Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/184

 circumstances, and is neither a mere word without any idea, nor a particular image of one thing; so the idea of a particular man, though still only a general result from a number of particulars is sufficiently positive for the actual purposes of thought, and distinguishable from that other general result or impression which institutes the idea of a particular horse, for instance.

2. That our general notions are any otherwise particular than as they are the same with themselves, and different from one another, is more than I know. I must demur on this question, whatever others may do. Whatever contradictions are involved in the one side of it, those on the other seem as great. For it is not easy to imagine any thing more absurd than the supposition that the idea of a line for instance is precisely, and to a hair's breadth or to the utmost possible exactness, of a certain length, when neither the precise number nor the precise proportion of the parts composing this line are at all known. It is like saying that we cast up an account to the utmost degree of nicety, when not one of the items is known, but as of an average conjecture or in round numbers. We generally estimate our notion of a particular extension by the point or matter at all terminating it, and it seems as if this did not admit of an ambiguity, or variation. But in fact all ideas are a calculation of particulars, and when the parts are only known in gross, the sum total, or resulting idea can only be so too. The smallest division of which our notions are susceptible is a general idea. In the progress of the understanding, we never begin from absolute unity but always from something that is more. How then is it possible that these general conceptions should form a whole always commensurate to a precise number of absolute unity I cannot conceive, any more than how it is possible to express a