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are they the chief objects of those states of mind which 
Locke includes in reflection. To see this we have only to 
notice that sensation does not, as a general rule, call attention 
to itself, but to an external object. A man who, like Locke, 
has got his mind twisted into a certain direction of thinking, 
fixes his attention on the sensation rather than on the external 
object which produces it, but this is an exception to the rule of 
human thought. That thought, so far as the material world is 
concerned, is not of sensations, but of sensible objects. It is 
not mediate . but immediate — it is at least as immediate as 
sensation is immediate. 
If one follows this mediate school of mental philosophy, 
he is led to think of the mind as a pool which is full of 
fishes, one class of which preys upon another. All that ranges 
under reflection lives upon all that ranges under sensation. 
It. is lost sight of that in all thinking one state of the 
mind is exchanged for another. That which is now only 
sensation, is the next moment attention to the object that has 
given the sensation. You may say, perhaps rightly, that 
it consists of two elements, and is of the nature of both 
sensation and attention, but that does not make it two states of 
the mind. It is, in fact, only perception, and perfectly distinct 
from mere sensation. It must also be observed that no one 
can establish the mediate character of our knowledge by sayino* 
that sensation is always first and reflection after. You may a! 
well say, because I see a thing first, and then feel it, my 
feeling is mediate, while my seeing is immediate. The 
feeling in such a case is second in order to the seeino-, 
but both are equally immediate. Certainly the one is 
not through the medium of the other. Just so with 
attention and that thought of an external object, which some- 
times goes before the sensations which that object is fitted to 
give, as it often follows some of these sensations. It is true 
that sensation depends on organs of sense which are part of the 
external world, but that can never establish the doctrine that 
thought of this world is thought of our sensations, for all our 
thoughts depend on organs of thought that belong to this 
world too. In the history of our states of mind, so far as the 
material world is concerned, sensations are first— thoughts 
follow— but neither does that determine that sensations are 
the only objects of thought, any more than that a person who 
should hear before he could see would thereby see nothino- but 
ns hearmg. In cases in which an object gives me sensations 
hrst, these sensations, as a rule, are followed by attention to 
the object (not to the sensations), but the state of mind which 
amounts to thought of that object is as directly connected 
