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coloured surface we see a line without breadth as the limit of each colour. Both surface and line as mathematically defined are unimaginable, for we cannot form images of them, cannot picture them detached; but that which is unpicturable may be conceivable, and the abstraction which is impossible to perception and imagination is easy to conception. It is thus that sensibles are raised to intelligibles, and the constructions of science-conceptions-take the place of perceptions. But the hold on reality is not loosened by this process. When we consider solely the direction of a line we are dealing with a fact of Nature, just as we are dealing with a fact of Nature when we perform the abstraction of considering the movement of a body irrespective of any other relations. . . . Not only is it misleading to call the objects of Mathematics imaginary, it is also incorrect to call them generalizations. They are abstractions of intuitions. Any particular line we draw has breadth, any particular circle is imperfect; consequently generalized lines and circles (scil. by imagination =generic images) must have breadth and imperfection. Whereas the line or circle which we intuit mathematically is an abstraction from which breadth or imperfection has dropped, and the figures we intuit are these figures under the form of the limit." 17

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So much for Dr. Bain's denial of abstract conceptions and universal relations. His definition of length as the name of one or more things agreeing in this property," illustrates well the violence that must be done to common language and common thought in order to adapt them to the needs of the Sensist Psychology. Length is not the name of thingsthe fishing-rod, the piece of string, and the River Thamesany more than motion is the name of the steam-engine, the swallow, and the perambulator. It is simply the name of a common property which the mind can consider and reason about "irrespective of any other relations." It is quite true that we cannot form a sensuous image or phantasm of a circle except of some particular colour, size, &c., and it is also true that the intellect cannot elicit a universal idea without the presence of a concrete image; but given this latter, we can contemplate in thought the specific or universal features abstracting from those which are individual.

The comparative or judicial activity of intellect Dr. Bain resolves into the Law of Relativity. "The Principle of Relativity, or the necessity of change in order to our being conscious, is the groundwork of Thought, Intellect, Knowledge, as well as of Feeling. . . . We know heat only in the transition

17 Id. 420, 421.

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from cold and vice versa. Relativity in this sense applied to thought coincides with the power of discrimination sense or feeling of difference which is one of the constituents of intelligence. We do not know any one thing of itself, but only the difference between it and another thing; the present sensation of heat is, in fact, a difference from the preceding cold." "The really fundamental separation of the Intellect is into three facts called (1) Discrimination, the sense, feeling, or consciousness of difference. (2) Similarity, the feeling or consciousness of agreement, and (3) Retentiveness, or the power of memory or acquisition. These three functions, however, much as they are mingled in our mental operations are yet totally distinct properties, and each the groundwork of a distinct structure. . . They are the Intellect, the whole Intellect, and nothing but the Intellect."

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Against Mr. Bain's statement of the alleged Law of Relativity numerous serious difficulties have been urged: this question, however, does not seem to us of very grave philosophical importance. But his attempted reduction of Intellect to a mere phase of that law lies open to the fatal objection that he confounds in the crudest manner two

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18 Mr. J. Ward has forcibly argued against the supposed law : (1) That the axiom, Idem semper sentire et non sentire ad idem recidunt, though a truism in reference to the totality of mental life, or to consciousness as a whole, is false as regards many individual impressions. (2) That the suggested illustrations, e.g. insensibility to continuous motion, temperature, pressure of the air, &c., are cases of physiological, not psychical habituation, and so are not constant mental impressions at all. (3) That "constant impressions" in the form of "fixed ideas' are the very reverse of a blank." (4) That if every feeling were " two-fold" or a " transition," a man surrounded by a blue sky and ocean, or passing from a neutral to a positive state of consciousness, must be unaware of any impression at all, which is not the fact. (5) There is, too, the old difficulty of Buridan's ass. (6) Moreover differences, which are themselves real presentations or objects of apprehension, are cognized, e.g. degrees of variation in shade, pitch, pressure, &c., and therefore presuppose the perception of the absolute terms. Mr. Ward also rightly traces Dr. Bain's confusion on this subject to his ignoring the difference between the mere successive or simultaneous occurrence of two related

feelings, and the intellectual perception of their relation. ("Psychology," Encycl. Brit. 9th Edit.) A still more fundamental objection in our view is that the primitive act both of sense and intellect is not comparative at all, but simply apprehensive. The first cognition of the intellect is the being of the object, that is a being" or "something is." But of this more hereafter.

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essentially distinct things-capacity for discriminable feelings, and the power of discriminating between them. His language about the so-called "facts" of discrimination ignores the radical diversity between the mere occurrence of unlike feelings and the comparative act of the higher faculty by which that unlikeness is cognized. Transition from one feeling to the other, change from one state of consciousness to another, is very different from the intellectual act of attention by which we may and do at times recognize that transition, and compare those states. Among low stages of animal life we frequently find the keenest susceptibility to different sensations. But the intellectual perception of them as different is wanting. The same objection applies to his treatment of the "fact" of agreement. As regards the third "fact or "function" he is even less happy. "Retentiveness " strictly understood means simply the persistence in the mind or body of a disposition towards the re-excitation of a state which has once occurred. Now this capability of conservation or resuscitation is not a specially intellectual or cognitive property at all. If, however, it is to be interpreted more largely as involving recognition and equivalent to "memory," then it is clearly not simple or ultimate in Dr. Bain's sense, but is in part made up of the "fact" or cognition of agreement.

