3o8 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



than a very few subjects, and many can hardly feel 

 at all. 



But, however this may be, our sensations and per- 

 ceptions of material phenomena are attendant oil the 

 excitation of certain motions in the anterior parts of 

 the brain. Whenever certain motions are excited in 

 this substance, certain sensations and ideas of resist- 

 ance, extension, &c., are either concomitant, or ensue 

 within a period too brief for our cognisance. It is 

 these sensations and ideas that we directly cognise, 

 and it is to them that we have attached the idea of the 

 particular kind of matter we happen to be thinking of. 

 As this idea is not like the thing itself, so neither is 

 it like the motions in our brain on which it is atten- 

 dant. It is no more like these than, say, a stone is 

 like the individual characters, written or spoken, that 

 form the word "stone," or than these last are, in 

 sound, like the word " stone " itself, whereby the idea 

 of a stone is so immediately and vividly presented to 

 us. True, this does not involve that our idea shall 

 not resemble the object that gave rise to it, any more 

 than the fact that a looking-glass bears no resemblance 

 to the things reflected in it involves that the reflection 

 shall not resemble the things reflected; the shifting 

 nature, however, of our ideas and conceptions is enough 

 to show that they must be symbolical, and conditioned 

 by changes going on within ourselves as much as by 

 those outside us ; and if, going behind the ideas which 

 suffice for daily use, we extend our inquiries in the 

 direction of the reality underlying our conception, we 

 find reason to think that the brain- motions which 



