Page "Concept" Paragraph 2

John Stuart Mill argued that general conceptions are formed through abstraction.

A general conception is the common element among the many images of members of a class.

"... hen we form a set of phenomena into a class, that is, when we compare them with one another to ascertain in what they agree, some general conception is implied in this mental operation " ( A System of Logic, Book IV, Ch.

II ).

Mill did not believe that concepts exist in the mind before the act of abstraction.

" It is not a law of our intellect, that, in comparing things with each other and taking note of their agreement, we merely recognize as realized in the outward world something that we already had in our minds.

The conception originally found its way to us as the result of such a comparison.

It was obtained ( in metaphysical phrase ) by abstraction from individual things " ( Ibid.

).