25 July 1814

Logic

Ch.3.IV. Operations

'.2.1 Subjects Single

5

2

At the time when the perception takes place, the mind may either be more or less active or purely passive in relation to it: it is only in so far as it is more or less active that any operation can, with propriety be said to be performed.

If the mind be purely passive, the perception is the work of the simply perceptive - a branch of the intellectual faculty: if in any mode or degree the mind be active, in so far the will, the volitional faculty bears a part in the production of it.

Conception is a word which is frequently employed to express the same import as in the expression of which the word perception would be employed to express. In common usage the distinction is altogether unsettled. Where any marked distinction is observed, it is to the word conception that the largest and most complex sense seems commonly to be assigned: while impressions alone are considered as the objects of perception, conception is considered as having for its objects ideas, simple ideas the copies of these expressions - the things signified by the signs of which discourse is composed - ex. gr. the import of entire propositions - of a discourse composed of such propositions in any multitude - or even that of single words. In this word intimation is given of a certain degree of complexity in the object denoted by it is but the natural effect of the first syllable.

By the word apprehension, at least if its etymology be considered, intimation is conveyed not only of action, activity, but of some certain degree of exertion - of effort: pretendo - appretendo[?] - to lay hold of.