58 



supposed to be found individually in diflerent persons. If 

 therefore for the classification of natural objects by philoso- 

 phical abstraction, there, be an indispensable necessity for 

 sound judgment and accurate discrimination, the occasion 

 for it in this poetical abstraction must, from the superior dif- 

 ficulty of the operation, be immediately acknowledged. In 

 philosophical abstraction you are required only to omit pecu- 

 liarities, here it would be a vice not only to add an idea that 

 was not to be found in any, but to retain what was not to be 

 found in all ; whereas, in the other case, you are expected 

 not only to omit, but to retain some singularities, and even 

 to add, as far as possibiHty will allow, whatever seems ne- 

 cessary for the perfection of the generic character. In the 

 one mode you diminish from real existence, in the other you 

 ])oth diminish in one respect, and encrease in another; in 

 the former the genus is partial and incom])lcte, in the latter 

 it is exaggerated and redundant. In philosophical ab- 

 straction you have but one, and that apparently a simple 

 rule to follow, that is, to leave out all differences whatsoever : 

 in the other you leave out differences not merely as sucii, 

 but because they are accidental to that particular character 

 you intend to delineate; it is requisite not only that the in- 

 dividuals of the species described should differ from each 

 other in these qualities, but agree with individuals of other 

 classes in the same points. 'J'hus in drawing the character 

 of Pipes, a trait was not to be omitted, merely because it 

 was not universally found in all seamen, but because it 



