Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/283

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228
GREEK PHILOSOPHY.

for thought to be merely particular. A thought is never the thought merely of a particular object, but is always the thought of something more than this. The question, you will remember, with which we are at present engaged, is this: What is thought? what is it in itself? The answer is as I have given it to you, Thought is always the thought of something more than that, whatever it may be, which ostensibly occupies the mind. And further, the true and exact distinction between sensation and thought I conceive to be this. In feeling a sensation, what is really and truly felt is always that sensation merely, and is nothing more than that sensation. In thinking a sensation (or anything else, but at present I limit the statement to sensation), what is really and truly thought is never that sensation merely, but is always something more than that sensation. Such, in the briefest and clearest expression which I can give to it, is what I hold to be the fact in regard to the difference between sensation and thought.

14. I have said that in thinking the mind is always occupied with something more than that which is apparently and obviously before it. For example, in thinking a present sensation (keep, if you choose, to the pain occasioned by the scratch of a pin), in thinking this present sensation, the mind always thinks, and must think, something more than this sensation. Unless it does this, it does not think the sensation, it merely feels it. I conceive, then,