Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/209

 198 G. S. FULLERTON : possibility of the operation. "When he says, for instance, that there is no such thing as the idea of government in the abstract, but that we can compare governments in the concrete and recognise the likeness of the individuals, it is perfectly true that all that we are clearly conscious of is several individual objects and a similarity between them ; but, when we come to analyse this recognition of a similarity, it will be seen that the elements which are known as similar are quite incapable, by themselves, of forming a concrete object, and yet they are distinguished by the mind from the dissimilar elements : they must, therefore, have been in some sort grasped separately, though they cannot separately be brought into a clear consciousness. Whether, during this rapid act of concentration and comparison, the other elements which go to form the object actually disappear from consciousness, or are only dimly perceived, as Mill suggests that they are in most cases, does not affect the peculiar character of the act. When I compare in height two trees, which I see side by side in the distant landscape before me, I am perhaps conscious of several objects in their immediate vicinity in a dim and indefinite way, but the two objects compared are present in consciousness in a manner very different, and are grasped, so to speak, separately. And when I fix my attention upon the height of the two trees, finding them similar or dissimilar in this one element, we have every reason to suppose that something very analogous takes place, and that this one element is present in consciousness in some way quite different from the others, and is grasped separately, for the time being. Were it not so, we could not say that the trees were alike in height, but different in contour or colour of foliage. We are justified in assuming that, when we recognise two trees as alike in height but not in colour, we have compared height with height, and colour with colour, and not merely compared the one object as an undistinguishable complex of qualities with another object as another undistinguishable complex. As I have before said, the name which we choose to apply to this operation is of little consequence : the point to be -chiefly borne in mind is, that we have here an operation differing from ordinary imagination, in that it takes cogni- sance of certain psychic elements which can yet not be called into clear consciousness by themselves as a mental picture. Whether the two operations completely differ in their ulti- mate nature is another question. When the Conceptualist asserts that, though he cannot imagine length apart from breadth or colour, yet he can conceive or think it, he