contrast accumulating attributes on an object which it itself constitutes, but is regarded as given ready-made in an impression (i.e. a feeling), that the question arises whether a general proposition is really possible or no. To all intents and purposes Hume decides that it is not. The mind is so tied down to the particular collection of qualities which is given to it or which it 'finds,' that it cannot present one of them to itself without presenting all. Having never found a triangle that is not equilateral or isosceles or scalene, we cannot imagine one, for ideas can only be copies of impressions, and the imagination, though it has a certain freedom in combining what it finds, can invent nothing that it does not find. Thus the idea, represented by a general name and of which an assertion, general in form, is made, must always have a multitude of other qualities besides those common to it with the other individuals to which the name is applicable. If any of these, however, were included in the predicate of the proposition, the sleeping custom, which determines the mind to pass from the idea present to it to the others to which the name has been applied, would be awakened, and it would be seen at once that the predicate is not true of them. When I make a general statement about the horse,' there must be present to my mind some particular horse of my acquaintance, but if on the strength of this I asserted that the horse is a grey-haired animal,' the custom of applying the name without reference to colour would return upon me and correct me-as it would not if the predicate were four-footed.' He virtually yields the point in regard to the pre dicate of tions. 220. It would seem then that the predicate may, though the subject cannot, represent either a single quality, or a set of qualities which falls far short even of those common to the class, much more of those which characterise any individual. If I can think these apart, or have an idea of them, as the proposi predicate of a proposition, why not (it may be asked) as the subject? It may be said, indeed, with truth, that it is a mistake to think of the subject as representing one idea and the predicate another; that the proposition as a whole represents one idea, in the sense of a conception of relation between attributes, and that at bottom this account of it is consistent with Locke's definition of knowledge as a perception of relation between 'ideas,' since with him 'ideas' and As to the equivocates be tween singleness of feeling and individuality of concep tion. 'qualities are used interchangeably. It is no less true, however, that the relation between attributes, which the proposition states, is a relation between them in an individual subject. It is the nature of the individuality of this subject, then, that is really in question. Must it, as Hume supposed, be considered' under other qualities than those to which the predicate relates? When the proposition only concerns the relation between certain qualities of a spherical figure, must the figure still be considered as of a certain colour and material? 221. The possibility of such a question being raised implies subject, he that the step has been already taken, which Hume ignored, from feeling to thought. His doctrine on the matter arises. from that mental equivocation, of which the effects on Locke have been already noticed,2 between the mere singleness of a feeling in time and the individuality of the object of thought as a complex of relations. If the impression is the single feeling which disappears with a turn of the head, and the idea a weaker impression, every idea must indeed be in one sense individual,' but in a sense that renders all predication impossible because it empties the idea of all content. Really, according to Hume's doctrine of general names, it is individual in a sense which is the most remote opposite of this, as a multitude of different resemblances and relations'in 'simplicity.' It is just such an individual as Locke supposed to be found (so to speak) ready-made in nature, and from which he supposed the mind successively to abstract ideas less and less determinate. Such an object Hume, coming after Berkeley, could not regard in Locke's fashion as a separate material existence outside consciousness. The idea with him is a 'copy' not of a thing but of an impression,' but to the impression he transfers all that individualization by qualities which Locke had ascribed to the substance found in nature; and from the impression again transfers it to the idea which 'is but the weaker impression.' Thus the singleness in time of the impression becomes the 'simplicity' of an object' containing many different resemblances and relations,' and the individuality of the subject of a proposition, instead of being regarded in its true light as a temporary isolation from other relations of those for the time under view-an individuality 1 See above, paragraph 17. 2 See above, paragraphs 47, 95, &c. which is perpetually shifting its limits as thought proceeds-becomes an individuality fixed once for all by what is given in the impression. Because, as is supposed, I can only 'see' a globe as of a certain colour and material, I can only think of it as such. If the 'sight' of it had been rightly interpreted as itself a complex work of thought, successively detaching felt things from the flux' of feelings and determining these by relations similarly detached, the difficulty of thinking certain of these-e.g. those designated as 'figure'-apart from the rest would have disappeared. It would have been seen that this was merely to separate in reflective analysis what had been gradually put together in the successive synthesis of perception. But such an interpretation of the supposed datum of sense would have been to elevate thought from the position which Hume assigned to it, as a 'decaying sense,' to that of being itself the organizer of the world which it knows.' which ad mits predi cation, but only as singular. 