67).
This proposition is true, or not, according to the sense in which the
word "thought" is employed. Thought is not uncommonly used in a sense
co-extensive with consciousness, and, especially, with those states
of consciousness we call memory. If I recall the impression made by a
colour or an odour, and distinctly remember blueness or muskiness, I
may say with perfect propriety that I "think of" blue or musk; and,
so long as the thought lasts, it is simply a faint reproduction of the
state of consciousness to which I gave the name in question, when it
first became known to me as a sensation.
Now, if that faint reproduction of a sensation, which we call the
memory of it, is properly termed a thought, it seems to me to be
a somewhat forced, proceeding to draw a hard and fast line of
demarcation between thoughts and sensations. If sensations are
not rudimentary thoughts, it may be said that some thoughts are
rudimentary sensations. No amount of sound constitutes an echo, but
for all that no one would pretend that an echo is something of totally
different nature from a sound. Again, nothing can be looser, or more
inaccurate, than the assertion that "sensations supply the conditions
for the existence of thought or knowledge.
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