In the earlier tropes we see the lack of abstraction appearing as the incapacity to grasp their diversitude under more simple general points of view, although they all, in fact, partly under a simple conception and partly in their difference, do in fact converge into some necessary simple determinations. From all alike, in relation to immediate knowledge, is the insecurity demonstrated of that of which we say “it is.” Sextus Empiricus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 14, § 38) even remarks, that “all the tropes may be summed up in three: the one is the judging subject; the other that respecting which the judgment is made; the third that which contains both sides”—the relation of subject and object. If thought is developed further, it embraces things in these more general determinations.
a. “The first trope is the diversitude in animal organization, according to which different living beings experience different conceptions and sensations respecting the same object. This the Sceptics conclude from the different nature of their origin, because some are brought into being through copulation and others without copulation” (from a _generatio æquivoca_): “but of the first some are hatched from eggs, and others come immediately living into the world, &c. Thus it is a matter of no doubt that this difference of origin produces opposite constitutions, temperaments, &c. The variety in the parts of the body, and particularly in those which are given to the animal for purposes of distinguishing and feeling, thus produces in them the greatest differences in conceptions. For instance, the jaundiced patient sees as yellow what to others appears white,” and as green, what to the latter seems blue. “Similarly the eyes of animals are differently constructed in different species, and have different colours, being pale, grey or red; consequently what is perceived thereby must be different.”[197]
This difference in the subject undoubtedly establishes a difference in perception, and this last a difference between the conception and the nature of the object of perception. But if we say “That is,” we mean something fixed, maintaining itself under all conditions; whereas in opposition to this the Sceptics show that everything is variable. But if they thereby destroy similarity and identity for the senses, and consequently _this_ universality, another steps in, for universality or existence rests simply in the fact of men knowing that, in the hackneyed example of the jaundiced man, things appear so to him, _i.e._ the necessary law is known whereby a change of sensation arises for him. But certainly it is implied in this that the first sensuous universality is not true universality, because it is one immediate and unknown; and in it as sensuous existence, its non-universality is rightly demonstrated within itself through another universality. As against the statement “This is blue because I see it as such,” which clearly makes sight the ground of its being asserted to be blue, it is quite fair to point to another who has immediate perception of the object and for whom it is not blue.