“It’s a thing that has no matter; that is, it cannot be felt, seen, heard, smelt or tasted; it has no substance or solidity; it is neither large nor small, hot nor cold, long nor short.”
“Then what is the long and short of it?” asked the schoolmaster.
“Abstraction,” replied the Doctor.
“Suppose, for instance,” said Malachi, “that I had a pitchfork—”
“Ay,” said the Doctor, “consider a pitchfork in general; that is, neither this one nor that one, nor any particular one, but a pitchfork or pitchforks divested of their materiality—these are things in the abstract.”
“They are things in the hay-mow,” said Malachi.
“Pray,” said Uncle Tim, “have there been many such things discovered?”
“Discovered!” returned the Doctor, “why all things, whether in heaven or upon the earth, or in the waters under the earth, whether small or great, visible or invisible, animate or inanimate; whatever the eye can see, or the ear can hear, or the nose can smell, or the fingers touch; finally, whatever exists or is imaginable in rerum natura, past, present or to come, all may be abstractions.”
“Indeed!” said Uncle Tim, “pray what do you make of the abstraction of a red cow?”
“A red cow,” said the Doctor, “considered metaphysically, or as an abstraction, is an animal possessing neither hide nor horns, bones nor flesh, but is the mere type, eidolon, and fantastical semblance of these parts of a quadruped. It has a shape without any substance, and no colour at all, for its redness is the mere counterfeit or imagination of such. As it lacks the positive, so is it also deficient in the accidental properties of all the animals of its tribe, for it has no locomotion, stability, or endurance, neither goes to pasture, gives milk, chews the cud, nor performs any other function of a horned beast, but is a mere creature of the brain, begotten by a freak of the fancy, and nourished by a conceit of the imagination.”