Sex and Character

INTRODUCTION

All thought begins with conceptions to a certain extent generalised, and thence is developed in two directions. On the one hand, generalisations become wider and wider, binding together by common properties a larger and larger number of phenomena, and so embracing a wider field of the world of facts. On the other hand, thought approaches more closely the meeting-point of all conceptions, the individual, the concrete complex unit towards which we approach only by thinking in an ever-narrowing circle, and by continually being able to add new specific and differentiating attributes to the general idea, “thing,” or “something.” It was known that fishes formed a class of the animal kingdom distinct from mammals, birds, or invertebrates, long before it was recognised on the one hand that fishes might be bony or cartilaginous, or on the other that fishes, birds and mammals composed a group differing from the invertebrates by many common characters.