Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



other similar objects, I invent the word greyhound 

 to denote these latter by. The concept foxhound 

 differs from the objects which it denotes, in this 

 respect that these latter are (as we say) real dogs 

 with thousands and thousands of attributes each : 

 one of them has a broken tooth, another is nearly 

 all white, another answers to the name " Sally," 

 and so on ; while the concept is only an imaginary 

 form in my mind, with only a few attributes and 

 no individual peculiarities — a kind of tiny G.C.M. 

 arising from the contemplation of a long row of 

 big figures. 



Now having created these concepts " foxhound," 

 ** greyhound," and a lot of other similar ones, 

 I find that they in their turn have a few attributes 

 in common and thus give rise to a new concept 

 '* dog." Of course this " dog " is more of an 

 abstraction than ever, the concept of a concept. 

 In fact the peculiarity of this whole process is 

 that, as sometimes stated, the broader the generalisa- 

 tion becomes the less is its depth ; or in other 

 words and obviously, that as the number of objects 

 compared increases, the number of attributes 

 common to them all decreases. Ultimately as 

 we saw at the beginning, when a sufficient number 

 of objects are taken in, the concept (" dog " or 

 whatever it may be) fades away and ceases to have 

 any meaning. This therefore is the dilemma of 

 Science and indeed of all human knowledge, 

 that in carrying out the process which is peculiar 

 to it, it necessarily leaves the dry ground of reality 

 for the watery region of abstractions, which ab- 



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