DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 485 



on the other hand, consider this same effect as an aggregate from a 

 plurality of sensations, and the ideal trace it leaves as highly compound. 

 'The idea of an object,' instead of being an elementary starting-point 

 "with them, is one of the elaborate results of repetition and experience ; 

 and is continually adduced as remarkably illustrating the fusing power 

 of habitual association. Thus James Mill observes : 



" ' It is to this great law of association that we trace the formation of 

 our ideas of what we call external objects ; that is, the ideas of a cer- 

 tain number of sensations, received together so frequently that they 

 coalesce as it were, and are spoken of under the idea of unity. Hence, 

 what we call the idea of a tree, the idea of a stone, the idea of a horse, 

 the idea of a man. In using the names, tree, horse, man, the names 

 of what I call objects, I am referring, and can be referring, only to ray 

 own sensations : in fact, therefore, only naming a certain number of 

 sensations regarded as in a particular state of combination, that is, 

 concomitance. Particular sensations of sight, of touch, of the muscles, 

 are the sensations to the ideas of which, color, extension, roughness, 

 hardness, smoothness, taste, smell, so coalescing as to appear one idea, 

 I give the name of the idea of a tree.' * 



' ' To precisely the same effect Mr. Bain remarks : 



'• 'External objects usually affect us through a plurality of senses. 

 The pebble on the sea-shore is pictured on the eye as form and color. 

 We take it up in the hand and repeat the impression of form, with the 

 additional feeling of touch. Knock two together, and there is a charac- 

 teristic sound. To preserve the impression of an object of this kind, 

 there must be an association of all these different effects. Such associa- 

 tion, when matured and firm, is our idea, our intellectual grasp of the 

 pebble. Passing to the organic world, and plucking a rose, we have 

 the same effects of form to the eye and hand, color and touch, with 

 new effects of odor and taste. A certain time is requisite for the co- 

 herence of all these qualities in one aggregate, so as to give us for all 

 purposes the enduring image of the rose. When fully acquired, any 

 one of the characteristic impressions will revive the others ; the odor, 

 the sight, the feeling of the thorny stalk — each of the.se by itself will 

 hoist the entire impression into the view.' \ 



"Now, this order of derivation, making our objective knowledge be- 

 gin with plurality of impression and arrive at unity, we take to be a 

 complete inversion of our psychological history. Hartley, we think, 

 was perfectly right in taking no notice of the number of inlets through 

 which an object delivei's its effect upon us, and, in spite of this circum- 

 stance, treating the effect as one. . . . Even now, after life has read 

 us so many analytic lessons, in proportion as we can fix the attitude of 

 our scene and ourselves, the sense of plurality in our impressions re- 

 treats, and we lapse into an undivided consciousness ; losing, for in- 



* Analysis, vol. i. p. 71. 



f The Senses and the lutelleot, page 411. 



