CHAPTER VII.

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THE IMAGINATIONis another term, the explanation of which will be found to be included in the expositions which have previously been given.

The phenomena classed under this title are explained, by modern Philosophers, on the principles of Association. Their accounts of the mental process, to which the name Imagination is applied, include their explanation of the laws of Association, or the manner in which ideas succeed one another in a train, with little else, except remarks on the causes to which diversity in the several kinds of Imagination may be traced.

It is not to be overlooked that the termIMAGINATIONis here used in the sense which is given to it by philosophers when they rank it as a particular power of the mind; for it is no doubt true, that it is often used, in vulgar speech, as synonymous with Conception, and with Supposition, and with Conjecture; as the verb, to imagine, is, with the verbs, to discover, to suppose, conjecture, believe, and perhaps others.

We have seen that Consciousness, and Conception, are names of feelings,taken one by one: Consciousness239ofanyof our feelings so taken; Conception of aparticular classof them, namely, complex ideas. IMAGINATIONis not a name of any one idea. I am not said to imagine, unless I combine ideas successively in a less or greater number. An imagination, therefore, is the name of atrain. I am said to have an imagination when I have a train of ideas; and when I am said to imagine, I have the same thing; nor is there any train of ideas, to which the term imagination may not be applied.

In this comprehensive meaning of the word Imagination, there is no man who has not Imagination, and no man who has it not in an equal degree with any other. Every man imagines, nay, is constantly, and unavoidably, imagining. He cannot help imagining. He can no more stop the current of his ideas, than he can stop the current of his blood.

In the phrase we have just employed, “there is no man who has not imagination,” it is meant, that there is no man who now has not, who has not always had, and who will not always have a train of ideas. Imagination, therefore, is a word connotingindefinite time; it is, to use the language of the Greek grammarians, aoristical. When it connotes, which by the strain of the passage it may be made to do, aparticular time, it marks aparticular train. When it connotestime indefinitely, it markstrains indefinitely, any train at any time.

The having or doing a thing at any time, means the potentiality of having or doing it. Imagination, then, has two meanings. It means either some one train, or the potentiality of a train. These are two meanings which it is very necessary not to confound.

240There is great diversity of trains. Not only has the same individual an endless variety of trains; but a different character belongs to the whole series of trains which pass through the minds of different individuals or classes of individuals. The different pursuits in which the several classes of men are engaged, render particular trains of ideas more common to them than other trains. One man is a merchant; and trains respecting the goods in which he deals, the markets in which he buys, and those in which he sells, are habitual in his mind. Another man is a lawyer, and ideas of clients, and fees, and judges, and witnesses, and legal instruments, and points of contestation, and the practice of his court, are habitually passing in his mind. Ideas of another kind occupy the mind of the physician; of another kind still, the mind of the warrior. The statesman is occupied with a train different from that of any of the classes that have been mentioned; and one statesman with a very different train from another, according as his mind is running upon expedients which may serve the purpose of the day, or arrangements which may secure the happiness of the population from generation to generation. A peculiar character belongs to the train which habitually occupies the mind of the mathematician. The mind of the metaphysician is also occupied by a train distinguished from that of other classes. And there is one man, yet to be mentioned, the poet, the peculiarity of whose trains has been a subject of particular observation. To such a degree, indeed, have the trains of the poet been singled out for distinction, that the word Imagination, in a more restricted sense, is appropriated to them. We do not241call the trains of the lawyer, or the trains of the merchant, imagination. We do not speak of them as imagining, when they are revolving, each, the ideas which belong to his peculiar occupation; it is only to the poet, that the epithet of imagining is applied. His trains, or trains analogous to his, are those which receive the name of Imagination.

It is then a question, to which we should find an answer, whether, in that by which the trains of the poet differ from the trains of other men, there be any thing which, being wholly absent from that by which the trains of other classes are distinguished, lays a foundation for this peculiarity of naming.

