data for our speculations. I begin with some remarks on the Power of General Reasoning; for the exercise of which, (as I formerly endeavoured to show,) the use of language, as an instrument of thought, is indispensably requisite.

SECTION II.

OF GENERAL REASONING.

I.

Illustrations of some Remarks formerly stated in treating of Abstraction.

I SHOULD Scarcely have thought it necessary to resume the consideration of Abstraction here, if I had not neglected, in my first volume, to examine the force of an objection to Berkeley's doctrine concerning abstract general ideas, on which great stress is laid by Dr. Reid, in his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man; and which some late writers seem to have considered as not less conclusive against the view of the question which I have taken. Of this objection I was aware from the first; but was unwilling, by replying to it in form, to lengthen a discussion which savoured so much of the schools; more especially, as I conceived that I had guarded my own argument from any such attack, by the cautious terms in which I had expressed it. Having since had reason to believe that I was precipitate in forming this judgment, and that Reid's strictures on Berkeley's theory of General Signs have produced a deeper impression than I had expected,* I shall endeavour to obviate them, at least as far as they apply to myself, before entering on any new speculations concerning our reasoning powers; and shall, at the same time, introduce

See a book entitled, Elements of Intellectual Philosophy, by the late learned and justly regretted Mr. Scott, of King's College, Abe 118. et seq. (Edinburgh, 1805.) I have not thought it necessary to repott's own reasonings, which do not appear to me to throw much new question; but I thought it right to refer to them here, that the reader opportunity of judging for himself.

+

some occasional illustrations of the principles which I formerly endeavoured to establish.

To prevent the possibility of misrepresentation, I state Dr. Reid's objection in his own words.

"Berkeley, in his reasoning against abstract general ideas, seems unwillingly or unwaringly to grant all that is necessary to support abstract and general conceptions.

"A man," says Berkeley, "may consider a figure merely as triangular, without attending to the particular qualities of the angles, or relations of the sides. So far he may abstract. But this will never prove that he can frame an abstract general inconsistent idea of a triangle."

Upon this passage Dr. Reid makes the following remark: "If a man may consider a figure merely as triangular, he must have some conception of this object of his consideration; for no man can consider a thing which he does not conceive. He has a conception, therefore, of a triangular figure, merely as such. I know no more that is meant by an abstract general conception of a triangle."

"He that considers a figure merely as triangular," continues the same author, "must understand what is meant by the word triangular. If to the conception he joins to this word, he adds any particular quality of angles or relation of sides, he misunderstands it, and does not consider the figure merely as triangular. Whence I think it is evident, that he who considers a figure merely as triangular, must have the conception of a triangle, abstracting from any quality of angles or relations of sides." *

For what appears to myself to be a satisfactory answer to this reasoning, I have only to refer to the first volume of these Elements. The remarks to which I allude are to be found in the third section of chapter fourth; † and I must beg leave to recommend them to he attention of my readers as a necessary preparation for the following discussion.

• Pet Intellectual Powers, p. 483, 4to. ed.

In the farther prosecution of the same argument, Dr. Reid lays hold of an acknowledgment which Berkeley has made, "That we may consider Peter so far forth as man, or so far forth as animal, inasmuch as all that is perceived is not considered."-"It may here," says Reid, "be observed, that he who considers Peter so far forth as man, or so far forth as animal, must conceive the meaning of those abstract general words man and animal; and he who conceives the meaning of them, has an abstract general conception."

According to the definition of the word conception, which I have given in treating of that faculty of the mind, a general conception is an obvious impossibility. But, as Dr. Reid has chosen to annex a more extensive meaning to the term than seems to me consistent with precision, I would be far from being understood to object to his conclusion, merely because it is inconsistent with an arbitrary definition of my own. Let us consider, therefore, how far his doctrine is consistent with itself; or rather, since both parties are evidently so nearly agreed about the principal fact, which of the two have adopted the more perspicuous and philosophical mode of stating it.

