ABSTRACTION. 225 



5. So much for the first of Mr. Whewell's con- 



r 



ditions, that conceptions must be appropriate. The 

 second is, that they shall he "clear:" and let us con- 

 sider what this implies. Unless the conception cor- 

 responds to a real agreement, it has a worse defect 

 than that of not being clear; it is not applicable to 

 the case at all. Among the phenomena, therefore, 

 which we are attempting to connect by means of the 

 conception, we must suppose that there really is an 

 agreement, and that the conception is a conception of 

 that agreement. In order, then, that it should be 

 clear, the only requisite is, that we shall know exactly 

 in what the agreement consists; that it shall have 

 been carefully observed, and accurately remembered. 

 We are said not to have a clear conception of the 

 resemblance among a set of objects, when we have 

 only a general feeling that they resemble, without 

 having analyzed their resemblance, or perceived in 

 what points it consists, and fixed in our memory an 

 exact recollection of those points. This want of clear- 



explaining the form of the luminous spot made by the sun shining 

 through a hole, because they applied the inappropriate conception 

 of a circular quality in the sun's light : they speculated to no pur- 

 pose about the elementary composition of bodies, because they 

 assumed the inappropriate conception of likeness between the ele- 

 ments and the compound, instead of the genuine notion of elements 

 merely determining the qualities of the compound. " But in these 

 cases there is more than an inappropriate conception ; there is a 

 false conception; one which has no prototype in nature, nothing 

 corresponding to it in facts. This is evident in the last two 

 examples, and is equally true in the first ; the " properties of the 

 circle" which were referred to, being purely fantastical. There is, 

 therefore, an error beyond the wrong choice of a principle of gene- 

 ralization; there is a false assumption of matters of fact. The 

 attempt is made to resolve certain laws of nature into a more general 

 law, that law being not one which, though real, is inappropriate, but 

 one wholly imaginary. 



VOL. II. Q 



