10 
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 and the other blue ? 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 a relation, 
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 different 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. 
