CONCEPTION. 469 



trine for himself. His asseverations against ' abstract 

 ideas' are among the oftenest quoted passages in philo- 

 sophic literature. 



" It is agreed," he says, " on all hands that the qualities or modes 

 of things do never really exist each of them apart by itself, and sepa- 

 rated from all others, but are mixed, as it were, and blended together, 

 several in the same object. But, we are told, the mind being able to 

 consider each quality singly, or abstracted from those other qualities 

 with which it is united, does by that means frame to itself abstract 

 ideas. . . . After this manner, it is said, we come by the abstract idea 

 of man, or, if you please, humanity, or human nature ; wherein it is 

 true there is included color, because there is no man but has some 

 color, but then it can be neither white, nor black, nor any particular 

 color, because there is no one particular color wherein all men partake. 

 So likewise there is included stature, but then it is neither tall stature 

 nor low stature, nor yet middle stature, but something abstracted from 

 all these. And .so of the rest. . . . Whether others have this wonder- 

 ful faculty of abstracting their ideas, they best can tell : for myself, I 

 find indeed I have a faculty of imagining or representing to myself the 

 ideas of those particular things I have perceived and of variously com- 

 pounding and dividing them. ... I can consider the hand, the eye, 

 the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the 

 body. But then, whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have .some 

 particular shape and color. Likewise the idea of man that 1 frame to 

 myself must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or 

 a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any 

 effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above described. And it 

 is equally impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct 

 from the body moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear 

 nor rectilinear; and the like may be said of all other abstract general 

 ideas whatsoever. . . . And there is ground to think most men will 

 acknowledge themselves to be in my case. The generality of men 

 which are simple and illiterate never pretend to abstract notions. It is 

 said they are difficult, and not to be attained without pains and study. 

 . . . Now I would fain know at what time it is men are employed in 

 surmounting that difficulty, and furnishing themselves with tliose nec- 

 essary helps for discourse. It cannot be when they are grown up, for 

 then it seems they are not conscious of any such painstaking; it re- 

 mains therefore to be the business of their childhood. And surely the 

 great and multiplied labor of framing abstract notions will be found a 

 hard task for that tender age. Is it not a hard thing to imagine that a 

 couple of children cannot prate together of their sugar-plums and rat- 

 tles and the rest of their little trinkets, till they have fii'st tacked to- 

 gether numberless inconsistencies, and so framed in their minds ab- 

 stract genei'al ideas, and annexed them to every common name they 

 make use of ?" * 



* Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, §§ 10, 14. 



