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accordingly used it as synonymous in treating of the dif ferent relations that have come under our review." Degerando, in his treatise on the Origin of Human Knowledge, pt. ii., chap. ii., 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, nour 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.

§ 201. 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 everywhere 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 flavour 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.

§ 202. 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.

203. 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 DIVERTSIY, of DEGREE, of PROPORTION, OF PLACE, of TIME, of POSSESSION, and of CAUSE and

EFFECT.

§ 204. 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.

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 colours are not the same. We 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 neighbouring 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.

§ 205. Of axioms in connexion 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.

§ 206. (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 t more explicitly the power of RELATIVE SUGGEST properly enough be named perceptions of r VOL. I-Z

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Degree. Such perceptions of relation are found to exist in respect to all such objects as are capable of being considered as composed of parts, and as susceptible, in some respects, of different degrees.-We look, for instance, at two men; they are both tall; but we at once perceive and assert that one is taller than the other. We taste two apples; they are both sweet; but we say that one is sweeter than another. That is to say, we discover, in addition to the mere perception of the man and the apple, a relation, a difference in the objects in certain respects.

There are terms in all languages employed in the expression of such relations. In English, a reference to the particular relation is often combined in the same term which expresses the quality. All the words of the comparative and superlative degrees, formed by merely altering the termination of the positive, are of this description, as whiter, sweeter, wiser, larger, smaller, nobler, kinder, truest, falsest, holiest, and a multitude of others. In other cases (and probably the greater number), the epithet expressive of the quality is combined with the adverbs more and most, less and least. But certainly we should not use such terms if we were not possessed of the power of relative suggestion. We should ever be unable to say of one apple that it is sweeter than another, or of one man that he is taller than another, without considering them in certain definite respects, and without perceiving certain relations. So that, if we had no knowledge of any other than relations of Degree, we should abundantly see the importance of the mental susceptibility under review, considered as a source of words, and of grammatical forms in language.

§ 207. Relations of degree in adjectives of the positive form.

Although relations of degree are discoverable more frequently in comparative and superlative adjectives than anywhere else, they may sometimes be detected also in abstract terms which have the appearance of being entirely positive, and not unfrequently in adjectives of the positive form.-Let it be considered, as one instance among many others, what we mean when we say of a person, He is an AGED man. Although the epithet has

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