boo orders; those of co-existence and succession ;-the former of which order is to be considered by us in the first place.

The relations of this order, are either of objects believed by us to co-exist without, or of feelings that are considered by us as if co-existing in one simple state of mind.

Of the nature of this latter species of virtual, but not absolute co-existence, I have already spoken too often to require again to caution you against a mistake, into which, I must confess, that the terms which the poverty of our language obliges us to use, might of themselves very naturally lead you ;the mistake of supposing, that the most complex states of mind are not truly, in their very essence, as much one and indivisible, as those which we term simple-the complexity and seeming co-existence which they involve, being relative to our feeling only, not to their own absolute nature. I trust I need not repeat to you that, in itself, every notion, however seemingly complex, is, and must be, truly simple-being one state or affection, of one simple substance, mind. Our conception of a whole army, for example, is as truly this one mind existing in this one state, as our conception of any of the individuals that compose an army our notion of the abstract numbers, eight, four, two, as truly one feeling of the mind, as our notion of simple unity. But, by the very nature or original tendency of the mind, it is impossible for us not to regard the notion of eight as involving, or having the relation of equality to two of four, four of two, eight of one; and it is in consequence merely of this feeling of the virtual equivalence of one state of mind, which we therefore term complex, to many other states of mind, which we term simple, that we are able to perceive various relations of equality, or proportion, in the complex feeling which seems to us to embrace them all in one joint conception-not in consequence of any real co-existence of separate parts, in a feeling that is necessarily and essentially indivisible. It is, as I before stated to you, on this virtual complexity alone that the mathematical sciences are founded; since these are only forms of expressing the relations of proportion, which we feel of one seeming part of a complex conception, to other seeming parts of that complex conception, which appear to us as if mentally separable from the rest.

I proceed, then, now, to the consideration of the first of our classes of relations, those of which the subjects are regarded, without reference to time. To this order of real co-existence, as in matter, or of seeming co-existence, as in the complex phenomena of the mind, belong the relations of position, resemblance or difference, proportion, degree, comprehension. I am aware, that some of these might, by a little refinement of analysis, be made to coincide, that, for example, both proportion and degree might, by a little effort, be forced to find a place in that division which I have termed comprehension, or the relation of a whole to the separate parts included in it; but I am aware, at the same time, that this could not be done without an effort,-and an effort too, in some cases, of very subtile reasoning; and I prefer, therefore, the division which I have now made, as sufficiently distinct, for every purpose of arrangement.

I look at a number of men, as they stand together. If I merely perceived each individually, or the whole as one complex group, I should not have the feeling of relation; but I remark one, and I observe who is next

to him, who second, who third; who stands on the summit of a little eminence above all the rest; who on the declivity; who on the plain beneath; that is to say, my mind exists in the states which constitute the various feelings of the relation of position.

I see two flowers, of the same tints and form, in my path. I lift my eye to two cliffs of corresponding outline, that hang above my head. I look at a picture, and I think of the well known face which it represents;—or, I listen to a ballad, and seem almost to hear again some kindred melody, which it wakes in my remembrance. In each of these cases, if the relative suggestion take place, my mind, after existing in the states which constitute the perception or the remembrance of the two similar objects, exists inmediately in that state which constitutes the feeling of resemblance, as it exists in the state which constitutes the feeling of difference, when I think of certain circumstances, in which objects, though similar, perhaps, in other respects, have no correspondence or similarity whatever.

I think of the vertical angles formed by two straight lines, which cut one another; of the pairs of numbers, four and sixteen, five and twenty,-of the dimensions of the columns, and their bases and entablatures, in the different orders; and my mind exists immediately in that state, which constitutes the feeling of proportion.

I hear one voice, and then a voice which is louder. I take up some flowers, and smell first one, and then another, more or less fragrant. I remember many days of happiness, spent with friends who are far distant,and I look forward to the day of still greater happiness, when we are to meet again. In these instances of spontaneous comparison, my mind exists in that state, which constitutes the feeling of degree.

