James Mill

“ From this, it necessarily follows, that between none of our ideas is the association more intimate and intense, than between antecedent and consequent, in the order of events. Whenever we perceive an event, the mind instantly flies to its antecedent. I hear words in the street; event: some one, of course, is making them; antecedent. My house is broken, and my goods are gone; event: a thief has taken them; antecedent. This is that remarkable case of association, in which the combination is inseparable; a case of so much importance in explaining some of the more mysterious phenomena of thought. ”

“ As regards Sensation, we are incessantly solicited by a variety of agencies, outward and inward. We may be roused into consciousness, through the eye, through the ear, through the touch, through the taste, through the smell, through the organic sensibilities; and all this at the same time with the rise of emotions or ideas through purely mental causes. Nay more; even under a single sense, we may have a plurality of distinguishable impressions. Sight is the greatest example. Hearing is little inferior; witness the complexity of a band of music, and the tumult of a stormy sea. ”

“ The word Mankind is the name of another of those remarkable associations, by which countless ideas are so combined, that their individuality is sunk, and the aggregate is, to appearance, one idea.
The Idea Mankind, like the Idea Country, is not made up wholly of indifferent ideas. It has in it all the trains of pleasurable ideas which we associate, either with individuals, or with subdivisions, of the whole mass. ”

“ No one thinks it necessary to suppose an original and inherent love of money or of power; yet these are the objects of two of the strongest, most general, and most persistent passions of human nature; passions which often have quite as little reference to pleasure or pain, beyond the mere consciousness of possession, and are in that sense of the word quite as disinterested, as the moral feelings of the most virtuous human being. ”

“ When, instead of the word feeling, I use the word conscious, I do exactly the same thing, I merely use a tautological expression. To say I feel a sensation, is merely to say I feel a feeling; which is an impropriety of speech. And to say I am conscious of a feeling, is merely to say that I feel it. To have a feeling is to be conscious; and to be conscious is to have a feeling. ”

“ The beautiful is that which excites in us the emotion of beauty, a state of mind with which we are acquainted by experience. This state of mind has been successfully analysed, and shewn to consist of a train of pleasurable ideas, awakened in us by the beautiful object.
“But is it in this way only that we are concerned in moral acts? Do we value them for nothing, but as we value a picture, or a piece of music, for the pleasure of looking at them, or hearing them? Everybody knows the contrary. Acts are objects of importance to us, on account of their 317 consequences, and nothing else. ”

“ I can, according to the manner in which I direct my thoughts, see sunset either as the earth tilting above the sun, or as the sun dipping below the earth: in the same manner as when a railway train in motion passes another at rest, we are able, if we prevent our eyes from resting on any third object, to imagine the motion as being either in the one train or in the other. How, then, can it be said that there is an inseparable association of sunset with the one mode of representation, and a consequent inability to associate it with the other? ”

“ It is not individual qualities that we ever have occasion to predicate. It is true that the qualities of an object are only the various ways in which we or other minds are affected by it, and these affections are not the same in different objects, except in the sense in which the word same stands for exact similarity. But we never have occasion to predicate of an object the individual and instantaneous impressions which it produces in us. The only meaning of predicating a quality at all, is to affirm a resemblance. ”

“ The term conception, we have seen, applies not only to those combinations of ideas, which we call the ideas of external objects, but to those combinations which the mind makes for its own purposes.
It thus appears, that the word CONCEPTION is a generical name, like CONSCIOUSNESS; but less comprehensive. We call ourselves conscious, when we have any sensation, or any idea. We say that we conceive, only when we have some complex idea. It remains to be inquired, whether by saying we conceive, or have a conception, we mean any thing whatsoever beside having an idea. ”

“ Now, although any original construction, selected and put together to gratify an Æsthetic emotion, is a work of Imagination, yet imagination is not exhausted by fine art. The picture that an angry man draws of his enemy would be called an effort of imagination, but not a work of fine art. All our emotions,—Wonder, Fear, Love, Anger, Vanity—determine the constructions of the intellect, when called into active exercise; and for these constructions we have no other name but imagination, whether they may, or may not give pleasure as works of art. ”

“ When the word man calls up the ideas of an indefinite number of individuals, not only of all those to whom I have individually given the name, but of all those to whom I have in imagination given it, or imagine it will ever be given, and forms all those ideas into one,—it is evidently a very complex idea, and therefore indistinct; and this indistinctness has doubtless been the main cause of the mystery which has appeared to belong to it. That this however is the process, is an inevitable result of the laws of association. ”

“ The essence of Attention is that the sensation or thought is, as it were, magnified, or strengthened: it becomes more intense as a whole, and at the same time more distinct and definite in its various parts, like a visible object when a stronger light is thrown upon it: while all other sensations or thoughts which do or which might present themselves at the same moment are blunted and dimmed, or altogether excluded. This heightening of the feeling we may call, if we please, heightening the consciousness of the feeling ”

“ We can command the smell of a rose, the hearing of a bell, the sight of a tree, the sensation of heat or of cold, and so on. Over the occasions of our ideas we have little or no direct power. Our ideas come and go. There is a perpetual train of them, one succeeding another; but we cannot will any link in that chain of ideas; each link is determined by the foregoing; and every man knows, how impossible 132 it is, by mere willing, to make such a train as he desires. ”

“ By an inevitable result of the laws of association, it is impossible to form an idea of a man in the abstract; the class-attributes are always represented in the mind as part of an image of an individual, either remembered or imagined; this individual may vary from time to time, and several images of individuals may present themselves either alternatively or in succession: but is it necessary that the name should recal images of all the men I ever knew or imagined, or even all of whom I retain a remembrance? In no person who has seen or known many men, can this be the case. ”

“ But the Memory and Imagination of successions present to us nothing but the successions themselves. If then the Memory and Imagination of successions, give us the idea of Time, the idea of Time can only be some part or the whole of the idea of the successions.
“The World has been likened to a variety of Things, but it appears to resemble no one more than some moving spectacle (such as a procession or a triumph) that abounds in every part with splendid objects, some of which are still departing, as fast as others make their appearance. ”

“ The means any man has of paying for the services of others, extends at most to some thousands; the means which some men have had of imposing their commands on other men, through fear, has extended to many millions.
Dignity is a word of much more vague signification, than Wealth, or Power. It is, therefore, much more difficult, to describe clearly its mode of operation.
Dignity, is commonly said to be that which procures us the respect of other men. But what is this respect? It is not a mere barren feeling in the mind of another man, regarded as wholly unconnected with his actions. ”

“ We can conceive ourselves, as endowed with smelling, and not enjoying any other faculty. In that case, we should have no idea of objects as seeable, as hearable, as touchable, or tasteable. We should have a train of smells; the smell at one time of the rose, at another of the violet, at another of carrion, and so on. The successive points of consciousness, composing our sentient being, would be mere smells. Our life would be a train of smells, and nothing more. Smell, and Life, would be two names for the same thing. ”

“ Wherever there is a general name there is a class: classification, and general names, are things exactly coextensive. It thus appears that, without classification, language would not fulfil its most important function. Had we no names but those of individuals, the names might serve as marks to bring those individuals to mind, but would not enable us to make a single assertion respecting them, except that one individual is not another. ”