As a matter of fact, the child begins with whatever significance he has got out of the one dog he has seen, heard, and handled. He has found that he can carry over from one experience of this object to subsequent experience certain expectations of certain characteristic modes of behavior--may expect these even before they show themselves. He tends to assume this attitude of anticipation whenever any clue or stimulus presents itself; whenever the object gives him any excuse for it. Thus he might call cats little dogs, or horses big dogs. But finding that other expected traits and modes of behavior are not fulfilled, he is forced to throw out certain traits from the dog-meaning, while by contrast (see p. 90) certain other traits are selected and emphasized. As he further applies the meaning to other dogs, the dog-meaning gets still further defined and refined. He does not begin with a lot of ready-made objects from which he extracts a common meaning; he tries to apply to every new experience whatever from his old experience will help him understand it, and as this process of constant assumption and experimentation is fulfilled and refuted by results, his conceptions get body and clearness. [Sidenote: It is general because of its application] 2. Similarly, conceptions are general because of their use and application, not because of their ingredients. The view of the origin of conception in an impossible sort of analysis has as its counterpart the idea that the conception is made up out of all the like elements that remain after dissection of a number of individuals. Not so; the moment a meaning is gained, it is a working tool of further apprehensions, an instrument of understanding other things. Thereby the meaning is _extended_ to cover them. Generality resides in application to the comprehension of new cases, not in constituent parts. A collection of traits left as the common residuum, the _caput mortuum_, of a million objects, would be merely a collection, an inventory or aggregate, not a _general idea_; a striking trait emphasized in any one experience which then served to help understand some one other experience, would become, in virtue of that service of application, in so far general. Synthesis is not a matter of mechanical addition, but of application of something discovered in one case to bring other cases into line. § 5. _Definition and Organization of Meanings_ [Sidenote: Definiteness _versus_ vagueness] [Sidenote: In the abstract meaning is intension] [Sidenote: In its application it is extension]