Objection to this use.—This use of the term is, on some accounts, objectionable. It is certainly not the ordinary sense of the word, but a departure from established usage. It is an arbitrary limitation of a word to denote a part only instead of the whole of that which it properly signifies There is no reason, in the nature of the case, why the notion we form of an absent object of perception, or of a sensation, should be called a conception, rather than our notion of an abstract truth, a proposition in morals, or a mathematical problem. I am not aware that any special importance attaches to the former more than to the latter class of conceptions. Indeed, Sir W. Hamilton limits the term to the latter. But this again is not in accordance with established usage.
INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES
PART FIRST
THE
PRESENTATIVE POWER
SENSE OR PERCEPTION BY THE SENSES.
§ I.—General Observations.