itself to his mind in that single aspect; and certainly the difference between one primrose and another is never equal to that between the same human countenance under different expressions of feeling.

When the common name belongs to objects of a more complex and diversified character, the range of images that may be called up is much wider. Take the word man, for example. When that common name is used, the image of any man we have ever seen may come into the mind, or an image made up of parts put together without our consciousness, and forming a combination we never actually saw; and if we have time to dwell on the word, multitudinous images may be suggested in

succession.

Just as a painter, if asked to draw the human figure, might, without premeditation, sketch a form which, in many particulars, would be unlike any he had before either seen or imagined, so we are all of us apt to have novel forms (novel as to composition, but not as to component parts) constantly conjured up before us by the power of language, or by other instruments of association.

It appears, then, from this analysis, that no essential difference exists between what passes in the mind when proper names are heard, and when general names are heard. The peculiar feature, in the latter case, may be stated to be, that there is possibly and frequently, but not necessarily, a

greater range in the mental representations called up by any single appellation; still there is nothing but an individual image, or a group or a succession of individual images or representations passing through the mind. It must be obvious, on reflection, that this is, in truth, the only possible effect of general terms. We rank individual objects under a common name on account of their resemblance to each other in one or more respects; and when we use such an appellation, the utmost which the nature of the case allows us to do, whether the name has been imposed by ourselves or others, is to recall to our own minds, or to those of our hearers, the whole of the single objects thus classed together. This is an extreme case, which, no doubt, may happen; but the result is usually far short of such a complete ideal muster, and we recall only a very inconsiderable part, or even sometimes only one, of the objects covered by the general term. It also appears that, if the ideas thus raised up are sometimes vague and indefinite, the same qualities frequently characterise the ideas raised up by proper names, and attend even the perception of external objects. So far as we have proceeded, indeed, nothing has been found in our ideas of things without us, but what has its exact counterpart in the actual perception of objects.

Before concluding my present Letter, I will briefly glance at a large division of gencral names which deserve especial notice, from their not denoting a

class of objects in the usual sense of that term, like the words man, tree, horse, star; but assuming a sort of identity, by no means real, in the things to which they are applied. The terms light, heat, air, oxygen, hydrogen, silver, gold, exemplify my meaning; in which instances the words are not the names of classes as ordinarily understood, nor yet of collective wholes, but of substances, wherever and in whatever quantity found, possessing certain definite qualities.

These words are, nevertheless, in effect, the names of classes. As what you predicate of a class may be predicated of any individual member of it, so what you predicate of one of these substances is predicable of every portion of it. Gold, for instance, is describable as being yellow, and possessing a certain specific gravity; i. e., any portion of gold has these properties, just as every man has head, trunk, and limbs. There is, to be sure, this difference, that every man is a circumscribed organised being constituting an individual whole, which is destroyed when a certain separation of parts takes place; while every portion of gold, even the minutest, possesses all the properties on account of which the name is bestowed.

For the purpose I have in view, however, this distinction is of no importance. Just as the word man brings before the mind some individual image of humanity, so the word gold raises up the idea

of some piece of gold-some portion of the metal, or some article composed of it.

The same remark may be usefully made respecting the important and very comprehensive general term matter, which is the common name of everything perceived through the organs of sight and touch, not to speak of other organs. When you happen to be thinking about matter with any clearness and distinctness you have in your mental view some particular form of matter, some individual substance formerly observed through one or more of your bodily organs, or perhaps you have a long array of such individual substances in succession. Such is all that definite and precise thinking can possibly yield.

LETTER XXIII.

ABSTRACT TERMS.

WE next come to the consideration of what passes in the mind when abstract terms are used; and this, I may venture to say, is a part of the subject that will repay the close attention which it unavoidably requires.

By abstract terms, which should be carefully distinguished from general names, I mean those which do not designate any object or event, or any class of objects and events, but an attribute or quality belonging to them, and which are capable of standing grammatically detached, without being joined to other terms: such are the words roundness, swiftness, length, innocence, equity, health, whiteness.

On reflecting upon what passes in my own consciousness when such terms are used, I find that I think of some object possessing the quality thus abstractly signified. When I hear the word "roundness," I think of a circle or a sphere. If any one talks of swiftness, I think of the flight of an arrow, or of an eagle cleaving the air, or a race