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Professor Bain distinguishes two kinds of Propositions of Co-existence. “In the one kind, account is taken of Place; they may be described as propositions of Order in Place.” In the other kind, the co-existence which is predicated is termed by Mr. Bain Co-inherence of Attributes. “This is a distinct variety of Propositions of Co-existence.
Consequently, the co-inherence of two attributes is but the co-existence of the two states of consciousness implied in their meaning: with the difference, however, that this co-existence is sometimes potential only, the attribute being considered as in existence, though the fact on which it is grounded may not be actually, but only potentially present.
That a thing is, is owing to the co-inherence therein of any two powers; but that it is that particular thing arises from the proportions in which these powers are co-present, either as predominance or as reciprocal neutralization; but under the modification of twofold power to which magnetism itself is, as the thesis to its antithesis.
Snow, for instance, is, with great convenience, said to be white even in a state of total darkness, because, though we are not now conscious of the color, we shall be conscious of it as soon as morning breaks. Co-inherence of attributes is therefore still a case, though a complex one, of co-existence of states of consciousness; a totally different thing, however, from Order in Place.
The very points here objected to as faults I should have selected as excellencies. For do not the duties and temptations occur in real life even so intermingled? The imperfection of thought much more of language, so singly successive, allows no better representation of the close neighbourhood, nay the co-inherence of duty in duty, desire in desire.
The concurring properties of minerals, of plants, and of the bodily and the mental structure of animals, are united in affirmations of co-inherence.” The distinction is real and important. But, as has been seen, an Attribute, when it is any thing but a simple unanalyzable Resemblance between the subject and some other things, consists in causing impressions of some sort on consciousness.
Wisely docile to the suggestions of Nature herself, the ancients significantly expressed these forces under the names of earth, water, air, and fire; not meaning any tangible or visible substance so generalized, but the powers predominant, and, as it were, the living basis of each, which no chemical decomposition can ever present to the senses, were it only that their interpenetration and co-inherence first constitutes them sensible, and is the condition and meaning of a—thing.
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