ABSTRACT
The further one carry their analysis of things, the more manifest does it become, that divisions and classifications are essentially human inventions which have no absolute demarcations in nature corresponding to them, but are simply subjective—are scientific artifices by which one limit and arrange the matter under investigation, and so facilitate their thinking. Hence the circumstance, that when one attempt to frame a definition of anything complex, or make a generalization of facts other than the most simple, one can scarcely ever avoid including more than they intended, or leaving out something that should be taken in. The carrying on a chain of reasoning, necessitates a great number of successive states of consciousness, each implying a change of the preceding state. Inorganic changes, however, do not in any considerable degree exhibit this peculiarity. The states of consciousness comprised in any ratiocination are not similar to each other, either in their composition or in their modes of dependence.
