Note note 24 — ANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE HUMAN MIND James Mill

24 A question which, as far as I know, has been passed over by psychologists, but which ought not to be left unanswered, is this: Can we have ideas of ideas? We have sensations, and we have copies of these sensations, called ideas of them: can we also have copies of these copies, constituting a second order of ideas, two removes instead of one from sensation?

Every one will admit that we can think of a thought. We remember ourselves remembering, or imagine ourselves remembering, an object or an event, just as we remember or imagine ourselves seeing one. But in the case of a simple idea of sensation, i.e. the idea or remembrance of a single undivided sensation, there seems nothing to distinguish the idea of the idea, from the idea of the sensation itself. When I imagine myself thinking of the colour of snow, I am not aware of any difference, even in degree of intensity, between the image then present to my mind of the white colour, and the image present when I imagine myself to be seeing the colour.

The case, however, is somewhat different with those combinations of simple ideas which have never been presented to my mind otherwise than as ideas. I have an idea of Pericles; but it is derived only from the testimony of history: the real Pericles never was present to my senses. I have an idea of Hamlet, and of Falstaff; combinations which, though made up of ideas of sensation, never existed at all in the world of sense; they never were anything more than ideas in any mind. Yet, having had these combinations of ideas presented to me through the words of Shakespeare, I have formed what is properly an idea not of an outward object, but of an idea in Shakespeare’s mind; and I may communicate my idea to others, whose idea will then be an idea of an idea in my mind. My idea of Pericles, or my idea of any person now alive whom I have never seen, differs from these in the circumstance that I am persuaded that a real object corresponding to the idea does now, or did once, exist in the world of sensation: but as I did not derive my idea from the object, but from some other person’s words, my idea is not a copy of the original, but a copy (more or less imperfect) of some other person’s copy: it is an idea of an idea.

Although, however, the complex idea I have of an object which never was presented to my senses, is rightly described as an idea of an idea; my remembrance of a complex idea which I have had before, does not seem to me to differ from the remembered idea as an idea differs from a sensation. There is a distinction between my visual idea of Mont Blanc and the actual sight of the mountain, which I do not find between my remembrance of Falstaff and the original impression from which it was derived. My present thought of Falstaff seems to me not a copy but a repetition of the original idea; a repetition which may be dimmed by distance, or which may, on the contrary, be heightened by intermediate processes of thought; may have lost some of its features by lapse of time, and may have acquired others by reference to the original sources; but which resembles the first impression not as the thought of an object resembles the sight of it, but as a second or third sight of an object resembles the first. This question will meet us again in the psychological examination of Memory, the theory of which is in no small degree dependent upon it.—Ed.