Note 30 — Chapter III

Logos, p. 175, quoted by Max Müller, who adds:—“The followers of Hume might possibly look upon the faded images of our memory as abstract ideas. Our memory, or, what is often equally important, our oblivescence, seems to them able to do what abstraction, as Berkeley shows, never can do; and under its silent sway many an idea, or cluster of ideas, might seem to melt away till nothing is left but a mere shadow. These shadows, however, though they may become very vague, remain percepts; they are not concepts” (Science of Thought, p. 453). Now, I say it is equally evident that these shadows are not percepts: they are the result of the fusion of percepts, no one of which corresponds to their generic sum. Seeing, then, that they are neither percepts nor concepts, and yet such highly important elements in ideation, I coin for them the distinctive name of recepts.