Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/397

342 however, a question in what sense and to what extent is this doctrine to be accepted. It may be asked, for example, in what sense are the conceptions expressed by the word animal, man, tree, to be regarded as innate? I answer, that these conceptions are not innate, if we suppose them to denote, as most people do, some faint or vague representation of animal, man, or tree; nothing which is representable as an object is in any degree innate, and therefore these conceptions, if they are innate, must not express anything which can be represented as an object. What, then, do these terms denote? They denote the fact that, on the occasion of an animal, a man, or a tree being presented to the mind, the mind thinks not merely of the one man, the one animal, or the one tree, but of something wider; in short, of a class, which class is to be construed to the mind not as an object, but as a fact or law; a fact or law by means of which unity is given to a number of our resembling' impressions. Viewed in this way, the conception man may be said, with perfect truth, to be innate. When a man is placed before me, and when I think him (as distinguished from merely seeing him), I place him under a class, that is, under an idea wider than himself. And this idea or class I do not construe to my mind as made up of a number of individuals, for these again, however numerous, I should be again compelled by the necessity of thought to place under a class, and so on for ever. When I think a man, I think him as an instance of