The trains of one class differ from those of another, the trains of the merchant, for example, from those of the lawyer, not in this, that the ideas follow one an other by any other law, in the mind of the one, and the mind of the other; they follow by the same laws exactly; and are equally composed of ideas, mixed indeed with sensations, in the minds of both. The difference consists in this, that the ideas which flow in their minds, and compose their trains, are ideas of different things. The ideas of the lawyer are ideas of the legal provisions, forms, and distinctions, and of the actions, bodily, and mental, about which he is conversant. The ideas of the merchant are equally ideas of the objects and operations, about which he is concerned, and the ends toward which his actions are directed; but the objects and operations themselves, are remarkably different. The trains of poets, also, do not differ from the trains of other men, but perfectly agree with them, in this, that they are composed of ideas, and that those ideas succeed one another,242according to the same laws, in their, and in other minds. They are ideas, however, of very different things. The ideas of the poet are ideas of all that is most lovely and striking in the visible appearances of nature, and of all that is most interesting in the actions and affections of human beings. It thus, however, appears most manifestly, that the trains of poets differ from those of other men in no other way, than those of other men differ from one another; that they differ from them by this only, that the ideas of which they are composed, are ideas of different things. There is also nothing surprising in this, that, being trains of pleasurable ideas, they should have attracted a peculiar degree of attention; and in an early age, when poetry was the only literature, should have been thought worthy of a more particular naming, than the trains of any other class. These reasons seem to account for a sort of appropriation of the name Imagination, to the trains of the poet. An additional reason may be seen in another circumstance, which also affords an interesting illustration of a law of association already propounded; namely, the obscuration of the antecedent part of a train, which leads to a subsequent, more interesting than itself. In the case of the lawyer, the train leads to a decision favourable to the side which he advocates. The train has nothing pleasurable in itself. The pleasure is all derived from the end. The same is the case with the merchant. His trains are directed to a particular end. And it is the end alone, which gives a value to the train. The end of the metaphysical, and the end of the mathematical inquirer, is the discovery of truth:243their trains are directed to that object; and are, or are not, a source of pleasure, as that end is or is not attained. But the case is perfectly different with the poet. His train is its own end. It is all delightful, or the purpose is frustrate. From the established laws of association, this consequence unavoidably followed; that, in the case of the trains of those other classes, the interest of which was concentrated in the end, attention was withdrawn from the train by being fixed upon the end; that in the case of the poet, on the other hand, the train itself being the only object, and that pleasurable, the attention was wholly fixed upon the train; that hence the train of the poet was provided with a name; that in the cases of the trains of other men, where the end only was interesting, it was thought enough that the end itself should be named, the train was neglected.

In conformity with this observation, we find, that wherever there is a train which leads to nothing beyond itself, and has any pretension to the character of pleasurable (the various kinds of reverie, for example), it is allowed the name of Imagination. Thus we say that Rousseau indulged his imagination, when, as he himself describes it, lying on his back, in his boat, on the little lake of Bienne, he delivered himself up for hours to trains, of which, he says, the pleasure surpassed every other enjoyment.

Professor Dugald Stewart has given to the word Imagination, a technical meaning; without, as it appears to me, any corresponding advantage. He confines it to the cases in which the mind forms new combinations; or, as he calls them, creations; that is,244to cases in which the ideas which compose the train do not come together in the same combinations in which sensations had ever been received. But this is no specific difference. This happens, in every train of any considerable length, whether directed to any end, or not so directed. It is implied in every wish of the child to fly, or to jump over the house; in a large proportion of all his playful expressions, as puss in boots, a hog in armour, a monkey preaching, and so on. It is manifested in perfection in every dream. It is well known that, for the discovery of truths in philosophy, there is a demand for new trains of thought, multitudes of which pass in review before the mind, are contemplated, and rejected, before the happy combination is attained, in which the discovery is involved. If imagination consists in bringing trains before the mind involving a number of new combinations, imagination is probably more the occupation of the philosopher than of the poet.

Mr. Stewart appears not to have understood the real distinction between the use of the words Conception, and Imagination; that the one is the name of a single idea, the other that of a train. He also involves, without seeming to be wholly aware of it, the idea of a train destined to a particular end in the meaning which he bestows on the word Imagination. Imagination is with him, not the name of a train having merely new combinations, but of a train having new combinations, and those destined to some end. But this is not more the character of the trains which belong to the painter and the poet, as his language appears to imply, than it is of the lawyer, or the metaphysician; or, indeed, the professors of many245of the vulgar arts; the tailor, for example, and the mantua-maker.77

