As far as regards the present merely, it expresses the existence of a particular feeling, but nothing more.

"We may, indeed, look back on a particular feeling of the moment preceding, as we look back on some more distant event of years that are past; and from the belief of identity which arises intuitively in such a case, we may give the name of Consciousness to this brief retrospect and identification, as we give the name of Memory or Remembrance to the longer retrospect. But the difference is a difference of name only. The remembrance is in kind the same, whether the interval of recognition be long or short. The whole complex state of mind, in such a case, is in strictness of language one present feeling,-one state of the mind and nothing more; and even of this virtual complexity, we find, on analysis, no other elements than these-a certain feeling of some kind, the remembrance of some former feeling, and the belief of the identity of that which feels and has felt. If we take away the memory of every former feeling, we take away the very notion of self or identity, and with it every thing that distinguishes the complex feeling which is termed Consciousness, from the simpler feeling of which we are said to be conscious. "It is but in a very small number of our feelings, as they succeed each other in endless variety, that any such retrospects and identifications of past and present feeling, in one self or continued subject of both, take place. The pleasure or pain begins and passes away, and is immediately succeeded by other pleasures or pains, or thoughts or emotions. In such a case, when there is no retrospect beyond the moment, and no notion, therefore, of self, as the continued subject of various feelings, the consciousness of the mind is either the brief simple present feeling itself, whatever that may be, or

it is nothing; and when it is mingled with

a retrospective feeling, there is no occasion to have recourse to a peculiar Faculty, to be distinguished from the ordinary cases of remembrance, in which there is, in like manner, a retrospect of some former feeling of the mind, together with that belief of identity which is common to memory in all its forms. We do not suppose, that when at one time we look back on some event of our boyhood, at

another time on some event of the preceding hour, and, in both cases, identify the subject of the past feeling with that which is the subject of a present sensation, we exercise, in the recognition at the longer and shorter interval, a power of the mind that is specifically different in the two cases; and there is surely as little reason to suppose such a specific difference, when, in an interval still shorter, the recognition of a common subject of two feelings has regard to a present sensation, and to one so recent in its freshness as almost to seem present still.

From this extract it will be seen that Dr Brown views the thoughts and feelings of the mind as a mutually

derived series, of which each successive phenomenon is generated from the last, or from external perceptions

the whole being so many different states of one sentient principle, and each state being uncompounded and simple, and including the whole essence of the mind so long as it lasts. But even this mode of viewing the phenomena is not inconsistent with the notion of the mind having particular faculties for particular purposes. A faculty means only the power of existing in a particular state thought or feeling is a relation of some in relation to external objects; for every kind to external objects. Cut off the mind's communication with the outward world, and take away the conception of things formerly perceived, and all thoughts and feelings would immediately cease. Now, it is not in consequence of any one quality that the mind is capable of existing in so many different relations to external objects, or (what is the same thing) to conceptions and, if it be in conse-. quence of different qualities, these qualities may without impropriety be called powers or faculties.

If the antecedent temporary state or affection of the mind were the sole cause of that which follows, then it would be unsuitable to speak of the mind's having permanent qualities; but the consequent state results not merely from the antecedent temporary state, but also from the nature and constitution of the mind. permanent If, on the other hand, it be said, that each successive state includes the permanent nature and capacities of the mind, and that, therefore, the antecedent state is the sole cause of what. follows; it will be somewhat difficult to reconcile this notion with the perfect simplicity and unity which Dr Brown attributes to each mental

state. In speaking of mental identity, he makes the following observations:

ing objection to be put. "I can imagine, for example, the follow

things, it may be said, are easily conceiv The changeful appearances of external able, because a mass of matter admits of addition, or subtraction, or at least of change of place of the atoms that compose it. But if mind be, as is asserted, absolutely simple and indivisible, the same at every moment, without addition, or subtraction, or possible change of parts,

that which is by its very nature so. completely incapable of essential alteration, cannot admit of any difference what

