ing out by some voluntary process, those intervening propositions, which serve as the medium of proof. The error on which this opinion is founded, I have already sufficiently exposed; and, therefore, need not repeat, at any length, the confutation of it.

We cannot invent, as I shewed you, a single medium of proof; but the proofs arise to us independently of our will, in the same manner, as the primary subject of the proposition, which we analyse in our reasoning, itself arose. The desire of tracing all the relations of an object, when we meditate, may coexist with the successive feelings of relations as they arise, -and it is this complex state of mind, in which intention or desire continues to coexist, with these successive feelings, to which we commonly give the name of reasoning. But it surely is not difficult to analyse this complex state, and to discover in it, as its only elements, the desire itself, with the conceptions which it involves, or which it suggests, and the separate relations of these conceptions, which rise precisely as they arose, and are felt precisely as they were felt before, on other occasions, when no such desire existed, and when the relative objects chanced to present themselves together to our perceptions, or in our loosest and most irregular trains of thought. The permanence of the desire, indeed, keeps the object to which it relates more permanently before us, and allows therefore, a greater variety of relative suggestions belonging to it to arise; but it does not affect the principle itself, which develops these relations. Each arises, as before, unwilled. We cannot will the feeling of a relation, for this would be to have already felt the relation which we willed; as to will a particular conception in a train of thought, would be to have already that particular conception. Yet, while this power of willing conceptions and relations was falsely ascribed to the mind, it was a very natural consequence of this mistake, that the reasoning, which involved the supposed invention, should be regarded as essentially different from the judgments, or simple feelings of relation, that involved no such exercise of voluntary power.

Reasoning then, in its juster sense, as felt by us internally, is nothing more than a series of relative suggestions, of which the separate subjects are felt by us to be mutually related-as expressed in language, it is merely a series of propositions, each of which is only a verbal statement of some relation internally felt by us. There is nothing, therefore, involved in the ratiocination independently of the accompanying desire, but a series of feelings of relation, to the susceptibility of which feelings, accordingly, the faculty called reason, and the faculty

called judgment, may equally be reduced. If we take away at each step the mere feeling of relation, the judgment is nothing, and if we take away the separate feelings termed judgments, nothing remains to be denominated reasoning.

Another faculty, with which the mind has been enriched, by those systematic writers, who have examined its phenomena, and ranked them under different powers, is the faculty of abstraction, a faculty by which we are supposed to be capable of separating in our thought certain parts of our complex notions, and of considering them thus abstracted from the

rest.

This supposed faculty, however, is not merely unreal, as ascribed to the mind, but, I may add, even that such a faculty is impossible, since every exertion of it would imply a contradiction.

In abstraction, the mind is supposed to single out a particular part of some one of its complex notions, for particular consideration. But what is the state of the mind immediately preceding this intentional separation-its state at the moment in which the supposed faculty is conceived to be called into exercise? Does it not involve necessarily the very abstraction which it is supposed to produce? and must we not, therefore, in admitting such a power of voluntary separation, admit an infinite series of preceding abstractions, to account for a single act of abstraction? If we know what we single out, we have already performed all the separation which is necessary; if we do not know what we are singling out, and do not even know that we are singling out any thing, the separate part of the complex whole may, indeed, rise to our conception; but it cannot arise by the operation of any voluntary faculty. That such conceptions do indeed arise, as states of the mind, there can be no question. In every sentence which we read -in every affirmation which we make-in almost every portion of our silent train of thoughts, some decomposition of more complex perceptions or notions has taken place. The exact recurrence of any complex whole, at any two moments, is perhaps what never takes place. After we look at a scene before us, so long as to have made every part of it familiar, if we close our eyes to think of it, in the very moment of bringing our eyelids together, some change of this kind has taken place. The complex whole, which we saw the very instant before, when conceived by us in this instant succession, is no longer, in every circumstance, the same complex whole. Some part, or rather may parts, are lost altogether. A still greater number of parts are variously diversified, and though we should still call the scene the same, it would appear to us a

very different scene, if our conception could be embodied and presented to our eye, together with the real landscape of which it seems to us the copy. If this change takes place in a single instant, at longer intervals it cannot fail to be much more considerable, though the very interval, which gives occasion to the greater diversity, prevents the diversity itself from being equally felt by us.

Abstraction then-as far as abstraction consists in the rise of conceptions in the mind, which are parts of former mental affections, more complex than these, does unquestionably occur; and since it occurs, it must occur according to laws which are truly laws of the mind, and must indicate some mental power, or powers, in consequence of which the conceptions termed abstractions arise. Is it necessary, however, to have recourse to any peculiar faculty, or are they not rather modifications of those susceptibilities of the mind, which have been already considered by us?

