But I am approaching too closely to matters of high import. I am drawn by the word _Infinite_. Aristotle said truly, “the Infinite attracts.” He was thinking of that other infinite, which is not the one intended by astronomers; but for myself the infinite in nature captivates me so powerfully that I find it difficult to touch earth again. Let us walk in beaten paths; let us endeavour to grasp the meaning of the more simple words learnt mechanically at school, such as those denoting abstraction as well as nouns, and terms both general and particular; and let us see to what phase of thought and speech these grammatical exercises will carry us. * * * * * Each palpable object is known to us according as it affects our senses, that is to say, by its properties; all impalpable objects cannot be known otherwise than by their qualities; but nothing exists in nature, whether palpable or impalpable, that has only one property or one quality, each object has several; an object as it exists in reality is concrete, and has a concrete name. If we wished to consider only one of its attributes, we should have to take that apart and isolate it, in order to fix our thoughts exclusively on that; “we must drop that of which the attributes are attributes.”[55] We see white snow, white chalk, white milk, we have the sensation of the white colour; but to take whiteness apart from the snow, the chalk, and the milk, is an operation which requires an instrument, a means, this we possess in a word, viz., the word _white_. Without that word we should have the sensation of whiteness, but not the idea; it is the word _white_, whilst separating the white colour from the snow, the chalk, and the milk, that gives us the abstract idea as well as the abstract term whiteness. This mental act is called _abstraction_: and it is by this process of abstraction that we really arrive at the true knowledge of anything, apart from the sensation of it only. Here is another example of abstraction. Let us suppose that two persons are in one room, and that there are in the room two windows, two doors, two tables and two chairs. Let us try to obliterate in our mind the persons, the windows, the doors, the tables and the chairs; nothing now remains but the abstraction _two_. Now _two_, as such, apart from objects, does not exist in nature; still it is a conception we can retain in our mind, and this abstract idea can be incorporated in the abstract word _two_. These two examples of abstraction tell us but little of what is meant by it; and although they teach us little of the part abstraction plays in our mental life, they are correct from a logical point of view, and clearly demonstrate the impossibility of retaining a thought apart from the word expressing it, since evidently the representation of _two_ and of _whiteness_ could not have been made if the words had been lacking.