Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/96

 Though I do not see my way out of the dilemma here stated, I think I have seen enough of the difficulties belonging to it to be able to reject the Hartleian hypothesis as directly incompatible with a fair and comprehensive view of the subject. First, it has been shewn above that every idea, or perception is communicated to all the parts of the brain, or to the whole sentient principle, whatever this is supposed to be. Or the same thing might be shewn from the nature of consciousness, consciousness being here and all along (where any particular stress is laid upon it) used in its etymological sense, as literally the same with conscientia, the knowing or perceiving many things by a simple act of the attention. That there is some faculty of this sort which opens a direct communication between our ideas, so that the same thinking principle is at the same time conscious of different impressions, and of their relations to each other, is what hardly any person who attends in the least to what passes in his own mind and is not the slave of a system will I should think deny. In other words, when any two ideas or parts of an idea (for there is no difference in this respect) are impressed at the same time on different parts of the brain, before these ideas can be perceived in connection as making parts of a whole, or can be accompanied with a consciousness of each other's existence, we must suppose them mutually to affect the seats of action belonging to each other, or else to be united in some common principle of thought, the same comparing power being exerted upon both. Without supposing their distinct impressions thus to meet in the same point, it seems a thing impossible to conceive how any comparison can take place between different impressions existing at the same time, or between our past and present impressions, or ever to explain what is meant by saying I perceive such and such objects, I remem-