LOGIC OF CONCEPTS. 7 1 



points of agreement between them — and also between all 

 other individuals of their kind — without regard to their points 

 of disagreement : the word Animal takes a still wider range, 

 and so with nearly all words denoting objects. Like words 

 connoting qualities, they may be arranged in rank above 

 rank according to the range of their generality : and it is 

 obvious that the wider this range the further is their meaning 

 withdrawn from anything that can ever have been an object 

 of immediate perception. 



We shall afterwards find it is of the highest importance 

 to note that these remarks apply quite as much to actions 

 and states as they do to objects and qualities. Verbs, like 

 nouns and adjectives, may be merely the names of simple 

 recepts, or they may be compounds of other concepts — in 

 either case differing from nouns and adjectives only in that 

 they have to do with actions and states. To sow, to dig, to 

 spin, &c., are names of particular actions ; to labour is the 

 name of a more general action ; to live is the symbol of 

 a concept yet more general. And it is obvious that here, 

 as previously, the more general concepts are built out of 

 the more special. 



Later on I will adduce evidence to show that, whether we 

 look to the growing infant or to the history of mankind as 

 newly unearthed by the researches of the philologist, we alike 

 find that no one of these divisions of simple concepts — 

 namely, nouns, adjectives, and verbs — appears to present 

 priority over the others. Or, if there is any evidence of such 

 priority, it appears to incline in favour of nouns and verbs. 

 But the point on which I desire to fasten attention at present 

 is the enormous leverage which is furnished to the faculty of 

 ideation by thus using words as the mental equivalents of 

 ideas. For by the help of these symbols we climb into 

 higher and higher regions of abstraction : by thinking in 

 verbal signs we think, as it were, with the semblance of 

 ideas : we dispense altogether with the necessity of actual 

 images, whether of percepts or of recepts : we quit the sphere 

 of sense, and rise to that of thought 



