A Manual of Logic Author:H. H. Munro Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. SECTION I. ABSTRACTION AND GENERALISATION. A Correct understanding of the processes indicated by these terms respectively, will be of advant... more »age in studying the doctrine of the predicables. 1. Abstraction.—A-bstraction literally signifies a drawing off, or taking away from; but in its strict and secondary sense it means the separate consideration of one or more of the parts or qualities of any species of whole, omitting or excluding for the moment all consideration of the other co-existing qualities. This process invariably precedes generalisation. The parts or qualities excluded at one time may again be made the objects of new abstractions, and become the groundwork of new classes denoted by common names. When, therefore, we draw off and consider separately any part or quality of an object presented to us, we are said to abstract; and with this simple act the province of abstraction terminates. We may, for example, attend to the fragrance of a violet, There is a prevalent confusion regarding the meaning of the worda subject and object. ' Not to understand these words,' remarks the author of the ' Outline of the Laws of Thought,' note, p. 52, ' is a disqualification for the study of modern philosophy. The subject is the person who receives impressions ; the object is-the external thing which gives them. When I see a mountain, I am the subject, and the mountain the object. Subjective, therefore, would mean "relating to the mind that thinks;" objective "relating to the thing thought of." This use of the words, though now universally followed, is of modem origin; formerly that in which any qualities inhered was called the " subject" of them, a very different use of the word."—[For a masterly disquisition on this point, see Tappan's Elements of Logic, ...« less