ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 29 



concept we form of any thing or class of things, misrepre- 

 sents the reality, we are apt to be wrong in any assertion we 

 make respecting the reality ; but it is that we are led to sup- 

 pose we have truly conceived a great variety of things which 

 we have conceived only in this fictitious way ; and further to 

 confound with these certain things which cannot be con- 

 ceived in any way. How almost unavoidably we fall into 

 this error it will be needful here to observe. 



From objects readily representable in their totality, to 

 those of which we cannot form even an approximate repre- 

 sentation, there is an insensible transition. Between a peb- 

 ble and the entire Earth a series of magnitudes might be in- 

 troduced, each of which differed from the adjacent ones so 

 slightly that it would be impossible to say at what point in 

 the series our conceptions of them became inadequate. 

 Similarly, there is a gradual progression from those groups 

 of a few individuals which we can think of as groups with 

 tolerable completeness, to those larger and larger groups 

 of which we can form nothing like true ideas. Whence it is 

 manifest that we pass from actual conceptions to symbolic 

 ones by infinitesimal steps. Note next that we are led to 

 deal with our symbolic conceptions as though they were ac- 

 tual ones, not only because we cannot clearly separate the 

 two, but also because, in the great majority of cases, the first 

 serve our purposes nearly or quite as well as the last — are 

 simply the abbreviated signs we substitute for those 

 more elaborate signs which are our equivalents for 

 real objects. Those very imperfect representations of ordi- 

 nary things which we habitually make in thinking, we know 

 can be developed into adequate ones if needful. Those con- 

 cepts of larger magnitudes and more extensive classes 

 which we cannot make adequate, we still find can be veri- 

 fied by some indirect process of measurement or enumera- 

 tion. And even in the case of such an utterly inconceivable 

 object as the Solar System, we yet, through the fulfil- 

 ment of predictions founded on our symbolic conception of 