I consider a house, and its different apartments,-a tree, and its branches, and stems, and foliage,-a horse, and its limbs, and trunk, and head. My mind, which had existed in the states that constituted the simple perception of these objects, begins immediately to exist in that different state, which constitutes the feeling of the relation of parts to one comprehensive whole. In these varieties of relative suggestion, some one of which, as you will find, is all that constitutes each individual judgment, even in the longest series of our ratiocination,-nothing more is necessary to the suggestion, or rise of the feeling of relation, than the simple previous perceptions or conceptions, between the objects of which the relation is felt to subsist. When I look at two flowers, it is not necessary that I should have formed any intentional comparison. But the similitude strikes me, before any desire of discovering resemblance can have arisen. I may, indeed, resolve to trace, as far as I am able, the resemblances of particular objects, and may study them accordingly; but this very desire presupposes, in the mind, a capacity of relative suggestion, of which it avails itself, in the same manner, as the intention of climbing a hill, or traversing a meadow, implies the power of muscular motion as a part of our physical constitution.

The susceptibility of the feeling of relation, in considering objects together, is as easy to be conceived in the mind, as its primary susceptibility of sensation, when these objects were originally perceived, whether separately or together; and, if nothing had before been written on the subject, I might very safely leave you to trace, for yourselves, the modifications of relative suggestion, in all the simple or consecutive judgments which we form;-but so much mystery has been supposed to hang about it; and the art of logic,

=which should consist only in the developement of this simple tendency of suggestion, has rendered so obscure, what would have been very clear, but for the labour which has been employed in striving to make it clear, that it will be necessary to dwell a little longer on these separate tribes of relations, at least on the most important tribes of them, not so much for the purpose of showing what they are, as to show what they are not.

The first species of relation, to which I am to direct your particular attention, is that of resemblance.

When, in considering the relation of resemblance, we think only of such obvious suggestions, as those by which we feel the similarity of one mountain or lake, to another mountain or lake, or of a picture to the living features that seem in it almost to have a second life, we regard it merely as a source of additional pleasure to the mind, which, in moments that might otherwise be listless and unoccupied, is delighted and busied with a new order of feelings. Even this advantage of the relation, slight as it is, when compared with other more important advantages of it, is not to be regarded as of little value. I need not say, of how much pleasure the imitative arts, that are founded on this relation, are the source. In the most closely imitative of them all, that which gives to us the very forms of those, whose works of genius, or of virtue, have commanded or won our admiration, and transmits them from age to age, as if not life merely, but immortality, flowed in the colours of the artist's pencil; or, to speak of its still happier use, which preserves to us the lineaments of those whom we love, when separated from us either by distance or the tomb,-how many of the feelings which we should regret most to lose, would be lost but for this delightful art,-feelings that ennoble us, by giving us the wish to imitate what was noble in the moral hero or sage, on whom we gaze, or that comfort us, by the imaginary presence of those whose affection is the only thing that is dearer to us, than even our admiration of heroism and wisdom. The value of painting will, indeed, best be felt by those who have lost, by death, a parent or much-loved friend, and who feel that they would not have lost every thing, if some pictured memorial had still remained.

VOL. I.

Then, for a beam of joy, to light

In memory's sad and wakeful eye;
Or banish, from the noon of night,
Her dreams of deeper agony.

Shall song its witching cadence roll?
Yea, even the tenderest air repeat,
That breath'd when soul was knit to soul,
And heart to heart responsive beat.

What visions wake-to charm-to melt!
The lost, the lov'd, the dead are near

O hush that strain, too deeply felt!
And cease that solace, too severe !

But thou, serenely silent art!

By Heaven and Love was taught to lend
A milder solace to the heart-

The sacred image of a friend.

No spectre forms of pleasure fled

Thy softening sweetning tints restore;
For thou canst give us back the dead,
Even in the loveliest looks they wore
- 58

Campbell

In the wide variety of nature, how readily do we catch the resemblance of object to object, and scene to scene. With what pleasure do those, who have been long separated from the land of their youth, trace the slightest similarity to that familiar landscape which they never can forget! In reading the narratives of voyages of discovery, there is something which appears to me almost pathetic, in the very names given by the discoverers, to the islands, or parts of islands, or continents, which they have been the first to explore. We feel how strong is that omnipresent affection, which, in spaces that have never been traversed before, at the widest distance which the limits of the globe admit, still binds to the land which gave them birth, even those to whom their country can scarcely be said to be their home, so much as the ocean which divides them from it. It is some rock, or river, or bay, or promontory of his native shore, that, before he has given a name to the rock, or river, or bay, or promontory which he sees, has become present to the sailor's eye, and made the most dreary waste of savage sterility seem, for the moment, a part of his own populous soil of cultivation and busy happi

ness.

