Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/185

 172 A. BAIN : another, we call the final generality ' universal '. The second example is the controversy of Nominalism and Eealism : called in the schools the theory of Universals. Here the universal is opposed at once to the concrete and particular, and gradation is not implied. But neither of those senses, at bottom the same, coincides with Mr. Bradley's 'universal'. The contrast of the Sensation and the Idea, the original concrete experience and the product formed by recalling that experience through association, is one of the most important contrasts in Psychology. For one reason already given, the particular and the universal does not express it ; while the attempt to employ these terms for the purpose would destroy their fitness for their more usual meanings, and especially for the meaning of singular and general. If I call my actual observation of the Dungeon Ghyll ' particular,' and my recol- lection of it ' universal,' I have no terms to express a water- fall in general, still less for terrestrial gravitation, least of all for universal gravitation. Our difficulty then lies in this. An idea may be the idea of an absolute individual in all its clothing of individuality ; even when existing out of its time, and present only as a re- collection, it retains its reference to the moment of its occur- 7 rence, and, so far as that goes, it is no less particular than the actual sensation was. Of the various attempts to express the real contrast, perhaps the most suitable are the meta- phors ' original ' and ' copy,' ' sound ' and ' echo '. There is a propriety also in the word ' faded,' as opposed to fresh and first-hand. Something may be said for Mr. Bradley's ' mutilated ' reproduction, implying, as it does, a failure in the pristine accuracy of the lineaments. The defect of the term lies in suggesting distortion and loss of identity ; a pre- ferable metaphor would be ' impoverished,' as showing, not distortion, but simply the inferiority in fulness of the picture to the original. All this, however, implies that our examples are taken from the presentations of the higher series, as embracing the complexity of the outer world. No imagination can re- produce a visible scene in all the fulness of its lineaments, and in all the brightness of its illumination. But in the wide range of our acquisitions are to be found instances where we reproduce an original exactly, as in mechanical processes. I can learn the words of a language precisely as they are presented by my teacher ; I can copy him to the life : there is no loss whatever. Again, we often begin upon ideas, and couple these from the first. In point of fact, we must accommodate the description of the Idea to the cases.