numerous 

 than the sensations whose presence gives rise to their formation; 2°, the 

 most fertile, for the relative ideas of which the feeling-of-relation is the 

 source . . . are more important than absolute ideas, if such exist. ... If 

 we interrogate common speech, we find the feeling of relation expressed 

 there in a thousand different ways. If it is easy to seize a relation, we say 



