HE impression which any object makes upon the mind may be called a Presentation. Some Presentations are admitted

into the mind without being noticed, as is the case with the words spoken to a dreamy or absent man, or with a house or tree which, forming part of a great landscape, escapes the special notice of the beholder. The mind is unconscious of them; it sees or hears, but does not know that it sees or hears, so that the impression is not clear. And yet it is a real impression, because, when attention is directed to it, we know that it must have been there before. A man stares his friend in the face without recognising him; when his friend awakens his attention, the recognition takes place. But he knows that it is not the impression upon his eye which begins at that point of time, but his attention to the impression. Presentations then are divided into Clear and Ob

scure, and the former, with which alone Logic if concerned, may be called Notions or Cognitions.

Clear Presentations, or Cognitions, are subdivided into confused and distinct. Where the marks or attributes which make up the Presentation cannot be distinguished, it is confused; where they can be distinguished and enumerated, it is distinct. For example, we have a clear notion of the colour red; but we cannot tell by what marks we identify it; we could not describe it intelligibly to another; and hence our cognition of it is confused again we have a clear notion of house; but we can declare its various marks, namely, that it is an enclosed and covered building fit for habitation; and therefore our notion is distinct.

We subdivide the class of distinct notions twice, according to two principles of division; and first, into adequate and inadequate notions. Adequate notions are those in which, besides enumerating the marks, we can explain them; that is, can enumerate the marks of the marks of the distinct notion, and again the marks of those marks. As this kind of analysis is almost interminable, we call a notion adequate, not when the enumeration of subordinate marks has been carried to the farthest, but when they have been enumerated sufficiently for our present purpose, in whatever subject we are employed. Our notion of happiness, for instance (according to Aristotle), is ade

quate, when we not only know that it is "

an energy

of the soul according to the best virtue, in a complete life," but can explain what we mean by an energy of the soul, the best virtue, and a complete life. So we have an adequate notion of what Hobbes means by Right, when we not only know that it is "unresistible might in a state of nature," but can explain what unresistible might and state of nature are. The same two notions would be indequate, if we had the respective definitions of them but could not explair them.

The other division of distinct notions is into symbolical and notative; it has been already explained.*

P. 45., seq. Throughout this section we have followed Leibnitz, with some slight alterations. See Erdmann's Leibnitz, p. 79. Acta Erudit. an. 1684. Some useful distinctions in the various names of notions are given by S. T. Coleridge.

"The most general term (genus summum) belonging to the speculative intellect, as distinguished from acts of the will, is Representation, or (still better) Presentation.

"A conscious Presentation, if it refers exclusively to the

§ 47. Intuitions and Conceptions.

The notions formed in the mind from things offered to it, are either of single objects, as of "this pain, that man, Westminster Abbey ;" or of many objects gathered into one, as "pain, man, abbey." Notions of single objects are called Intuitions, as being such as the mind receives when it simply attends to or inspects (intuetur) the object. They are also called Singular Representations. Notions formed from several objects are called Conceptions, as being produced by the power which the mind possesses of taking several things together (concipere, i. e. capere hoc cum illo) according to the principle to be explained presently. They are also called General Notions or Representations.

§ 48. Formation of Conceptions.

On a first inspection of an object of an entirely novel kind, we are unable to distinguish between its

subject, as a modification of his own state of being, is-Sensation.

"The same, if it refers to an object, is = Perception.

"A Perception immediate and individual, is=an Intuition. "The same Mediate, and by means of a character or mark common to several things, is=a Conception.

"A Conception, extrinsic and sensuous, is=a Fact or a Cognition.

"The same purely mental and abstracted from the forms of the understanding itself is: a Notion."-Church and State, p. 301.