A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (Vol. 1 of 2)
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 very generally 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 confound them under that common head, 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 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 me warranted by a sound
philosophy.