72 THE HUMANIZING OF THE BRUTE. 



as almost to vanish from our imagination, still retains 

 a definite extension , and remains essentially individual. 

 The universal concept of a man or a triangle can be 

 applied not only to a redskin or a negro, not only to 

 this or that triangle, obtuse or equilateral, but to all 

 men and all triangles without any exception, 

 whilst the phantasm of a triangle even in the most 

 extreme case can never be identified with any other 

 triangle. It even disappears from our imagination, if 

 we eliminate its sides of a definite length, its obtuse 

 or acute angles. But the universal idea of a triangle 

 is independent of all this. It can be identified with 

 any existing or possible triangle, even if the latter be 

 so large that its three vertices rest on three different 

 fixed stars, or so small that we can perceive it only by 

 means of a microscope, if its sides be green or blue, 

 its angles obtuse or acute. These are merely casual 

 differences, and do not affect its nature as a triangle. 

 The universal idea expresses that which constitutes a 

 being, denotes its essence, its nature, whilst the pic- 

 ture in the imagination merely represents a being, 

 colored in such and such a way, of this or that exten- 

 sion. The color and extension of things, even of one 

 and the same class, may be different; but the nature of 

 things must be the same in all. A man deprived of his 

 essence, of that which makes him what he is, would 

 no longer be a man, and a triangle no longer a trian- 

 gle. Still, we do not wish to say that the universal 

 idea of human nature exists in the same way, that is, as 

 universal, in every individual human being. That is 

 the error of the ultra-realists. Every finite being that 

 exists, or can be called into existence, is necessarily 



