This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ...as that is of extension. In the books generally it is called a percept, but a per.cept is the product of a singlejjense. This gives harmony to the whole procedure. It places at the foot of the column, and as the condition of generalization, an individual person or object whose distinguishing and common qualities must have been found by observation, so that observation must be the basis of any generalization that can avail anything, So much for the lowest term of the series. Now for the highest, that is, Being. This is commonly, and I believe universally regarded by logicians as the result of generalization, and as giving us the summum genus, or most comprehensive class. But is this so? It is conceded that the idea of Being is given us by intuition at the very beginning of our mental operations. Is the idea of it here different from that we had when we began? Do we get something new, or do we complete the circle, excluding everything except Being, with which we began? I think the latter. We had with us the idea of being when we began with Cato, and it simply remains as applicable to ah things when everything else is excluded. It is not, like the others, an attribute known by observation to belong to an individual or to a class. We know by observation the attributes that belong to Cato, and man, and mammals; but it is not so with Being. That is a necessary idea accompanying the whole process, and is at length left alone as the one thing that must be thought in connection with every particular being and thing. In this view of it, Being is not a concept at all, either individual or general. Knowing thus how our column is composed, we shall readily understand those two great operations in thinking, definition and division. Who ever can define...