§ 41. In what follows we shall, for convenience, adopt the phraseology which regards the products of thought as clothed in language in preference to that which regards the same products as they exist in the mind of the individual. For although the object of logic is to examine thought pure and simple, it is obviously impossible to discuss it except as clothed in language. Accordingly the three statements above made may be expressed as follows-- The term is the result of comparing attributes. The proposition is the result of comparing terms. The inference is the result of comparing propositions. § 42. There is an advantage attending the change of language in the fact that the word 'concept' is not an adequate expression for the first of the three products of thought, whereas the word 'term' is. By a concept is meant a general notion, or the idea of a class, which corresponds only to a common term. Now not only are common terms the results of comparison, but singular terms, or the names of individuals, are so too. § 43. The earliest result of thought is the recognition of an individual object as such, that is to say as distinguished and marked off from the mass of its surroundings. No doubt the first impression produced Upon the nascent intelligence of an infant is that of a confused whole. It requires much exercise of thought to distinguish this whole into its parts. The completeness of the recognition of an individual object is announced by attaching a name to it. Hence even an individual name, or singular term, implies thought or comparison. Before the _child_ can attach a meaning to the word '_mother_,' which to it is a singular term, it must have distinguished between the set of impressions produced in it by one object from those which are produced in it by others. Thus, when Vergil says Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem, he is exhorting the beatific infant to the exercise of the faculty of comparison. § 44. That a common term implies comparison does not need to be insisted upon. It is because things resemble each other in certain of their attributes that we call them by a common name, and this resemblance could not be ascertained except by comparison, at some time and by some one. Thus a common term, or concept, is the compressed result of an indefinite number of comparisons, which lie wrapped up in it like so many fossils, witnessing to prior ages of thought. § 45. In the next product of thought, namely, the proposition, we have the result of a single act of comparison between two terms; and this is why the proposition is called the unit of thought, as being the simplest and most direct result of comparison. § 46. In the third product of thought, namely, the inference, we have a comparison of propositions either directly or by means of a third. This will be explained later on. For the present we return to the first product of thought.