anticipatory experience is a fiction, the remembered experience is a re-percept.

§ 16. The thought must carefully be retained in view that a constructive fiction of the mind is not necessarily of objective untruth and invalidity. All that is meant by the term fiction is that in the mind of the individual a construction so denominated is made which has no correspondent (to that individual) in presentative cognition. Or, that a construction is made which in the minds of a definite or an indefinite number of individuals has no such correspondent. Accordingly it may and often does transpire (as has been before remarked) that what is properly at one time a fiction becomes afterward a scientific truth; or that which to one person or class of persons is imagination simply, to another class has a confirmation in presentative experience. There is no necessary antithesis between a scientific truth and a mental fiction; the antithesis lies between reality as apprehended in presentative experience and fictitious construction or fiction in representation. The term imagination may be properly applied to the process, but makes an awkward name for the product. The test of a fiction is its non-accordance with presentative experience. A concrete object which has no prototype in nature, an hypothesis as yet unverified, an event expected but not yet come into experience, ideal standards by which experience is measured-all are fictions and entitled to be regarded as products of the constructive powers. When they become realised in experience, though still as to their origin products of construction, they receive a new and different value from being expressions of facts in nature (nature as matter or nature as mind) and are entitled to be placed in other groups of mental products.

§ 17. The symbolical character of fictions is oftentimes obvious. A type of a species stands for many individuals embraced in that species; an ideal line or triangle symbolises all linear and triangular figures; ideal pictures of houses, streets, noise and bustle of busy life, symbolise to us the city we have never seen; an ideal of a beautiful landscape is a representative of a vast multitude of agreeable experiences that we have had; an ideal of moral excellence, a symbol of an indefinite number of sentiments and utilities that have come within the cognisance and experience of ourselves or our ancestors. So also the pictures of heaven upon which the mind fondly dwells; and so also the ideal we form of a Creator whom we can love, and worship, and trust. Quite

prominently too is this fact exemplified in the constructions made to indicate to the mind distances, as that between the planets or the suns; the ideal image of the distance between the earth and Venus, or the moon is a wholly symbolical cognition. Even terrestrial distances are represented in a symbolical construction. The idea we form of the space between one mile-post and another is a creation symbolising certain experiences we have had of passing between mile-posts, or going over equivalent lengths on the road. Finally, when we try to realise that which is a mere negation, we do so only by a positive symbolical idea. Infinity is made a subject of predication only by a finite positive symbolical image purely fictitious.

§ 18. There can be no doubt that the study of mental fictions is highly important, and even indispensable to the progress of psychological science. To determine the relations of these products to presentative knowledge, to ascertain how far they can be verified, and according to what laws they are formed; to discover to what extent they can be relied upon as giving information of what is beyond, or has hitherto been beyond, presentative experience are desiderata as great as anything which can be suggested in connection with the science of mind. Some of the most important interests of human kind are here involved, and the prediction may be ventured that perhaps the most valuable work of the future in psychology and metaphyics will be done by those who devote themselves to the investigation and elucidation of the constructive fictions of the intellect.

§ 19. To recapitulate: Fictions are intellectual constructions which are not as wholes in exact conformity with a prior presentative experience. They are of five degrees of complexity, and embrace specifically, ideals of beauty, truth, and goodness, much à priori cognition, hypotheses and anticipations of the future, all these making up and including the most prominent groups.

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CHAPTER LIII.

DEFINITIONS AND DIVISIONS.

DEFINITIONS.

§ 1. A DEFINITION is a proposition declaratory of the meaning of a word: this is the clearest statement of what a definition itself is, and yet the process of definition and its psychological import need some further explanation. With that process, as a process, we have no other concern here than to refer to it to the extent necessary to make apparent the exact position of definitions as products, inasmuch as the process is not different from the general processes of mental actions which have been expounded to the degree of which the ability of the writer and the necessities of the subject admitted. A word is simply a mark, and, as has been elsewhere seen, its meaning resides in its connotation. Connotative names, then, are those which allow of definition: non-connotatives are not subject to the process. But although definition is a matter of the declaration of the meaning of a word, since words are representatives of ideas, explaining a word's signification involves some sort of psychological process. Since those names which admit of connotation are general names standing for concepts, it is apparent that whatever mental process takes place is in and upon concepts. Furthermore, since definition is not an enumeration of individuals, it must have relation to the intension rather than the extension of a general notion. So that psychologically considered the process is one of unfolding in propositions the intension of a concept. This requires a decomposition of the general notion into lesser generalities, a breaking up of the same into groups of homogeneous particulars until the whole notion is laid out in order. And as each lesser generalisation is made it is marked off or separated from something and the whole is contrasted with something, so that additional definiteness may often be obtained by noting the generalised properties of those things with which contrasts are taken in the process of generalising the partieulars of the concept whose definition is sought. Where a notion is composed of several notions which are distinct and well generalised, the work of definition is much simplified, for it is only necessary to state these subordinate notions. If, however, the general notion

