"Treatise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Berkeley George)

9. And as the mind frames to itself abstract ideas of qualities or
modes, so does it, by the same precision or mental separation,
attain abstract ideas of the more compounded beings which include
several coexistent qualities. For example, the mind having observed
that Peter, James, and John resemble each other in certain common
agreements of shape and other qualities, leaves out of the complex
or compounded idea it has of Peter, James, and any other particular
man, that which is peculiar to each, retaining only what is common
to all, and so makes an abstract idea wherein all the particulars
equally partake- abstracting entirely from and cutting off all those
circumstances and differences which might determine it to any
particular existence. And after this manner it is said we come by
the abstract idea of man, or, if you please, humanity, or human
nature; wherein it is true there is included colour, because there
is no man but has some colour, but then it can be neither white, nor
black, nor any particular colour, because there is no one particular
colour wherein all men partake. So likewise there is included stature,
but then it is neither tall stature, nor low stature, nor yet middle
stature, but something abstracted from all these. And so of the
rest. Moreover, their being a great variety of other creatures that
partake in some parts, but not all, of the complex idea of man, the
mind, leaving out those parts which are peculiar to men, and retaining
those only which are common to all the living creatures, frames the
idea of animal, which abstracts not only from all particular men,
but also all birds, beasts, fishes, and insects. The constituent parts
of the abstract idea of animal are body, life, sense, and
spontaneous motion. By body is meant body without any particular shape
or figure, there being no one shape or figure common to all animals,
without covering, either of hair, or feathers, or scales, &c., nor yet
naked: hair, feathers, scales, and nakedness being the
distinguishing properties of particular animals, and for that reason
left out of the abstract idea. Upon the same account the spontaneous
motion must be neither walking, nor flying, nor creeping; it is
nevertheless a motion, but what that motion is it is not easy to
conceive.

10. Whether others have this wonderful faculty of abstracting
their ideas, they best can tell: for myself, I find indeed I have a
faculty of imagining, or representing to myself, the ideas of those
particular things I have perceived, and of variously compounding and
dividing them. I can imagine a man with two heads, or the upper
parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. I can consider the hand,
the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the
rest of the body. But then whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must
have some particular shape and colour. Likewise the idea of man that I
frame to myself must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a
straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I
cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above
described. And it is equally impossible for me to form the abstract