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SOME PEOBLEMS OF CONCEPTION. 157 V. The Relations of the Species. So far we have spoken as though any given content fell into either one form of the concept or the other, according to circumstances and just as it may happen. But we may go a little farther than this. In the first place we have, so far, been engaged mainly in setting two types in contrast with one another. Actual concepts may vary between the two. Absolute definiteness and constancy is a limiting case, and a content may approxi- mate thereto without reaching it. The irrelevance of the context may be more or less complete. The more constant the content and the more irrelevant its context, the more categorical its usage. There remains always the sense of a disjunction (so to put it) in that the quality must be realised in this way or that. Even the square -^inust be either drawn in chalk or pencil or in some other way, it must be of a definite size, and occupy a certain position. Similarly in the other species the element of identity per- sists and is categorically predicated, while the differences are not wholly and purely its modifications. We may go a step farther. Viewed broadly the distinc- tion tends to coincide with a certain grade in the hierarchy of classification. If there is a true infima species all differ- ences within it are wholly without effect on the constancy of the content. They are all of the irrelevant order. But the same cannot in the most important cases be said of the ascending genera. In the truest classification the species exhibit the genus in a modified form. And this distinction tends to coincide with two others. For our infima species will be a kind of " first universal " an attribute simple or complex, clear or obscure, taken straight out of experience as it comes, and categorically asserted or denied of fresh subjects ; while the genus as now understood will pre- suppose these universals, and grasp their somewhat complex and subtle affinities in a single thought. And, secondly, upon the whole the species as nearer to the concrete is more distinctly realisable. As we get farther back we come to that which, more and more, is bound to take a distinct form upon itself in order to acquire any distinct and realis- able character. VI. Relation to Classification and Inference. From what Begriffsbestimmungen, gesetzt " (op. cit., p. 61), but we must remember that the individual instance can only be taken as " a universal " with the limitations laid down in the preceding note, while the total system cannot be identified with an individual as a structural or con- tinuous unity. For this reason, I have avoided the historic phrase ' concrete universal '.