:358 PSYCHOLOGY. 



concessions amount, so far as tliey are intelligible, to the 

 -admission of something very like the Soul. This 'inex- 

 plicable tie ' Avhicli connects the feelings, this ' something 

 in common ' by which they are linked and which is not the 

 passing feelings themselves, but something ' permanent,' of 

 which we can ' affirm nothing ' save its attributes and its 

 permanence, what is it but metaj)hysical Substance come 

 again to life ? Much as one must resj)ect the fairness of 

 Mill's temper, quite as much must one regret his failure 

 of acumen at this point. At bottom he makes the same 

 blunder as Hume : the sensations per se, he thinks, have 

 no ' tie.' The tie of resemblance and continuity which the 

 remembering Thought finds among them is not a ' real tie ' 

 but ' a mere product of the laws of thought ;' and the 

 fact that the present Thought 'appropriates ' them is also 



ties which we have not set forth, and which it seems to me beyond the 

 power of metaphysical analysis to remove. . 



" The thread of consciousness which composes the mind's phenomena^ 

 life consist not only of present sensations, but likewise, in part, of mem- 

 ories and expectations. Now what are these ? In themselves, they are 

 present feelings, states of present consciousness, and in that respect not dis- 

 tinguished from sensations. They all, moreover, resemble some given sen- 

 sations or feelings, of wliich we have previously had experience. But they 

 are attended with the peculiarity that each of them involves a belief in 

 more than its own present existence. A sensation involves only this ; but 

 a remembrance of sensation, even if not referred to any particular date, in- 

 volves the suggestion and belief that a sensation, of which it is a copy or 

 representation, actually existed in the past ; and an expectation involves 

 the belief, more or less positive, that a sensation or other feeling to which 

 it directly refers will exist in the future. Nor can the phenomena in- 

 volved in these two states of consciousness be adecpiately expressed, with- 

 out saying that the belief they include is, that I myself formerly had, or 

 that I myself, and no other, shall hereafter have, the sensations remembered 

 or expected. The fact believed is, that the sensations did actually form, or 

 will hereafter form, part of the se'if-same series of states, or thread of con- 

 sciousness, of which the remembrance or expectation of those sensations is 

 the part new present. If. therefore, we speak of the mind as a series of 

 feelings we are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series of 

 feelings which is aware of itself as past and future ; and we are reduced to 

 the alternative of believing that the mind, or Ego, is something different 

 from any series of feelings, or possibilities of them, or of accepting the 

 paradox that something which ex hypotliesi is but a series of feelings, can 

 be aware of itself as a series. 



" The truth is. that we are here face to face with that final inexplira- 