In the first place, then, let it be remembered as a thing admitted on both sides," that we have a power of reasoning concerning a figure considered merely as triangular, without attending to the particular qualities of the angles, or relations of the sides;" and also, that "we may reason concerning Peter or John, considered so far forth as man, or so far forth as animal." About these facts there is but one opinion; and the only question is, Whether it throws additional light on the subject, to tell us, in scholastic language, that "we are enabled to carry on these general reasonings, in consequence of the power which the mind has of forming abstract general conceptions." To myself, it appears, that this last statement (even on the supposition that the word conception is to be understood agreeably to Dr. Reid's own explanation) can serve no other purpose than that of involving a plain and simple truth in obscurity and mystery. If it be used in the sense in which I have invariably em

ployed it in this work, the proposition is altogether absurd and incomprehensible.

For the more complete illustration of this point, I must here recur to a distinction formerly made between the abstractions which are subservient to reasoning, and those which are subservient to imagination. "In every instance in which imagination is employed in forming new wholes, by decompounding and combining the perceptions of sense, it is evidently necessary that the poet or the painter should be able to state or represent to himself the circumstances abstracted, as separate objects of conception. But this is by no means requisite in every case in which abstraction is subservient to the power of reasoning; for it frequently happens, that we can reason concerning the quality or property of an object abstracted from the rest, while, at the same time, we find it impossible to conceive it separately. Thus, I can reason concerning extension and figure, without any reference to color, although it may be doubted, if a person possessed of sight can make extension and figure steady objects of conception, without connecting with them the idea of one color or another. Nor is this always owing (as it is in the instance just mentioned). merely to the association of ideas; for there are cases, in which we can reason concerning things separately, which it is impossible for us to suppose any mind so constituted as to conceive apart. Thus we can reason concerning length, abstracted from any other dimension; although, surely, no understanding can make length, without breadth, an object of conception."* In like manner, while I am studying Euclid's demonstration of the equality of the three angles of a triangle to two right angles, I find no difficulty in following his train of reasoning, although it has no reference whatever to the specific size or to the specific form of the diagram before me. I abstract, therefore, in this instance, from both of these circumstances presented to my senses by the immediate objects of my perceptions; and yet it is manifestly impracticable for me either to delineate on

* Vol. I. p 119.

paper, or to conceive in the mind, such a figure as shall not include the circumstances from which I abstract, as well as those on which the demonstration hinges.

In order to form a precise notion of the manner in which this process of the mind is carried on, it is necessary to attend to the close and inseparable connexion which exists between the faculty of general reasoning, and the use of artificial language. It is in consequence of the aids which this lends to our natural faculties, that we are furnished with a class of signs, expressive of all the circumstances which we wish our reasonings to comprehend; and, at the same time, exclusive of all those which we wish to leave out of consideration. The word triangle, for instance, when used without any additional epithet, confines the attention to the three angles and three sides of the figure before us; and reminds us, as we proceed, that no step of our deduction is to turn on any of the specific varieties which that figure may exhibit. The notion, however, which we annex to the word triangle, while we are reading the demonstration, is not the less a particular notion, that this word, from its partial or abstracted import, is equally applicable to an infinite variety of other individuals.*

These observations lead, in my opinion, to so easy an explanation of the transition from particular to general reasoning, that I shall make no apology for prosecuting the subject a little farther, before leaving this branch of my argument.

* "By this imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter signification, we turn the reckoning of the consequences of things imagined in the mind, into a reckoning of the consequences of appellations. For example, a man that hath no use of speech at all (such as is born and remains perfectly deaf and dumb,) if he set before his eyes a triangle, and by it two right angles (such as are the corners of a square figure,) he may by meditation compare and find, that the three angles of that triangle, are equal to those right angles that stand by it. But if another triangle be shown him, different in shape from the former, he cannot know, without a new labor, whether the three angles of that also be equal to the same. But he that hath the use of words, when he observes that such equality was consequent, not to the length of the sides, nor to any particular thing in this triangle; but only to this, that the sides were straight, and the angles three; and that that was all for which he named it a triangle; will boldly conclude universally, that such equality of angles is in all triangles whatsoever; and register his invention in these general terms, "Every triangle hath its three angles equal to two right angles. And thus the consequence found in one particular, comes to be registered and remembered as an universal rule; and discharges our mental reckoning of time and place; and delivers us from all labor of the mind, saving the first; and makes that which was found true here, and now, to be true in all times and places."-HOBBES, Of Man, Part. I. Chap. iv.