In 1829 Mr. Mill came before the public with his Analysis of the. Phenomena of the Human Mind, a work on which he bestowed more of the labor of thought than on any other cf his ])roductions, and on a subject of spe- cial interest to the theologian and the philosopher. In his work Mill has attempted to resolve all the powers of the human mind into a very small number of simple elements. Erom an examination of a number of the more complicated cases of consciousness, he arrives at the conclusion that they all resolve themselves into three simple elements— sensations, ideas, and the train of ideas. He thus explains what he means by the terms sensa- tions and ideas: "We have two classes of feeling: one, that which exists when the object of sense is present; another, that which exists after the object of sense has ceased to be present. The one class of feelings I call sensations, the other class of feelings I call ideas" (i, 41). He begins with the simpler phenomena, and thence pro- ceeds to the exposition of the more complex ones. " The feelings," he says, "which we have through the exter- nal senses are the most simple, at least the most famil- iar, of the mental phenomena. Hence the propriety of commencing with this class of our feelings" (.! na/ysis, i, 1). Accordingly he begins with sensation, under which head he ranges the feelings which we have by the five senses — smell, taste, hearing, touch, and sight ; the mus- cular sensations, and the sensations in the alimentary canal. He next treats of ideas, or, as he calls them, the images of sensation. He then comments on ideas put together or associated in trains, and of the order of their association and the causes of that order. He then treats of consciousness and conception, which ydiilosopliers, he says, have erroneously created into what they called powers of the mind ; whereas, he says, consciousness is merely a name applied to sensations, and to ideas wheth- er simple or complex — to all the feelings of our sentient nature : and conception a name applied only to ideas, and to ideas only in a state of combination, " Imagination," he says, " is the name of a train of ideas, I am said to have an imagination when I have a train of ideas. There is a gre^at diversity of trains. Not only has the same individual an endless varietj' of trains, but a differ- ent character belongs to the whole series of trains which pass through the minds of different individuals or classes of individuals. The different ])ursuits in which the sev- eral classes of men are engaged render particular trains of ideas more common to tliem than other trains. One man is a merchant, and trains respecting the goods in which he buys and those in which he sells are habitual in his mind. Another man is a lawyer, and ideas of clients and fees, and judges and witnesses, and legal in- struments and points of contestation, and the practice of his court, are habitiudly passing in his mind. Ideas of another kind occujiy tlie niiiul of the physician; of another kind still the mind of ilie warrior. The states- man is occujiied with a train different from that of any of the classes that have l)een mentioned, and one states- man with a very different train from another, according as his mind is running upon expedients wliich may serve the purpose of the day. or arrangement which may secure the happiiu'ss of the population from generation to generation. A peculiar character belongs to the train which habitually occupies the mind of the mathemati- cian. The mind of the metaphysician is also occupied by a train distinguished from that of other classes. And there is one man yet to be mentioned, the poet, the pe- ' culiarity of whose trains has been a subject of particular [ observation. To such a degree, indeed, have the trains ', of the poet been singled out for distinction, tliat the I word imagination, in a more restricted sense, is appro- priated to tliem. We do not call the trains of the law- yer, or the trains of the merchant, imagination. W'n do I not speak of them as imagining, when they are revolv-
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ing each the ideas which belong to his peculiar occupa- tion ; it is only to the poet that the epithet of imagina- tion is applied. His train, or trains analogous to his. are those which receive the name of imagination" (i, 179).
In some parts of his philosophy Mill has, we think, been led into error, by carrying his notion of association, as an explanation of these phenomena, too far. Thus, in the chapter on classification, after very ably showing how long men had been led away by mere jargon from the real nature and object of classification, he says: " IMan first becomes acquainted with individuals. He first names individuals. But individuals are innumera- ble, and he cannot have innumerable names. He must make one name serve for many individuals." Then, after allucUng to the case of " synchronous sensations so concreted by constant conjunction as to appear, though numerous, only one, of which the ideas of sensible ob- jects— a rose, a plough, a house, a ship — are examples," he thus proceeds : " It is easy to see wherein the present case agrees with and wherein it differs from those famil- iar cases. The word man, we shall say, is first applied to an individual; it is first associated with the idea of that individual, and acquires the power of calling up the idea of him ; it is next applied to another individual, and acquires the power of calling up the idea of him ; so of another, and another, till it has become associated with an indefinite number, and has acquired the power of calling up an indefinite number of those ideas indif- ferently. What happens ? It does call up an indefinite number of the ideas of individuals as often as it occurs ; and calling them up in close connection, it forms them into a species of complex idea" (i, 204). From this sim- ple basis he builds up with remarkable dexterity a com- prehensive system, all the errors or defects of which lie at the very threshold. His conclusions are inevitable, if his premises, his representation of the facts of con- sciousness, be accepted. Sensation, ideation, association, and naming are the elementary processes in his analy- sis, b}^ which he accounts for all the complex phenomena of the mind — for abstraction, memorj', judgment, ratioci- nation, belief, and the power of motives. He devotes the latter half of the second volume of his Analysis to the phenomena in which the sensations and ideas are to be considered as not merely existing, but also as exciting to action. He treats of pleasurable and painful sensa- tions, and of the causes of the pleasurable and painful sensations; then of ideas of the pleasurable and painful sensations, and of the causes of them. He treats of wealth, power, and dignity, and their contraries ; of our fellow-creatures, and of the objects called sublime and beautiful, and their contraries, contemplated as causes of our pleasures and pains. Chapter xxii is devoted to the subject of motives, and chapter xxiv to that of the will; chapter xxv (the last) to intention. Mr. Mill's exposition of all these phenomena is mainly grounded on the law of association, by which he means simply the fact that the order of occurrence among our ideas is tlie order of occurrence among our former sensations, of which those ideas are the copies.