ever. If strictly identical, it must be the same in every respect. Now we know, that what is called the Mind, far from being at every moment the same in every respect, scarcely presents for two successive moments the same phenomena. It is by its changes, indeed, indirectly, as sentient or percipient, and only by its changes, that all other changes become known to us; and independently of those varying perceptions, by which it reveals to us the phenomena of the material world, it is susceptible of innumerable modifications of feeling that have no direct relation to them. Without taking into account, therefore, such lasting changes of character, as the mind often exhibits, in different circumstances of fortune, or at different periods of life, are not even its more rapid changes, when the feeling of one moment has no resemblance whatever to the feeling of the preceding moment, sufficient to disprove its absolute identity? There is unquestionably in these changes a difference of some sort, and often a difference as striking, as can be supposed in the feelings of any two minds at the same moment. How, then, can that which is so different be absolutely identical?

"Absolute identity, in the strictest sense of that term, and difference of any sort, seem, I own, when we first consider them, to be incompatible: and yet, if such a compatibility be found to be true, not of mind only, but of matter itself, the objection that is founded on the analogy of matter, in the supposed necessity of some integral alteration in its changing phenomena, will lose the force which that analogy had seemed to give to it. If every material atom be unceasingly changing its state, so as often to exhibit tendencies the most opposite, and yet, in all its changes of physical character, be, without all question, the same substance which it was before; it may be allowed, in like manner, that the mind also, with corresponding diversities of character, may exist in various, and often in opposite states, at different times, and yet be in all these changes of state, whether the diversity be more or less brief or lasting, the same identical substance.

"The examination of this compatibility of diversity with sameness in external things, may involve a more subtile analysis of the general phenomena of matter, than has commonly been employed by philosophers. But it is a discussion that is interesting in itself, and that is particularly interesting in the present question, as obviating an objection, the force of which, but for such a proof of exact analogy in the phenomena of the material world, will be felt most strongly by those who are best qualified to judge of such questions.

In the narrow limits of the present outlines, it is impossible to state the argument in its minuter physical bearings. A single illustration, however, from one of the most familiar of the phenomena of matter, may be

sufficient to shew what is meant by that compatibility of sameness and diversity in things without, to which the internal phenomena of mind, in their similar union of diversity and sameness, present an analogy so striking, as to justify the assertion of the compatibility as a general law of nature. "A body at rest, we believe, would remain for ever at rest, but for the application of some foreign force: when impelled by some other body, it moves, and, as we believe, would for ever in free space continue to move onward, in the line of impulse, with a certain velocity proportioned to that impulse. Let us take, then, any series of moments, a, b, c, in the continued quiescence, and any series of moments x, y, z, in the continued uniform motion. At the moment a, every atom of the body is in such a state, that, in consequence of this state, it does not exhibit any tendency to motion in the moment b; at the moment a every atom of it is in such a state, that in the subsequent moment y, though an impelling body be no longer present, it has a tendency to pass from one point of space to another; and thus progressively, through the series a, b, c, and the series x, y, z, the difference of tendency at each moment is indicative of a difference of state at each moment. Every atom of the body, at the moment y is, however, exactly the same atom which it was at the moment b. Nothing is added to the mass; nothing is taken away from the mass: yet how different are the phenomena exhibited, and consequently how different the tendencies, or physical character, of the identical atoms, at these two moments! Nay, more, as the varieties of velocity are infinite, increasing or diminishing with the force of the primary impulse or other cause of motion, and as, in the continual progressive motion, the cause of the particular velocity of that motion at the moment y is the peculiar state of the atoms at the moment a, with any difference of which the velocity also would be different, there is in the va rieties even of such simple rectilinear motion, without taking into account any other varieties arising from any other foreign causes, an infinite number of states of every atom of every mass, with the same continued identity of the whole: and it is truly not more wonderful, therefore, that the substance to which we give the name of Mind should, without the slightest loss of identity, be affected in succession with joy, sorrow, love, hate, or any other feelings or tendencies the most opposite, than that a substance to which we give the name of Matter, without the slightest loss of identity, should have tendencies so opposite as those by which at one time it remains, moment after moment, in the same relative point of space, and afterwards flies through space with a velocity of which the varieties are infinite. However paradoxical, then, the statement may appear, it may yet safely be admitted, as a law both of mind and of matter, that

