Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic. W. Stebbing
the non-original part of our knowledge. And so also is the distinction in German metaphysics, between the mind's acts and its passive states. Enough for us now that they are all states of the mind.
II. Substances.—Logicians think they have defined substance and attribute, when they have shown merely what difference the use of them respectively makes in the grammar of a sentence. They say an attribute must be an attribute of something, but that a substance is self-existent (being followed, if a relative, by of, not quâ substance, but quâ the relation). But this of, as distinguishing attributes, itself needs explanation: besides, we can no more conceive a substance independent of attributes, than an attribute independent of a substance. Metaphysicians go deeper into the distinction than logicians. Substances, most of them say, are either bodies or minds; and, of these, a body is the external cause to which we ascribe sensations. Berkeley and the Idealists, however, deny that there exists any cause of sensations (except, indeed, a First Cause). They argue that the whole of our notion of a body consists of a number of our own or others' sensations occurring together habitually (so that, the thought of one being associated with the thought of the others, we get what Hartley and Locke call a complex idea). They deny that a residuum would remain if all the attributes were pared off; for that, though the sensations are bound together by a law, the existence of a substratum is but one of many forms of mentally realising the connection. And they ask how it is—since so long as the sensations occurred in the old order, we should not miss such a substratum, supposing it to have once existed and to have perished—that we can know it exists even now? Their opponents used formerly to reply, that the uniform order of sensations implies an external cause determining the law of the order; and that the attributes inhere in this external cause or substratum, viz. matter. But at last it was seen that the existence of matter could not be proved by extrinsic evidence; consequently, now the answer to the idealist argument simply is, that the belief in an external cause of sensations is universal, and as intuitive as our knowledge of sensations themselves. Even Kant allows this (notwithstanding his belief in the existence of a universe of things in themselves, i.e. Noümena, as contrasted with the mental representation of them, where the sensations, he thinks, furnish the matter, and the laws of the mind, the form). Brown even traced up to the sensations of touch, combined with the sensations seated in the muscular frame, those very properties, viz., extension and figure, which Reid referred to as proving that some qualities must exist, not in the sensations, but in the things themselves, since they cannot possibly be copies of any impression on the senses. We have, in truth, no right to consider a thing's sensible qualities akin to its nature, unless we suppose an absurdity, viz. that a cause must, as such, resemble its effects. In any case, the question whether Ontology be a possible science, concerns, not Logic, but the nature and laws of intuitive knowledge. And the question as to the nature of Mind is as out of place here as that about Body. As body is the unknown exciting cause of sensations, so mind, the other kind of substance, is the unknown recipient both of the sensations and of all the other feelings. Though I call a something myself, as distinct from the series of feelings, the 'thread of consciousness,' yet this self shows itself only through its capacity of feeling or being conscious; and I can, with my present faculties, conceive the gaining no new information but about as yet unknown faculties of feeling. In short, as body is the unsentient cause of all feelings, so mind is the sentient subject (in the German sense) of them, viz. that which feels them. About this inner nature we know nothing, and Logic cares nothing.
III. Attributes.—Qualities are the first class of attributes. Now, if we know nothing about bodies but the sensations they excite, we can mean nothing by the attributes of bodies but sensations. Against this it has been urged that, though we know nothing of sensible objects except the sensations, the quality which we ascribe on the ground of the sensation may yet be a real hidden power or quality in the object, of which the sensation is only the evidence. Seemingly, this doctrine arises only from the tendency to suppose that there must be two different things to answer to two names when not quite synonymous. Quality and sensation are probably names for the same thing viewed in different lights. The doctrine of an entity per se, called quality, is a relic of the scholastic occult causes; the only intelligible cause of sensation being the presence of the assemblage of phenomena, called the object. Why the presence of the object causes the sensation, we know not; and, granting an occult cause, we are still in the dark as to how that produces the effect. However, the question belongs to metaphysics; and it suits this doctrine, as well as the opposed one, to say that a quality has for its foundation a sensation.
Relations form the second class of attributes. In all cases of relation there exists some fact into which the relatives enter as parties concerned; and this is the fundamentum relationis. Whenever two things are involved in some one fact, we may ascribe to them a relation grounded on it, however general the fact may be. As, then, a quality is an attribute based on the fact of a sensation, so a relation is an attribute based on a fact into which two objects enter jointly. This fact in both is always composed entirely of states of consciousness; and this, whether it be complicated, as in many legal relations, or simple, as in the relations expressed by antecedent and consequent and by simultaneous, where the fact consists merely of the two things so related, since the consciousness either of the succession or of the simultaneousness of the two sensations which represent the things, is a feeling not added to, but involved in them, being a condition under which we must suppose things. And so, likewise, with the relations of likeness and unlikeness. The feeling of these sometimes cannot be analysed, when the fundamentum relationis is, as in the case of two simple sensations, e.g. two sensations of white, only the two sensations themselves, the consequent feeling of their resemblance being, like that of their succession or simultaneousness, apparently involved in the sensations themselves. Sometimes, again, the likeness or unlikeness is complex, and therefore can be analysed into simpler cases. In any case, likeness or unlikeness must resolve itself into likeness or unlikeness between states of our own or some other mind; and this, whether the feeling of the resemblance or dissimilarity relate to bodies or to attributes, since the former we know only through the sensations they are supposed to excite, and the latter through the sensations on which they are grounded. And so, again, when we say that two relations are alike (one of the many senses of analogy), we simply assert resemblance between the facts constituting the two fundamenta relationis. Several relations, called by different names, are really cases of resemblance. Thus, equality, i.e. the exact resemblance existing between things in respect of their quantity, is often called identity.
The third species of attributes is Quantity. The assertion of likeness or unlikeness in quantity, as in quality, is always founded on a likeness or unlikeness in the sensations excited. What the difference is all who have had the sensations know, but it cannot be explained to those who never had them.
In fine, all the attributes classed under Quality and Quantity are the powers bodies have of exciting certain sensations. So, Relation generally is but the power which an object has of joining its correlative in producing the series of sensations, which is the only sign of the existence of the fact on which they both are grounded. The relations of succession and simultaneousness, indeed, are not based on any fact (i.e. any feeling) distinct from the related objects. But these relations are themselves states of consciousness; resemblance, for example, being nothing but our feeling of resemblance: at least, we ascribe these relations to objects or attributes simply because they hold between the feelings which the objects excite and on which the attributes are grounded. And as with the attributes of bodies, so also those of minds are grounded on states of consciousness. Considered in itself, we can predicate of a mind only the series of its own feelings: e.g. by devout we mean that the feelings implied in that word form an oft-recurring part of the series of feelings filling up the sentient existence of that mind. Again, attributes may be ascribed to a mind as to a body, as grounded on the thoughts or emotions (not the sensations, for only bodies excite them) which it excites in others: e.g. when we call a character admirable, we mean that it causes feelings in us of admiration. Sometimes, under one word really two attributes are predicated, one a state of the mind, the other of other minds affected by thinking of it: e.g. He is generous. Sometimes, even bodies have the attribute of producing an emotion: e.g. That statue is beautiful.
The general