§ 131. We have already noted at several points in our progress the mistake of the psychological theory which thinks that universal terms are derived from particulars by abstraction. In Chapter XI it has been shown that the third figure of the syllogism discriminates subclasses, dividing the vague and general class which experience brings with it by a more minute observation. The fixing of the first object that the mind perceives is, of course, very inadequate. The object is empty and vague because the infant has no previous experience with which to apperceive or interpret the first sense-impressions of his new life. Differences of light and shade, of agreeable and disagreeable taste, of heat and cold, of pleasant and unpleasant movements, of soft and loud tones and noises, successively impress his senses, and he gradually parts his general or common sense into special senses, and after a time locates them in parts of his body and comes to know his body from its environment. His first general categories are existence and non-existence, and are divided into subcategories, something and something else, and change. This is on the surface of his intellect; but deep down are the vital instincts which are as unconscious as those of the plant. As consciousness awakes, it finds the self engaged in processes of spontaneous action, which are not

guided by intellect or will. The plant life, the life of nutrition, is the basis of the animal life of feeling and instinct which has arisen. The infant gradually conquers this first life by a higher form of self-activity-higher because more nearly conscious and individual. He becomes conscious of his feelings, and gradually discriminates the products of his five senses, and later on can distinguish his body from the environment, and still later divides the latter into things and self-moving beings, persons, animals, plants, and inanimate beings. It is a descent from vague general categories to more specific ones by division, his analysis taking the form of the third figure. At first, one category does for the whole of his experience— is and is not.

$132. Concepts do not arise, however, until the infant mind has attained the power of comparing its recollection with the reality, and has transferred its thought of itself as maker of particular representations to the object as a particular example of a hidden producing generic cause. Each thing is then seen as one specimen out of an infinite number of possible specimens produced by the objective cause. Language becomes possible only on this condition. The object must be dislodged from its solidarity with Nature and made to stand out as a product distinguish

able from its causal genesis. Everything has a causal genesis, it will be admitted. This act of separation individualizes or personifies in the infant mind, and he forms a concept every time he has a percept, and unites them by the second figure of the syllogism, identifying the particular with a class by some mark of class production. A dog is thus identified as a cat from its resemblance to the already familiar animal; or, vice versa, if the dog is a familiar object, the new object, cat, is identified with dog. Objects are identified in a class by the concept, which is an idea below the threshold of consciousness equivalent to the-cause-that-produces-this-kind-of-appearances.

"My little grandchild Florence was held in my arms asleep. A distant locomotive sounded its whistle like a trumpet as it approached the town. She aroused herself, and said softly, 'Tow' (for cow). She had come from a ranch in the distant West and was familiar with the lowing of cows. Hence she interpreted the particular of sense-the sound which came to her ear-as produced by a cow."

§ 133. The human characteristic is the knowing by universals. Man recognises or sees all objects as specimens of classes. He sees the particular in the universal. Hence his act of cognition is more complex than that of mere sense-perception, which he shares with the animal. Note that the sense-perception

which sees classes as the background on which the particular is imaged implies self-consciousness. The soul has perceived itself as a free producing cause in the act of recollection, and it transfers unconsciously this idea of itself to the object, and now perceives with concepts.

§ 134. The rise of self-consciousness, or the perception of self-activity, and the perception of the general object in the external world, are thus contemporaneous. With the perception of the general energy the psychological activity has outgrown representation and become conception. With conception the energy or soul begins to be an individuality for itself a conscious individuality. It recognises itself as a free energy. The stage of mere perception does not recognise itself, but merely sees its own energy as the objective energy, because its acts are entirely occasioned by the external object. In the recognition of the object as an individual of a class the soul recognises its own freedom and independent activity. Recollection (Erinnerung) relates to individuals, recalling the special presentation or impression, and representing the object as it was before perceived. Memory (like the German word Gedächtniss) may be distinguished as the activity which reproduces the object as one of a class, and therefore as the

form of representation that perceives universals. With memory arises language.

§ 135. Imagination and fancy, or fantasy, are like recollection, free in the sense that they depend on the self. But they are freer than recollection, because they are not tethered to real events or things that belong to a past experience. They determine forms, shapes, situations, and actions entirely ideal, and without reference to actual existences, except in so far as the general laws of space and time, which logically condition fancies, as well as existences, demand. The freedom of imagination is therefore seemingly more perfect than that of recollection, or even memory. It is, however, only the abstract freedom as compared with the true freedom of ethical thought and action, as we shall see later on.