when any part has been over-exerted. But there are feelings of a fainter kind, increasing in intensity with the exertion employed, which accompany the simpler contractions, and enable us in some measure to distinguish, independently of the aid of our other senses, our general position or attitude. These muscular feelings I conceive to form a very important element of many of our complex sensations, in which their influence has been little suspected.

"It is not to be supposed, however, that we are able, by a sort of instinctive anatomy, to distinguish the separate muscles of our frame, which may have been brought together into play. Our muscular movements themselves are almost always complicated; and our accompanying sensation, therefore, in such cases, is equally complex. But whether the number of muscles employed be more or less extensive, and the degree of their contraction be greater or less, there is one result of sensation which forms in every case one state of the mind; and it is this joint result alone, which we distinguish from other muscular sensations, that may have resulted, in like manner, from various degrees of contraction of the same or different muscles."

ries, whether merely remembered as past, or anticipated as future, is felt as of a certain length. The notion of a certain regu lar and limited length is thus acquired, and very soon becomes habitual to the mind of the infant; so habitual to it, that the first feeling which attends the beginning contraction of the fingers, suggests, of itself, a length that may be expected to follow.

"It must be remembered, that it is the mere length of a sequence of feelings, attendant on muscular contraction, of which I speak, and not of any knowledge of muscular parts contracted. The infant does not know that he has fingers which move, even when, from an instinctive tendency, or other primary cause to which we are ignorant how to give a name, he sets them in motion; but when they are thus in motion, and a consequent series of feelings already familiar to him has commenced, he knows the regular series of feelings that are instantly to follow.

"In these circumstances, let us imagine some hard body to be placed on his little palm. The muscular contraction takes place, as before, to a certain extent, and with it a part of the accustomed series; but, from the resistance to the usual full contraction, there is a break in the anticipated series of feelings, the place of the remaining portion of which is supplied by a tactual feeling combined with a muscular feeling of another

As often as

"3. Let us once more consider the circumstances in which the infant first exists, when he is the subject indeed of various feelings, but is ignorant of the existence of his own organic frame, and of every thing

external. If we observe him as he lies on

his little couch, there is nothing which strikes us more than his tendency to continual muscular motion, particularly of the parts which are afterwards his great organs of touch. There is scarcely a moment while he is awake, at which he is not opening or closing his little fingers, or moving his little arms in some direction. Now, though he does not know that he has a muscular frame, he is yet susceptible of all the feelings that attend muscular contraction in all its stages. From the moment at which his fingers begin to move towards the palm, to the moment at which they close on it, there is a regular series of feelings, which is renewed as unceasingly as the motion itself is renewed. The beginning of this series, as in every other regular sequence of events in after life, leads to the expectation of the parts which are to follow; and, like any other number of continuous parts, the whole se

been already considered by us. the same portion of the series of feelings is the same body is placed again in the hand, interrupted by the same new complex feeling. It is as little wonderful, therefore, that this new feeling should suggest or become representative of the particular length of which it supplies the place, as that the reciprocal suggestion of one object by another should be the result of any other association as uniform.

A smaller body interrupts proportionally a smaller part of the accustomed series-a larger body a larger portion and, while the notion of a certain length of sequence interrupted, varies thus exactly with the dimensions of the external object felt, it is not very wonderful that the one should become representative of the other; and that the particular muscular feeling of resistance, in combination with the tactual feeling, should be attended with notions of different lengths, exactly according to the difference of the length of which it uniformly supplies the place.

