Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/203

192 G. S. FULLERTON : them separately. In those last few sentences Berkeley admits all that a reasonable Conceptualist would care to prove, and the words ' abstract idea,' as there used, are equivalent to object of the imagination a something which is not implied in the formation of the abstract or general notion. Every one, Nominalist or Conceptualist, must acknowledge that we can compare objects, and recognise them as like or unlike : not merely like or unlike as wholes, but in this or that element ; like in length, unlike in breadth ; like in colour, unlike in shape. Now no one claims that we can call into clear consciousness the element of length alone, and picture it divorced of breadth and colour ; but when we recognise two objects as like in length and unlike in breadth, the ele- ments must in some way have been present in mind sepa- rately, so as to be recognised separately as length and breadth. If one object that what is present in conscious- ness must ipso facto be perceived, and that we cannot perceive length as a factor by itself, nor recall in memory any perception of such a factor during the act of comparison ; I answer that what is in consciousness is not necessarily in a clear analytic consciousness ; and that we may by a process of deductive reasoning be sure that certain elements are present as factors in a given mental state, while we are yet quite unable to call these elements into a clear analytic consciousness, separated from certain other elements bound to them by long association and habit. As an instance I refer to vision. That distance is itself unperceivable by sight we must admit. That judgments of distance are a result of reasoning from an observed constant connexion of certain visual with certain other elements may be satisfac- torily established when the above proposition is admitted. But to call into clear consciousness by itself the purely visual sensation, which forms the basis of the judgment, is altogether impossible. That it is a factor, and an important factor, in the complex consciousness which we have at the time, we admit : and yet its presence, as a single and distinct element, is capable of being only deductively known. Notice a further point which is worthy of remark. If wr vary the purely visual element, allowing all other elements to remain the same, that is, if we change the colour of the object, but do not change in any respect the form or size of the image on the retina, a difference is at once remarked, and the change of colour recognised. But the difference is not re- cognised as a difference between two purely visual sensations, when the result of the actual comparison comes out into clear