A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. I
John Stuart Mill · en
§ 11. In a somewhat similar position are two other sorts of relations,
Likeness and Unlikeness. I have two sensations; we will suppose them to
be simple ones; two sensations of white, or one sensation of white and
another of black. I call the first two sensations _like_; the last two
_unlike_. What is the fact or phenomenon constituting the _fundamentum_
of this relation? The two sensations first, and then what we call a
feeling of resemblance, or of want of resemblance. Let us confine
ourselves to the former case. Resemblance is evidently a feeling; a
state of the consciousness of the observer. Whether the feeling of the
resemblance of the two colours be a third state of consciousness, which
I have _after_ having the two sensations of colour, or whether (like the
feeling of their succession) it is involved in the sensations
themselves, may be a matter of discussion. But in either case, these
feelings of resemblance, and of its opposite dissimilarity, are parts of
our nature; and parts so far from being capable of analysis, that they
are presupposed in every attempt to analyse any of our other feelings.
Likeness and unlikeness, therefore, as well as antecedence, sequence,
and simultaneousness, must stand apart among relations, as things _sui
generis_. They are attributes grounded on facts, that is, on states of
consciousness, but on states which are peculiar, unresolvable, and
inexplicable.
But, though likeness or unlikeness cannot be resolved into anything
else, complex cases of likeness or unlikeness can be resolved into
simpler ones. When we say of two things which consist of parts, that
they are like one another, the likeness of the wholes does admit of
analysis; it is compounded of likenesses between the various parts
respectively, and of likeness in their arrangement. Of how vast a
variety of resemblances of parts must that resemblance be composed,
which induces us to say that a portrait, or a landscape, is like its
original. If one person mimics another with any success, of how many
simple likenesses must the general or complex likeness be compounded:
likeness in a succession of bodily postures; likeness in voice, or in
the accents and intonations of the voice; likeness in the choice of
words, and in the thoughts or sentiments expressed, whether by word,
countenance, or gesture.