77The foregoing analysis of the Imagination brings to view some of the important points of distinction between it and the other faculties; for example, the circumstance that the trains and constructions of the Imagination are their own ends, and not a means to farther ends, as in the constructions of science and of the industrial arts. All creative originality is not imagination; the steam-engine was not a product of this faculty.The main features that distinguish the Imagination seem to be these three:—1. It is a faculty of theCONCRETE, like Perception and Memory, and not of the Abstract, as the scientific faculties. When we imagine a thing, we picture it to the mind, as far as we are able, in its full concrete reality. Our imagination of a scene in the tropics is of the character of an actual perception; it embraces, or should embrace, whatever would strike the view of any one surveying the reality.2. Imagination rises above Perception and Memory, in being aCONSTRUCTIVEfaculty. It alters, re-arranges, puts together the materials of perception and memory to satisfy certain demands of the mind. In this respect, it is more than Conception, which as viewed by the author, is also a faculty of the concrete, but introduces no novelty of combination. Conception may involve a great constructive effort, as when we try to picture to ourselves a poet’s creation by the help of his language; nevertheless, the term imagination loses its characteristic force, and leaves an important meaning without a name, if applied to this conceiving or realizing effort. The imaginative stretch belongs to the poet or artist; the power of conceiving is what the reader of a poem brings into exercise.3. Imagination is swayed by somePRESENT EMOTION. This is another way of expressing the author’s view that it is an end in itself. If we were to use the general word “feeling,” we should encounter the difficulty of separating imagination246from common industry, which is all intended to gain pleasures or ward off pains.The brief designation “present emotion” approximates to, but does not fully bring out, the precise operation of the feelings in the constructions of Imagination. When, actuated by the love of the marvellous, any one invents a fabulous story, or highly exaggerates a real occurrence, the process is a typical instance of the imaginative workings.The Fine Arts are the domain of Imagination; the one goes far to specify the other. If the coincidence were exact, Imagination would be defined by a definition of the Æsthetic emotions. Now, although any original construction, selected and put together to gratify an Æsthetic emotion, is a work of Imagination, yet imagination is not exhausted by fine art. The picture that an angry man draws of his enemy would be called an effort of imagination, but not a work of fine art. All our emotions,—Wonder, Fear, Love, Anger, Vanity—determine the constructions of the intellect, when called into active exercise; and for these constructions we have no other name but imagination, whether they may, or may not give pleasure as works of art.Perhaps this exceptional region may be marked out by a statement of the perverting influence, or bias, of the feelings in matters of truth and falsehood, or in works of utility. When the true and the useful, instead of being determined by their own ends, or their proper criteria, are swayed by extraneous emotions—giving birth to mythical or fictitious creations—we have the corrupting substitution of Imagination for Reason in men’s judgments and opinions.Thus, Fear is a potent spur to Imagination; its creations may not be æsthetically agreeable, and therefore may not come under the definition of Fine Art; yet they are fairly to be described as perverting the judgment of true and false.—B.

The main features that distinguish the Imagination seem to be these three:—

1. It is a faculty of theCONCRETE, like Perception and Memory, and not of the Abstract, as the scientific faculties. When we imagine a thing, we picture it to the mind, as far as we are able, in its full concrete reality. Our imagination of a scene in the tropics is of the character of an actual perception; it embraces, or should embrace, whatever would strike the view of any one surveying the reality.

2. Imagination rises above Perception and Memory, in being aCONSTRUCTIVEfaculty. It alters, re-arranges, puts together the materials of perception and memory to satisfy certain demands of the mind. In this respect, it is more than Conception, which as viewed by the author, is also a faculty of the concrete, but introduces no novelty of combination. Conception may involve a great constructive effort, as when we try to picture to ourselves a poet’s creation by the help of his language; nevertheless, the term imagination loses its characteristic force, and leaves an important meaning without a name, if applied to this conceiving or realizing effort. The imaginative stretch belongs to the poet or artist; the power of conceiving is what the reader of a poem brings into exercise.

3. Imagination is swayed by somePRESENT EMOTION. This is another way of expressing the author’s view that it is an end in itself. If we were to use the general word “feeling,” we should encounter the difficulty of separating imagination246from common industry, which is all intended to gain pleasures or ward off pains.

The brief designation “present emotion” approximates to, but does not fully bring out, the precise operation of the feelings in the constructions of Imagination. When, actuated by the love of the marvellous, any one invents a fabulous story, or highly exaggerates a real occurrence, the process is a typical instance of the imaginative workings.

The Fine Arts are the domain of Imagination; the one goes far to specify the other. If the coincidence were exact, Imagination would be defined by a definition of the Æsthetic emotions. Now, although any original construction, selected and put together to gratify an Æsthetic emotion, is a work of Imagination, yet imagination is not exhausted by fine art. The picture that an angry man draws of his enemy would be called an effort of imagination, but not a work of fine art. All our emotions,—Wonder, Fear, Love, Anger, Vanity—determine the constructions of the intellect, when called into active exercise; and for these constructions we have no other name but imagination, whether they may, or may not give pleasure as works of art.