"The only objection which I can conceive to be made to this theory-if the cirstances be accurately stated, and if the inadequacy of touch as itself the direct sense of figure, have been sufficiently shown-is, that the length of a sequence of feelings is so completely distinct in character, as to be incapable of being blended with tactual notions of space. But this objection, as I flatter myself I have proved, arises from inattention, not to a few only of the phenomena

of tactual measurement, but to all the phenomena; for in the measurement even of the most familiar object, as we have seen, a difference of the mere rapidity or slowness with which we pass our hand along its surface, and therefore of the mere length or shortness of the accompanying series of feelings, is sufficient to give in our estimate a corresponding difference of length or shortness to the surface which we touch. Length, indeed, considered abstractly, whether it be of time or of space, is nothing more in our conception than a number of continuous parts; and this definition is equally applicable to it, in the one case as in the other. "5. In whatever manner the first mo

tions of the fingers may be produced, the infant will soon discover that they are renewable by his will; and he will often exercise this power. From the accustomed antecedents he will expect the accustomed consequents, exactly as in after life; since this anticipation, which is independent of all reasoning, seems to flow from a law of our physical being. Certain series of feelings, then, begin and end in uniform order; the anticipation of which is fulfilled as often as he does not will to suspend them. At last, however, they are suspended, without any will on his part, when some external substance has been placed in his hand. He expected the whole of the accustomed series: but the place of a portion of it is now supplied by another feeling; and since all of which he was conscious in himself at the moment preceding the interruption, was exactly the same as in the many former instances when the regular sequence took place, he ascribes the feeling of resistance to something that is foreign to him. There is something, then, which is not himself something that represents a number of concurring lengths something that gives rise to the feeling of resistance; and we have thus, however obscure they may be as first conceived by him, the rude elements, which afterwards become more distinct in his no

tion of a system of external things. Matter is that which is without us which has parts which resists our effort to compress

it."

Thus he thinks that our notion of space is entirely founded upon a series of successive feelings experienced in bending the muscles, and that the notion so formed is afterwards transferred to sensations received through the medium of other organs, and accompanies them only as an acquired perception. He conceives that the optic nerve receives only the sensation of colourthat we do not originally perceive colour spread out in particular figures, but that we ascribe extension to colour in consequence of the series of muscular sensations experienced in moving the eye along the parts of a figure. In VOL. VII.

this hypothesis there is far more originality and invention shewn than in subject. In so far as regards the perany former theory concerning the same ception of figure by sight, it is, however, so revolting to our natural feelings or original impressions, as almost to preclude serious belief. We are irresistibly led to attribute to colour the same connexion with the perception of space, as its cause really has with space in the external world. The muscular sensations experienced in moving the eye may remind us of succession and change in altering the sphere of vision; but the relations of parts in a simple figure appear to be perceived instantaneously; nor perhaps, if the figure occupies but a small space in the sphere of vision, does the perception of the relations of its parts employ any movement of the eye. A series of muscular changes of sensation may be conceived to produce something like the feeling of linear progression; but the proportions of a figure lengthways and breadthways (which, even when irregular, are often perceived instantane ously with the utmost distinctness) would require to be represented by a very great number of different trains of muscular sensations, corresponding to the different positions of the points that were compared in the figure-a number indeed far greater than the mind seems capable of recollecting or arranging into one conception. Whatcribed to Dr Brown's notions concernever degree of probability may be asing perception, they are, beyond dispute, an important addition to what had previously been thought upon the subject. The qualities of space have always proved the most fertile source of difficulties to those who have specu lated upon perception. Former metaphysicians saw that the perception of them accompanied some sensations, but that the qualities of space were not themselves the causes of sensation; while all other objects of perception were causes of sensation. Dr Brown has endeavoured to shew that nothing is made known to us by the senses but objects that are causes of sensation; and that space is not an object of present perception, but of memory, our notions of it being founded entirely upon the succession of particulars in remembered trains of sensations.

Having, in the first part of the vo lume, discussed the external affections I