Distinction between

fore be present along with it; and that thus, though they may occur in a perpetual flux of succession-every turn of the eyes in their sockets, as Hume truly says, giving a new one-yet, just so far as they are qualified by likeness or unlikeness to each other, they must be taken out of that succession by something which is not itself in it, but is indivisibly present to every moment of it. This we may call soul, or mind, or what we will; but we must not identify it with the brain' either directly or by implication (as we do when we 'refer to the anatomist' for an account of it), since by the brain is meant something material, i.e. divisible, which the unifying subject spoken of, as feeling no less than as thinking, cannot be. In short, any such modification of Hume's doctrine of the singleness and successiveness of impressions as will entitle us to speak of their carrying with them, though single and successive, the consciousness of their resemblance to each other, will also entitle us to speak of their carrying with them a reference to that which is not itself any single impression, but is permanent throughout the impressions; and the whole ground of Hume's polemic against the idea of self or spirit is removed."

213. The above admission, however, does not dispose of the question about ideas of resemblance. A feeling qualified resembling feelings by relation of resemblance to other feelings is a different and idea of thing from an idea of that relation-different with all the

resem

blance.

difference which Hume ignores between feeling and thought, between consciousness and self-consciousness. The qualification of successive feelings by mutual relation implies, indeed, the presence to them of a subject permanent and immaterial (i. e. not in time or space); but it does not imply that this subject presents them to itself as related objects, permanent with its own permanence, which abide and may be considered apart from the circumstances in time' of their occurrence. Yet such presentation is supposed by all language other than interjectional. It is it alone which can give us names of things, as distinct from noises prompted by the feelings as they occur. Of course it is open to any one to say that by an idea of resemblance he does not mean any thought involving the self-conscious presentation spoken of, but merely a feeling qualified by resemblance, and not at its properly, the whole body) is organic to it. See above, paragraph 205.

It is, of course, quite a different thing to say that the brain (or, more

liveliest stage. Thus Hume tells us that by idea' he merely means a feeling less lively than it has been, and that by idea of anything he implies no reference to anything other than the idea,' but means just a related idea, i.e. a feeling qualified by natural relation' to other feelings. It is by this thoughtful abnegation of thought, as we shall find, that he arrives at his sceptical result. But language (for the reason mentioned) would not allow him to be faithful to the abnegation. He could not make such a profession without being false to it. This appears already in his account of complex' and 'abstract' ideas.

tions of

ideas.

214. His account of the idea of a substance (p. 324) is Substances simply Locke's, as Locke's would become upon elimination of collec the notion that there is a real 'something' in which the collection of ideas subsist, and from which they result. It thus avoids all difficulties about the relation between nominal and real essence. Just as Locke says that in the case of a 'mixed mcde' the nominal essence is the real, so Hume would say of a substance. The only difference is that while the collection of ideas, called a mixed mode, does not admit of addition without a change of its name, that called a substance does. Upon discovery of the solubility of gold in aqua regia we add that idea to the collection, to which the name 'gold' has previously been assigned, without disturbance in the use of the name, because the name already covers not only the ideas of certain qualities, but also the idea of a 'principle of union' between them, which will extend to any ideas presented along with them. As this principle of union, however, is not itself any real essence,' but 'part of the complex idea,' the question, so troublesome to Locke, whether a proposition about gold asserts real co-existence or only the inclusion of an idea in a nominal essence, will be superfluous. How the 'principle of union' is to be explained, will appear below."

ideas in

flux' be

215. There are names, then, which represent collections How can of ideas.' How can we explain such collection if ideas are merely related feelings grown fainter? Do we, when we use collected? one of these names significantly, recall, though in a fainter form, a series of feelings that we have experienced in the process of collection? Does the chemist, when he says that gold is soluble in aqua regia, recall the visual and tactual

See above, paragraph 208. VOL. I.

2 Paragraph 303, and the following.

N

Are there general ideas? Berkeley

and no.'

6

feeling which he experienced when he found it soluble? If so, as that feeling took its character from relation to a multitude of other complex ideas,' he must on the same principle recall in endless series the sensible occurrences from which each constituent of each constituent of these was derived; and a like process must be gone through when gold is pronounced ductile, malleable, &c. But this would be, according to the figure which Hume himself adopts, to recall a 'perpetual flux.' The very term 'collection of ideas,' indeed, if this be the meaning of ideas, is an absurdity, for how can a perpetual flux be collected? If we turn for a solution of the difficulty to the chapter where Hume expressly discusses the significance of general names, we shall find that it is not the question we have here put, and which flows directly from his account of ideas, that he is there treating, but an entirely different one, and one that could not be raised till for related feeling had been substituted the thought of an object under relations.