Perhaps this exceptional region may be marked out by a statement of the perverting influence, or bias, of the feelings in matters of truth and falsehood, or in works of utility. When the true and the useful, instead of being determined by their own ends, or their proper criteria, are swayed by extraneous emotions—giving birth to mythical or fictitious creations—we have the corrupting substitution of Imagination for Reason in men’s judgments and opinions.

Thus, Fear is a potent spur to Imagination; its creations may not be æsthetically agreeable, and therefore may not come under the definition of Fine Art; yet they are fairly to be described as perverting the judgment of true and false.—B.

247

“Dans l’ordre historique, la philosophie transcendante a devancé la philosophie élémentaire. Il ne faut point s’en étonner; les grands problèmes de la métaphysique et de la morale se présentent à l’homme, dans l’enfance même de son intelligence, avec une grandeur et une obscurité qui le séduisent et qui l’attirent. L’homme, qui se sent fait pour connoître, court d’abord à la vérité avec plus d’ardeur que de sagesse; il cherche à deviner ce qu’il ne peut comprendre, et se perd dans des conjectures absurdes ou téméraires. Les théogonies et les cosmogonies sont antérieures à la saine physique, et l’esprit humain a passé à travers toutes les agitations et les délires de la métaphysique transcendante avant d’arriver à la psychologie.”—Cousin,Frag. Philos.p. 75.

THEprocess by which we connect what we call the objects of our senses, and also our ideas, into certain aggregates called classes, is of too much importance not to have attracted the attention of those who have engaged in the study of mind. Yet it is doubtful, whether metaphysicians have regardedCLASSIFICATIONas an original power of the mind, or have allowed that what is included under that name might be resolved into simpler elements. The term Abstraction, I think, they have generally taken as the name of a distinct, and original, power, not susceptible of further analysis. But, in doing so, it seems (for the language of writers248is too loose on this subject, to allow us the use of more affirmative terms), they have restricted the name to the power of forming such ideas as are represented by the terms, hardness, softness, length, breadth, space, and so on. And this operation they rather consider as subservient to classification, than as that operation itself. The process, however, of grouping individuals into classes, has been regarded as sufficiently mysterious. The nature of it has been the object of deep curiosity; and the erroneous opinions which were entertained of it bewildered, for many ages, the most eminent philosophers; and enfeebled the human mind.

What (it was inquired) is that which is really done by the mind, when it forms individuals into classes; separates such and such things from others, and regards them, under a certain idea of unity, as some thing by themselves? Why is the segregation thought of? And for what end is it made? These questions all received answers; but it was many ages before they received an answer approaching the truth; and it is only necessary to read with care the writings of Plato and of Aristotle, and of all philosophers, with very few exceptions, from theirs to the present time, to see, that a misunderstanding of the nature of General Terms is that which chiefly perplexed them in their inquiries, and involved them in a confusion, which was inextricable, so long as those terms were unexplained.

The process in forming those classes was said to be this. The Mind leaves out of its view this, and that, and the other thing, in which individuals differ from one another; and retaining only those in which they all agree, it forms them into a class. But what is249this forming of a class? What does it mean? When I form a material aggregate; when I collect a library; when I build a house; when I even raise a heap of stones; I move the things, whatever they may be, and place them, either regularly or irregularly, in a mass together. But when I form a class, I perform no operation of this sort. I touch not, nor do I in any way whatsoever act upon the individuals which I class. The proceeding is all mental. Forming a class of individuals, is a mode of regarding them. But what is meant by a mode of regarding things? This is mysterious; and is as mysteriously explained, when it is said to be the taking into view the particulars in which individuals agree. For what is there, which it is possible for the mind to take into view, in that in which individuals agree? Every colour is an individual colour, every size is an individual size, every shape is an individual shape. But things have no individual colour in common, no individual shape in common, no individual size in common; that is to say, they have neither shape, colour, nor size in common. What, then, is it which they have in common, which the mind can take into view? Those who affirmed that it was something, could by no means tell. They substituted words for things; using vague and mystical phrases, which, when examined, meant nothing. Plato called itἰδέα, Aristotle,εἶδος, both, words taken from the verb to see; intimating, something as it were seen, or viewed, as we call it. At bottom, Aristotle’sεἶδος, is the same with Plato’sἰδέα, though Aristotle makes a great affair of some very trifling differences, which he creates and sets up between them. The Latins, translated bothἰδέα, and250εἶδος, by the same words, and were very much at a loss for one to answer the purpose; they usedspecies, derived in like manner from a verb to see, but which, having other meanings, was ill adapted for a scientific word; they brought, therefore, another word in aid,forma, the same withὅραμα, derived equally from a verb signifying to see, which suited the purpose just as imperfectly asspecies; and as writers used both terms, according as the one or the other appeared best to correspond with their meaning, they thickened by this means the confusion.

