ourselves. To find out this meaning, to ascertain what that is to which these epithets apply, we are thrown on our own resources, on our own meditations; and to these accordingly I now propose to have recourse.
9. Suppose that I am pricked or scratched with a pin. I feel a sensation, a sensation of pain. I feel this whether I will or not. I cannot help myself. Here I am necessitated and passive. The sensation is imposed upon me, is given to me, without my having had any hand in bringing it on. Suppose, now, that, besides feeling this sensation, I think it. Now, can any of you tell me wherein the distinction here stated consists, the distinction, viz., between feeling the pain and thinking the pain? That there is some distinction is obvious. But what it precisely amounts to, or wherein it lies, is not so obvious. I know very well that you must experience great difficulty in conceiving what the distinction can be between feeling a sensation—the pain, for example, occasioned by the prick of a pin—and thinking that sensation. The two, the feeling and the thought of it, are so inseparably blended, that it seems as if no analysis could divide them. The sensation of the pain seems so closely incorporated with the thought of the pain, the sensation, at least, seems to bring the thought along with it so instantaneously as its necessary sequent or adjunct, that the two seem to be not two, but only one. Hence philosophers, while they
