Note note 25 — ANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE HUMAN MIND James Mill

25 The analysis of the facts, in all these cases, is admirable, but I still demur to the language. I object to saying, for instance, that silence is “the name of sound and its absence.” It is not the name of sound, since we cannot say Sound is silence. It is the name of our state of sensation when there is no sound. The author is quite right in saying that this state of sensation recalls the idea of sound; to be conscious of silence as silence, implies that we are thinking of sound, and have the idea of it without the belief in its presence. In another of its uses, Silence is the abstract of Silent; which is a name of all things that make no sound, and of everything so long as it makes no sound; and which connotes the attribute of not sounding. So of all the other terms mentioned. “Nothing” is not a name of all possible objects, including their non-existence. If Nothing were a name of objects, we should be able to predicate of those objects that they are Nothing. Nothing is a name of the state of our consciousness when we are not aware of any object, or of any sensation.—Ed.