476 PSYCHOLOOY. 



is not ; and in all tluit they say about this something, which 

 they explain to be ' an indefinite number of particular 

 ideas,' the same vacillation between the subjective and the 

 objective points of view appears. The reader never can 

 tell whether an ' idea ' spoken of is supposed to be a knower 

 or a known. The authors themselves do not distinguish. 

 They want to get something in the mind which shall resem- 

 ble Avhat is out of the mind, however vaguely, and they think 

 that when that fact is accomplished, no farther questions 

 will be asked. James Mill writes : * 



" The word, man, we shall say, is first applied to an individual ; it 

 is first associated with the idea of that individual, and acquires the 

 power of calling up the idea of him ; it is next applied to another indi- 

 vidual and acquires the power of calling up the idea of him ; so of an- 

 other and another, till it has become associated with an indefinite num- 

 ber, and has acquired the power of calling up an indefinite number of 

 those ideas indifferently. What happens? It does call up an indefinite 

 number of the ideas of individuals as often as it occurs; and calling 

 them in close connection, it forms a species of complex idea of them. 

 ... It is also a fact, that when an idea becomes to a certain extent 

 complex, from the multiplicity of the ideas it compyrhends, it is of ne- 

 cessity indistinct; . . . and this indistinctness has, doubtless, been a 

 main cause of the mystery wliich has appeared to belong to it. . . . It 

 thus appears that the word man is not a word having a very simple 

 idea, as was the opinion of the realists ; nor a word having no idea at 

 all, as was that of the [earlier] nominalists ; but a word calling up an 

 indefinite number of ideas, by the irresistible laws of association, and 

 forming them into one very complex and indistinct, but not therefore 

 unintelligible, idea." 



Berkeley had already said : f 



" A word becomes general by being made the sign, not of an ab- 

 sti'act general idea, but of many several particular ideas, any one of 

 which it indifferently suggests to the mind. An idea which, consid- 

 ered in itself, is particular, becomes general by being made to represent 

 or stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort." ' 



' Stand for,' not knoiv : ' becomes general,' not becomes 

 aivare of something general ; * particular ideas,' not par- 

 ticular things — everywhere the same timidity about beg- 

 ging the fact of knowing, and the pitifully impotent attempt 

 to foist it in the shape of a mode of being of * ideas.' lY 



* Analysis, chap. viii. 



f Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, |§ 11, 12. 



