Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/519

Rh sensational ethics has been disguised and obscured. All sensation then, I repeat, is individual and particular. By this I mean that each sensation is precisely the single sensation which it is, and any group or series of sensations is precisely that single group or series of sensations, and not anything more. A sensation has no general or indefinite compass. Hence no sensation, and no series of sensations, can ever carry the being who experiences them out of and beyond himself. He is tied down by sensation and confined exclusively to himself. Particular pleasures and pains are experienced, there the matter begins and ends; not a hair's-breadth beyond his own sentient states can the creature experiencing the sensations travel. His condition is one of utter and entire isolation. No sensations, transform them as we may, can ever transport a being beyond the limits of itself, nothing can do that but thought: and thought, as different from sensation, has no place in this psychology. If you are not quite satisfied with this statement, consider the matter in this way: I cannot feel your pleasures and your pains, nor can you feel mine. Each of us can only feel his own; and therefore if sensation be all in all it is absolutely impossible for us to pay the slightest heed to the pains and pleasures of one another. To do that we should require actually to experience each other's sensations. But this we cannot do. If I am wounded I feel pain, but you feel none; while if you are wounded you feel pain, but I don't. Your pain is to me absolutely