220 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



stage of abstraction, giving rise to a general conception. 

 Having advanced thus far, when we now take in hand 

 a third object we naturally ask ourselves the question, 

 not merely whether this third object agrees with the 

 first, but whether it agrees with it in the same circum- 

 stances in which the second did ? in other words, 

 whether it agrees with the general conception which 

 has been obtained by abstraction from the first and 

 second ? Thus we see the tendency of general con- 

 ceptions, as soon as formed, to substitute themselves 

 as types, for whatever individual objects previously 

 answered that purpose in our comparisons. We may, 

 perhaps, find that no considerable number of other 

 objects agree with this first general conception; and 

 that we must drop the conception, and beginning 

 again with a different individual case, proceed by 

 different comparisons to a different general concep- 

 tion. Sometimes, again, we find that the same con- 

 ception will serve, by merely leaving out some of its 

 circumstances; and by this higher effort of abstrac- 

 tion, we obtain a still more general conception; as, in 

 the case formerly referred to, we rose from the con- 

 ception of poles to the general conception of opposite 

 properties in opposite directions; or as those South 

 Sea islanders, whose conception of a quadruped had 

 been abstracted from hogs (the only animals of that 

 description which they had seen), when they after- 

 wards compared that conception with other quadru- 

 peds, dropped some of the circumstances, and arrived 

 at the more general conception which Europeans 

 associate with the term. 



These brief remarks contain, I believe, all that is 

 well-grounded in Mr. Whewell's doctrine that the 

 conception by which the mind arranges and gives 

 unity to phenomena must be furnished by the mind 