After a time, unfortunately a long time, it began to be perceived, that what was thus represented as the object of the mind in the formation of classes, was chimerical and absurd; when a set of inquirers appeared, who denied the existence of all such objects, affirmed that ideas were all individual, and that nothing was general but names. The question rose to the dignity of a controversy; and to the hateful violence of a religious controversy. They who affirmed the existence of general ideas were called Realists, they who denied their existence Nominalists. There can be no doubt, that of the two the Nominalists approached, by far, the nearest to the truth; and their speculations tended strongly to remove from mental science the confusion in which the total misapprehension of abstract terms had involved it. But the clergy brought religion into the quarrel, and as usual on the wrong side. Realism was preached as the doctrine which alone was consistent with orthodoxy; the Nominalists were hunted down; and persecution, well knowing her object, clung to the books as well as the men; so that the books of the Nominalists,251though the art of printing tended strongly to preserve them, were suppressed and destroyed, to such a degree, that it is now exceedingly difficult to collect them; and not easy to obtain copies even of the most remarkable.

The opinion, that the particulars in which the individuals of a class agree were distinct Objects of the Mind, soon made them distinctEXISTENCES; they were the Essence of things; the Eternal Exemplars, according to which individual things were made; they were calledUNIVERSALS, and regarded as alone the Objects of the Intellect. They were invariable, always the same; individuals, not the objects of intellect but only the low objects of sense, were in perpetual flux, and never, for any considerable period, the same. Universals alone have Unity; they alone were the subject of science; Individuals were innumerable, every one different from another; and cognoscible only by the lower, the sensitive part of our nature.

Endless were the subtleties into which ingenious men were misled, in the contemplation of those Fictions; and wonderful were the attributes which they bestowed upon them. “It is, then, on thesepermanentPhantasms,” says Mr. Harris, copying the ancient Philosophers, “that the human mind first works, and by an energy as spontaneous and familiar to its nature, as the seeing of colour is familiar to the eye, it discerns at once what inMANYisONE; what in thingsDISSIMILARandDIFFERENTisSIMILARand theSAME. By this it comes to behold a kind ofsuperiorObjects; a new Race of Perceptions, more comprehensive than those of sense; a Race of Perceptions,each one of which, may be found entire and whole in the separate252individuals of an infinite and fleeting multitude, without departing from the unity and permanence of its own nature.”8*Here we have something sufficiently mystical; a thing which is, at once,ONE, andMANY; which isONE, it seems, by its very nature, and yet may exist, entire and whole, in the separate individuals of an infiniteMULTITUDE. This is a specimen of their Doctrine; a specimen of what they callTHE SUBLIMEin Intellection.

8*Hermes, b. iii. ch. 4.

But this is not all. For as, when we form a minor class, asman, there is a certainONE, the object of intellect, complete in every individual;MANY, therefore, and at the same time,ONE; so when we form a larger class,animal, there is a certainONE, the object of intellect, complete in every one of those individuals. And when we go still higher, as to the grand class,BODY, there is always aONE, the object of intellect, complete in every one of those more numerous individuals. When we mount up to the very summit, and embrace all things in one class,BEING, there is in like manner aONE, the object of intellect, complete in every individual that exists. This is the grandONE; theONEpre-eminently. This istheONE;τό ἕν;ONENESS;ONEin the abstract. This was a conception deemed trulySUBLIME. The loftiest epithets were bestowed uponτό ἕν,theONE. It wasDIVINE; it was more than that; for being not concrete, but abstract, it wasDIVINITY. All things were contained intheONE; andtheONEwas in all things.TheONEwas the source and principle of Being. It was immutable, eternal.

