150 L. T. HOBHOUSE : Averni on which we enter when we find the distinction of universal and particular in a different mode of reality. The Myth of Er will have to bolster up our demonstration of the happiness of the just. And as against the whole conception, Aristotle who probably had sufficient intellect to under- stand his own teacher as well as any average nineteenth century commentator can do will be justified in insisting that the avrodvOpwTros cannot be defined in any way which will not apply to the men of our experience. By reaction from the abstract idea we come naturally to the view (/3) that the general content is really an expression for resemblances between individuals. In a sense no doubt this is true. But resemblance cannot be put in antithesis to the qualities in virtue of which things resemble one another. And if or in as far as the concept is based on an adequate analysis, the resemblance which it expresses will be not a vague relation between the individuals con- cerned as concrete individuals, but a precise relation grounded upon certain qualities which they possess. So far then from delivering us from the quality, resemblance brings us back to it again at the first turn. Lastly (7) the concept may be taken to cover a certain intelligible totality of experience a mass of individuals taken as related by their qualities in certain assignable degrees of resemblance and difference. To predicate a general term of a subject may then be taken as equivalent to assigning it a place in such a system. This account again is true in a sense. For according to our original principle the concept must, directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly, contain a reference to the whole of the experi- ence from which it is drawn. But this is really our starting- point, and what we want to find out is how the conception organises this experience for use in ordinary thought. And from this point of view we may note two objections. First, this interpretation would tend to throw all predication into a disjunctive form. To assign a thing a place in a whole is to leave a great deal indefinite unless we can go on to determine what that place is. And so the disjunctive theory of the concept is just as abstract in its way as the abstract theory itself. It leaves out information, and infor- mation which one would think to be relevant. In fact this scarcely seems to do justice to all cases of the general content. ' The fire is out ' is surely as definite a piece of information as one could wish to have. T$o doubt it admits of further definition (the fire went out in a particular way, at a particular time, and so on), but this does not in the
