Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/164

 same thing, or same idea as body in another, their generals belong to things and ideas, as well as to names; if body in one case expresses quite a different thing in one, what it does in another, then it is not easy to imagine what determines the mind to apply the name to these different things, or on what foundation Mr. Locke's definition rests. Extreme opinions were not in general the side on which Mr. Locke erred; and, on the present occasion, he has qualified his opposition to the prevailing system in such a manner, that it is difficult to say in what point he admitted or rejected it. He evidently, in the general scope of this argument, admits the reality of abstract ideas in the mind, though he denies the existence of real sorts, or nature of things of the mind to correspond to them: for the expressions which intimate any doubt of the former are occasional and parenthetical, and his acknowledgment that there is something in nature which guides and determines the mind in the sorting of things and giving names to them is equally extorted from him. There is none of this doubt and perplexity in the minds of his French commentators; none of this suspicion of error and anxious desire to correct it; no lurking objections arise to stagger their confidence in themselves; it is all the same light airy self-complacency; not a speck is to be seen in the clear sky of their metaphysics, not a cloud obscures the sparkling current of their thoughts. In the logic of Condillac, the whole question of abstract ideas, of genera and species, and of the nature of reasoning as founded upon them, is settled and cleared from all difficulties, past, present, and to come, with as little expence of thought, time, and trouble, as possible. The Abbe demonstrates with ease. "General ideas," he says, "of which we have explained the formation, are a part of the aggregate idea of each of the individuals to which they