ABSTRACTION. 395 



thereby the place from whence it originally came, or the place whore 

 a great quantity of matter similar to itself was assembled. In the other 

 class of motions, as when bodies are thrown up in the air, they are, on 

 the contrary, mo\mgf/om their own place. Now, this conception of 

 a body moving towards its own place may justly be considered inap- 

 propriate ; because, though it expresses a circumstance really found in 

 some of the most famiHar instances of motion apparently spontaneous, 

 yet, Jirsf, there are many other cases of such motion, in which that cir- 

 cumstance is absent: the motion, for instance, of the earth and planets. 

 Secondly, even when it is present, the motion, on closer examination, 

 would often be seen not to be spontaneous : as, when air rises in water, 

 it docs not rise by its own nature, but is pushed up by the superior 

 weight of the water which presses upon it. Fhially, there are many 

 cases in which the spontaneous motion takes place in the contrary 

 direction to what the theory considers as the body's own place ; for 

 instance, when a fog rises from a lake, or when water dries up. There 

 is, therefore, no agi-eement, but only a superficial semblance of agree- 

 ment, which vanishes on closer inspection : and hence the conception 

 is " inappropriate." We may add that, in the case in question, no con- 

 ception would be appropriate; there is no agreement which runs 

 through all the cases of spontaneous, or apparently spontaneous, mo- 

 tion : they cannot be brought under one law — it is a case of Plurality 

 of Causes.* 



§ 5. So much for the first of Mr. Wlievvell's conditions, that concep- 

 tions must be appropriate. The second is, that they shall be "clear;" 

 and let us consider what thi-s implies. Unless the conception corre- 

 sponds to a real agreement, it has a worse defect than that of not being 

 clear ; it is not applicable to the case at all. Among the phenomena, 

 therefore, which we ai'e attempting to connect by mefuis of the con- 

 ception, we must suppose that there really is an agreement, and that 

 the conception is a conception of that agreement. In order, then, that 

 it should be clear, the only requisite is, that we shall know exactly in 

 what tho agreement consists; that it shall have been carefully observed, 

 and accurately remembered. We are said not to have a clear concep- 

 tion of the resemblance among a set of objects, when we have only a 

 general feeling that they resemble, without having analyzed their 

 resemblance, or perceived in what points it consists, and fixed in our 

 memoiy an exact recollection of those points. This want of clearness, 

 or, as it may be otherwise called, this vagueness, in the general con- 



* Other examples of inappropriate conceptions are given by Mr. Whevvell (Phil. Iml. Sc. 

 ii., 185), as follows: — "Aristotle and his followers endeavored in vain to accoont for the 

 mechanical relation of forces in the lever, by applying the inapjiropriate geometrical con- 

 ceptions of the properties of the circle : they failed in explaining the form of the luminous 

 spot made by the sun shining through a hole, tecause they applied the inappropriate con- 

 ception of a circular quality in the sun's light : they speculated to no purpose about the 

 elementary composition of bodies, because they assumed the inappropriate conception of 

 likeness between the elements and the compound, instead of the genuine notion of elements 

 merely determining the qtialilies of the compound." Rut in these cases there is more than 

 an inappropriate conception ; there is a false conception ; one which has no prototype in 

 nature, nothing corresponding to it in facts. This is evident in the last two examples, and 

 is equally true in the first; the " properties of the circle" which were referred to, being 

 purely fantastical. There is, therefore, an error beyond the wrong choice of a principle oi 

 generalization ; there is a false assumption of matters of fact. The attempt is made to re- 

 solve certain laws of nature into a more general law, that law being not one which, though 

 real, is inappropriate, but one wholly imaginary. 



