l existence of visible and tangible objects, means reliance on the
reality and permanence of possibilities of visual and tactual
sensations, when no sensations are actually experienced."[232]
"Sensations," however, let it be borne in mind, are but a subordinate
species of the genus feeling.[233] They are "states of
consciousness"--phenomena of mind, not of matter; and we are still
within the impassable boundary of ideal phenomena; we have yet no
cognition of an external world. The sole cosmical conception, for us, is
still a succession of sensations, or states of consciousness. This is
the one phenomenon which we can not transcend in knowledge, do what we
will; all else is hypothesis and illusion. The _non-ego_, after all,
then, may be but a mode in which the mind represents to itself the
possible modifications of the _ego_.

[Footnote 228: "Logic," bk. i, ch. iii. Sec. 8.]

[Footnote 229: "Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy," vol. i.
p. 243.]

[Footnote 230: Ibid., vol. i. p. 253.]

[Footnote 231: Ibid., vol. i. p. 246.]

[Footnote 232: Ibid., vol. i. pp. 243, 244.]

[Footnote 233: "Logic," bk. i. ch. iii. Sec. 3.]

And now that matter, as a real existence, has disappeared under Mr.
Mill's analysis, what shall be said of mind or self? Is there any
permanent subject or real entity underlying the phenomena of feeling? In
feeling, is there a personal self that feels, thinks, and wills? It
would seem not. Mind, as well as matter, resolves itself into a "series
of feelings," varying and fugitive from moment to moment, in a sea of
possibilities of feeling. "My mind," says Mill, "is but a series of
feelings, or, as it has been called, a thread of consciousness, however
supplemented by believed possibilities of consciousness, which are not,
though they might be, realized."[234]

[Footnote 234: "Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy," vol. i.
p. 254.]

The ultimate fact of the phenomenal world, then, in the philosophy of
Mill, is neither matter nor mind, but feelings or states of
consciousness associated together by the relations, amongst themselves,
of recurrence, co-existence, and resemblance. The existence of self,
except as "a series of feelings;" the existence of any thing other than
self, except as a feigned unknown cause of sensation, is rigorously
denied. Mr. Mill does not content himself with saying that we are
ignorant of the _nature_ of matter and mind, but he asserts we are
ignorant of t