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ry new scene in nature, and every new combination of events have their appropriate results in the mind, it will be readily conjectured, that this enumeration might be carried to a much greater extent. What has been said will serve to indicate some of the prominent sources for self-inquiry on this subject.

CHAPTER FOURTH.

RELATIVE SUGGESTION OR JUDGMENT.

§. 199. Of the susceptibility of perceiving or feeling relations. It is not inconsistent with the usage of our language to say, that the mind brings its thoughts together, and places them side by side, and compares them. Such are nearly the expressions of Mr. Locke, who speaks of the mind's bringing one thing to and setting it by another, and carrying its view from one to the other. And such is the imperfect nature of all arbitrary signs, that this phraseology will probably continue to be employed, although without some attention it will be likely to lead into error. Such expressions are evidently of material origin, and cannot be rightly interpreted, in their application to the mind, without taking that circumstance into consideration. When it is said, that our thoughts are brought together, that they are placed side by side and the like, probably nothing more can be meant than this, that they are immediately successive to each other. And when it is further said, that we compare them, the meaning is, that we perceive or feel their relation to each other in certain respects.

The mind, therefore, has an original susceptibility or power, corresponding to this result; in other words, by which this result is brought about; which is sometimes known as its power of RELATIVE SUGGESTION, and at other times, the same thing is expressed by the term JUDGMENT, although the

latter term is sometimes employed with other shades of meaning."With the susceptibility of Relative Suggestion, (says Dr. Brown, Lect. 51,) the faculty of judgment, as that term is commonly employed, may be considered as nearly synonymous; and I have accordingly used it as synonymous in treating of the different relations that have come under our review." Degerando, in his treatise on the Origin of Human Knowledge, Pr. II, Chap. 2d, has a remark nearly to the same effect. "Le judgment nous fournit de nombreux secours; combien d'idées de relation n'avons nous pas ? Le judgment seul peut, en comparant les objets, nous en faire decouvrir les rapports."

We arrive here, therefore, at an ultimate fact in our mental nature; in other words we reach a principle so thoroughly elementary that it cannot be resolved into any other. The human intellect is so made, so constituted, that, when it perceives different objects together, or has immediately successive conceptions of any absent objects of perception, their mutual relations are immediately felt by it. It considers them as equal or unequal, like or unlike, as being the same or different in respect to place and time, as having the same or different causes and ends, and in various other respects.

§. 200. Occasions on which feelings of relation may arise.

The occasions, on which feelings of relation may arise, are almost innumerable. It would certainly be no easy task to specify them all. Any of the ideas, which the mind is able to frame, may either directly, or indirectly, lay the foundation of other ideas of relation, since they may in general be compared together; or if they cannot themselves be readily placed side by side, may be made the means of bringing others into comparison. But those ideas, which are of an external origin, are representative of objects and their qualities; and hence we may speak of the relations of things, no less than of the relations of thought. And such relations are every where discoverable.

We behold the flowers of the field, and one is fairer than another; we hear many voices, and one is louder or softer than another; we taste the fruits of the earth, and one flavor is more pleasant than another. But these differences of

sound and brightness and taste could never be known to us without the power of perceiving relations. Again, we see a fellow being; and as we make him the subject of our thoughts, we at first think of him only as a man. But then he may at the same time be a father, a brother, a son, a citizen, a legislator; these terms express ideas of relation.

§. 201. Of the use of correlative terms.

Correlative terms, are such terms, as are used to express corresponding ideas of relation. They suggest the relations with great readiness, and by means of them the mind can be more steadily, and longer, and with less pain, fixed upon the ideas, of which they are expressive. The words father and son, legislator and constituent, brother and sister, husband and wife, and others of this class, as soon as they are named, at once carry our thoughts beyond the persons who are the subjects of these relations, to the relations themselves. Wherever, therefore, there are correlative terms, the relations may be expected to be clear to the mind.

