LOGIC OF RECEPTS, 43 



the same distinction is conveyed by Noird thus: — "All trees 

 hitherto seen by me may leave in my imagination a mixed 

 image, a kind of ideal representation of trees. Quite different 

 from this is the concept, which is never an image." * 



And, not to overburden the argument with quotations, I 

 will furnish but one more, which serves if possible with still 

 greater clearness to convey exactly what it is that I mean by a 

 recept. Professor Huxley writes : — " An anatomist who occu- 

 pies himself intently with the examination of several specimens 

 of some new kind of animal, in course of time acquires so 

 vivid a conception of its form and structure, that the idea may 

 take visible shape and become a sort of waking dream." f 



Although the use of the word " conception " here is unfortu- 

 nate in one way, I regard it as fortunate in another : it shows 

 how desperate is the need for the word which I have coined. 



The above quotations, then, may be held sufficient to show 

 that the distinction which I have drawn has not been devised 

 merely to suit my own purposes. All that I have endeavoured 

 so far to do is to bring this distinction into greater clearness, 

 by assigning to each of its parts a separate name. And in 

 doing this I have not assumed that the two orders of generaliza- 

 tion comprised under recepts and concepts are the same in 

 kind. So far I have left the question open as to whether a 

 mind which can only attain to recepts differs in degree or 

 in kind from the intellect which is able to go on to the 

 formation of concepts. Had I said, with Sully, " When the 

 resemblance is less striking, as in the case of more abstract 



• Logos, p. 175, quoted by Max Miiller, who adds : — "The followers of Hume 

 might possibly look upon the faded images of our memory as abstract ideas. Our 

 memory, or, what is often equally important, our oblivescence, seems to them able 

 to do what abstraction, as Berkeley shows, never can do ; and under its silent 

 sway many an idea, or cluster of ideas, might seem to melt away till nothing is 

 left but a mere shadow. These shadows, however, though they may become very 

 vague, remain percepts ; they are not concepts " [Science of Thought, p. 453). 

 Now, I say it is equally evident that these shadows are not percepts : they are the 

 result of the/usi'on of percepts, no one of which corresponds to their generic sum. 

 Seeing, then, that they are neither percepts nor concepts, and yet such highly 

 important elements in ideation, I coin for them the distinctive name of recepts. 

 t Li/e of Ilume^ p. 96, 



