IMAGINATION. 49 



is perfectly clear and determinate ; now that I possess it, I never fail 

 to recognize an araucaria among the various plants which may be shown 

 me ; it differs then from the confused and floating representation I have 

 of some particular araucaria." * 



In other words, a blurred picture is just as much a single 

 mental fact as a sharp picture is ; and tJie use of either picture 

 by the mirid to symbolize a whole class of individuals is a neio 

 mental function, requiring some other modification of con- 

 sciousness than the mere perception that the picture is 

 distinct or not. I may bewail the indistinctness of my 

 mental image of my absent friend. That does not prevent 

 my thought from meaning him alone, however. And I may 

 mean all mankind, with perhaps a very sharp image of one 

 man in my mind's eye. The meaning is a function of the 

 more ' transitive ' parts of consciousness, the ' fringe ' of 

 relations which we feel surrounding the image, be the latter 

 sharp or dim. This was explained in a previous place (see 

 p. 473 If., especially the note to page 477), and I would not 

 touch upon the matter at all here but for its historical 

 interest. 



Our ideas or images of past sensible experiences may 

 then be either distinct and adequate or dim, blurred, and 

 incomplete. It is likely that the different degrees in which 

 difi'erent men are able to make them sharp and complete 

 has had something to do with keeping up such philosophic 

 disputes as that of Berkeley with Locke over abstract ideas. 

 Locke had spoken of our possessing ' the general idea of a 

 triangle ' which " must be neither oblique nor rectangle, 

 neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and 

 none of these at once." Berkeley says : 



" If any man has the faculty of framing in his mind such an idea of 

 a triangle as is here described, it is in vain to pretend to dispute him 

 out of it, nor would I go about it. All I desire is that the reader would 

 fully and certainly inform himself whether 7ie has such an idea or no." f 



Until very recent years it was supposed by all philoso- 

 phers that there was a typical human mind which all indi- 

 vidual minds were like, and that propositions of universal 

 validity could be laid down about such faculties as ' the 



* On Intelligence (N. Y.), vol. ii. p. 139. 



f Principles, Introd. § 13. Compare also the passage quoted above, 

 p. 469 



