70 THE HUMANIZING OF THE BRUTE. 



blance to the fishy tribe this imaginary fish is alto- 

 gether void of any universality, and represents merely 

 an individual fish. Let us try to eliminate the quali- 

 ties in which it differs from other fish and bring out 

 those which it has in common with them. Can this 

 image now be called universal? Or must we not con- 

 cede, that in spite of a great similarity with fish in 

 general the image is still concrete and individual? It 

 may be that the discriminating marks are less promi- 

 nent, but the common marks of all fish, as form, color, 

 fins, are still, as it were, in the foreground of our 

 imagination. The image is and remains the represen- 

 tation of an individual fish. We may make as many 

 efforts as we like, as long as the fish remains a product 

 of our imagination we can never deprive it of all definite 

 shape and color, and of definite extension. "I can con- 

 sider," says Berkeley, "the hand, the eye, the nose, 

 each by itself abstracted and separated from the rest 

 of the body. But, then, whatever hand or eye I -im- 

 agine, it must have some particular shape and color' ' x ) . 

 As long as the representation of an object possesses 

 color and extension it is not universal. What infer- 

 ence have we to make from this conclusion? It is 

 this, that there are no real universal phantasms, 

 and that the abstractive faculty of the imagination 

 consists merely in the weaker or stronger representation 

 of sensitive perceptions. 



The common phantasm, either as an act or the rep- 

 resentation of an object, is and remains individual. 

 Or, as Clarke has it: "The common phantasm is not 

 really common at all. It is simply an individual 



l ) Michael Maher, S.J., Psychology ed. 4., p. 236. 



