Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

ABSTRACT'ION. 123
to contain a summary of their doctrine? The absurdity of the
ancient opinion concerning universals, as maintained both by
Plato and Aristotle, he has exposed by the clearest and most
decisive arguments; not to mention, that, by his own very original and important speculations concerning the ideal theory, he
has completely destroyed that natural prejudice from which the
whole system of universal ideas gradually took rise. If, even
in the case of individuals, we have no reason to believe the existence of any object of thought in the mind, distinct from the
mind itself, we are at once relieved from all the difficulties in
which philosophers have involved themselves, by attempting to
explain, in consistency with that ancient hypothesis, the process
of the mind in its general speculations.
On the other hand, it is no less clear, from Dr. Reid's criticisms on Berkeley and Hume, that his opinion does not coincide
with that of the Nominalists; and that the power which the
mind possesses of reasoning concerning classes of objects, appears to him to imply some faculty, of which no notice is talen
in the systems of these philosophers.
In order to justify his own expressions concerning universals,
and in opposition to the language of Berkeley and Hume, Dr.
Reid is at pains to illustrate a distinction between conception
and imagination, which, he thinks, has not been sufficiently
attended to by philosophers. "A universal," says he, "is not
an object of any external sense, and therefore cannot be imag
imed; but it may be distinctly conceived. When Mr. Pope says,'The proper study of mankind is man,' I conceive his meaning
distinctly; although I neither imagine a black or a white, a
crooked or a straight man. I can conceive a thing that is impossible; but I cannot distinctly imagine a thing that is impossible;
I can conceive a proposition or a demonstration, but I cannot
imagine either. I can conceive understanding and will, virtue
and vice, and other attributes of the mind; but I cannot imagine
them. In like manner, I can distinctly conceive universals; but
I cannot imagine them."
It appears from this passage, that, by conceiving univerals,
Dr. Reid means nothing more than utnderstanding the meaning