I. ABSTRACTION. _Term often used in a Wide Sense._--This term is frequently employed to denote the entire synthetic process as now described--the power of forming abstract general conceptions, and of classifying objects according to those conceptions. It is thus employed by Stewart, Wayland, Mahan, and others. There is, perhaps, no objection to this use of the word, except that it is manifestly a departure from the strict and proper sense of the term. _More limited Sense._--There is another and more common use of the term abstraction, which gives it a more limited sense. As thus employed, it denotes that act of the mind by which we fix our attention on some one of the several parts, properties, or qualities of an object, to the exclusion of all the other parts or properties which go to make up the complex whole. In consequence of this exclusive direction of the thoughts to that one element, the other elements or properties are lost sight of, drop out of the account, and there remains in our present conception only that one item which we have singled out from the rest. This is denominated, in common language, _abstraction_. Such is the common idea and definition of that term. It is Mr. Upham's definition. _This not really Abstraction._--Whether this, again, is the true idea of abstraction, is, to say the least, questionable. When I think of the cover of a book, the handle of a door, the spring of a watch, in distinction from the other parts which make up a complex whole, I am hardly exercising the power of abstract thought; certainly no new, distinct faculty is requisite for this, but simply attention to one among several items or objects of perception. Hardly ever can it be called analysis, with Wayland. It is the simple direction of the thought to some one out of several objects presented. A red rose is before me. I may think of its color exclusively, in distinction from its form and fragrance; that is, of the redness of this particular rose, this given surface before me. The object of my thought is purely a sensible object. I have not abstracted it from the sensible individual object to which it belongs. It is in no sense an abstract idea, a pure conception. There has been nothing done which is not done in any case where one thing, rather than another of a group or assemblage of objects, is made the object of attention.