CONCEPTION. 461 



CONCEPTION DEFINED. 



The fuTwtion by tuhich we thus identify a numerically dis- 

 tinct and permanent subject of discourse is called conception ; 

 and tlie thouglits wliicli are its vehicles are called concepts. 

 But the word ' concejDt ' is often used as if it stood for the 

 object of discourse itself; and this looseness feeds such 

 evasiveness in discussion that I shall avoid the use of the 

 expression concept altogether, and speak of ' conceiving 

 state of mind,' or something similar, instead. The word 

 * conception ' is unambiguous. It properly denotes neither 

 the mental state nor what the mental state signifies, but 

 the relation between the two, namely, the function of the 

 mental state in signifying just that particular thing. It is 

 plain that one and the same mental state can be the ve- 

 hicle of many conceptions, can mean a particular thing, 

 and a great deal more besides. If it has such a multiple 

 conceptual function, it may be called an act of compound 

 conception. 



We may conceive realities supposed to be extra-mental, 

 as steam-engine ; fictions, as mermaid; or mere entia rati- 

 onis, like difference or nonentity. But whatever we do 

 conceive, our conception is of that and nothing else — noth- 

 ing else, that is, instead of that, though it may be of much 

 else in addition to that. Each act of conception results 

 from our attention singling out some one part of the mass 

 of matter for thought which the world presents, and hold- 

 ing fast to it, without confusion.* Confusion occurs when 



* In later chapters we shall see that determinate relations exist between 

 the various data thus fixed upon by the mind. These are called a prian 

 or axiomatic relations. Simple inspection of the data enables us to per- 

 ceive them; and one inspection is as effective as a million for engendering- 

 in us the conviction that between those data that relation must always hold. 

 To change the relation we should have to make the data different. ' Thg 

 guarantee for the uniformity and adequacy 'of the data can only be the 

 mind's own power to fix upon any objective content, and to mean that 

 content as often as it likes. This right of the mind to ' construct ' perma- 

 nent ideal objects for itself out of the data of experience seems, singularly 

 enough, to be a stumbling-block to many. Professor Robertson in his 

 clear and instructive article ' Axioms ' in the Encyclopsedia Britannica (9th 

 edition) suggests that it may only be where tnoveinents enter into the con- 

 stitution of the ideal object (as they do in geometrical figures) that we can 



