CONCLUSION. 30; 



accept volition as having had a large share in organic 

 modification must admit to have had a no less large 

 share in the formation of volition. Volition grows out 

 of ideas, ideas from feelings. What, then, is feeling, 

 and the subsequent mental images or ideas ? 



The im«wg of a stone formed in our minds is no 

 representation of the object which has given rise to it. 

 Not only, as has been often remarked, is there no re- 

 semblance between the particular thought and the 

 particular thing, but thoughts and things generally 

 are too unlike to be compared. An idea of a stone 

 may be like an idea of another stone, or two stones 

 may be like one another ; but an idea of a stone is not 

 like a stone ; it cannot be thrown at anything, it 

 occupies no room in space, has no specific gravity, 

 and when we come to know more about stones, we 

 find our ideas concerning them to be but rude, 

 epitomised, and highly conventional renderings of the 

 actual facts — mere hieroglyphics, in fact, or, as it were, 

 counters or bank-notes, which serve to express and to 

 convey commodities with which they have no pretence 

 of analogy. 



Indeed we daily find that, as the range of our per- 

 ceptions becomes enlarged either by invention of new 

 appliances or after use of old ones, we change our 

 ideas though we have no reason to think that the 

 thing about which we are thinking has changed. In 

 the case of a stone, for instance, the rude, unassisted, 

 uneducated senses see it as above all things motionless, 

 whereas assisted and trained ideas concerning it repre- 

 sent motion as its most essential characteristic; but 



u 



