=The 'Singling out' of Elements in a Compound.=--It is safe to lay it down as a fundamental principle that _any total impression made on the mind must be unanalyzable so long as its elements have never been experienced apart or in other combinations elsewhere_. The components of an absolutely changeless group of not-elsewhere-occurring attributes could never be discriminated. If all cold things were wet, and all wet things cold; if all hard things pricked our skin, and no other things did so: is it likely that we should discriminate between coldness and wetness, and hardness and pungency, respectively? If all liquids were transparent and no non-liquid were transparent, it would be long before we had separate names for liquidity and transparency. If heat were a function of position above the earth's surface, so that the higher a thing was the hotter it became, one word would serve for hot and high. We have, in fact, a number of sensations whose concomitants are invariably the same, and we find it, accordingly, impossible to analyze them out from the totals in which they are found. The contraction of the diaphragm and the expansion of the lungs, the shortening of certain muscles and the rotation of certain joints, are examples. We learn that the _causes_ of such groups of feelings are multiple, and therefore we frame theories about the composition of the feelings themselves, by 'fusion,' 'integration,' 'synthesis,' or what not. But by direct introspection no analysis of the feelings is ever made. A conspicuous case will come to view when we treat of the emotions. Every emotion has its 'expression,' of quick breathing, palpitating heart, flushed face, or the like. The expression gives rise to bodily feelings; and the emotion is thus necessarily and invariably accompanied by these bodily feelings. The consequence is that it is impossible to apprehend it as a spiritual state by itself, or to analyze it away from the lower feelings in question. It is in fact impossible to prove that it exists as a distinct psychic fact. The present writer strongly doubts that it does so exist. In general, then, if an object affects us simultaneously in a number of ways, _abcd_, we get a peculiar integral impression, which thereafter characterizes to our mind the individuality of that object, and becomes the sign of its presence; and which is only resolved into _a_, _b_, _c_, and _d_, respectively, by the aid of farther experiences. These we now may turn to consider.