194 



is presented to the child. Another psychical state is produced^ 

 also in its strong degree. How is it that the one object is at 

 length called red' said the other hlue ? Can the mere faint 

 reproduction of the first impressions account for this ? 

 Certainly not. And still less can such reproduction account 

 for the abstract idea which is expressed by redness or by 

 blueness. The psychical state, which is the result of arelatmij 

 perceived between a red object and a blue one, can never be 

 confounded in true thinking with the mere result of a colour, 

 or any other sensible quality. Nothing but helpless confusion 

 of thought can account for any man's huddling together states 

 so palpably difierent from one another. Hence we must dis- 

 miss Mr. Spencer as well as Mr. Huxley. 



Yet we may glance at another illustration of confusion in 

 popular thought. Professor Bain speaks of the conscious- 

 ness of a tree, a river, a constellation.^^ * His queer use of 

 the word '^'^ consciousness ^' makes us naturally look for his 

 meaning. Well, he tells us that consciousness is mental 

 life, as opposed to torpor or insensibility; the loss of con- 

 sciousness is mental extinction for the time ; while, on the 

 other hand, a more than ordinary wakefulness is a heightened 

 form of consciousness.''^ Mr. Bain would probably join Mr. 

 Huxley, and say that whether the tree existed independently of 

 his consciousness is a point on which he offers no opinion ! 

 So with regard to the river, and so with the constellation ! 

 Hence these wise men could not say whether their extinction 

 during sleep was not that of every body and thing too ! Nor 

 could they venture to guess even whether any heightened 

 form of consciousness^'' in them were not a revival in the 

 universe ! No wonder if they cannot see the difference 

 between a sensation and a thought, when they fail to see that 

 trees grew and rivers ran, while the stars held on in their 

 courses, before they were born. 



Now we must go on to remark that the feeling which is the 

 result of a thought does not generically differ from that which 

 is produced by an external object. • A strongly scented plant 

 is brought near to me — a feeling which I call smelling is the 

 result in my soul. An idea of wrong occurs to my memory — 

 a feeling which I call remorse is the result, exactly as that of 

 the smell was of the odour. Both these feelings are involun- 

 tary, and hence necessarily the effect of their distinctive 

 causes. It may, no doubt, be truthfully said that the one 

 feeling is from an external, and the other from an internal 

 cause ; but it is difficult to say that the mind has an outside 



Mental and Moral Science, ed. 1868, pp. 1 and 93. 



