Welsh Journals

Y Hí>l1> A KYMVN,|>; ^T B R U D A STLWÍ DDJ OR, Cîj* ®t)vonitle anîi <Dí»0£tbn-. Rhif. 7.] GORPHENHAF 15, 1828. [Cyf. L No. 70 JULY 15, 1828. [VOL. 1. DEFINITION Or EDEAS. í'Ctmfinued /«mi pag« 105J Having reserved my definition of some of the ideas enumerated until a future occasion, for reasons alleged, I will attempt to define the remaining ■set of ideas which are supposed to be undefinable, in this place. They are reducihle tofour classes: viz. 1. Iden- tity and sameness: 2. Suecession, time, and duration: 3. Right line, fìgure, extension, and magnitude: and 4. Number, ratio. and unity. However irrevelant some of those ideas may appear to he to others, with which they are comprehended in one class, I thinh it will he found that every cìass has a cornmon and princi- pally constituent idea, hy which it is distinguished from the other classes. The idea which is common to the first class, (the words heing taten in a philosophical sense,) îs permanence: the common idea of the second class is change: that of the third, continuity: and that of the fourth is distinction. Permanence is analogous to the po- sitive of immutability considered in any one species of things, related to change in another species. Ideìüiiy is the permanence of a sub- ject with respect to change of its attributes or relations. Thus is the mind permanent with respect to its attributive ideas^whichare continually changing. The ideas of permanence ^nd subject are therefpre compounded to constitute the idea of identity. Sameness, in the sense in which,for the sake of philosophical precision, it is distinguished from identity, means the permanence of attributes or rela- tions with respect to the change of their subjects. Thus is a green colour or rotundity the same, notwithstand- ing that the mind in which they are conceived changes the object of its attention from one indi\ddual body, to another which is green or round. Thus also are vegetable and animal bndies the same through the course of their growth to their dissolution, hecause they maintain the same prin- cipal attributes or relations, notwith- standing the changeof their substance, and the change of some other at- tributes. Our idea of sameness is therefore compounded of the ideas of permanence and attribute. 1 now come to the second class of ideas which are derived from change. In every change there is something permanent that is coexistent or con- nected, the diverse adjuncts, attributes or subjects of whichare substituted one for another, whether one part of space occupied for another, or one position assumed for another, by a permanent body in motion; one idea for another în a permanent mind; one form for another in a body that is crushed, in- tersected, or emaciated. Now in the idea signified by change, we attend more directly to the difference taken