In addition, then, to the terms Percept and Concept, I coin the word _Recept_. This is a term which seems exactly to meet the requirements of the case. For as perception literally means a _taking wholly_, and conception a _taking together_, reception means a _taking again_. Consequently, a recept is that which is taken again, or a _recognition_ of things previously _cognized_. Now, it belongs to the essence of what I have defined as compound ideas (recepts), that they arise in the mind out of a repetition of more or less similar percepts. Having seen a number of araucarias, the mind _receives_ from the whole mass of individuals which it _perceives_ a composite idea of Araucaria, or of a class comprising all individuals of that kind—an idea which differs from a general or abstract idea only in not being consciously fixed and signed as an idea by means of an abstract name. Compound ideas, therefore, can only arise out of a _repetition_ of more or less similar percepts; and hence the appropriateness of designating them recepts. Moreover, the associations which we have with the cognate words, Receive, Reception, &c., are all of the _passive_ kind, as the associations which we have with the words Conceive, Conception, &c., are of the _active_ kind. Now, here again, the use of the word recept is seen to be appropriate to the class of ideas in question, because in receiving such ideas the mind is passive, as in conceiving abstract ideas the mind is active. In order to form a concept, the mind must intentionally bring together its percepts (or the memories of them), for the purpose of binding them up as a bundle of similars, and labelling the bundle with a name. But in order to form a recept, the mind need perform no such intentional actions: the similarities among the percepts with which alone this order of ideation is concerned, are so marked, so conspicuous, and so frequently _repeated_ in observation, that in the very moment of perception they sort themselves, and, as it were, fall into their appropriate classes spontaneously, or without any conscious effort on the part of the percipient. We do not require to name stones to distinguish them from loaves, nor fish to distinguish them from scorpions. Class distinctions of this kind are conveyed in the very act of perception—_e.g._ the case of the infant with the glass bottles,—and, as we shall subsequently see, in the case of the higher animals admit of being carried to a wonderful pitch of discriminative perfection. Recepts, then, are _spontaneous associations, formed unintentionally_ as what may be termed _unperceived abstractions_.[24]