General Sense Images and the Power of Abstraction. 01 



of animals can omit concrete circumstances of time and 

 space. The sensile memory often reproduces only 

 those elements of the object, to which attention was 

 more closely drawn in former sense perceptions; for 

 they have mostly made a deeper impression than the 

 accompanying circumstances, and are, consequently, 

 more easily reproduced. Thus also those qualities of 

 the object come out most clearly and distinctly in its 

 reproduced image, which made the strongest impression 

 in the original sense perception, while the rest are dis- 

 carded. The saying, therefore, that the sensile imagi- 

 nation is able to abstract from circumstances of place 

 and time, means nothing beyond the assertion, that the 

 stronger sense impressions are more readily and sharply 

 reproduced than the weaker. This is all that can be 

 said on the power of abstraction of the sensile memory 

 and imagination. 



It is true, I am able to imagine the various colors, 

 as "green," "red," "blue," and, in general, any definite 

 color, or, rather, any object of a definite color, without 

 picturing to myself a specifically limited surface, or a 

 definitely limited body. Consequently it might seem 

 as if the sensile imagination were endowed with the 

 faculty of abstracting the colors of an object from its 

 extension. Still, the explanation we have just given is 

 equally applicable to this phenomenon. For, if it were 

 a question of abstraction in the proper sense of the 

 word, we ought, vice versa, to be able to fancy an 

 object of definite extension without any definite color. 

 However, this is impossible. In reproducing a sight 

 perception our imagination seems to be able to discard 

 the definite extension of a colored object, because color 



