Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/546

 532 CRITICAL NOTICES: The first is the Order of Generality l or of Eesemblance, other- wise called the metaphysical order, because its higher terms, if not all its terms, are theoretical or fictitious objects, and not actual things. It depends on the varying Kesemblance between objects, and this Eesemblance is in the ratio of the proportion of common characters which unite them. This Taxinomic Order is familiar to us in the relation between genera and species. M. Durand expounds it with extreme clearness, providing diagrams which represent the superposition of characters in each actual object as well as the coalescence of the common characters into ideal groupings or classes. The actual objects, he is careful to remind us, appear in the base line only, and not at all in the vertical suc- cession. Strictly speaking, indeed, they are driven underground, and we work from the species upwards. It is to be noted and the fact prepares us for reservations to be made below that the author embodies in his account of this order the " inverse pro- portionality of extension and comprehension " in its sharpest form. The second Taxinomic Order is the Order of Composition or Collectivity, which is founded on the relation of whole to part and part to whole. Its objects, higher and lower alike, are actual concrete objects, herein differing from those of the previous order. M. Durand holds that equivocation arises in Science and Philo- sophy by confusing three usages of the words general or universal ; one belonging to the previous order, in which they represent the relation of a genus-idea to its species ; and two belonging to the present order, in which they represent (a) the relation of the actual compound whole to its actual component parts (the " real com- prehension " of a collective name, as the body is the universal of its members), and (>) the relation of " the part " in a homogene- ous actual compound whole to the whole, as the cell is the general element of the body (the " real extension " of an element). The juxtaposition of the relation of genera and species and the relation of whole and part is the suggestive side of the author's very sharp distinction between them a distinction, it will be found, which he is not always able to maintain. From Lotze downwards a good deal has been done of late years to undermine the rule of inverse proportionality between extension and com- prehension, and the modification of this rule affects the alleged unreality of the higher terms in generic generality, so as to open a bridge from connexion by resemblance, to connexion by deter- mination in an actual whole, from imitation to constructive co- operation. In the generic sense, M. Durand observes, " we may say of Humanity that it is present and entire in each of us ; in the collective sense it is a totality " ; and he finds analogous meanings in Animality. It is interesting to compare this with 1 The term Generality will recur in a different sense in the account of another Order, and it would have been better to call this the Order of / Generic Generality.