But Whately did not intend this: he was a man of great penetration and common-sense.
(b) Hamilton, our best-known Conceptualist, defined Logic as the science of the "formal laws of thought," and "of thought as thought," that is, without regard to the matter thought about.

Just as Whately regarded Logic as concerned merely with cogent forms of statement, so Hamilton treated it as concerned merely with the necessary relations of thought.
This doctrine is called Conceptualism, because the simplest element of thought is the Concept; that is, an abstract idea, such as is signified by the word _man, planet, colour, virtue_; not a representative or generic image, but the thought of all attributes common to any class of things.

Men, planets, colours, virtuous actions or characters, have, severally, something in common on account of which they bear these general names; and the thought of what they have in common, as the ground of these names, is a Concept.

To affirm or deny one concept of another, as _Some men are virtuous_, or _No man is perfectly virtuous_, is to form a Judgment, corresponding to the Proposition of which the other schools of Logic discourse.

Conceptualism, then, investigates the conditions of consistent judgment.
To distinguish Logic from Psychology is most important in connection with Conceptualism.