CHAP. III.] DERIVATION OF THE LAWS. 45 



indifferent if for the words "white" and "men" we substituted 

 any other descriptive or appellative terms whatever, provided 

 only that their meaning was fixed and absolute. And thus the 

 indifference of the order of two successive acts of the faculty of 

 Conception, the one of which furnishes the subject upon which 

 the other is supposed to operate, is a general condition of the 

 exercise of that faculty. It is a law of the mind, and it is the 

 real origin of that law of the literal symbols of Logic which con- 

 stitutes its formal expression (1) Chap. n. 



9. It is equally clear that the mental operation above de- 

 scribed is of such a nature that its effect is not altered by repe- 

 tition. Suppose that by a definite act of conception the attention 

 has been fixed upon men, and that by another exercise of the 

 same faculty we limit it to those of the race who are white. 

 Then any further repetition of the latter mental act, by which 

 the attention is limited to white objects, does not in any way 

 modify the conception arrived at, viz., that of white men. This 

 is also an example of a general law of the mind, and it has its 

 formal expression in the law ((2) Chap, n.) of the literal symbols. 



10. Again, it is manifest that from the conceptions of two 

 distinct classes of things we can form the conception of that col- 

 lection of things which the two classes taken together compose ; 

 and it is obviously indifferent in what order of position or of 

 priority those classes are presented to the mental view. This is 

 another general law of the mind, and its expression is found in 

 (3) Chap. n. 



11. It is not necessary to pursue this course of inquiry and 

 comparison. Sufficient illustration has been given to render ma- 

 nifest the two following positions, viz. : 



First, That the operations of the mind, by which, in the 

 exercise of its power of imagination or conception, it combines 

 and modifies the simple ideas of things or qualities, not less than 

 those operations of the reason which are exercised upon truths 

 and propositions, are subject to general laws. 



Secondly, That those laws are mathematical in their form, 

 and that they are actually developed in the essential laws of 

 human language. Wherefore the laws of the symbols of Logic 



