[FR]I use this term because the word "percept" is used in different senses by different writers, e.g. by Mr. Mivart and Mr. Romanes.
[FS]"Let the perception be considered to be made up of x + y; x being the ego, or self, and y the object. The mind has the power of supplying its own - x, and so we get (through the imagination of the mind and the object) x + y - x, or y pure and simple" (Mivart, "On Truth," p. 135). Mr. Mivart devotes a whole section of this work to the defence of ordinary common-sense realism. The above assertion seems to contain the essence of his teaching in the matter.
[FT]If it be said that the object does exist independently of man, though not in the phenomenal guise under which we know it, I would reply—Not so; for it is to the existence under this phenomenal guise that we apply the word "object." In philosophical language, the existence, stripped of its phenomenal aspect, is called the Ding an sich. Its essential character is its independence of man; and hence its unknowability.
[FU]I avoid, for the present, the use of the terms "abstraction" and "abstract idea" because they are employed in different senses by different authors.
[FV]"Outlines of Psychology," p. 153.
[FW]Ibid. p. 339.
[FX]"Science of Thought," p. 453.
[FY]For compound or generic ideas "not consciously fixed and signed by means of an abstract name," Mr. Romanes ("Mental Evolution in Man," p. 36) has suggested the term "recept." In the photographic psychology which he adopts, the percept is an individual and particular photograph, the recept a generalized or composite photograph. "The word 'recept,'" he says, "is seen to be appropriate to the class of ideas in question, because, in receiving such ideas, the mind is passive." This, it will be observed, is in opposition to the teaching of this chapter, in which the activity of the mind in perception has been insisted on. Mr. Romanes's recepts answer in part to what I have termed constructs, which, as we have seen, are, as a rule, from the first general rather than particular, and in part to concepts reached through analysis. Mr. Romanes, for example, speaks of ideas of principles (e.g. the principle of the screw) and ideas of qualities (e.g. good-for-eating and not-good-for-eating) as recepts (p. 60). On the other hand, Mr. Mivart ("The Origin of Human Reason," p. 59; see also his work "On Truth") terms such generic affections "sensuous universals." It may be well to append Mr. Romanes's and Mr. Mivart's tabular statements.
| Mr. Romanes. | |||
| Ideas | { | General, abstract, or notional | = Concepts. |
| Complex, compound, or mixed | = Recepts, or generic ideas. | ||
| Simple, particular, or concrete | = Memories of percepts. | ||
| Mr. Mivart. | |||
| Ideas | { | General or true universals | = Concepts |
| Particular or individual | = Percepts. | ||
| Sensitive Cognitive Affections |  | Groups of actual experiences combined with sensuous reminiscences | = Sensuous universals, or recepts. |
| Groups of simply juxtaposed actual experiences | = Sense-perceptions, or sencepts. | ||
In Mr. Mivart's terminology, the representations of the lower group are "mental images" or "phantasmata." The term "consciousness" is by him restricted to the higher region of ideas, the term "consentience" being applied to the faculty by which cognitive affections are felt, unified, and grouped without consciousness. There is a difference in kind, according to Mr. Mivart, between "consentience" and "consciousness;" and the former could therefore never develop into the latter, nor the latter be evolved from the former. For this reason (because of the philosophy it is intended to carry with it) I shall not employ the word "consentience," which would otherwise be a useful term.