(somewhat clumsy) terminology I have used, it has to do with the 'fringe' of the object, and is a 'feeling of tendency,' whose neural counterpart is undoubtedly a lot of dawning and dying processes too faint and complex to be traced. (See p. 169.) The geometer, with his one definite figure before him, knows perfectly that his thoughts apply to countless other figures as well, and that although he sees lines of a certain special bigness, direction, color, etc., he means not one of these details. When I use the word man in two different sentences, I may have both times exactly the same sound upon my lips and the same picture in my mental eye, but I may mean, and at the very moment of uttering the word and imagining the picture know that I mean, two entirely different things. Thus when I say: "What a wonderful man Jones is!" I am perfectly aware that I mean by man to exclude Napoleon Bonaparte or Smith. But when I say: "What a wonderful thing Man is!" I am equally well aware that I mean no such exclusion. This added consciousness is an absolutely positive sort of feeling, transforming what would otherwise be mere noise or vision into something understood; and determining the sequel of my thinking, the later words and images, in a perfectly definite way.

No matter how definite and concrete the habitual imagery of a given mind may be, the things represented appear always surrounded by their fringe of relations, and this is as integral a part of the mind's object as the things themselves are. We come, by steps with which everyone is sufficiently familiar, to think of whole classes of things as well as of single specimens; and to think of the special qualities or attributes of things as well as of the complete things in other words, we come to have universals and abstracts, as the logicians call them, for our objects. We also come to think of objects which are only problematic, or not yet definitely representable, as well as of objects imagined in all their details. An object which is problematic is defined by its relations only. We think of a thing

about which certain facts must obtain. But we do not yet know how the thing will look when realized—that is, although conceiving it we cannot imagine it. We have in the relations, however, enough to individualize our topic and distinguish it from all the other meanings of our mind. Thus, for example, we may conceive of a perpetual-motion machine. Such a machine is a quæsitum of a perfectly definite kind,-we can always tell whether the actual machines offered us do or do not agree with what we mean by it. The natural possibility or impossibility of the thing never touches the question of its conceivability in this problematic way. 'Round-square,' again, or ‘black-whitething,' are absolutely definite conceptions; it is a mere accident, as far as conception goes, that they happen to stand for things which nature never shows us, and of which we consequently can make no picture.

The nominalists and conceptualists carry on a great quarrel over the question whether "the mind can frame abstract or universal ideas." Ideas, it should be said, of abstract or universal objects. But truly in comparison with the wonderful fact that our thoughts, however different otherwise, can still be of the same, the question whether that same be a single thing, a whole class of things, an abstract quality or something unimaginable, is an insignificant matter of detail. Our meanings are of singulars, particulars, indefinites, problematics, and universals, mixed together in every way. A singular individual is as much conceived when he is isolated and identified away from the rest of the world in my mind, as is the most rarefied and universally applicable quality he may possess -being, for example, when treated in the same way. From every point of view, the overwhelming and portentous character ascribed to universal conceptions is surprising. Why, from Socrates downwards, philosophers should have vied with each other in scorn of the knowledge of the particular, and in adoration of that of the general, is hard to understand, seeing that the more adorable knowledge ought to b

that of the more adorable things, and that the things of worth are all concretes and singulars. The only value of universal characters is that they help us, by reasoning, to know new truths about individual things. The restriction of one's meaning, moreover, to an individual thing, probably requires even more complicated brain-processes than its extension to all the instances of a kind; and the mere mystery, as such, of the knowledge, is equally great, whether generals or singulars be the things known. In sum, therefore, the traditional Universal-worship can only be called a bit of perverse sentimentalism, a philosophic 'idol of the cave.'

Nothing can be conceived as the same without being conceived in a novel state of mind. It seems hardly necessary to add this, after what was said on p. 156. Thus, my armchair is one of the things of which I have a conception; I knew it yesterday and recognized it when I looked at it. But if I think of it to-day as the same arm-chair which I looked at yesterday, it is obvious that the very conception of it as the same is an additional complication to the thought, whose inward constitution must alter in consequence. In short, it is logically impossible that the same thing should be known as the same by two successive copies of the same thought. As a matter of fact, the thoughts by which we know that we mean the same thing are apt to be very different indeed from each other. We think the thing now substantively, now transitively; now in a direct image, now in one symbol, and now in another symbol; but nevertheless we somehow always do know which of all possible subjects we have in mind. Introspective psychology must here throw up the sponge; the fluctuations of subjective life are too exquisite to be described by its coarse terms. It must confine itself to bearing witness to the fact that all sorts of different subjective states do form the vehicle by which the same is known; and it must contradict the opposite view.

CHAPTER XV.

DISCRIMINATION.

Discrimination versus Association.-On p. 15 I spoke of the baby's first object being the germ out of which his whole later universe develops by the addition of new parts from without and the discrimination of others within. Experience, in other words, is trained both by association and dissociation, and psychology must be writ both in synthetic and in analytic terms. Our original sensible totals are, on the one hand, subdivided by discriminative attention, and, on the other, united with other totals, either through the agency of our own movements, carrying our senses from one part of space to another, or because new objects come successively and replace those by which we were at first impressed. The simple impression' of Hume, the simple idea' of Locke are abstractions, never realized in experience. Life, from the very first, presents us with concreted objects, vaguely continuous with the rest of the world which envelops them in space and time, and potentially divisible into inward elements and parts. These objects we break asunder and reunite. We must do both for our knowledge of them to grow; and it is hard to say, on the whole, which we do most. But since the elements with which the traditional associationism performs its constructions--' simple sensations,' namely are all products of discrimination carried to a high pitch, it seems as if we ought to discuss the subject of analytic attention and discrimination first.

Discrimination defined.-The noticing of any part whatever of our object is an act of discrimination. Already on p. 218 I have described the manner in which we often spon

taneously lapse into the undiscriminating state, even with regard to objects which we have already learned to distinguish. Such anæsthetics as chloroform, nitrous oxide, etc., sometimes bring about transient lapses even more total, in which numerical discrimination especially seems gone; for one sees light and hears sound, but whether one or many lights and sounds is quite impossible to tell. Where the parts of an object have already been discerned, and each made the object of a special discriminative act, we can with difficulty feel the object again in its pristine unity; and so prominent may our consciousness of its composition be, that we may hardly believe that it ever could have appeared undivided. But this is an erroneous view, the undeniable fact being that any number of impressions, from any number of sensory sources, falling simultaneously on a mind WHICH HAS NOT YET EXPERIENCED THEM SEPARATELY, will yield a single undivided object to that mind. The law is that all things fuse that can fuse, and that nothing separates except what must. What makes impressions separate is what we have to study in this chapter.

Conditions which favor Discrimination.—I will treat successively of differences:

(1) So far as they are directly felt;

(2) So far as they are inferred;

(3) So far as they are singled out in compounds.

Differences directly felt.-The first condition is that the things to be discriminated must BE different, either in time, place, or quality. In other words, and physiologically speaking, they must awaken neural processes which are distinct. But this, as we have just seen, though an indispensable condition, is not a sufficient condition. To begin with, the several neural processes must be distinct enough. No one can help singling out a black stripe on a white. ground, or feeling the contrast between a bass note and a high one sounded immediately after it. Discrimination is here involuntary. But where the objective difference is