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- The reassuring phrase 'mere aggregates' must be received warily as a description of classes. Aggregates, perhaps; but not in the sense of composite concrete objects or heaps. Continental United States is an extensive physical body having the several states as parts; at the same time it is a physical body having the several counties as parts. It is the same concrete object, regardless of the conceptual dissections imposed; the heap of states and the heap of counties are identical. The class of states, however, cannot be identified with the class of counties; for there is much that we want to affirm of the one class and deny of the other. We want to say e.g. that the one class has exactly 48 members, while the other has 3075. We want to say that Delaware is a member of the first class and not of the second, and that Nantucket is a member of the second class and not of the first. These classes, unlike the single concrete heaps which their members compose, must be accepted as two entities of a non-spatial and abstract kind. (en)
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