Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/167

 SOME PROBLEMS OF CONCEPTION. 151 least interfere with the clearness and fixity of the predicate as we have it. Secondly, if the totality is taken as identical with the class the old difficulty recurs. The class is not, as such, a structural totality in which any component individual has its ' place ' in the sense of fulfilling a function relative to the whole structure. On the contrary, the class, as Mill urged, is a mere dependant. It rests upon the common quality. And with that admission we have come back to our starting-point once more. III. Species of the General Concept. We shall be able to understand and perhaps to unite these interpretations better if we advert further to certain real differences among general contents on which we have already touched. (a) The abstract quality. In certain cases, as we have seen, the concept has a very clear and precise content, which stands out of itself, so to say, from its surroundings and runs no risk of being confounded with any of them. I do not mean that such a content can be represented 'by itself,' in vacuo, but that however represented we are quite clear that the context is irrelevant. A square, for instance, must be presented either to sight or touch, and in the first case it must have colour, and in the second it must have some tactual character. But this gives us no trouble. The outlines of our content are perfectly well defined. We know where it begins and ends and are under no tempta- tion to merge it in anything else. A consequence is that squareness is a conception applied with perfectly identical meaning. It admits of no latitude and will hear of no com- promise with the oblong or the pentagonal. The Principle of Excluded Middle is its rule of conduct. ' Either a square or not a square ' is the maxim by which it measures things. It is a perfectly hard crystalline concept. (/3) The organic principle. In contrast at first sight in absolute contrast with the last class stand concepts based on that kind of resemblance which has given rise to the expression identity in difference. Both characteristics of the previous class are reversed. The common element is not readily distinguishable from the specific differences, and it is not applied with strict identity of meaning in all cases. For though there is an element of identity it is no longer unaffected by the differences, but the differences are precisely modifications of the identity. Thus above we had a quality A appearing in two contexts B and C. B and C were modifications of the wholes A B and A C but not of A itself. A appeared in each case unmodified. The