is composed of a mixture of indistinct, partly generalised and non-generalised particulars, the ultimate particulars have to be examined more closely, and new subordinate generalisations constructed and distinguished from each other. Definition, therefore, is a process of association within the compass of a larger association; it is a process of combined analysis and synthesis, analysis in separating a general notion into its particulars and synthesis in remitting those particulars into subordinate general notions. Where the notion is composed of other well-defined notions, the method of analysis is the more conspicuous, because the synthesis into subordinate generalities has been performed before, and the association is so firmly established as to be more machine-like. If, however, the notion is composed of particulars not well assimilated, the synthetical process being slower and more troublesome is the most characteristic part.

§ 2. Definitions may be divided into three classes: Complete Definitions, Incomplete Essential Definitions, and Accidental Definitions. The first of these embraces those definitions which exhibit the whole proper intension of a concept; the second those which declare a portion only of that intension; the third those which express necessarily no part of that intension, but are simply descriptions.

§ 3. Complete definitions are the exhibitions of the essential intension of concepts; that is to say, of the scientific intension. Names have a different connotation with different people and at different times; they may and do connote with some things which are in no wise a part of the essential intension of the concept they express. The scientific intension is that which becomes attached to the concept as the result of careful comparison, analysis and synthesis, to determine what is the essential character of the concept; that without which it would cease to be the concept and would be something else; and that which in no wise belongs to it as essential, but rather is to be attributed to some other notion. To declare this scientific intension is the office of a complete defini tion. Complete definitions include all that is essential, and exclude all that is not essential. It is evident, therefore, that to form a complete definition is a matter of difficulty. It requires a scientific knowledge of that which is defined. It demands both an acquaintance with the exact state of present knowledge upon the subject and an assurance that the knowledge is complete and final. In this view there are no absolutely complete definitions. But those

may be called complete, relatively speaking, which give whatever present scientific information we have concerning that which is defined, which is essential. For instance, the definition of living bodies so far as it can be called complete would be something like the following:--Living bodies are those bodies which are constituted chiefly of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, and less abundantly of phosphorus, calcium, sulphur, chlorine, fluorine, sodium, potassium, iron, magnesium, and silicon; which possess an organised cellular structure; which have a definite individuality, and yet a vast variety of forms and structures; which exemplify a definite combination of changes simultaneous and successive, and a continuous adjustment to external circumstances; which assimilate the latter to their own organisation and adapt themselves to the external; and which have in many instances the concomitant of mind. This definition may be expressed less concisely; and many others would require a still longer and more complex definition. Complete definitions-those which fairly may be ranked as such-are very few as compared with the number in the other classes.

§ 4. The most of those definitions which are accounted as proper definitions and are given and accepted as such, where there is occasion for definition, are what have been termed Incomplete Essential Definitions. These are substantially of use, not to give a complete, adequate, or scientific exhibition of that which is to be defined, but to furnish criteria for the correct use of the term, to mark out the limits of the extension of the concept, rather than to give the sum of its intension. They are always, however, a part of the scientific connotation of the name which is the subject of definition. Thus, Matter is that substance which has the property of tending to remain at rest if once at rest; Life is the continuous adjustment of internal and external relations; Living bodies are organised bodies; Man is a rational animal; A dog is a vertebrate animal; A stone is inorganic matter; A house is something built-are severally incomplete essential definitions.

§ 5. The third class of definitions comprise what are otherwise known as descriptions, and are hardly to be considered as definitions at all; that they are not scientific definitions is clear, yet as they do actually express the ordinary popular intension of concepts, and as this loose accidental intension may really be an unrecognised part of the scientific intension, or may become a part thereof, it is not wise to omit descriptions in treating definitions. Like