Mr. Sully, whose Outlines of Psychology constitutes at present probably the most popular work of the Sensist school, seems to have clearly recognized the inadequacy of the account of our knowledge given by previous representatives. In chapters ix. x. of that work he analyzes and describes the process of thinking. Some of his remarks there appear to us very accurate; but usually when this is the case they are completely inconsistent with his Sensationalist assumption that "all mental activity is of one and the same kind throughout its manifold phases." (p. 26.) 19 We

19 The phrase "manifold phases" is happily vague; but in substance Mr. Sully adopts the sensist principle that at bottom all mental life is essentially of one kind-sensuous consciousness. How the admission of a power of "active self-direction" (p. 73) and of those various activities involved in comparison of impressions, cognition of relations, and reflexion on states of self (cc. ix. x.) is to be reconciled with this view, he does not attempt to explain. For our own part, we cannot easily imagine a more fundamental difference in kind than that between the sensibility exhibited in passive sensations awakened by the reception of concrete impressions, and the active and reflexive energies exerted in reflexive attention to, and comparison of, these impressions. If there is a

can only cite a few typical phrases which will nevertheless sufficiently justify our observations: "All thinking is representation like imagination, but it is of a different kind." "Thinking deals with abstract qualities of things-that is, aspects common to them and many other things, e.g. the possession of life."

These statements are true, but directly opposed to Nominalism, involved in Sensism, and frankly accepted by Mr. Bain. If "thinking is representation like imagination, but of a different kind," and if "abstract qualities of things, that is, aspects common to them and many other things,' can be thus represented in thought, then evidently the Sensist tenet that there can be really no general notions or concepts, and that the only thing which is universal is the word or name, is abandoned. Again: thinking, "like the simpler

forms of cognition, consists in discrimination and assimilation, in detecting differences and agreements," but " 'it is of a higher kind involving much more activity of mind. All thinking involves comparison. By an act of comparison is meant the voluntary direction of the attention to two or more objects at the same moment, or in immediate succession, with a view to discover differences or agreements." This power he holds to be beyond that of even intelligent brutes. Here, again, the description is correct, but utterly incompatible with the empirical conception of the mind as a mere collection of impressions.

In treating of the nature and origin of the universal idea, Mr. Sully unfortunately at times lapses back into the old exploded method of confounding the intellectual concept with the phantasm of the imagination, though he seems occasionally to have grasped the distinction between them. He defines the concept as "the representation in our minds answering to a general name, such as soldier, man, animal." But, "what is in the mind is a kind of composite image formed by the fusion or coalescence of many images of single objects, in which individual differences are blurred, and only the common

mind in the sense of a real unity, an abiding energy, endowed with intellectual or spiritual as well as sensuous powers, then it is conceivable that such a mind should be capable of reacting through its superior faculty, and of attending to, comparing, and reflecting upon the sensuous impressions which it has received. But if all mental life is essentially one in kind, and the mind itself but the series of sensuous states, then, where this active self-direction and this reflexive comparing force is to come from, we confess. ourselves unable to conceive.

features stand out prominently . . . this may be called a typical or generic image." Now, this so-called " generic image" is as distinct from the general concept proper as is the individual image. It is merely a confused phantasm, or rather a series of fleeting phantasms in which some of the individualizing notes are dimmed. The word man or rightangled-triangle calls up in the imagination a succession of obscure unsteady representations which reproduce the outlines and common parts of a number of objects pertaining to the class; but the universal idea or concept is something quite different. It is stable; it may be grasped clearly, while the generic image is confused; it is truly universal, it really applies to all possible members of the class. When the mathematician demonstrates that "the sum of the squares of the sides of a right-angled triangle are equal to the square of the hypothenuse," or the moral philosopher, that "man is a free moral being responsible for his actions," what is signified by the words "man" and "right angled triangle is neither the oral word nor the congeries of phantasms styled the "generic image," nor yet some particular individual, but the general notion, the intellectual concept, or rather the essential nature realized in the various individuals of the species, and apprehended in the abstract thought.20

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THE ORIGIN OF NECESSARY TRUTHS: ASSOCIATIONIST THEORY.-Besides universal concepts, necessary truths and especially those which have been called synthetic a priori judgments have been advanced in proof of the existence of a supra-sensuous faculty. Examples of these are the axioms of mathematics: "Two things which are equal to a third are (necessarily) equal to each other;" Equals added to equals give equals; "Two straight lines cannot inclose a space;" the principle of causality: "Nothing can begin to exist without a cause;" and also self-evident ethical maxims: Right ought to be done;" " Ingratitude is wrong," and SO on. These judgments, we maintain, affirm necessary and universal truths. They must hold always and everywhere, even in the most distant parts of the universe. God cannot infringe them. The peculiar necessary character of these propositions Kant sought to explain, as we have seen, by the hypotheses of subjective forms or laws inherent in

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20 The inadequacy of the generalized image to furnish a basis for science is clearly perceived by Lewes in the passage cited some pages back. The reader will find a detailed treatment of the common phantasm" or 'generic image" in the volume on Logic, c. 7 (present series). Cf. also Kleutgen, op. cit. § 80?.

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