LXVIII.

The bearing of essence on the recognitive faculty is independent on verbal sign. It excites recognition in the lower animals as well as in man, and the former connect with it no name. When the dog barks at a beggar he manifests recognition, and in that recognition the bearing of the essence of the human individual as well as of the accidents that signify a mendicant animus and habit. The bearing is also independent on idea of kind. Recognition, as I shall soon explain (chap. xvi.), excludes reference of its object to a kind.

LXIX.

1. Let Thing be the common name of individuals of the summum genus. Is existence essential to things, to the thing, possibility, as well as to the thing Substance? The absolute necessity of a whole to be greater than its part, and of a two and a two to be a four, is a thing that would be though nothing existed save time and space. Its existence- -if it can be said to have existence-is independent of the existence involved in such things as atoms, molecules, bodies, spiritual substances, and the attributes of these. this necessity an existence, an entity? I put the question in order to plead the vagueness which it is likely to evoke in apology for the makeshift division of the summum genus, Things, which I find it convenient to

Is

make. I divide Things into two subgenera, viz. entities, and things which I make free to term quesits ; the former comprising all things to which the popular mind easily imputes reality, the latter such things as possibility and necessity. I do not imply in the name, entities, that existence is proper to entities, that it is not an attribute of quesits. I leave the question open. This rude division gives us two kinds which we distinguish, as we distinguish primary kinds, without discerning their differentiæ, and it gives us names of the kinds which suggest the question that elucidates the kinds. One advantage of the name, quesit, is, that it enables us to treat perspicuously and concisely of a kind of object which delusively tends to pass for an abstract idea and to support the doctrine of Abstraction (cxxxv. 8).

2. It may be objected that I class time and space as entities, whereas it is in question, whether realities correspond to our ideas of Time and Space. My classification does not beg this question. The term entity, as I employ it, connotes, not existence, but, objectivity that tends to impose itself on the popular mind as real. The pretension of Time and Space to reality pales before scrutiny, and yet, to deny it is to deny the reality of extension and event, e.g. the existence of matter and motion (lxiii. 10). Common sense protests that in the present state of knowledge such a negation is frivolous. But we shall do well to signalise the great difference between such entities and those of which the entity, body, is an example. Let us accordingly divide entities into the two kinds, vacant and non-vacant entities, putting Time and Space as the great exemplars of the former. I leave it to the

reader to determine in which of these two kinds he will place points, lines, mobile voids, and temporal beginnings and ends.

LXX.

Infimæ species constitute the lowest degree of the scale of kinds. An infima species is a kind of which the individuals differ from one another in no important respect, e.g. circles of an inch diameter.

CHAPTER X.

MIND.

LXXI.

ACCORDING to Positivism, Mind is merely either-1st, the consciousness or sum of consciousnesses that obtains at any instant in an individual, or 2nd, the sum of the consciousnesses, both simultaneous and successive, that obtain throughout life in an individual. Their definition transfers the name, Mind, from the subject of consciousness, to which spontaneous generalisation had annexed it, to what that generalisation ranked as the determining attribute, the consciousness. It implies at least distrust of two axioms, one that mind is a durable thing, the other that consciousness is an attribute. It must be allowed to the credit of Positivism that it is a method originated and in part determined by a revolt of Common Sense. Deduction that proceeds on axioms, after having achieved one great success,― Mathematics,—had betrayed speculation into the labyrinth known as Metaphysics, where it wasted human intellect, while Induction, proceeding on unguaranteed data, was proving itself by its fruits to be the better way. Consequently Metaphysics and its method lost credit with Common Sense, which was

then for confining speculation to the pursuit of unguaranteed knowledge. It would thenceforward have utility and the enablement of precision to be the sole tests of truth. It inadvertently arrogated the liberty of rejecting data inconvenient to its spirit,-those that sloped to Metaphysics. In this its impetus carried it beyond its goal. It could maintain itself on the slope without falling into Metaphysics. It could admit that mind is a concrete or sum of concretes and consciousness an attribute, without rolling into pertinent insoluble questions, saying to these with Horatio,-" It were to inquire too curiously." It has not improved the situation by taking up the alternative that mind is not a durable thing and that a consciousness is not an attribute. I restore the name, Mind, to its old signification. It denotes a concrete or sum of concretes that either is or involves what lacks nothing essential to a subject of consciousness. So far as this definition implies, a mind may be material or immaterial, it may exclusively consist of an immaterial subject of consciousness, or of this and the brain, nervous system, and other parts of the organs of sense. It does not imply that the subject of consciousness is a spirit. It consists with the consistent thesis that the subject of consciousness is an atom, which might, in certain relations, be incapable of consciousness, and might be a constituent of an inorganic body. Solidity and extension do not exclude from their subject susceptibilities and powers adequate to the highest exercises of mind. We have conclusive though undemonstrative evidence that knowledge mainly depends upon modifications of the brain wrought by experience, that it is neither more nor less than the relation of the subject of consciousness to such modifications, that knowledge acquired by experi