Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/278

Rh They are limited to sensations, and each sensation being only and exactly what it is, in other words, being what we call an absolute singular, the lower animals never rise above singulars. They are, in truth, a mere series of sensations, which we suppose to be united in their persons, but which they (the animals) do not suppose to be either united or disunited, because such a supposition would imply the presence of a power very different from sensation, a power of reducing these different impressions to the unity of one consciousness, which power the animals have not, and of which I am now about to speak.

11. Let us now, in the second place, consider what the nature of thought is. Secondly, then, of thought. The characteristic of thought is exactly the reverse of that which I have described to you as the characteristic of sensation. Thought is contradistinguished from sensation in this, that the thought of a particular thing is never the thought of that particular thing only, but is always the thought of something else as well, of something more than that particular thing. So that we may say with truth, although the expression is somewhat paradoxical, that each thought is never exactly what it is. It is never exactly and literally and exclusively what it is, in the same way as each sensation is always exactly and literally and exclusively what it is. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the object of each thought is never