486 PSYCHOLOGY. 



stance, the separate notice of any nniform hum in the ear, or light in 

 the eye, or weight of clotlies on the body, though not one of them is in- 

 operative on tiie complexion of our feeling. This law, once granted, 

 must be carried far beyond Hartley's point. Not only must each ob- 

 ject present itself to us integrally before it shells oflf into its qnalities, 

 butthe whole scene around ns must disengage for us object after object 

 from its still background by emergence and change ; and even our 

 self-detachment from the world over against us must wait for the 

 start of collision between the force we issue and that which we receive. 

 To confine ourselves to the simplest case : when a red ivory ball, seen 

 for the first time, has been withdrawn, it will leave a mental re])resen- 

 tation of itself, in which all that it simultaneously gave us will indis- 

 tinguishably coexist. Let a white ball succeed to it ; now, and not 

 before, \:\\\ an attribute detach itself, and the color, by force of con- 

 trast, be shaken out into the foreground. Let the white ball be re- 

 placed by an egg : and this new difterence will bring the form into 

 notice from its previous slumber. And thus, that which began by 

 being simply an object, cut out from the surrounding scene, becomes 

 for us first a red object, and then a red round object ; and so on. In- 

 stead, therefore, of the qualities, as separately given, subscribing to- 

 gether and adding themselves up to present us with the object as their 

 aggregate, the object is beforehand with them, and from its integrity 

 debvers them out to our knowledge, one by one. In this disintegration, 

 the primary nucleus never loses its substantive chai'acter or name ; 

 whilst the difference which it throws off appears as a mere attribute, ex- 

 pressed by an adjective. Hence it is that we are compelled to think of 

 the object as luiriiifj, not as being, its qualities ; and can never heartily 

 admit the l)elief of any loose lot of attributes really fusing theniselves 

 into a tJiiny. The unity of the original whole is not felt to go to pieces 

 and be resolved into the properties which it successively gives off ; it 

 retains a residuary existence, which constitutes it a substance, as against 

 the emerging quality, which is only its phenomenal predicate. Were 

 it not for this perpetual process of differentiation of self from the 

 world, of object from its scene, of attribute from object, no step of 

 Abstraction could be taken ; no qualities could fall under our notice ; 

 and had we ten thousand senses, they would all converge and meet in 

 but one consciousness. But if this be so, it is an utter falsification of 

 the order of nature to speak of sensations grouping themselves into 

 aggregates, and so composing for us the objects of which we think ; 

 and the whole language of the theory, in regard to the field of 

 synchronous existences, is a direct inversion of the truth. Experience 

 proceeds and intellect is trained, not by Association, but by Dissoci- 

 ation, not by reduction of pluralities of impression to one, but by the 

 opening out of one into many ; and a true psychological history must 

 expound itself in analytic rather than synthetic terms. Precisely those 

 ideas— of Substance, of Mind, of Cause, of Space— which this system 

 treats as infinitely complex, the last result of myriads of confluent ele- 



