But when we come to the following Chapter of the Analysis (ch. ix. on Abstraction, p. 296), we read as follows--"Let us suppose that we apply the adjective _black_ first to the word Man. We say 'black man.' But we speedily see that _for the same reason_ for which we say black man, we may say black horse, black cow, black coat, and so on. The word _black_ is thus associated with innumerable modifications of the sensation black. By frequent repetition, and the gradual strengthening of the association, these modifications are at last called up in such rapid succession that they appear commingled, and no longer many ideas, but one. _Black_ is therefore no longer an individual, but a general name. It marks not the particular black of a particular individual, but the black of every individual and of all individuals."
To say that we apply the word _black_ to the horse _for the same reason_ as we applied it to the man, is surely equivalent to saying that the colour of the horse is the same as that of the man: that blackness is the colour which they have in common. It is quite true that we begin by applying the name to one individual object, then apply it to another, and another, &c.; but always for the same reason--to designate (or _connote_, in the phraseology of Mr. John Stuart Mill) the same colour in them all, and to denote the objects considered under one and the same point of view. It may be that in fact there are differences in shade of colour: but the class-name leaves these out of sight. When we desire to call attention to them, we employ other words in addition to it. Every attribute is considered and named as One, which is or may be common to many individual objects: the objects only are individual.
It is to be regretted, I think, that Mr. James Mill disconnected Classification so pointedly from Abstraction, and insisted on explaining the former without taking account of the latter. Such disconnection is a novelty, as he himself states (p. 294): previous expositors thought that "abstraction was included in classification"--and, in my judgment, they were { 285} right in thinking so, if (with Mr. James Mill) we are to consider Classification as a "great operation." An aggregate of concretes is not sufficient to constitute a Class, in any scientific sense, or as available in the march of reasoned truth. You must have, besides, the peculiar mode of regarding the aggregate: (a phrase which Mr. James Mill deprecates as mysterious, but which it is difficult to exchange for any other words more intelligible) you must have "that separating one or more of the ingredients of a complex idea from the rest, which has received the name of Abstraction"--to repeat the very just explanation given by him, p. 295--though that too, if we look at p. 249, he seems to consider as tainted with mystery.