248 PSYCHOLOGY. 



are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into 

 each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but 

 one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream. 



that it is sensible, to (Hstingiiisli it from one wliicli, bccauso its terms are 

 too remote, cannot be as (luickly perceived. A sensible (iillerence, or re- 

 semblance. . . . What is taste in tlie arts, in intellectual productions i 

 What but the feeling of those relations among the parts wiiich constitutes 

 their merit ? . . . Did we not feel relations we should never attain to true 

 knowledge, ... for almost all our knowledge is of relations. . . . We 

 never have an isf)!ated sensation ; . . . we are therefore never without the 

 feeling of relation. . . . An object strikes our senses ; we see in it only a 

 sensation. . . . The relative is so near the ab.solute, the relation-feeling so 

 near the sensation-feeling, the two are so intimately fused in the composi- 

 tion of the object, that the relation appears to us as part of the sensation 

 itself. It is doubtless to this sort of fusion l)etween sensations and feelings 

 of relation that the silence of metaphysicians as to the latter is due; and 

 it is for the same reason thai they have obstinately persisted in asking from 

 sensation alone those ideas of relation which it was powerless to give." 



Dr. Thomas Brown writes (Lectures, xlv. init.): "There is an exten- 

 sive order of our feelings which involve this notion of relation, and which 

 consist indeed in the mere perception of a relation of some sort. . . . 

 Whether the relation be of two or of many external objects, or of two or 

 many affections of the mind, the feeling of this relation . . . is what I term 

 a relative suggestion; that phrase being the simplest which it is possible to 

 employ, for expressing, without any theory, the mere fact of the rise of 

 •certain feelings of relation, after certain other feelings which precede 

 them; and therefore, as involving no particular theory, and simply ex- 

 pressive of an undoubted fact That the feelings of relation are states 



of the mind essentially different from our simple perceptions, or concep- 

 tions of the objects, . . . that they are not what Condillac terms trans- 

 formed sensdtions, I proved in a former lecture, when I combated the ex- 

 cessive simplification of that ingenious but not very accurate philosopher. 

 There is an original tendency or susceptibility of the mind, by which, on 

 perceiving together different objects, we are instantly, without the inter- 

 vention of any other mental process, sensible of their relation in certain 

 respects, as truly as there is an original tendency or su.sceptibility by which, 

 when external objects are present and have produced a certain affection of 

 our sensorial organ, we are instantly affected with the primary elementary 

 feelings of perception; and, I may add, that as our sensations or percep- 

 tions are of various species, so are there various species of relations; — the 

 number of relations, indeed, even of external things, being almost infinite, 

 while the number of perceptions is, necessarily, limited by that of the ob- 

 jects which have the power of producing some affection of our organs of 

 sensation. . . . Without that susceptibility of the mind by which it has 

 the feeling of relation, our consciousness would be as truly limited to a 

 single point, as our body would become, were it possible to fetter it to a 

 single atom." 



Mr. Spencer is even more explicit. His philosophj^ is crude in that he 