Of the influence of this suggestion on our complex emotion of beauty, I shall have an opportunity of speaking afterwards. At present it is only as a mere physical fact, illustrative of the peculiar mental susceptibility which we are considering, that I remind you of the pleasure which we feel in every similarity perceived by us, in new scenes and forms, to those with which we have been intimately and happily familiar.

These immediate effects of the feeling of obvious resemblance, however, delightful as they may be, arc, in their permanent effects, unimportant, when compared with the results of resemblances of a more abstract kind,-the resemblances to which we owe all classification, and, consequently, every thing which is valuable in language.

That classification is founded on the relation of similarity of some sort, in the objects classed together, and could not have been formed, if the mind, in addition to its primary powers of external sense, had not possessed that secondary power, by which it invests with certain relations the objects which it perceives, is most evident. All which is strictly sensitive in the mind might have been the same as now; and the perception of a sheep might have succeeded, one thousand times, the perception of a horse, without suggesting the notion, which leads us to form the general term quadruped, or animal, inclusive of both; for the relation is truly no part of the object perceived by us, and classed as relative and correlative, each of which would be precisely the same, in every quality which it possesses, and in every feeling which it directly excites, though the others, with which it may be classed. had no existence. It is from the laws of the mind which considers them, that the relation is derived,-not from the laws or direct qualities of the objects considered. But for our susceptibilities of those affections or states of the mind, which constitute the feeling of similarity, all objects would have been to us, in the scholastic sense of the phrase, things singular, and all language, consequently, nothing more than the expression of individual existence. Such a language, it is very evident, would be of little service, in any respect, and of no aid to the memory, which it would oppress rather than relieve. It is the use of general terms, that is to say, of terms founded on the feeling of resemblance, which alone gives to language its power,-enabling us to condense, in a single word, the innumerable objects, which, if we attempt

ed to grasp them all individually in our conception, we snould be as little able to comprehend, as to gather all the masses of all the planets in the narrow concavity of that hand which a few particles are sufficient to fill, and which soon sinks oppressed with the weight of the few particles that fill it.

That man can reason, without language of any kind, and consequently without general terms,-though the opposite opinion is maintained by many very eminent philosophers,-seems to me not to admit of any reasonable doubt, or, if it required any proof, to be sufficiently shown, by the very invention of the language which involves these general terms, and still more sensibly by the conduct of the uninstructed deaf and dumb,-to which also, the evident marks of reasoning in the other animals,-of reasoning which Í cannot but think as unquestionable as the instincts that mingle with it,-may be said to furnish a very striking additional argument from analogy. But it is not less certain, that, without general terms, reasoning must be very imperfect, and scarcely worthy of the name, when compared with that noble power which language has rendered it. The art of definition,--which is merely the art of fixing, in a single word or phrase, the particular circumstance of agreement of various individual objects, which, in consequence of this feeling of relation, we have chosen to class together, gives us certain fixed points of reference, both for ourselves and others, without which, it would be impossible for us to know the progress which we have made,-impossible to remember accurately the results even of a single reasoning, and to apply them with profit to future analysis. Nor would knowledge be vague only, it would, but for general terms, be as incommunicable as vague; for it must be remembered, that such terms form almost the whole of the great medium by which we communicate with each other. "Grammarians," says Dr. Reid, "have reduced all words to eight or nine classes, which are called parts of speech. Of these there is only one, to wit, that of nouns, wherein proper names are found. All pronouns, verbs, participles, adverbs, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections, are general words. Of nouns, all adjectives are general words, and the greater part of substantives. Every substantive that has a plural number, is a general word; for no proper name can have a plural number, because it signifies only one individual. In all the fifteen books of Euclid's Elements," he continues, "there is not one word that is not general; and the same may be said of many large volumes.”*

In the account which Swift gives of his Academy of Projectors in Lagado, he mentions one project for making things supply the place of language; and he speaks only of the difficulty of carrying about all the things necessary for discourse, which would be by far the least evil of this species of eloquence; since all the things of the universe, even though they could be carried about as commodiously as a watch or a snuff-box, could not supply the place of language, which expresses chiefly the relations of things, and which, even when it expresses things themselves, is of no use but as expressing or implying those relations, which they bear to us or to each other.

"There was a scheme," he says, "for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever, and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health as well as brevity. For it is plain, that every word we speak is, in some degree, a diminution of our lungs by corrosion, and, consequently, contributes to the

* Reid on the Intellectual Powers, Essay V. o. H