CONCEPTION'. 465 



pirical instance, but new conceptions, are the indispensable 

 conditions of advance. 



For if the alleged cases of self-development be examined 

 it will be found, I believe, that the new truth affirms in 

 every case a relation between the original subject of con- 

 ception and some new subject conceived later on. These 

 new subjects of conception arise in various ways. Every 

 one of our conceptions is of something which our attention 

 originally tore out of the continuum ©f felt experience, and 

 provisionally isolated so as to make of it an individual 

 topic of discourse. Every one of them has a way, if the 

 mind is left alone with it, of suggesting other parts of the 

 continuum from which it was torn, for conception to work 

 upon in a similar way. This ' suggestion ' is often no more 

 than what we shall later know as the association of ideas. 

 Often, however, it is a sort of invitation to the mind to play, 

 add lines, break number-groups, etc. Whatever it is, it brings 

 new conceptions into consciousness, which latter thereupon 

 may or may not expressly attend to the relation in which 

 the new stands to the old. Thus I have a conception of 

 equidistant lines. Suddenly, I know not whence, there 

 jjops into my head the conception of their meeting. Sud- 

 denly again I think of the meeting and the equidistance both 

 together, and perceive them incompatible. " Those lines 

 Avill never meet," I say. Suddenly again the word ' paral- 

 lel ' pops into my head. ' They are jaarallels,' I continue; 

 and so on. Original conceptions to start with ; adventitious 

 conceptions pushed forward by multifarious psychologic 

 causes ; comparisons and combinations of the two ; I'esult- 

 ant conceptions to end with ; which latter may be of either 

 rational or empirical relations. 



As regards these relations, they are conceptions of the 

 second degree, as one might say, and their birthplace is 

 tl»e mind itself. In Chapter XXVIIT I sliall at considerable 

 length defend the mind's claiin to originality and fertility 

 in bringing them forth. But no single one of the mind's 

 conceptions is fertile of itself, as the opinion which I criti- 

 cise pretends, Wben tlie several notes of a chord are 

 sounded together, we get a new feeling from their combi- 

 nation. This feeling is due to the mind reacting upon that 



