SENSATION. 11 



real." "On the recognition of relations as constituting the nature of 

 ideas, rests the possibility of any tenable theory of their reality." 



Such quotations as these from the late T. H. Green* 

 wouhi be matters of curiosity rather than of importance, 

 were it not that sensationalist writers themselves believe in 

 a so-called 'Relativity of Knowledge,' which, if they only 

 understood it, they would see to be identical with Professor 

 Green's doctrine. They tell us that the relation of sensa- 

 tions to each other is something belonging to their essence, 

 and that no one of them has an absolute content : 



"That, e.g., black can only be felt in contrast to white, or at least 

 in distinction from a paler or a deeper black; similarly a tone or a sound 

 only in alternation with others or with silence; and in like manner a 

 smell, a taste, a touch, only, so to speak, in statu nascendi, whilst, when 

 the stimulus continues, all sensation disappears. This all seems at first 

 sight to be splendidly consistent both with itself and with the facts. 

 But looked at more closely, it is seen that neither is the case." t 



* Introd. to Hume, §§ 146, 188. It is hard to tell just what this aposto- 

 lic human being but strenuously feeble writer means by relation Some- 

 times it seems to slaud for system of related fact. The ubiquity of the 

 'psychologist's fallacy ' (see p. 196) iu his pages, his incessaut leauiug ou 

 the confusion between the thing known, the thought that knows it, and the 

 farther things known about that thing and about that thought by later and 

 additional thoughts, make it impossible to clear up his meaning. Compare, 

 however, with the utterances iu the text such others as these: " The wak- 

 ing of Self-consciousness from the sleep of sense is an absolute new begin- 

 ning, and nothing can come within the ' crystal sphere ' of intelligence 

 except as it is determined by intelligence. What sense is to sense is noth- 

 ing for thought. What sense is to thought, it is as determined by thought. 

 There can, therefore, be no 'reality 'in sensation to which the world of 

 thought can be referred." (Edward Caird's Philosophy of Kant, 1st ed. 

 pp. 393-4.) "When," says Green again, "feeliug a pain or pleasure of 

 heat, I perceive it to be connected with the action of approaching the fire, 

 am I not perceiving a relation of which one constituent, at any rate, is a 

 simple sensation? TJie true answer is, No-" "Perception, in its simplest 

 form . . . — perception as the first sight or touch of an object in which 

 nothing but what is seen or touched is recognized — neither is nonr contains 

 sensation" (Contemp. Rev., xxxi. pp. 746, 750.) "Mere sensation is in 

 truth a phrase thai represents no reality." " Mere feeling, then, as a mat. 

 ter unformed by thought, has no place in the world of facts, in the cosmos 

 of possible experience." (Prolegomena to Ethics, §§ 46, 50.) — I have ex- 

 pressed myself a little more fully on this subject in Mind, x. 27 ff. 



f Stumpf: Tonpsychologie, i. pp. 7,8. Hobbes"s phrase, senizre semper 

 idem et non sentire ad idem recidunt, is generally treated as the original state- 

 ment of the relativity doctrine. J. S. Mill (Examn. of Hamilton, p. 6) 



