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232 than the particular; and, therefore, to represent it as dealing, in the first instance, with the particular merely, is to represent it as being what it is not its nature to be. To think is precisely not to think of any singular thing exclusively, but to think it as an instance of what may be again, and again, and again. Every thought transcends the particular object thought of; and that transcendence is not one mode in which thought operates, it is the only mode; it is thought itself in its very essence. To take our former illustration. When I feel the prick of the pin, I either do not think it at all, or, if I think it, I do not think it only, I think as one of other possible cases of the same. I think as one of a class, I think it under something wider than itself, under a class, a conception, a universal. I do this, I say at once, in the very first act and first instant of thought. I do not think first of the pain as an absolute singular, and then place it under a class by thinking of what it has in common with other pains. That is not what I do, although this is usually said to be what I do. I am convinced that thought begins by regarding the pain as one of a class; begins by thinking something more than the particular pain itself, and that that something more is a class, a genus, a conception, a universal, or, in the language of Plato, an idea.

17. The main points contained in our discussion from p. 197 and onwards, may be recapitulated as follows:—1st, According to the psychology of the