Recapitula further ex and illustration. LECTURE VIII. STOICHEIOLOGY. SECT. II.-OF THE PRODUCTS OF THOUGHT. I. ENNOEMATIC. A. OF CONCEPTS IN GENERAL; B. IN SPECIAL-I. THEIR LECT. IN our last Lecture, we began the Second Section of VIII. Stoicheiology, the consideration of the Products of tion, with Thought. The product of thought may be considered planation as Concepts, as Judgments, and as Reasonings; these, however, are not to be viewed as the results of different faculties, far less as processes independent of each other, for they are all only the product of the same energy in different degrees, or rather in simpler or more complex application to its objects. In treating of Concepts, which form the subject of the First Chapter of this Second Section, I stated that I should first consider them in general, and then consider them in special; and, in my last Lecture, I had nearly concluded all that I deem it requisite under the former head to state in regard to their peculiar character, their origin, and their general accidents. I, first of all, explained the meaning of the two terms concept and notion, words convertible with each other, but still severally denoting a different aspect of the simple operation, which they equally express; notion being relative to and expressing the apprehension VIII. the remarking the taking note of the resembling LECT. attributes in objects; concept, the grasping up or synthesis of these in the unity of thought. Having shown what was properly expressed by the terms notion and concept or conception, I went on to a more articulate explanation of that which they are employed to denote. And here I again stated what a Concept or Notion is in itself, and in contrast to a Presentation of Perception, or Representation of Phantasy. Our knowledge through either of the latter, is a direct, immediate, irrespective, determinate, individual, and adequate cognition; that is, a singular or individual object is known in itself, by itself, through all its attributes, and without reference to aught but itself. A concept, on the contrary, is an indirect, mediate, relative, indeterminate, and partial cognition of any one of a number of objects, but not an actual representation either of them all, or of the whole attributes of any one object. Though it be not strictly within the province of Logic to explain the origin and formation of our notions, the logician assuming, as data, the laws and products of thought, as the mathematician assumes, as data, extension and number and the axioms by which their relation is determined, both leaving to the metaphysician the inquiry into their grounds ;this notwithstanding, I deemed it not improper to give you a very brief statement of the mode and circumstances in which our concepts are elaborated out of the presentations and representations of the subsidiary faculties. Different objects are complements partly of similar, partly of different, attributes. Similar qualities are those which stand in similar relation to our organs and faculties, and where the similarity VIII. LECT. is complete, the effects which they determine in us are, by us, indiscernible. To us, they are, therefore, virtually the same, and the same we, accordingly, consider them to be, though in different objects; precisely as we consider the thought of the same object to be itself the same, when repeated at intervals,-at different times, in consciousness. This, by way of preface, being understood, I showed that, in the formation of a concept or notion, the process may be analysed into four momenta. In the first place, we must have a plurality of objects presented or represented by the subsidiary faculties. These faculties must furnish the rude material for elaboration. In the second place, the objects thus supplied are, by an act of the Understanding, compared together, and their several qualities judged to be similar or dissimilar. In the third place, an act of volition, called Attention, concentrates consciousness on the qualities thus recognised as similar; and that concentration, by attention on them, involves an abstraction of consciousness from those which have been recognised and thrown aside as dissimilar; for the power of consciousness is limited, and it is clear or vivid precisely in proportion to the simplicity or oneness of its object. Attention and abstraction are the two poles of the same act of thought; they are like the opposite scales in a balance, the one must go up as the other goes down. In the fourth place, the qualities, which by comparison are judged similar and by attention are constituted into an exclusive object of thought,-these are already, by this process, identified in consciousness; for they are only judged similar, inasmuch as they produce in us indiscernible effects. Their synthesis in consciousness may, however, for precision's sake, be VIII. stated as a fourth step in the process; but it must be LECT. remembered, that at least the three latter steps are not, in reality, distinct and independent acts, but are only so distinguished and stated, in order to enable us to comprehend and speak about the indivisible operation, in the different aspects in which we may consider it. In the same way, you are not to suppose that the mental sentence which must be analysed in order to be expressed in language, has as many parts in consciousness, as it has words, or clauses, in speech; for it forms, in reality, one organic and indivisible whole. To repeat an illustration I have already given :-The parts of an act of thought stand in the same relation to each other as the parts of a triangle,—a figure which we cannot resolve into any simpler figure, but whose sides and angles we may consider apart, and, therefore, as parts; though these are, in reality, inseparable, being the necessary conditions of each other. But this by the way. The qualities of different individual things, thus identified in thought, and constituting concepts, under which, as classes, these individual things themselves are ranged; these primary concepts may themselves be subjected to the same process, by which they were elaborated from the concrete realities given in Perception and Imagination. We may, again, compare different concepts together, again find in the plurality of attributes which they comprehend, some like, some unlike; we may again attend only to the similar, and again identify these in the synthesis of consciousness; and this process of evolving concepts out of concepts we may go on performing, until the generalisation is arrested in that ultimate or primary concept, the basis itself of all attributes, the concept of Being or Existence. LECT. VIII. Relativity of Concepts. Having thus endeavoured to give you a general view of what concepts are, and by what process they are formed, I stated, by way of corollary, some of their general characteristics. The first of these I mentioned is their partiality or inadequacy, that is, they comprehend only a larger or smaller portion of the whole attributes belonging to the things classified or contained under them. Formed by compari- The second is their relativity. son, they express only a relation. fore, be held up as an absolute object to consciousness, -they cannot be represented, as universals, in imagination. They can only be thought of in relation to some one of the individual objects they classify, and, when viewed in relation to it, they can be represented in imagination; but then, as so actually represented, they no longer constitute general attributions, they fall back into mere special determinations of the individual object in which they are represented. Thus it is, that the generality or universality of concepts is potential, not actual. They are only generals, inasmuch as they may be applied to any of the various objects they contain; but while they cannot be actually elicited into consciousness, except in application to some one or other of these, so, they cannot be so applied without losing, pro tanto, their universality. Take, for example, the concept horse. In so far as by horse we merely think of the word, that is, of the combination formed by the letters h, o, r, s, e,-this is not a concept at all, as it is a mere representation of certain individual objects. This I only state and eliminate, in order that no possible ambiguity should be allowed to lurk. By horse, then, meaning not merely a representation of the word, but a concept relative to |