MENTAL STATES AND PROCESSES. 43 



call particular ideas, or ideas of particular objects, are 

 of the nature of mental images, or memories of such 

 objects — as when the sound of a friend's voice brings 

 before my mind the idea of that particular man. 

 Psychologists are further agreed that what they term 

 general ideas arise out of an assemblage of particular 

 ideas, as when from my repeated observation of numer- 

 ous individual men I form the idea of Man." In this 

 passage there is an ambiguity against which it is 

 necessary to be on our guard if we would avoid con- 

 fusion of thought. It is, of course, quite true that 

 general ideas, or " universals," only arise in our mind 

 after we have experienced corresponding groups of 

 sense-impressions. The ideas "camel," " triangle," etc., 

 cannot arise in us before we have had visual or auditory 

 impressions related to one or the other. We must first 

 have seen, felt, or heard descriptions of such things. 

 Therefore, in a certain loose and inaccurate way of 

 speaking, such ideas may be said to arise "out of" such 

 sense-impressions. But this by no means implies that 

 they consist of them, and " are " but assemblages of 

 such impressions further aggregated or otherwise modi- 

 fied. Nevertheless, to use the expression " arise out of 

 them" does lend itself to and favour this latter meaning, 

 which we shall see directly is the meaning of Mr. 

 Romanes himself. He continues as follows : " Hence, 

 particular ideas answer to percepts, while general ideas 

 answer to concepts : An individual perception (or its 

 repetition) gives rise to its mnemonic equivalent as a 

 particular idea ; while a group of similar, though not 

 altogether similar perceptions, gives rise to its mne- 



