such as ideal images leave. The inference invented an hypothesis as needless as it is inverisimilar. We discover the inconcrete by means of ideas which symbolise it as part of the concrete; we give it a name and then the name takes its place as immediate object of almost all discourse that refers to it. We discern, once for all, a certain proprium in a geometrical figure. say, the equality of the three angles of a triangle to two right angles; we give it a name and then the name exempts the mind from the cost of reproducing a symbol of the concrete circumstances of the proprium when we have occasion to think of it. Owing to this economy we do most of our thinking and intellectual intercommunication without the intervention of ideas. All general ideas, like that of the equality of the three angles of a triangle to two right angles, are either ideas of the concrete, or ideas of the inconcrete involved with a symbol of the concrete. Wherever we discern the general without the help of a symbol of the concrete, it is because general terms are doing duty for general ideas. There are no such things as abstract ideas. So far Nominalism is justified. But an abstract idea is one thing, and a concept another. Nominalism is true as regards its negation of abstract ideas, but not as regards its negation of concepts.

5. That we discern what are not appearances, e.g. the relation whereby such or such a parcel of sugar is a sample, that, in other words, we have inapparitional ideas, imparted plausibility to the theory of abstraction. But it is one thing for an idea to be inapparitional, and quite another to be abstract. The immediate object of my discernment when I am thinking of a certain parcel of sugar as being a sample of a cargo

involves an ideal symbol of a concrete, viz. the parcel, and an ideal symbol of a connected inapparitional thing, viz. the relation in virtue of which the parcel is a sample. The ideal symbol of the relation is inapparitional, but not abstract. Inapparitional ideas, or ideal symbols connected with symbols of the concrete, abound; but outside that connection there are none. When we think of inapparitional things outside that connection, we think by means of signs, not of ideas.

6. We sometimes contemplate with a lively sentiment of approval an ideal of emotive character unconnected with an image of a subject. The few whose Christianity has enamoured them of Wisdom, and who are earnestly occupied about their own moral development, frequently think of charity, patience, fortitude, generosity, and their opposites, apart from an ideal image of a subject, and with such sentiments of approval or disapprobation as are excited by living instances. Are the objects they contemplate concepts, or are they mere signs of concepts ? One might allege improbability that a mere sign could make itself an object of emotion, and conclude that the objects are concepts. Cardinal Newman, in his Grammar of Assent, dwells on the parching influence of abstract religious ideas, and, if the objects denoted as abstract ideas be really mere signs, his remarks apply against signs,against their inefficiency to kindle the intelligence of the heart. It is true that when the consideration of religious topics involves intricate reasoning and laborious effort of subtle discrimination, it tends to exclude emotion, so that "theologising" tends to parch the heart; but familiar general terms serving as substitutes for concepts have no such tendency. Words and

R

phrases, from being connected with emotions by their respective ideas, acquire a virtue whereby, without the help of the ideas, they excite the emotions. Hence the magic of a liturgy, a party cry, a proverb, and the superlative words of poets which certain emotions always suggest. There are objectless emotions.1 Such is the emotion of solemnity excited by an organ peal, such the emotion styled by Lord Kames the sympathetic emotion of virtue. They do not inform us that they are unconnected, and we take for granted that they are connected, with ideas. Such emotions mere words have the property of awakening.

7. Ideas of "quesits" (§ lxix. 1) tend to pass for Abstract Ideas, and to bolster the doctrine of Abstraction. Such objects are not primarily discriminated in the concrete, and then exhibited apart from the concrete. The idea of Possibility cannot be supposed to have such an origin. What it symbolises is not an attribute of the concrete, and, therefore, does not admit of abstraction. The idea of the absolute necessity indicated by axioms and all guaranteed theses, considered as holding though nothing existed save space and time, is not the idea of what could be an attribute of a concrete. The idea of the moral imperative symbolises it as a thing that is independent of the contingent, a thing which the contingent may intuite but not originate; which, if God be, is no less a law to God than to His creatures2 : of what concrete can this be supposed to be an attri

1 The writer once surprised in himself an objectless emotion of

sarcasm.

2 The notion that the moral imperative is the will of God in the sense that, if He should command what the moral sense apprehends as evil, what was commanded would therefore be good, is inconsistent.

bute so as to be amenable to abstraction? Clearly abstraction has nothing to do with such ideas.

8. The Moral Imperative, although a quesit, is a thing of transcendent importance. In this respect it has no rival but the animus which moves us to comply with it, the animus, wisdom. The idea by which it is symbolised bears powerfully upon the practical life of man, and is the product and sign of what is divine or nearest to divine in him. It bears to human nature and conduct a relation analogous to that which the useful figment termed "concept" bears to the realities it symbolises, a figment that serves as a hinge of science. We cannot too carefully enshrine, protect, and in every way make much of, a thing so holy and momentous. If we reduce it to the category of nonentity, we tend to impair its dignity and influence, and to help a demoralising argument, viz. that moral law is a mere fiction of minds of a certain order, and that, apart from minds of that order, there is no such thing as good and evil, an argument which confounds moral law with discernment of moral law.

CXXXVI.

Philosophers have been so engrossed by the relation of the concept to judgment that they have quite overlooked its relation to memory. When we remember a custom, the immediate object of the remembrance is a concept, an idea of an event serving as type of a kind of events. One may remember the customary temper of his youth in a concept having for nucleus an ideal

image of his young self smiling or laughing, or in some other way evincing an ebullition of pleasure, the image being apprehended as sample of events that made up the greater part of his youthful waking life.

Concepts

of this kind may be distinguished as mnemonical.

CXXXVII.

The primitive source of ideas of Kinds is a latent action of unitive likeness on the mind. We simultaneously or successively, or in part simultaneously and in part successively, perceive and otherwise experience several individuals of a kind, and their unitive likeness latently fecundates the mind, so that, without the intervention of any consciousness whatever, an idea of the Kind comes into existence. No comparison, no discernment of general likeness or of a basis of general likeness, nothing that could be accounted a conscious selection and synthesis of essential qualities, intervenes between the consciousness constituting the experiences and the birth of the idea. The bearing of the fecundating likeness is as remote from objectivity as that of the likeness which begets recognition. The idea thus begotten is the idea of a primary kind, one that excludes a symbol of the differentia of the kind, and, so, testifies that the kind does not owe its existence to discernment of a basis of likeness. One of the most toilsome and least remunerative offices of Reason is study in quest of the discovery of the differentia of primary kinds, e.g. of Mankind, or Wealth; and yet philosophers pretend that the idea of a kind supposes discrimination of its basis of general likeness, and that the idea was somehow