A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (Vol. 1 of 2)
John Stuart Mill · en
it does belong to it, unless it possessed unequivocally the properties of
which the class-name is scientifically significant.
There is still another exceptional case, in which, though the predicate is
a name of a class, yet in predicating it we affirm nothing but
resemblance, the class being founded not on resemblance in any given
particular, but on general unanalysable resemblance. The classes in
question are those into which our simple sensations, or other simple
feelings, are divided. Sensations of white, for instance, are classed
together, not because we can take them to pieces, and say they are alike
in this, and not alike in that, but because we feel them to be alike
altogether, though in different degrees. When, therefore, I say, The
colour I saw yesterday was a white colour, or, The sensation I feel is one
of tightness, in both cases the attribute I affirm of the colour or of the
other sensation is mere resemblance,—simple _likeness_ to sensations which
I have had before, and which have had those names bestowed upon them. The
names of feelings, like other concrete general names, are connotative; but
they connote a mere resemblance. When predicated of any individual
feeling, the information they convey is that of its likeness to the other
feelings which we have been accustomed to call by the same name. Thus much
may suffice in illustration of the kind of Propositions in which the
matter-of-fact asserted (or denied) is simple Resemblance.
Existence, Coexistence, Sequence, Causation, Resemblance: one or other of
these is asserted (or denied) in every proposition without exception. This
five-fold division is an exhaustive classification of matters-of-fact; of
all things that can be believed or tendered for belief; of all questions
that can be propounded, and all answers that can be returned to them.
Instead of Coexistence and Sequence, we shall sometimes say, for greater
particularity, Order in Place, and Order in Time: Order in Place being one
of the modes of coexistence, not necessary to be more particularly
analysed here; while the mere fact of coexistence, or simultaneousness,
may be classed, together with Sequence, under the head of Order in Time.