192 



tHat sucli blame may ever come^ there is in man that which 

 gives the keenest possible pain when wrong is remembered ; 

 and in spite of even the greatest possible praise,, this pain goes 

 on increasing in the soul^ in which the remembrance continues 

 to show its power. There is nothing of this kind among all 

 the facts which the naturalist gathers from the experience of 

 the lower creation ; and yet this alone is the moral sense. 



We come now to the point at which it is necessary to remark 

 that sensation is not thought. Sensation is feeling, and feeling 

 is not thought. We may, no doubt, use the word feeling 

 where we mean thinking ; but we never can do so when 

 careful to express correctly the states of mind of which we are 

 discoursing. It is not necessary to a sensation that any atten- 

 tion should be directed even to itself, still less to the object by 

 which it is produced. A little observation will satisfy any one 

 that he may feel cold without directly thinking of his coldness, 

 or of the air around by which he is chilled ; and especially he 

 will observe that he may have that comfortable, though not 

 always honourable feeling, which is called " luJieicarm/' without 

 thinking of his sensations at all. So he may have all sorts of 

 sensations without referring them to external objects. Sensa- 

 tion is separable, and is often separated from thought. 



The confusion of popular thinking is illustrated on this 

 point by Professor Huxley, who gives us very remarkable 

 words on the point now in hand. In criticising an article in 

 the Quarterly Review lately, and denouncing the idea that 

 sensation is distinct from thought, he says, If I recall the 

 impression made by a colour or an odour, and distinctly re- 

 member blueness or muskiness, I may say with perfect pro- 

 priety that I think of blue or musk; and so long as the 

 thought lasts, it is simply a faint reproduction of the state of 

 consciousness to which I gave the name in question when it 

 first became known to me as a sensation.^^ Mr. Huxley 

 apparently forgets that blueness and muskiness are 

 abstract thoughts. No single sensation can give such 

 thoughts. They are the result of the comparison of many 

 sensations. They are possible only as such a result. They 

 are no reproduction of a sensation or sensations, such as colour 

 or odour produces, but the results of reasoning on a great 

 variety of impressions. He could scarcely make a greater 

 mistake, or one more fatal to his reputation' as a careful 

 thinker, than to confound such abstractions with simple sensa- 

 tions produced for the first time in the soul. 



It would be every whit as rational to hold that a sight is a 



The Contemporary Review, vol. xviii. pp. 459, 460. 



