The defect, as it seems to me, of the view taken of General Names in the text, is that it ignores this distinction between the meaning of a general name, and the remainder of the idea which the general name calls up. That remainder is uncertain, variable, scanty in some cases, copious in others, and connected with the name by a very slight tie of association, continually overcome by counter-associations. The only part of the complex idea that is permanent in the same mind, or common to several minds, consists of the distinctive attributes marked by the class-name. Nothing else is universally present, though {293} something else is always present: but whatever else be present, it is through these only that the class-name does its work, and effects the end of its existence. We need not therefore be surprised that these attributes, being all that is of importance in the complex idea, should for a long time have been supposed to be all that is contained in it. The truest doctrine which can be laid down on the subject seems to be this--that the idea corresponding to a class-name is the idea of a certain constant combination of class attributes, accompanied by a miscellaneous and indefinitely variable collection of ideas of individual objects belonging to the class.--_Ed._] {294} CHAPTER IX. ABSTRACTION. "I think, too, that he (Mr. Locke) would have seen the advantage of 'thoroughly weighing,' not only (as he says) 'the imperfections of Language;' but its _perfections_ also: For the perfections of Language, not properly understood, have been one of the chief causes of the imperfections of our knowledge."--_Diversions of Purley_, _by John Horne Tooke, A.M._, i. 37. THE two cases of Consciousness, CLASSIFICATION, and ABSTRACTION, have not, generally, been well distinguished. According to the common accounts of Classification, ABSTRACTION was included in it. When it is said, that, in order to classify, we leave out of view all the circumstances in which individuals differ, and retain only those in which they agree; this separating one portion of what is contained in a complex idea, and making it an object of consideration by itself, is the process which is named Abstraction, at least a main part of that process. It is necessary now to inquire what are the purposes to which this separating of the parts of a complex idea, and considering and naming the separated parts by themselves, is subservient. {295} We have already observed the following remarkable things in the process of naming: 1, Assigning names of those clusters of ideas called objects; as man, fish; 2, Generalizing those names, so as to make them represent a class; 3, Framing adjectives by which minor classes are cut out of larger.