IV NOMENCLATURE OF MENTAL OPERATIONS 113 



sort of conceptions, yet that general ideas of 

 sensible objects may nevertheless be produced 

 in the way indicated, and may exist independ- 

 ently of language. In dreams, one sees houses, 

 trees and other objects, which are perfectly re- 

 cognisable as such, but which remind one of the 

 actual objects as seen " out of the corner of the 

 eye," or of the pictures thrown by a badly- 

 focused magic lantern. A man addresses us 

 who is like a figure seen by twilight; or we 

 travel through countries where every feature of 

 the scenery is vague ; the outlines of the hills 

 are ill-marked, a,nd the rivers have no defined 

 banks. They are, in short, generic ideas of many 

 past impressions of men, hills, and rivers. An 

 anatomist who occupies himself intently with the 

 examination of several specimens of some new 

 kind of animal, in course of time acquires so vivid 

 a conception of its form and structure, that the 

 idea may take visible shape and become a sort of 

 waking dream. But the figure which thus pre- 

 sents itself is generic, not specific. It is no copy 

 of any one specimen, but, more or less, a mean of 

 the series; and there seems no reason to doubt 

 that the minds of children before they learn to 

 speak, and of deaf mutes, are people with simi- 

 larly generated generic ideas of sensible objects. 



It has been seen that a memory is a complex 

 idea made up of at least two constituents. In the 



VOL. VI I 



