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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
This memory image is, however, not to be confounded with the concept, for it has, as an image, its clear cut outline and contour, as they were seen in the original object at some particular moment of time. A concept, on the contrary, is what the understanding conceives from what it has perceived. It is an idea robbed of all else but that which appertains to its kind, so that it would hold true of the whole class, but not represent any individual in it, except in so far as it shares, with the other members of its fraternity, the features distinctive of the whole class itself. As a modern psychologist says, in a concept the identity is removed from its concrete setting and viewed by itself. For instance, the concept 'man' would be true of every man, whether tall or short, fat or lean, young or old, whether existing now, or having existed in the past, or yet to be born. In other words, a concept is the symbol of thought, defining an object by pointing out those features of resemblance which are common to all the members of its species or class, but omitting those in respect of which it differs from others. It is clearly impossible for it to be an image of each and every individual, though they may all be said to exist in it rolled up in some way; for an image is nothing if not the likeness of a particular object as it appeared to us on some particular occasion.
Many of the concepts must, obviously, be without form, e.g., time, for we can mentally endow with forms only such objects as have been perceived by us, but never those which are beyond perception itself. Therefore, the notion that concepts and ideas float in consciousness,
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