The word, CITIZEN, is a relative term, but there being no correlative word, expressing a precisely corresponding relation, we find it more difficult to form a ready conception of the thing signified, than of SUBJECT, which has the correlatives, ruler and governor. It is hardly necessary to remind any one, that the relation is something different from the things related. The relations are often changing, while the subjects of them remain the same. A person may sustain the relation and the name of a father to-day; but the inroads of death may on the morrow deprive him of his offspring, and thus terminate that character, which the relative term, father, expresses.

§. 202. Of the great number of our ideas of relation,

Mr. Locke has somewhere made a remark to this effect, that it would make a volume to describe all sorts of relations, and with good reason; since they are as numerous, as that almost endless variety of respects, in which all our ideas and all other subjects of knowledge may be compared together. With the single idea of man how many others are connected in consequence of the various relations, which he sustains.

He may, at one and the same time, be a father, brother, son, brother-in-law, son-in-law, husband, friend, enemy, subject, general, judge, patron, townsman, servant, master, possessor, superior, inferior, greater, smaller, older, younger, wiser, contemporary, like, unlike, together with sustaining a variety of other relations too numerous to be mentioned.

Such is the number of relations, that it is found difficult to reduce them to classes; and probably no classification of them, which has been hitherto proposed, exhausts them in their full extent. The most of those, which it will be necessary to notice, may be brought into the seven classes of relations of IDENTITY and DIVERSITY, of DEGREE, of PROPORTION, of PLACE, of TIME, of POSSESSION, and of CAUSE and EFFECT.

§. 203. Of relations of identity and diversity.

The first class of ideas of relation, which we shall proceed to consider, are those of IDENTITY and DIVERSITY. Such is the nature of our minds, that no two objects can be placed before us essentially unlike, without our having a perception of this difference. When, on the other hand, there is an actual sameness in objects contemplated by us, the mind perceives or is sensible of their identity. It is not meant by this, that we are never liable to mistake; that the mind never confounds what is different, nor separates what is the same; our object here is merely to state the general fact.

We

Two pieces of paper, for instance, are placed before us, the one white, and the other red; and we at once perceive, without the delay of resorting to other objects and bringing them into comparison, that the colors are not the same. immediately and necessarily perceive a difference between a square and a circle, between a triangle and a parallelogram, between the river and the rude cliff that overhangs it, the flower and the turf from which it springs, the house and the neighboring hill, the horse and his rider.

Whatever may be the appearance of this elementary perception at first sight, it is undoubtedly one of great practical importance. It has its place in all forms of reasoning, as the train of argument proceeds from step to step; and in Demonstrative reasoning in particular, it is evident, that without it

we should be unable to combine together the plainest propositions.

§. 204. Of axioms in connection with relations of identity and diversity. The remark at the close of the last section will be better understood, on a little further explanation. The statement was, that without the relative perceptions or suggestions of IDENTITY and DIVERSITY, (otherwise denominated perceptions of AGREEMENT and DISAGREEMENT,) we should be incapable of demonstrative reasoning. Such reasoning, as is well known, is carried on by the help of axioms. And accordingly we generally find a number of axioms placed at the head of geometrical treatises, and of other treatises involving geometrical principles, such as the following; Things equal to the same are equal to one another; If equals be added to equals, the wholes are equal; The whole is greater than a part; Things, which are double of the same, are equal to one another; Things, which are halves of the same, are equal to one another; Magnitudes, which coincide with one another, (that is, which exactly fill the same space,) are equal to one another, &c.

It will be admitted, (and we shall see it perhaps more clearly, when we again have occasion to revert to this subject,) that demonstrative reasoning implies a constant reference to such axioms; that its advancement through the successive series of propositions is by means of their aid. But it is too evident to require remark, that these axioms are nothing more than particular instances of the relative suggestion of identity and diversity expressed in words. It is the perceptions of agreement and disagreement, actually arising in the mind, and not the mere verbal expression of them, which form the true cement and bond of the successive links, and impart consistency and strength to the whole chain.

§. 205. (II.) Relations of degree and names expressive of them.

Another class of those intellectual perceptions, which are to be ascribed to the Judgment, or what we term more explicitly the power of RELATIVE SUGGESTION, may properly enough be named perceptions of relations of Degree. Such perceptions of relation are found to exist in respect to all such objects, as are capable of being considered as composed of

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