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CHAPTER II. 



OF ABSTRACTION, OB THE FORMATION OF 

 CONCEPTIONS. 



1. THE metaphysical inquiry into the nature and 

 composition of what have been called Abstract Ideas, 

 or in other words, of the notions which answer in the 

 mind to classes and to general names, belongs not to 

 Logic, but to a different science, and our purpose does 

 not require that we should enter upon it here. We 

 are only concerned with the universally acknowledged 

 fact, that such general notions or conceptions do exist. 

 The mind can conceive a multitude of individual things 

 as one assemblage or class ; and general names do 

 really suggest to us certain ideas or mental representa- 

 tions, otherwise we could not use the names with con- 

 sciousness of a meaning. Whether the idea called up 

 by a general name is composed of the various cir- 

 cumstances in which all the individuals denoted by 

 the name agree, and of no others, (which is the doc- 

 trine of Locke, Brown, and the Conceptualists) ; or 

 whether it be the idea of some one of those indivi- 

 duals, clothed in its individualizing peculiarities, but 

 with the accompanying knowledge that those peculia- 

 rities are not properties of the class, (which is the doc- 

 trine of Berkeley, Dugald Stewart, and the modern 

 Nominalists) ; or whether (as held by Mr. Mill), the 

 idea of the class is that of a miscellaneous assemblage 

 of individuals belonging to the class ; or whether, 

 finally, (what appears to be the truest opinion) it be 

 any one or any other of all these, according to the 

 accidental circumstances of the case ; certain it is, 



