Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/171

 SOME PROBLEMS OF CONCEPTION. 155 related that either is incomplete and threatens to be mean- ingless without the other. It follows that a conception as actually appearing in thought will have somewhat different meanings according to the class to which it belongs. Take the abstract quality first. When I say that ' the fire is alight,' I do so presum- ably for the purpose of giving information. The point of interest to iny hearer is that the coals laid in a particular fireplace have entered upon a definite state. In short the real interest is in a particular fact a quality belonging to an individual thing. At first sight the element of generality has disappeared. We only find it again when we consider how the information is imparted. I choose a certain word to express the fact before me because that fact resembles others in my experience, and, as I assume, in yours also ; and to facts of that kind the term in question has been ap- propriated. The interest in the judgment is confined to the particular, but the terms used, taken in their full significa- tion, express that the particular through the quality assigned resembles other things. The concept, we may say, as organ- ised along with other terms into the Qualitative Judgment becomes an element in our knowledge of a particular fact, but in virtue of the residue of its meaning it brings this fact into relation with others. And this residue may in turn become the point of interest in a new judgment and the same concept may contribute to a quite different thought. In the real world of thought the concept exists in order to be used, that is, to be combined with other thoughts and so produce results. And in these combinations now one and now another element of its meaning will be emphasised. The residue will sometimes be obscurely felt, but will probably be always a condition, realised or unrealised, without which the actual thought could not be formed. But in all cases its reference is to the same reality, the existence in many things of qualities resembling one another. The quality merely as abstracted from its surroundings is not general. It is at best indeterminate. It is a content with a certain character, but generality is not a part of that character. Resemblance, again, is a relation depending upon character, but in which the character is not yet specified. The class of individuals, again, fall as individuals outside the scope of the concept, while the extent of the class is determined only by the possession of the character. The true general content is Reality, as similarly qualified in an indefinite number of individual cases. This is the total meaning of the content, in which the nature of the quality, the plurality of instances,