CHAPTER II. 



OF ABSTRACTION, OR THE FORMATION OF CONCEPTIONS. 



1. THE metaphysical inquiry into the nature and com 

 position of what have been called Abstract Ideas, or in other 

 words, of the notions which answer in the mind to classes 

 and to general names, belongs not to Logic, but to a different 

 science, and our purpose does not require that we should 

 enter upon it here. We are only concerned with the uni 

 versally acknowledged fact, that such notions or conceptions 

 do exist. The mind can conceive a multitude of individual 

 things as one assemblage or class; and general names do 

 really suggest to us certain ideas or mental representations, 

 otherwise we could not use the names with consciousness of a 

 meaning. Whether the idea called up by a general name is 

 composed of the various circumstances in which all the indivi 

 duals denoted by the name agree, and of no others, (which is 

 the doctrine of Locke, Brown, and the Conceptualists ;) or 

 whether it be the idea of some one of those individuals, clothed 

 in its individualizing peculiarities, but with the accompanying 

 knowledge that those peculiarities are not properties of the 

 class, (which is the doctrine of Berkeley, Mr. Bailey,* and 

 the modern Nominalists ;) or whether (as held by Mr. James 



* Mr. Bailey has given by far the best statement of this theory. &quot;The 

 general name,&quot; he says, &quot;raises up the image sometimes of one individual of 

 the class formerly seen, sometimes of another, not unfrequently of many indi 

 viduals in succession ; and it sometime* suggests an image made up of elements 

 from several different objects, by a latent process of which I am not conscious &quot; 

 (Letters on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 1st series, letter 22.) But 

 Mr. Bailey must allow that we carry on inductions and ratiocinations respecting 

 the class, by means of this idea or conception of some one individual in it. 

 This is all I require. The name of a class calls up some idea, through which we 

 can, to all intents and purposes, think of the class as such, and not solely of an 

 individual member of it. 



VOL. II. 13 



