stage of pure sensation, like a spontaneous act of observation, and it
is transformed into apprehension by the mental faculty. But the inward
consciousness of the quality is actual, psychical, and physical. The
abstract conception is a psychical symbol composed of idea and
consciousness, or rather of act and consciousness; both are fused into a
logical conception of indefinite form, yet consisting of real elements,
that is, of cerebral motions and of sensations.

Estimated according to its genuine value, therefore, an abstract
conception may be divided into three classes--physical, moral, and
intellectual. Whiteness and colours in general, levity and weight,
hardness, sound, and the like qualities, are all abstract types which
belong to the physical class. Goodness, virtue, love, hatred, and anger
must be assigned to the moral class; and equality, identity, number, and
quantity, etc., to the intellectual class. Such abstract conceptions,
without which human speech would be impossible, did not in the case of
primitive man take the explicit and reflex form in which they are
presented by mature science, and it is expedient to inquire what
character they really assumed in the spontaneous exercise of thought and
speech.

There is certainly a difference between the mythical and specific types
and the intrinsic value of these abstract conceptions. The former served
for the causative interpretation of the living system of the world, and
had a superstitious influence on the moral and social progress of
mankind; the latter were merely the instrument of thought and speech,
and were in spontaneous and daily use. But in spite of this difference,
there was no radical and substantial diversity in the genesis of such
conceptions, and the fundamental elements of perception were common to
both. While the form varied, the primitive law and genesis remained the