XIV 



THE CONCEPT 333 



concrete circumstances in which it is placed, and the series 

 of events with which it has to deal. Affinities between 

 this series and others influence the mind in its choice of 

 means to the practical end, but the affinities are operative 

 without being brought before consciousness. It is this 

 cross-relation between the different series of events, the 

 affinities and differences which unite and separate them, 

 that the general conception and the universal judgment 

 bring out. In other words, we have reached a higher 

 stage of correlation, in which a new relation is brought 

 into consciousness, and one more of the operative factors 

 no longer merely influences the mind, but is recognised 

 as an influence. We are a step further on in bringing the 

 factors of knowledge into an articulate system. 



7. The general meaning the reference to a class or to 

 Reality at large is potential rather than explicit in the 

 Concept. It is made explicit in the Universal Judgment. 

 The function of this judgment is to bring the contents 

 of two general conceptions into relation with each other, 

 whether as substance and attribute, cause and effect, or 

 in any other way. " Animal " is a general conception. 

 "All animals possess consciousness," a Universal Judg- 

 ment, true or false. The universal relation is asserted as 

 holding good apart from any special circumstances or any 

 particular perception. Its reference is to Reality at large, 

 and it asserts that wherever we find the one term 

 there we shall find the other which is predicated of it. 

 This is often expressed by saying that it attributes one 

 thing to another " as such." In our example, the fact 

 that an organism is an animal is taken to be of itself, or 

 <c as such," a sufficient ground for crediting it with con- 

 sciousness. The universal deals with general terms, and 

 attributes one to the other without taking anything else 

 into account. It thus enables us to go beyond our own 

 experience, and build up a " world of ideas." l 



1 We are not of course to suppose the rigidly defined universal of 

 science common to all human thought. The universal begins in the form 

 of the rough and ready rule of common sense, to which common sense 

 itself tacitly allows many exceptions and limiting conditions. But from 

 the first rough rule onwards, the assumption is the same, that one general 

 term may be used as a basis for inferring another. The conditions 



