The vocabulary of philosophy, mental, moral, and metaphysical : with quotations and references for the use of students / by William Fleming ; edited by Henry Calderwood.
- Date:
- 1876
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The vocabulary of philosophy, mental, moral, and metaphysical : with quotations and references for the use of students / by William Fleming ; edited by Henry Calderwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![ABSOLUTE— See Reid’s Intellectual Powers, essay v. ch. iii.; Edinburgh Review for October 1829; Sir William Hamilton (Discus- sions); Tiberghien (Essai des Connaissances Humaines).—V. Infinite, Unconditioned, Real. ABSTINENCE (abs teneo, to hold from or off)—“ is whereby a man refraineth from anything which he may lawfully take.” —Elyot, Governour, bk. iii. ch. 16. Abstinence is voluntarily refraining, for a moral or religious end, from things which nature, and especially physical nature, needs or delights in. It corresponds to the ’Avixov of the precept of Epictetus, ’Aviyev kou d.r.kyjiv; Sustine et abstinc. The Stoics inculcated abstinence in order to make the soul more independent of the body and of the things belonging to the body.—Christian abstinence is founded in humility and self-mortification.—V. Asceticism, Stoicism. ABSTRACT, ABSTRACTION (abstractio, from abs traho, to draw away from. It is also called separatio resolutio, and precisio). [Abstract is applied to a quality considered in itself apart from the object in which it exists. Abstraction is the exercise of mind by which attention is withdrawn from certain qualities in an object, or from certain objects among many, and concentrated upon others.—Ed.] Dobrisch observes that the term abstraction is used some- times in a psychological, sometimes in a logical sense. In the former we are said to abstract the attention from certain dis- tinctive features of objects presented (abstrahere [mentem] a differentiis). In the latter, we are said to abstract certain portions of a given concept from the remainder (abstrahere differentiae).—Mansel, Prolegorn. Log., note, p. 26. Abstraction (Psychological), says Mr. Stewart (Elements of the Philosophy of Human Mind, chap, iv.), “ is the power of con- sidering certain qualities or attributes of an object apart from the rest; or, as I would rather choose to define it, the power which the understanding has of separating the combinations which are presented to it.” Perhaps it may be more cor- rectly regarded as a process rather than a power—as a function rather than a faculty. Dr. Reid has called it (Intell. Powers, essay v. ch. 3) “ an operation of the understanding. It con- sists in the resolving or analyzing a subject (object) into its known attributes, and giving a name to each attribute, which](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2199531x_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
