On the contrary, I conceive that all our notions, from first to last, are (strictly speaking) general and abstract, not absolute or particular; and that to have a perfectly distinct idea of any one individual object or concrete existence, either as to the parts of which it is composed, or the differences belonging to it, or the circumstances connected with it, would require an unlimited power of comprehension in the human mind, which is impossible. All particular things consist of, and even lead to, an infinite number of other things. Abstraction is therefore a necessary consequence of the limitation of the comprehensive faculty, and mixes itself, more or less, with every act of the understanding, of whatever kind, during every moment of its existence. The same fallacy has led to the rejection of abstract and general ideas which has led to the rejection of complex ones, viz. that of supposing sensible images to be perfectly simple or individual things. But the truth is, that there is no one idea of an individual object which is any thing more than a general and imperfect notion of it: for as there is no such idea which does not relate to a number of complicated impressions and their connections, so we can conceive the whole of no one object. Again, there is no idea of a particular quality of any object, which is perfectly simple and definite, but the result of a number of sensible impressions of the same sort, classed together by the mind under the abstract notion of likeness, or of something common between them, without attending to their difference in other respects. This view of the subject is not, I confess, very obvious at first sight, and requires strong and clear proof, but it also admits of it. The only way to defend our common sense against the sophisms of the moderns is to retort their own analytical distinctions upon them.