In treating of those states of the mind, which constitute our general notion, I have already, in a great measure, anticipated the remarks, which it might otherwise be necessary to offer in explanation of abstraction. The relative suggestions of resemblance are, in truth, or at least involve as parts of the suggestion, those very feelings, for the production of which this peculiar faculty is assigned. We perceive two objects,—a rock, for example, and a tree: We press against them-they both produce in us that sensation, which constitutes our feeling of resistance. We give the name of hardness to this common property of the external objects; and our mere feeling of resemblance, when referred to the resembling objects, is thus converted into an abstraction. If we are capable of feeling the resemblance, the abstraction is surely already formed, and needs, therefore, no other power to produce it.

To that principle of relative suggestion, by which we feel the resemblance of objects in certain respects, to the exclusion, consequently, of all the other circumstances, in which they have no resemblance, by far the greater number of our abstractions, and those which most commonly go under that name, may, in this manner, be traced; since, in consequence of this principle of our mind, we are almost incessantly feeling some relation of similarity in objects, and omitting, in consequence, in this feeling of resemblance, the parts or circumstances of the complex whole, in which no similarity is felt. What is thus termed abstraction, is the very notion of partial similarity. It would be as impossible to regard objects as similar in certain respects, without having the conceptions termed abstract, as to see, without vision, or to hope without desire. The capacity

of the feeling of resemblance, then, is the great source of the conceptions termed abstract. Many of them, however, may be referred, not to that susceptibility of the mind, by which our relative suggestions arise, but to that other susceptibility of suggestions of another kind, which we previously considered. In those common instances of simple suggestion, which philosophers have ascribed to a principle of association, they never have thought it necessary to prove, nor have they even contended, that the feels which arise in consequence of this mere association, must be exact transcripts of the former feelings in every respect, however complex these former feelings. may have been; that, when we have seen a group of objects together, no part of this group can be recalled, without the rest,—no rock, or streamlet, of a particular valley, for example, without every tree, and every branch of every tree, that were seen by us, waving over the little current, and every minute angle of the rock, as if measured with geometrical precision. Suggestions of images, so exact as this, perhaps never occur; and if every conception, therefore, which meets some circumstance of the complex perception, which has given rise to it, be the result of a faculty, which is to be termed the faculty of abstraction, the whole imagery of our thought which has been ascribed to an associating or suggesting principle, should have been considered rather as the result of this power, in its never ceasing operation. But if we allow, that in ordinary association, the principle of simple suggestion can account for the rise of conceptions, that omit some circumstances of the past, it would surely be absurd to attempt any limitation of the number of circumstances which may be omitted, by the operation of this principle alone, and to refer every circumstance that is omitted beyond this definite number, to another faculty, absolutely distinct. The truth is, that it is only of certain parts of any complex perception, that our simple suggestions, in any case, are transcripts,-that the same power, which thus, without any effort of our volition, and even without our consciousness, that such a suggestion is on the point of taking place, brings before us, only three out of four circumstances, that coexisted in some former perception, might as readily be supposed to bring before us two of the four, or only one-and that the abstraction, in such a case, would be thus as independent of our will, as the simple suggestion; since it would be in truth, only the simple suggestion, under another name, being termed an abstraction, merely because, in certain cases, we might be able to remember the complex whole, with the circumstances omitted in the former partial suggestion, and thus to discover, by comparison of the two

coexisting conceptions, that the one is to the other, as a whole to some part of the whole. If this comparison could be made by us in every case, there is not a single conception, in our whole train of memory or fancy, which would not equally deserve to be denominated an abstraction.

Many of the states of mind, which we term abstractions, might thus arise by mere simple suggestion, though we had not, in addition to this capacity, that susceptibility of relative suggestion, by which we discover resemblance, and to which, certainly, we are indebted for the far greater number of feelings, which are termed abstract ideas. The partial simple suggestion of the qualities of objects, in our trains of thought, is less wonderful, when we consider how our complex notions of objects are formed. In conceiving the hardness separately from the whiteness of an object, we have no feeling that is absolutely new; we only repeat the process by which our conceptions of these qualities were originally formed. We received them separately, through the medium of different senses; and each, when it recurs separately, is but the transcript of the primary separate sensation.

But even though objects, as originally perceived, had been precisely, in every respect, what they now appear to us,-concretes of many qualities--the capacity of relative suggestion, by which we feel the resemblances of objects, would be of itself, as I have said, sufficient to account for the abstractions, of which philosophers have written so much. It is superfluous, therefore, to ascribe to another peculiar faculty what must take place, if we admit only the common mental susceptibilities, which all admit. If we are capable of perceiving a resemblance of some sort, when we look at a swan and on snow, why should we be astonished that we have invented the word whiteness, to signify the common circumstances of resemblance? Or why should we have recourse for this feeling of whiteness itself to any capacity of the mind, but that which evolves to us the similarity which we are acknowledged to be capable of feeling?

Whatever our view of the origin of these partial conceptions may be, however, the truth of the general negative argument, at least, must be admitted, that we have no power of singling out, for particular consideration, any one part of the complex group; since, in the very intention of separating it from the rest, we must already have singled it out in our will, and consequently, in our thought; and that we do not need any new operation, therefore, to conceive, what we must have conceived before the supposed operation itself could take place.