expressing an abstract reference to actions and passions in the verbs,
nouns, and adverbs, originally referred to a concrete object.

Three modes or degrees of abstract representations occur in the
progressive exercise of the intellectual faculty; these, combined with
the special apprehensions of the individual memory, and with imaginative
types, constitute the life of human thought, and are the conditions by
which we attain to rational knowledge. While the specific mythical type
may take the place of the general type in the logical exercise of
thought, and may suffice for an imaginative comprehension of the system
of the world, the abstract conception intervenes in the daily necessity
for communication between these general mythical types, and serves to
cement them together, thus rendering the commerce of ideas among men and
in the human mind more easy.

The abstract conceptions which are formed in this way may be divided
into three classes--physical, moral, and intellectual. To begin with the
first; it is impossible for human speech to point out and define a
subject or phenomenon in the series to which it belongs by resemblance,
identity, or analogy, unless there is already in the mind a conception
which includes the general qualities, or quality proper to the series of
similar phenomena; this is essentially an abstract type, but it
primarily assumes a concrete form. I cannot say that anything is white
or heavy, until by repetitions of the same sensation I have been able to
combine in a single conception the sensations diffused over an infinite
number of objects. The genesis of these conceptions is found in the
comparative explicit judgment which depends on the memory for the
necessary conditions of its formation.

The typical and abstract idea of white has not merely a nominal value,