ABSTRACTION. 393 



cumstances is already a first stage of abstraction, giving rise to a 

 general conception. HaNnng advanced thus far, when we now take in 

 hand a third object, we naturally ask ourselves the question, not merely 

 whether this third object agrees with the first, but whether it agrees 

 with it in the same circumstances in which the second did 1 in other 

 words, whether it agi'ees with the general conception which has been 

 obtained by abstraction from the first and second I Thus we see the 

 tendency of general conceptions, as soon as formed, to substitute them- 

 selves as types, for whatever individual objects previously answered 

 that purpose in our comparisons. We may, perhaps, find that no 

 considerable number of other objects agree with this first general con^ 

 ception; and that we must drop the conception, and beginning again 

 with a different individual case, proceed by different com[)arisons to a 

 diffei-ent general conception. Sometimes, again, we find that the same 

 conception will serve, by merely leaving out some of its circumstances ; 

 and. by this higher effort of abstraction, we obtain a still more general 

 conception; as, in the case formerly refeired to, we rose from the 

 conception of poles to the general conception of opposite properties in 

 opposite directions ; or as those South Sea islanders, whose conception 

 of a quadruped had been abstracted from hogs (the only animals of that 

 description which they had seen), when they afterwards compared that 

 conception with other quadrupeds, dropped some of the circumstances, 

 and arrived at the more general conception which Europeans associate 

 with the term. 



These brief remarks contain, I believe, all that is well-grounded in 

 Mr.-Whewell's doctrine that the conception by which the mind ar- 

 ranges and gives unity to phenomena must be furnished by the mind 

 itself, and that we find the right conception by a tentative process, 

 trying first one and then another until we hit the mark. It has been 

 seen that the conception is not furnished hi/ the mind until it litis been 

 furnished to the mind ; and that the facts which supply it are some- 

 times extraneous facts, but more often the very facts which we are 

 attempting to arrange by it. It is quite true, however, that in e'ndeav- 

 oring to arrange the facts, at whatever point we begin, we never ad- 

 vance three steps without forming a general conception, more or less 

 distinct and precise ; and' that this general conception becomes the 

 clue which we instantly endeavor to trace through the rest of the facts, 

 or rather, becomes the standard with which we thenceforth compare 

 them. If we are not satisfied with the agreements which we discover 

 among the phenomena by comparing them with this type, or with some 

 still more general conception which by an additional stage of abstrac- 

 tion we can form from the type : we change our course, and look out 

 for other agreements : we recommence the comparison from a differei;vt 

 starting point, and so generate a different set of general conceptions. 

 This is the tentative process wlilch Mr. Whewell speaks of; and this 

 it is which suggested the theory tliat the conception is supplied by the 

 mind itself. The different conceptions which the mind successively 

 tries, it either already possessexl from its previous experience, or they 

 were supplied to it in the very first stage of the corresponding act of 

 comparison ; and since, in the subsequent part of the process, the con- 

 ception manifested itself as something compared with the phenomena, 

 not evoh ed from them, Mr. Whewell's opinion, though I cannot help 

 thinking it erroneous, is not unnatural. 

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