A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. I
John Stuart Mill · en
After Feelings we proceeded to Substances. These are either Bodies or
Minds. Without entering into the grounds of the metaphysical doubts
which have been raised concerning the existence of Matter and Mind as
objective realities, we stated as sufficient for us the conclusion in
which the best thinkers are now for the most part agreed, that all we
can know of Matter is the sensations which it gives us, and the order of
occurrence of those sensations; and that while the substance Body is the
unknown cause of our sensations, the substance Mind is the unknown
recipient.
The only remaining class of Nameable Things is Attributes; and these are
of three kinds, Quality, Relation, and Quantity. Qualities, like
substances, are known to us no otherwise than by the sensations or other
states of consciousness which they excite: and while, in compliance with
common usage, we have continued to speak of them as a distinct class of
Things, we showed that in predicating them no one means to predicate
anything but those sensations or states of consciousness, on which they
may be said to be grounded, and by which alone they can be defined or
described. Relations, except the simple cases of likeness and
unlikeness, succession and simultaneity, are similarly grounded on some
fact or phenomenon, that is, on some series of sensations or states of
consciousness, more or less complicated. The third species of Attribute,
Quantity, is also manifestly grounded on something in our sensations or
states of feeling, since there is an indubitable difference in the
sensations excited by a larger and a smaller bulk, or by a greater or a
less degree of intensity, in any object of sense or of consciousness.
All attributes, therefore, are to us nothing but either our sensations
and other states of feeling, or something inextricably involved
therein; and to this even the peculiar and simple relations just
adverted to are not exceptions. Those peculiar relations, however, are
so important, and, even if they might in strictness be classed among
states of consciousness, are so fundamentally distinct from any other of
those states, that it would be a vain subtlety to bring them under that
common description, and it is necessary that they should be classed
apart.
As the result, therefore, of our analysis, we obtain the following as an
enumeration and classification of all Nameable Things:--
1st. Feelings, or States of Consciousness.
2nd. The Minds which experience those feelings.
3rd. The Bodies, or external objects, which excite certain of those
feelings, together with the powers or properties whereby they excite
them; these last being included rather in compliance with common
opinion, and because their existence is taken for granted in the common
language from which I cannot prudently deviate, than because the
recognition of such powers or properties as real existences appears to
be warranted by a sound philosophy.