A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (Vol. 1 of 2)
John Stuart Mill · en
§ 11. In a somewhat similar position are two other sorts of relation,
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, although 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. 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.