222. Here, then, as elsewhere, the embarrassment of Result is a Hume's doctrine is nothing which a better statement of it theory could avoid. Nay, so dexterous is his statement, that only upon a close scrutiny does the embarrassment disclose itself. To be faithful at once to his reduction of the impression to simple feeling, and to his account of the idea as a mere copy of the impression, was really impossible. If he had kept his word in regard to the impression, he must have found thought filling the void left by the disappearance, under Berkeley's criticism, of that outward system of things which Locke had commonly taken for granted. He preferred fidelity to his account of the idea, and thus virtually restores the fiction which represents the real world as consisting of so many, materially separate, bundles of qualities-a fiction which even Locke in his better moments was beginning to outgrow-with only the difference that for the separation of 'substances' in space he substitutes a separation of impressions' in time. That thought (the idea') can but faintly copy feeling (the 'impression') he consistently maintains, but he avails himself of the actual determination of feeling by reference to an object of thought-the determination expressed by such phrases as impression of a man, impression of a globe, &c.—to charge the feeling with a content which it only derives from The phrase 'decaying sense' belongs to Hobbes, but its meaning is adopted by Hume. All propositions re same such determination, while yet he denies it. By this means predication can be accounted for, as it could not be if our consciousness consisted of mere feelings and their copies, but only in the form of the singular proposition; because the object of thought determined by relations, being identified with a single feeling, must be limited by the 'this' or 'that' which expresses this singleness of feeling. It is really this or that globe, this or that man, that is the subject of the proposition, according to Hume, even when in form it is general. It is true that the general name 'globe' or 'man' not merely represents a particular' globe or man, though that is all that is presented to the mind, but also raises up a custom which produces any other individual idea for which we may have occasion.' As this custom, however, is neither itself an idea nor affects the singleness of the subject idea, it does not constitute any distinction between singular and general propositions, but only between two sorts of the singular proposition according as it does, or does not, suggest an indefinite series of other singular propositions, in which the same qualities are affirmed of different individual ideas to which the subject-name has been applied. 223. A customary sequence, then, of individual ideas upon stricted in each other is the reality, which through the delusion of words (as we must suppose) has given rise to the fiction of there being such a thing as general knowledge. We say fiction,' for with the possibility of general propositions, as the Greek tions about philosophers once for all pointed out, stands or falls the pos way as Locke's proposi real ex istence. sibility of science. Locke was so far aware of this that, upon the same principle which led him to deny the possibility of general propositions concerning real existence, he 'suspected' a science of nature to be impossible, and only found an exemption for moral and mathematical truth from this condemnation in its bare ideality.' Hume does away with the exemption. He applies to all propositions alike the same limitation which Locke applies to those concerning real existence. With Locke there may very well be a proposition which to the mind, as well as in form, is general-one of which the subject is an abstract general idea'—but such proposition concerns not existence.' As knowledge of real existence is limited to the actual present sensation,' so a proposition about such existence is limited to what is given in such sensation. It is a real truth that this piece of gold is now being dissolved in aqua regia, when the particular The question, how the singu lar propo sition is possible, the vital 224. A great advance in simplification has been made when the false sort of conceptualism' has thus been got rid ofthat conceptualism which opposes knowing and being under the notion that things, though merely individual in reality, may be known as general. This riddance having been achieved, as it was by Hume, the import of the proposition one. becomes the central question of philosophy, the answer to which must determine our theory of real existence just as much as of the mind. The issue may be taken on the proposition in its singular no less than in its general form. The weakness of Hume's opponents, indeed, has lain primarily in their allowing that his doctrine would account for any significant predication whatever, as distinct from exclamations prompted by feelings as they occur. This has been the inch, which once yielded, the full ell of his nominalism has been easily won; just as Locke's empiricisin becomes invincible as soon as it is admitted that qualified things are 'found in nature' without any constitutive action of the mind. As the only effective way of dealing with Locke is to ask,-After abstraction of all that he himself admitted. to be the creation of thought, what remains to be merely |