216. The chapter mentioned concerns the question which arises out of Locke's pregnant statement that words and ideas are particular in their existence' even when 'general said, yes in their signification.' From this statement we saw' that Berkeley derived his explanation of the apparent generality of ideas-the explanation, namely, which reduces it to a relation, yet not such a one as would affect the nature of the idea itself, which is and remains particular,' but a symbolical relation between it and other particular ideas for which it is taken to stand. An idea, however, that carries with it a consciousness of symbolical relation to other ideas, cannot but be qualified by this relation. The generality must become part of its nature,' and, accordingly, the distinction between idea and thing being obliterated, of the nature of things. Thus Berkeley virtually arrives at a result which renders unmeaning his preliminary exclusion of universality from the absolute, positive nature or conception of anything.' Hume seeks to avoid it by putting custom' in the place of the consciousness of symbolical relation. True to his vocation of explaining away all functions of thought that will not sort with the treatment of it as 'decaying sense,' he would resolve that idea of a relation between certain ideas, in virtue of which one is taken to stand for the rest, into the de facto

Above, paragraphs 182 and 183.

sequence upon one of them of the rest. Here, as everywhere else, he would make related feelings do instead of relations of ideas; but whether the related feelings, as he is obliged to describe them, do not already presuppose relations of ideas in distinction from feelings, remains to be seen.

for the

appear

such.

217. The question about 'generality of signification,' as Hume'no he puts it, comes to this. In every proposition, though its simply. subject be a common noun, we necessarily present to ourselves some one individual object with all its particular circumstances and proportions.' How then can the proposition be general in denotation and connotation? How can it be made with reference to a multitude of individual objects other than that presented to the mind, and how can it concern only such of the qualities of the latter as are common to the multitude? The first part of the question is answered as follows: When we have found a resemblance among How he several objects that often occur to us, we apply the same accounts name to all of them . . . whatever differences may appear among them. After we have acquired a custom of this kind, ance of the hearing of that name revives the idea of one of these their being objects, and makes the imagination conceive it with all its particular circumstances and proportions. But as the same word is supposed to have been frequently applied to other individuals, that are different in many respects from that idea which is immediately present to the mind, the word not being able to revive the idea of all these individuals, only touches the soul and revives that custom which we have acquired by surveying them. They are not really and in fact present to the mind, but only in power. . . . The word raises up an individual idea along with a certain custom, and that custom produces any other individual one for which we may have occasion. . . . Thus, should we mention the word triangle and form the idea of a particular equilateral one to correspond to it, and should we afterwards assert that the three angles of a triangle are equal to each other, the other individuals of a scalenum and isosceles, which we overlooked at first, immediately crowd in upon us and make us perceive the falsehood of this proposition, though it be true with relation to that idea which we had formed' (p. 328).

218. Next, as to the question concerning connotation:"The mind would never have dreamed of distinguishing a figure from the body figured, as being in reality neither distin

His account im

plies that ideas' are

conceptions, not feelings.

guishable nor different nor separable, did it not observe that even in this simplicity there might be contained many different resemblances and relations. Thus, when a globe of white marble is presented, we receive only the impression of a white colour disposed in a certain form, nor are we able to distinguish and separate the colour from the form. But observing afterwards a globe of black marble and a cube of white, and comparing them with our former object, we find two separate resemblances in what formerly seemed, and really is, perfectly inseparable. After a little more practice of this kind, we begin to distinguish the figure from the colour by a distinction of reason;-i.e. we consider the figure and colour together, since they are, in effect, the same and indistinguishable; but still view them in different aspects according to the resemblances of which they are susceptible. . . . A person who desires us to consider the figure of a globe of white marble without thinking on its colour, desires an impossibility; but his meaning is, that we should consider the colour and figure together, but still keep in our eye the resemblance to the globe of black marble or that to any other globe whatever' (p. 333).

219. It is clear that the process described in these passages supposes ab initio' the conversion of a feeling into a conception; in other words, the substitution of the definite individuality of a thing, thought of under attributes, for the mere singleness in time of a feeling that occurs after another and before a third. The finding of resemblances and differences among objects that often occur to us' implies that each object is distinguished as one and abiding from manifold occurrences, in the way of related feelings, in which it is presented to us, and that these accordingly are regarded as representing permanent relations or qualities of the object. Thus from being related feelings, whether more or less 'vivacious,' they have become, in the proper sense, ideas of relation. The difficulty about the use of general names, as Hume puts it, really arises just from the extent to which this process of determination by ideas of relation, and with it the removal of the object of thought from simple feeling, is supposed to have gone. It is because the idea is so complex in its individuality, and because this qualification is not understood to be the work of thought, by comparison and