as when I paint a glorious ideal of beauty or of virtue. A sensation is not judgment, even when that judgment is about sensation, as when I decide that the sensations produced by a noise are not so pleasant as those excited by music. Certainly, sensation is not reasoning, as when I argue that mere sentient affections cannot yield our higher ideas and deeper convictions. Sensation is not even the same as emotion, as when I fear that the sensational philosophy is to prevail for a time in this country. A sensation is something far lower than sentiment or affection, as when I would love God and my neighbours,-even those from whom I differ in most important points. A sensation is not a volition, as when I resolve to do my best to oppose prevailing error, even when countenanced by influential names.

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But may not sensation be the cause of something else? I can answer this question only after giving an explanation. In ordinary mundane action, an effect is always the result of the operation of more than one agent or antecedent. "A man," says Mr. Mill, "takes mercury, goes out of doors, and catches cold. We say, perhaps, that the cause of his taking cold was exposure to the air. . . . But to be accurate, we ought to say that the cause was exposure to the air while under "the effect of mercury" (Logic, B. III. c. v. § 3). I agree with this doctrine of Mr. Mill (it will be expounded more fully in chapter xiii. of this treatise), and I would apply it to the supposed causative influence of sensations. Sensation may be one of the antecedents which go to make up the cause, but it cannot, pro

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perly speaking, be a cause in itself; it is a condition or occasion, and can produce an effect only when conjoined with some other agent. A sensation may be the occasion of something else,--say of a violent derangement of a bodily organ; but that derangement is not the sensation, and in accounting for it we must look not merely to the sensation, but the properties of the organ affected. A sensation may, in like manner, be the occasion of a new thought arising, but the thought should not be confounded with the sensation; the sensation is not even the cause of the thought. Such a sensa

tion in a plant (supposing it to be capable of feeling), such a sensation in one of the lower animals, would give rise to no such thought. The sensation can originate the thought only by stirring up a mental capacity in the soul, which mental potency is to be regarded as the main element in the complex cause. And yet this essential element is inexcusably, culpably overlooked by the Sensational School, when they derive all our thoughts from sensations. They make the mere auxiliary or stimulating condition the producing power, as if, to use a homely illustration, we should make the setting of the pointer, which roused the attention of the sportsman, the cause of the killing of the bird shot by him. The mind of man, consciousness being the witness, does entertain a vast variety of ideas, some of them of a very elevating character, such as those we entertain of God, and good, and eternity. I doubt whether these are the product of sensations in any sense. Of this I am sure, that they do not proceed from sensations ex

cept when sensations are employed and moulded by lofty mental faculties, which faculties, and not the sen-sations, are the main agents in the production of the effect; and they should have their nature, laws, and modes of action unfolded by any one who would give us a correct theory of our mental operations.

By insisting on such points as these, we lay an effectual arrest on those rash speculations of our day which derive man's loftiest ideas from so low and subordinate an agent as sensation.

CHAPTER V.

MIND, PERSONALITY, PERSONAL IDENTITY, SUBSTANCE.

MR. MILL admits fully the veracity of consciousness and the reality of the facts attested by it (see d, e, n). But his view of the objects of which it is cognisant is very defective. It seems to be derived, through Mr. James Mill and Dr. Thomas Brown, from Hume and the Sensational School of France. Condillac, and those who followed him, designated all the states of the mind by the words sentir and sensibilité, which conveniently embraced two such different things as sensations excited by outward objects, and mental emotions, such as hope and fear. We have no such pliable word in our tongue, and Brown, who caught so much of the French spirit, had to adopt a narrower phrase when he habitually represents all states of mind as Feelings: thus he speaks of "feelings of relation" and "feelings of approbation," both of which imply judgment. Mr. James Mill says, "In the very word feeling, all that is implied "in the word consciousness is involved." And now we find Mr. J. S. Mill declaring "a feeling and a state of

consciousness are, in the language of philosophy" [that is, in the philosophy of Thomas Brown and James Mill], equivalent expressions: everything is a feeling of which "the mind is conscious; everything which it feels, or, in "other words, which forms a part of its own sentient "existence." Again, "Feeling, in the proper sense of the term, is a genus of which Sensation, Emotion, and "Thought are the subordinate species" (Logic, B. 1. c. iii. § 3). Of course Mr. Mill is at liberty to choose his own nomenclature, and use it in the signification he thinks fit to attach to it. But others have an equal liberty to reject it and give their reasons. It seems to me an unwarrantable use of the phrase to make Feelings embrace Thought, and I may add Volition; and those who so use it will be found, in spite of themselves, and of all explanations, understanding the word in its habitual and proper signification; and when all other ideas and resolutions are spoken of as "feelings," the impression will be left that they are part of our sentient and (at best) emotional nature.

Mr. Mill claims the liberty of examining all the facts of consciousness, and of resolving them if he can into simpler elements. I freely grant him this power. Our sensations, he grants, are simple and original. But I have argued that when we are conscious of a sensation, we are always conscious of self as sentient. Now I am quite ready to allow Mr. Mill or any other to reduce the self to something more elementary. But I am sure no components, which did not contain self, could give us self. Surely our perception of self could not be given