are told, are words like regiment, names of a number of things joined together as a whole. Now this is true, as a matter of fact. A number of soldiers form a regiment, but the original concept of regiment is not a number of soldiers, but what is ordered or commanded by a general.' True collective words are equitatus, cavalry, which is really conceived as a number of equites, or senatus, which was meant for so many senes or old people as formed the council. Humanitas was meant originally for many men or all men, conceived as a class or as a whole, and this we see most clearly when we translate humanitas by man-kind. Our word youth, like the Latin juventas, stands for a number of young men, Romana juventas was meant for juvenes Romani. We may imagine some kind of difference between juvenes and juventas, but the difference is one of sentiment rather than of fact. These are the real collective terms, and we shall meet with them again, when we come to abstract terms, because many of them, without any outward change, have become, what are called, secondary abstract terms. Youth, like juventus, from meaning a number of young men, and all young men, has come to be used in the sense of the attributes of all young men, conceived as a whole. His youth has carried him away' means 'the qualities of young men, taken as a lump, have carried him away.'

The collective terms ordinarily mentioned as such in our Handbooks of Logic are Parliament, which is called collective because it consists of two Houses, each House, because it consists of many members; or the Bible, because it consists of many books or biblia. But in this sense almost every term may

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be called collective. If Library is a collective term, because it contains so many books, so is book, because it consists of a collection of pages, so is page, because it consists of a collection of lines, so is line, because it consists of a collection of words, so is word, because it consists of a collection of syllables, so is syllable, because it consists of a collection of letters. I doubt whether anything is gained for logical purposes, if we extend the meaning of the name collective so as to comprehend all such terms.

Anyhow, if they are to be called collective, it would be desirable to have another class of partitive terms, and to call shilling, for instance, a partitive term, as opposed to sovereign, which would be a collective term.

It has been supposed that if singular terms correspond to Kant's category of Einheit, general terms to that of Mehrheit, collective terms would answer to the category of Allheit. This, however, is true of some collective terms only; what really corresponds to Allheit are universal terms, as when we use humanitas in the sense of mankind, i. e. all men.

There is no reason whatever why collective terms should be used as singular only. Parliament' in the sense of our English Parliament is, no doubt, a singular term, but we can use it as a general term, when we speak of the Parliaments of the world. 'Bible' is a singular term, but it becomes general when we speak of the Bibles of the human race, Only if collective terms have assumed a universal character, as in humanitas, mankind, it would be almost impossible to use them again as general terms, or to employ them in the plural.

Abstract

Terms.

Another very common division is that into abstract and concrete terms. It is extremely difficult to say what abstract and and Concrete concrete mean, and a mere juxtaposition of the different definitions given of these terms by the most prominent philosophers would teach a very useful lesson. These terms have no inherent meaning of their own, so that we could say 'abstract means this, and does not mean that.' Even to say that abstract should mean this and not that, is more than any human being is entitled to do. But what every philosopher has a perfect right to say is that abstract, as used by him, shall have such and such a meaning. If Aristotle possessed that right, so did Mill1 Abstract means what Aristotle wished it to mean, or whatever any philosopher wishes it to mean. The authority of a man like Aristotle is no doubt. greater than that of the ephemeral philosophers of our time, and to change the meaning of a name, invented and defined by one of the historical leaders of thought, is more or less presumptuous. Still it is far better that every writer should say in what sense he means to use a certain term, than that he should use it with a vague traditional meaning only.

Abstract is a term that goes back to Aristotle, not so concrete, and much confusion would have been avoided if, instead of concrete, logicians had been satisfied with using the term non-abstract. With Aristotle abstraction means principally the taking away or dropping of certain ingredients of our percepts. He applies it first of all to a work of art,

1 Logic, i. 8, 7.

a statue, which comes by àpaíperis, i. e. abstraction, from a block of marble (Phys. i, 7); but afterwards to ideas, which by our dropping what is accidental in them are raised to their true and permanent form. Mathematics, for instance, are founded on apaiperis or abstraction, because they treat of the necessary forms, without any reference to the matter of things. Thus abstract, according to Aristotle's view of aphaeresis, would mean everything which, as the general, has been separated in our thoughts from the singular, and in consequence can be no longer the object of sensuous perception, but of intellectual conception only 1.

Concrete, however, is not an Aristotelian term, though some scholars have taken it for a translation οἱ συμπεφυκότα. The fact is that no name was really wanted for what remained after abstract terms had been distinguished by their own name. If abstract is the proper adjective of a concept, sensuous or intuitive would have been the proper adjective of a percept, and there was no necessity for inventing a new term, such as concrete. Nor is it quite clear who first introduced that term, and in what sense it was first used. Some think that concrete is that in which the quality has grown together with the substance, while abstract is the quality apart from the substance. Others, again, take concrete in the sense of solid, in which Lucretius uses it, for instance, in concreta copia materiai (Lucr. i, 1018). I should say that non-abstract or sensuous would be far more intelligible than concrete, and though it is impossible to get rid of so old a term as concrete,

1 Metaph. xi (K) 3; xiii (M) 2.

it will be well to remember that so clear a thinker as Aristotle is not responsible for it.

Berkeley on

Abstraction.

We saw before that some of our greatest philosophers deny that there is such a thing as a general abstract idea. Berkeley scouted the thought that we could have abstract ideas, such as man, animal, body, and he only admitted some very primitive kind of abstraction, as when we consider the head, the eye, the nose, each by itself, abstracted and separated from the rest of the body.' Idea with Berkeley meant a picture or Vorstellung; an abstract idea, therefore, would have been with him a conceptual percept, which is self-contradictory. The followers of Hume might possibly look upon the faded images of our memory as abstract ideas. Our memory, or, what is often equally important, our obliviscence, seems to them able to do what abstraction, as Berkeley shows, never can do, and under its silent sway many an idea or cluster of ideas might seem to melt away till nothing is left but a mere shadow. These shadows, however, though they may become very vague, remain percepts; they are not concepts. Professor Huxley, in his Life of Hume2, seems to imagine that such a transition is possible. 'An anatomist,' he says, who occupies himself intently with the examination of several specimens of some new kind of animal, in course of time acquires so vivid a conception of its form and structure, that the idea may take visible shape and become a sort of waking dream.' But a waking

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1 Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, p. 140.

2 Page 96.