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THE HOLY TRINITY.
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can only be applicable, if at all, to the abstractions made from the percepts of visible objects. Here Berkeley's famous illustration of the concept triangle proves itself useful. It is not a concept of any particular kind of a triangle, nor of any triangle of a particular size or dimensions, but purely and simply of tri-angularity. If the concept triangle be an image, surely it ought to be easy to reproduce it on paper ; but the moment we set out to do so, we discover that our drawing is either a right-angled, or some other kind of triangle, with certain definite dimensions, and not the general idea of a triangle, in any sense of the word. We thus see that the concept triangle cannot possibly be an image, but is a quality of images; it can only represent the attribute of tri-angularity, but nothing more. Abstract away all the features of distinction from a number of individuals belonging to a class, or from the numerous phases of the same individual, and you have, in one case, the concept of the class, and, in the other, that of the individual object. Now, since the original concrete perception arises from mental reaction, that which is left after the elimination of the features of distinction, must necessarily be the diagram of just as much reaction as is common to the class to which the object belongs. Hence, concepts and ideas exist in the mind, not as images, but as 'liquid' possibilities which may be actualized in thought at will. Ewald Hering maintains (On Memory and The Specific Energy of The Nervous System):
"Our concepts appear on the stage of consciousness only transiently; they quickly disappear behind the scenes, to make place for others. Only on the stage are they conceptions, as an actor is king only on the stage. As what do they remain behind the scenes ?
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