CONCEPCION, or

See also:

• VILLA

VILLA CONCEPCION  , the principal town and a river port of northern Paraguay, on the Paraguay river, 138 m . (234 M. by river) N. of Asuncion, and about 345 ft. above sea-level . Pop . (1895, estimate) 1o,000, largely Indians and mestizos . It is an important commercial centre, and a port of call for the river steamers trading with the Brazilian town of Corumba, Matto Grosso . It is the principal point for the exportation of Paraguay tea, or " yerba mate " (Ilex paraguayensis) . The town has a street railway and telephone service, a national college, a public school, a market, and some important commercial establishments . The neighbouring country is sparsely settled and produces little except forest products . Across the river, in the Paraguayan Chaco, is an English missionary station, whose territory extends inland among the Indians for many miles . CONCEPT' . (Lat. conceptus, a thought, from concipere, to take together, combine in thought; Ger . Begriff), in philosophy, a term applied to a general idea derived from and considered apart from the particulars observed by the senses .

The

mental process by which this idea is obtained is called abstraction (q.v.) . By the comparison, for instance, of a number of boats, the mind abstracts a certain common quality or qualities in virtue of which the mind affirms the general idea of " boat." Thus the connotation of the term " boat," being the sum of those qualities in respect of which all boats are regarded as alike, whatever their individual peculiarities may be, is described as a " concept." The psychic process by which a concept is affirmed is called " Conception," a term which is often loosely used in a concrete sense for " Concept " itself . It is also used even more loosely as synonymous in the widest sense with " idea," " notion." Strictly, however, it is contrasted with " perception," and implies the mental reconstruction and combination of sense-given data . Thus when one carries one's thoughts back to a series of events, one constructs a psychic whole made up of parts which take definite shape and character by their mutual inter-relations . This process is called conceptual synthesis, the possibility of which is a sine qua non for the exchange of information by speech and writing . It should be noticed that this (very common) psychological interpretation of " conception " differs from the metaphysical or general philosophical definition given above, in so far as it includes mental presentations in which the universal is not specifically distinguished from the particulars . Some psychologists prefer to restrict the term to the narrower use which excludes all mental states in which particulars are cognized, even though the universal be present also . In biology conception is the coalescence of the male and female generative elements, producing pregnancy . ' The word " conceit " in its various senses (" idea," " plan," " fancy," " imagination," and, by modern extension, an overweening sense of one's own value) is likewise derived ultimately from the Latin concipere . It appears to have been formed directly from the English derivative " conceive " on the analogy of " deceit " from " deceive." According to the New English Dictionary there is no intermediate form in Old French .