Therefore, without in any way pre-judging the question as to whether or not there is any radical distinction between a mind thus far gifted and the conceptual thought of man, I may take it for granted that the ideation of infants is from the first generic; and hence that those psychologists are greatly mistaken who thoughtlessly assume that the formation of class-ideas is a prerogative of more advanced intelligence. No doubt their view of the matter seems plausible at first sight, because within the region of conceptual thought we know that progress is marked by increasing powers of _generalisation_—that it is the easiest steps which have to do with the cognition of particulars; the more difficult which have to do with abstractions. But this is to confuse recepts with concepts, and so to overlook a distinction between the two orders of generalization which it is of the first importance to be clear about. A _generic_ idea is generic because the particular ideas of which it is composed present such _obvious_ points of resemblance that they spontaneously fuse together in consciousness; but a _general_ idea is general for precisely the opposite reason—namely, because the points of resemblance which it has seized are _obscured_ from immediate perception, and therefore could never have fused together in consciousness but for the aid of intentional abstraction, or of the power of a mind knowingly to deal with its own ideas as ideas. In other words, the kind of classification with which recepts are concerned is that which lies nearest to the kind of classification with which all processes of so-called “intuitive inference” depend—such as mistaking a bowl for a sphere. But the kind of classification with which concepts are concerned is that which lies furthest from this purely automatic grouping of perceptions. Classification there doubtless is in both cases; but the one order is due to the closeness of resemblances in an act of perception, while in the other order it is an expression of their remoteness from merely perceptual associations.