Creative Concept

The logical acts of the understanding by which concepts are generated as to their form are:
• comparison, i.e., the likening of mental images to one another in relation to the unity of consciousness;
• reflection, i.e., the going back over different mental images, how they can be comprehended in one consciousness; and finally
• abstraction or the segregation of everything else by which the mental images differ ... In order to make our mental images into concepts, one must thus be able to compare, reflect, and abstract, for these three logical operations of the understanding are essential and general conditions of generating any concept whatever. For example, I see a fir, a willow, and a linden. In firstly comparing these objects, I notice that they are different from one another in respect of trunk, branches, leaves, and the like; further, however, I reflect only on what they have in common, the trunk, the branches, the leaves themselves, and abstract from their size, shape, and so forth; thus I gain a concept of a tree.