Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/295

bond, not free; each of them has no range beyond itself. It is quite otherwise with the thought of a sensation. The thought of a sensation is not limited to that sensation. I mean that the very first time, and in the very first instant, in which a sensation is thought, the thought is not limited to that sensation; if it were limited to it, it would be mere sensation, not thought. It takes in something more, it has a range, it extends to other sensations as well. Thought thus disengages itself from the particular sensation, it puts a negative upon it, it in a manner denies that the sensation is it, the thought; it starts away from the sensation, and brings down upon it a universal, a conception which embraces other possible sensations as well. Instead of saying that thought disengages itself, from the particular sensation, it would be more correct to say that this disengagement is itself thought. There is not, first of all, the thought of the sensation and then the disengagement of the thought from the sensation, and its extension to other instances of the same. No; the process is better described by saying that the disengagement, the disenthralment from the sensation, is itself the thought of the sensation. The two are identical. The thought does not precede the disengagement, nor does the disengagement precede the thought: but the thought is the disengagement and the disengagement is the thought. So that we may say of thought that it is a mental disengagement from every particular sensation, a mental refusal to be