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Essays on the powers of the human mind (1827)
Essays on the powers of the human mind - 1827 Author:Thomas Reid Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: perceive them by touch. They are external things, and that act of the mind by which we feel them, is easily distinguished from the objects felt : Secondly, The w... more »ordfee/ing is used to signify the same thing as sensation, which we have just now explained ; and, in this sense, it has no object ; the feeling and the thing felt are one and the same. Perhaps betwixt feeling taken in this last sense, and sensation, there may be this small difference, that sensation is most commonly used to signify those feelings which we have by our external senses and bodily appetites, and all our bodily pains and pleasures. But there are feelings of a nobler nature accompanying our affections, our moral judgments, and our determinations in matters of taste, to which the word sensation is less properly applied. I have premised these observations on the meaning of certain words that frequently occur in treating of this subject, for two reasons.jírí/, That I may be the better understood when I use them ; and, secondly, That those who would make any progress in this branch of science may accustom themselves to attend very carefully to the meaning of words that are used in it. They may be assured of this, that the ambiguity of words, and the vague and improper application of them, have thrown more darkness upon this subject, than the subtilty and intricacy of things. When we use common words, we ought to use them in the sense in vhich they are most commonly used by the best and purest writers in the language ; and, when we have occasion to enlarge or restrict the meaning of a common word, or give it more precision than it has in common language, the reader ought to have warning of this, otherwise we shall impose upon ourselves and upon him. ? very respectable writer has given a good example of t...« less