"I still don't see, Master, how this system of 'Blinker' [140], [160] can be of use in recognising things, ideation I mean."
"Don't you? When you look at a thing and you want to know whether it is precisely A or Not-A, or even 'more or less A', what do you do (ideationally)? You make-up the proper pattern of how A would be, put it in a blinker with the pattern you see, and let it blink. Thus, you can see immediately how many differences there are and where they are located. In other words, you can see how serious or unimportant the difference, if any, is compared with the pure A. Naturally, it opens the possibility to leave those unimportant points in the pattern, these digits entirely out, also, because of 'Learning', you can add new one's. After all, when you decide that two apples are virtually the same, a lot of precise knowledge of differences are superfluous. You are not interested in each 'uniqueness' but only in: 'the same' and 'good eat'. See what a woman does when she wants to buy wool that matches a particular colour. She takes a sample with her in order to, ... hold it near to the one in question (Spencer, Essay, ). You see, attention is never steady, it is a vibration between two positions." [140], [160]