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LECTURE XLVI.

CONTINUED-METAPHYSICAL

OF THE RELATIVE FEELINGS BELONGING TO THE ORDER OF COEXISTENCE, ERRORS CONCERNING THEM INVOLVED IN THE HYPOTHESES OF REALISM AND NOMINALISM.

HAVING brought to a conclusion my remarks on the phenomena of Simple Suggestion, I entered, in my last Lecture, on the consideration of those states of mind which constitute our feelings of relation, the results of that peculiar mental tendency to which, as distinguished from the simple suggestion that furnishes the other class of our intellectual states of mind, I have given the name of Relative Suggestion. The relations which we are thus capable of feeling, as they rise by internal suggestion, on the mere perception or conception of two or more objects, I divided,-in conformity with our primary division of the objects of physical inquiry,—into the relations of coexistence, and the relations of succession, according as the notion of time or change is not or is involved in them; and the former of these,-the relations that are considered by us without any regard to time,-I arranged in subdivisions, according to the notions which they involve, 1st. Of Position; 2d, Resemblance, or difference; 3d, Of Degree; 4th, Of Proportion; 5th, Of Comprehensiveness, or the relalation which a whole bears to the separate parts that are in<luded in it.

These various relations I briefly illustrated in the order in which I have now mentioned them, and showed, how very simple that mental process is by which they arise; as simple, indeed, and as easily conceivable, as that by which the primary perceptions themselves arise. On some of them, however, I felt it necessary to dwell with fuller elucidation; not on account of any greater mystery in the suggestions on which they depend, but on account of that greater mystery which has been supposed to hang about them.

A great part of my Lecture, accordingly, was employed in considering the relation of resemblance, which, by the general

notions and corresponding general terms that flow from it, we found to be the source of classification and definition, and of all that is valuable in language.

A horse, an ox, a sheep, have, in themselves, as individual beings, precisely the same qualities, whether the others be or be not considered by us at the same time. When, in looking at them, we are struck with their resemblance in certain respects, they are themselves exactly the same individuals as before, the only change which has taken place being a feeling of our own mind. And, in like manner, in the next stage of the process of verbal generalization, when in consequence of this feeling of relation in our own minds, we proceed to term them quadrupeds or animals, no quality has been taken from the objects which we have ranged together under this new term, and as little has any new quality been given to them. Every thing in the objects is precisely the same as before, and acts in precisely the same manner on our senses, as when the word quadruped or animal was uninvented. The general terms are expressive of our own internal feelings of resemblance, and of nothing more,-expressive of what is in us, and dependent wholly on laws of mind, not of what is in them, and directly dependent in any degree on laws of matter.

That, in looking at a horse, an ox, a sheep, we should be struck with a feeling of their resemblance in certain respects, -that to those respects, in which they are felt to resemble each other, we should give a name, as we give a name to each of them individually, comprehending under the general name such objects only as excite, when considered together with others, the feeling of this particular relation,-all this has surely nothing very mysterious in it. It would, indeed, be more mysterious, if, perceiving the resemblances of objects that are constantly around us, we did not avail ourselves of language, as a mode of communicating to others our feeling of the resemblance, as we avail ourselves of it in the particular denomination of the individual, to inform others of that particular object of which we speak; and to express the common resemblance which we feel by any word, is to have invented already a general term, significant of the felt relation. The process is in itself sufficiently simple; and, if we had never heard of any controversies with respect to it, we probably could not have suspected, that the mere giving of a name to resemblances which all perceive, and the subsequent application of the name only where the resemblance is felt, should have been thought to have any thing in it more mysterious, than the mere giving of a name to the separate objects which all perceive, and the repetition of that name when the separate

objects are again perceived. It assumes, however, immediately an air of mystery when we are told, that it relates to the predicables of the schools, and to all that long controversy with respect to the essence of universals, which divided not merely schoolman against schoolman, but nation against nation,when kings and emperors, who had so many other frivolous causes of warfare, without the addition of this, were eager to take up arms, and besiege towns, and cover fields with wounded and dead, for the honour of the universal a parte rei. It is difficult for us to think, that that could be simple which could produce so much fierce contention; and we strive to explain in our own mind, and, therefore, begin to see many wonderful, and perhaps unintelligible, or at least doubtful things, in phenomena, which we never should have conceived to require explanation, if others had not laboured to explain them, by clouding them with words. It is with many intellectual controversies as with the gymnastic exercises of the arena; the dust which the conflict itself raises, soon darkens that air, which was clear before,-and the longer the conflict lasts, the greater the dimness which arises from it. When the combatants are very many, and the combat very long and active, we may still, indeed, be able to see the mimicry of fight, and distinguish the victors from the vanquished; but even them we scarcely see distinctly; and all which remains, when the victory at last is won, or when both parties are sufficiently choaked with dust and weary, is the cloud of sand which they have raised, and perhaps some traces of the spots where each has fallen.

