AN TMAL AND RATIONAL INTELLIGENCE 225 



our regarding ideas as objects of knowledge, instead 

 of as forms of knowledge, keeps by popular usage in 

 his definition of the term. He says, In popular lan 

 guage, idea signifies the same thing as conception, 

 apprehension, notion. To have an idea of anything is 

 to conceive it. To have a distinct idea is to conceive 

 it distinctly. To have no idea of it, is not to conceive 

 it at all. . . . Conceiving or apprehending has always 

 been considered by all men as an act or operation of 

 the mind.&quot; l 



Without touching any of the questions in dispute 

 between these several thinkers, we have among them 

 sufficient agreement to supply the test desired. They 

 are agreed that ideas, such as we have, are the 

 product of thinking : and that impressions, common 

 to us with the animals, are excluded, as representing a 

 simpler preliminary phase of experience. Thinking 

 is the common term in all these definitions, applied 

 to the process by which ideas of things, or conceptions 

 of them, are formed in our minds. By this process is 

 meant a phase of mental activity which concerns 

 itself with present and past sensations, forming out 

 of these a general conception of an object, of a relation, 

 or of a law of existence. There is no evidence that 

 the higher mammals ever form such ideas, far less 

 engage in this as a familiar occupation. Men are 

 constantly forming such ideas or conceptions, of which 

 language becomes the familiar expression. Contact 

 with an external object makes an impression on the 

 sensory, but it does not? cause an idea/ if by idea we 

 mean a conception of the thing which has wakened 



1 Reid s {t*ay&amp;gt;i on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay I. Cli. i. 

 10. 



