312 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. fpT. ii. 



characteristic was hinted at when we were discussing the* 

 improvidence of the barbarian. It was observed that the 

 power of distinctly imagining objective relations not present 

 to sense is the most fundamental of the many intellectual 

 differences between the civilized man and the barbarian. 

 Making this statement somewhat wider, we may now safely 

 assert that tlie entire intellectual superiority of the civilized 

 man over the savage, or of the modern man over the primeval 

 man, is summed up in his superior power of representing that 

 which is not present to the senses. For it is not only in what 

 we call providence that this superiority of representation 

 shows itself, but also in all those combinations of present 

 with past impressions wliich accomj)any the extension of the 

 correspondence in space and time, and its increase in hetero- 

 geneity, definiteness, and coherence. It is his ability to re- 

 produce copies of his own vanished states of consciousness, 

 and of those of his fellows, that enables the civilized man to 

 adjust his actions to sequences occurring at the antipodes. 

 It is this same power of representation which underlies his 

 power of forming abstract and generrl conceptions. For the 

 peculiarity of abstract conceptions is that "the matter of 

 thought is no longer any one object, or any one action, but a 

 trait common to many " ; and it is, therefore, only when a 

 number of distinct objects or relations possessing some 

 common trait can be represented in consciousness that there 

 becomes possible that comparison which results in the ab- 

 straction of the common trait as the object of thouglit. 

 Obviously, then, the greater the power of abstraction and 

 generalization which is observed, the greater is the power of 

 representation which is implied. The case is the same with 

 that definiteness of the intellectual processes which we have 

 noted as distinguishing modern from primitive thinking. 

 For the conception which underlies definiteness of thinking 

 is the conception of exact likeness, — a highly abstract concep- 

 tion which can only be framed after the compaiison of 



