Subject and Object by Johnston Estep Walter

As illustrating and tending to confirm some of the main points that have just been dwelt on, we shall yet produce a familiar declaration of' Hume, which has often been quoted as being a particularly clear and compact statement of what is most distinctive in his psychology. Its main doctrine has been by many regarded as embodying very important truth and dominates much of the psychology of our time. For my part, says Hume, 'when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hate, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.' He soon adds, that men 'are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement (i In here saying that he never can observe anything but the perceptions, or flux of different isolated perceptions, he means especially that he cannot observe, in addition to the perceptions, any connecting substance among them, any single, permanent, identical, subject or support for them.