A Limit to Evolution 303 



complicated process is necessary because our mental food, 

 like our bodily food, needs to be digested in order tbat it 

 may be assimilated. In this process it is abstraction which 

 plays the part of a mental gastric juice. A moment's con- 

 sideration will suffice to show us how much clearer and more 

 luminous are the qualities of any object when they are thus 

 abstracted and distinctly regarded, than when apprehended 

 confusedly and indistinctly in one lump, in our first act of 

 perception. 



This complex process, which it has taken so long to 

 describe, is performed by our mind with exceeding rapidity. 

 It is all done while we say, ' Thai is an oak' That we should 

 do all this without being aware of it, may seem strange. Yet 

 it need not do so. How many persons say B, without think- 

 ing, or even knowing, that in order to utter it they must, if 

 the mouth be open, first close and then reopen the lips ! 



In perception, we form a notion from a number of 

 elements. In abstraction, we resolve a notion into a number 

 of elements. It might, then, be supposed that the elements 

 into which any notion is resolved by abstraction are those 

 very same elements through which that notion had pre- 

 viously been gained. In other words, it might be supposed 

 that abstraction was some sort of return towards the condition 

 existing the moment before perception. But to suppose this 

 would be a great mistake. The elements which minister to 

 perception are sensible elements — feelings of various kinds 

 resulting from the sensible qualities of the objects perceived. 

 In their ministering state, before they are apprehended by 

 the intellect, they are mere feelings or affections of our 

 sensitivity, and therefore (as we have seen) essentially in- 

 dividual and subjective. The elements which are separated 

 by abstraction are ideal elements, and therefore essentially 

 universal and objective. 



Now that we have thus examined what we do in forming 



