relation, by which the feeling is universalised, is only that of resemblance between properties supposed to exist independently of it. The ‘particular triangle,’ reducible to feelings of touch, has its triangularity (we must suppose) simply as a feeling. It is only the resemblance between the triangularity in this and other figures--not the triangularity itself--that is a relation, and, as a relation, not felt but considered; or in Berkeley’s language, something of which we have not properly an ‘idea’ but a ‘notion.’ [3] [1] See ‘Principles of Human Knowledge,’ sec. 89. (2nd edit.) [2] See below, paragraph 298. [3] ‘Principles of Human Knowledge,’ Ibid. This perhaps is the best place for saying that it is not from any want of respect for Dr. Stirling that I habitually use ‘notion’ in the loose popular way which he counts ‘barbarous,’ but because the barbarism is so prevalent that it seems best to submit to it, and to use ‘conception’ as the equivalent of the German ‘Begriff.’ But he fancies that each idea has a positive nature apart from relation. 184. But though Berkeley only renders explicit the difficulties implicit in Locke’s doctrine of ideas, that is itself a great step taken towards disposing of them. Once let the equivocation between sensible qualities and sensations be got rid of--once let it be admitted that the triangle in its absolute nature, as opposed to the triangle considered, is merely a feeling, and that relations are not feelings or felt--and the question must soon arise, What in the absence of all relation remains to be the absolute nature of the triangle? It is a question which ultimately admits of but one answer. The triangularity of the given single figure must be allowed to be just as much a relation as the resemblance, consisting in triangularity, between it and other figures; and if a relation, then not properly felt, but understood. The ‘particular’ triangle, if by that is meant the triangle as subject of a singular proposition, is no more ‘particular in time,’ no more constituted by the occurrence of a feeling, than is the triangle as subject of a general proposition. It really exists as constituted by relation, and therefore only as ‘considered’ or understood. In its existence, as in the consideration of it, the relations indicated by the terms ‘equilateral, equicrural and scalene,’ presuppose the relation of triangularity, not it them; and for that reason it can be considered apart from them, though not they apart from it, without any breach between that which is considered and that which really exists. Thus, too, it becomes explicable that a single experiment should warrant a universal affirmation; that the mathematician, having once found as the result of a certain comparison of magnitudes that the square on the hypothenuse is equal to the square on the sides, without waiting for repeated experience at once substitutes for the singular proposition, which states his discovery, a general one. If the