It surely cannot be denied, that the mind, with its other susceptibilities of feeling, has a susceptibility also of the feeling of the relation of similarity; or, in other words, that certain objects, when we perceive or think of them together, appear to us to resemble each other in certain respects,―that, for example, in looking at a horse, a crow, a sparrow, a sheep, we perceive, that the horse and sheep agree in having four legs, which the crow and sparrow have not; and that, perceiving the horse and sheep to agree in this respect, and not the birds, we should distinguish them accordingly, and call the one set quadrupeds, the other bipeds, is as little wonderful, as that we should have given to each of these animals its individual designation. If there be that relative suggestion which constitutes the feeling of resemblance, and what sceptic, if he analyze the process fairly, will deny this as a mere feeling, or state of mind-the general term may almost be said to follow of course. Yet for how many ages did this simple process perplex and agitate the schools,-which, agreeing in almost every thing that was complicated and absurd, could not agree in VOL. II.-X

what was simple and just; and could not agree in it precisely because it was too simple and just to accord with the other parts of that strange system, which, by a most absurd misnomer, was honoured with the name of philosophy. That during the prevalence of the scholastic opinions as to perception, -which were certainly far better fitted to harmonize with errors and mysteries than with simple truths,-the subject of generalization should have appeared mysterious, is not, indeed, very surprising. But I must confess, that there is nothing in the history of our science which appears to me so wonderful, as that any difficulty,—at least, any difficulty greater than every phenomena of every kind involves,-should now be conceived to be attached to this very simple process; and, especially, that philosophers should be so nearly unanimous in an opinion on the subject, which, though directly opposed to the prevalent error in the ancient schools, is not the less itself an

error.

The process, as I have already described it to you, is the following:-In the first place, the perception of two or more objects; in the second place, the feeling or notion of their resemblance, immediately subsequent to the perception; and, lastly, the expression of this common relative feeling by a name, which is used afterwards, as a general denomination, for all those objects, the perception of which is followed by the same common feeling of resemblance. The general term, you will remark, as expressing uniformly some felt relation of ob jects, is in this case significant of a state of mind, essentially distinct from those previous states of mind, which constituted the perception of the separate objects, as truly distinct from these primary perceptions as any one state of mind can be said to differ from any other state of mind. We might have perceived a sheep, a horse, an ox, successively, in endless series, and yet never have invented the term quadruped, as inclusive of all these animals, if we had not felt that particular relation of similarity, which the term quadruped, as applied to various objects, denotes. The feeling of this resemblance, in certain respects, is the true general notion, or general idea, as it has been less properly called, which the corresponding general term expresses; and, but for this previous general notion of some circumstance of resemblance, the general term, expressive of this general notion, could as little have been invented, as the terms green, yellow, scarlet, could have been invented, in their present sense, by a nation of the blind.

In the view that is taken of this process of generalization, as of every other process, there may be error in two ways,

either by adding to the process, what forms no part of it, or by omitting what does truly form a part of it. Thus, if we were to say, that, between the perception of a horse and sheep, and the feeling of their resemblance in a certain respect, there intervenes the presence of some external independent substance, some universal form or species of a quadruped, distinct from our conceiving mind, which, acting on the mind, or being present with it, produces the notion of a quadruped, in the same way as the presence of the external horse or sheep produced the perception of these individually, we should err, in the former of these ways, by introducing into the process, something of which we have no reason to suppose the existence, and which is not merely unnecessary, but would involve the process in innumerable perplexities and apparent inconsistencies, if it did exist. This redundance would be one species of error; but it would not less be an error, though an error of an opposite kind, were we to suppose that any part of the process does not take place,-that, for example, there is no relative suggestion, no rise in the mind of an intervening general notion of resemblance, before the invention and employment of the general term, but the mere perception of a multitude of objects, in the first place; and, then, as if in instant succession, without any other intervening mental state whatever, the general names under which whole multitudes are classed.

I have instanced these errors of supposed excess and deficiency, in the statement of the process, without alluding to any sects which have maintained them. I may now, however, temark, that the two opposite errors, which I have merely supposed, are the very errors involved in the opinions of the Realists and Nominalists, the great combatants in that most disputatious of controversies, to which I have before alluded, -a controversy, which in the strong language of John of Salisbury, even at that early period of which alone he could speak, had already employed fruitlessly more time and thought, than the whole race of the Cæsars had found necessary for acquiring and exercising the sovereignty of the world: "Quæstionem," he calls it, "in qua laborans mundus jam senuit, in qua plus temporis consumptum est, quam in acquirendo et regendo orbis imperio consumpserit Cæsarea domus; plus effusum pecuniæ, quam in omnibus divitiis suis possederit Cræsus. Hæc enim tamdiu multos tenuit, ut cum hoc unum tota vita quærerent, tandem nec istud, nec aliud, invenerent." However absurd, and almost inconceivable the belief of the substantial reality of genera and species, as separate and independent essences, may appear, on first consideration, we must