Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/200

CONCEIVABILITY AND THE INFINITE. 189 of an object as apprehended in nature, or to its subjective existence as represented in tbe imagination, is there any mental operation by which we may grasp some of these qualities to the exclusion of others, and convey to our own and other minds by the use of the word which stands for this new complex a distinct meaning ? There have been held with reference to this problem, as is well known, three opinions : the doctrine of the Realists, that general ideas have corresponding to them a counterpart reality a doctrine which may be passed over as now abandoned, though its influence makes itself felt in many directions ; the doctrine of the Coiiceptualists, that, although general ideas cannot exist in nature nor be represented in imagination, yet they have a true mental existence and are the result of a distinct mental operation ; and the doctrine of the Nominalists, that the only generality that has a sepa- rate existence subjective or objective is the name, which may be applied indifferently to many similar objects. The Conceptualist may hold that it is possible, unless the words include repugnant elements, to conceive an infinite line, that is, to grasp in mind a certain complex of psychic elements which are yet incapable of being pictured in the imagination as an infinite line. To think, in the sense of to form such a concept, is to him something other than to imagine. What cannot be imagined may yet be thought. The word ' man ', which we define as comprehending the elements of rationality and animality, does not, he claims, in the least include all those other qualities which must be combined with these two before we can picture in the ima- gination or know as existing any given man. If we select the two qualities in which all the objects of a class resemble each other, and give to these two a special name, have we not brought them into consciousness in some way in which we have not the other qualities possessed by the objects ? When we turn to the Nominalist, it would not be hard to show that, although his doctrines, if taken in strict- ness, would deny the possibility of the mental operation by which we arrive at the concept, and consequently of the operation by which we may grasp in thought the various elements implied in the expression ' an infinite line,' yet one may find in his teachings by implication ample justification for assuming its possible and actual existence. I will take some extracts from four well-known Nominalists, to show how palpable is the fact stated, and I will first quote from