253TheseONESthey also called by the names ofInternal Forms, andIntelligible Forms. Thus Harris: “Let us suppose any man to look for the first time uponsome Work of Art; as, for example, upon a Clock; and, having sufficiently viewed it, at length to depart. Would he not retain, when absent, an Idea of what he had seen? And what is it,to retain such Idea?It is to haveAFORM INTERNALcorrespondent toTHE EXTERNAL; only with this difference, that theInternal Form is devoid of the Matter; the External is united with it, being seen in the metal, the wood, and the like. Now, if we suppose this Spectator to viewmany such Machines, and not simply to view, but to consider every part of them, so as to comprehend how those parts all operate to one End, he might be then said to possess a kind ofINTELLIGIBLE FORM, by which he would not only understand and know the clocks, which he had seenalready, but every Work, also, of like Sort, which he might seehereafter.”

We might here remark upon the mystical jargon, which is thus employed to obscure the simple fact, that after a man has seen an individual of a particular kind he has the idea of that individual; and after he has seen various individuals of the same kind, he has ideas of the various individuals, and has them combined by association. But we must hear Mr. Harris a little further.

After telling us that there are two orders of theseimmutableINTELLIGIBLE FORMS;onebelonging to the Contemplator of objects, and subsequent to their existence;anotherbelonging to the Maker of them, being the archetype, according to which they were formed; he thus proceeds: “TheWHOLE VISIBLE254WORLD, exhibits nothing more than so many passing pictures of theseIMMUTABLE ARCHETYPES. Nay, through these it attains even a Semblance of Immortality, and continues throughout ages to beSPECIFICALLY ONE, amid those infinite particular changes, that befall it every moment. May we be allowed then to credit those speculative men, who tell us,it is in these permanent and comprehensiveFORMSthat theDEITYviews at once, without looking abroad, all possible productions both present, past, and future; that this great and stupendous view is but a view of himself, where all things lie enveloped in their Principles and Exemplars, as being essential to the fulness of this universal Intellection?”

I shall exhibit but one other specimen of the mode of speculating about these imaginary Beings, from another great master of the ancient philosophy, Cudworth. Both Aristotle and Plato, he says, “acknowledged two sorts of Entities, the one mutable, or subject to flux and motion, such as are especially individual corporeal things; the other immutable, that always rest or stand still, which are the proper objects of certain, constant, and immutable knowledge, that therefore cannot be mere nothings, non-entities.

“Which latter kind of being, that is, the immutable essence, as a distinct thing from individual sensibles, Aristotle plainly asserts against Heraclitus, and those other flowing philosophers in these words: ‘We would have these philosophers to know, that besides sensible things that are always mutable, there is another kind of being or entity of such things as are neither subject to motion, corruption, nor generation.’ And elsewhere he tells us, that this immovable essence255is the object of theoretical knowledge, of the first philosophy, and of the pure mathematics.

“Now these immutable entities are the universalrationes, or intelligible natures and essences of all things, which some compare to unities, but Aristotle to numbers; which formally considered, are indivisible: saith he, ‘The essences of things are like to numbers;’ because if but the least thing be added to any number, or subtracted from it, the number is destroyed.

“And these are the objects of all certain knowledge. As for example, the objects of geometry are not any individual material triangles, squares, circles, pyramids, cubes, spheres, and the like; which because they are always mutable, nothing can be immutably affirmed of them; but they are those indivisible and unchangeablerationesof a triangle, square, circle; which are ever the same to all geometricians, in all ages and places, of which such immutable theorems as these are demonstrated, as that a triangle has necessarily three angles equal to two right angles.

“But if any one demand here, where thisἀκίνητος οὐσία, these immutable entities do exist? I answer, first, that as they are considered formally, they do not properly exist in the individuals without us, as if they were from them imprinted upon the understanding, which some have taken to be Aristotle’s opinion; because no individual material thing is either universal or immutable. And if these things were only lodged in the individual sensibles, then they would be unavoidably obnoxious to the fluctuating waves of the same reciprocating Euripus, in which all individual material things are perpetually whirled. But because256they perish not together with them, it is a certain argument that they exist independently upon them. Neither in the next place, do they exist somewhere else apart from the individual sensibles, and without the mind, which is that opinion that Aristotle justly condemns, but either unjustly or unskilfully attributes to Plato. For if the mind looked abroad for its objects wholly without itself, then all its knowledge would be nothing but sense and passion. For to know a thing is nothing else but to comprehend it by some inward ideas that are domestic to the mind, and actively exerted from it. Wherefore these intelligible ideas or essences of things, those forms by which we understand all things, exist no where but in the mind itself; for it was very well determined long ago by Socrates, in Plato’s Parmenides, that these things are nothing butnoëmata: these species or ideas are all of them nothing butnoëmata, or notions that exist no where but in the soul itself.’ Wherefore, to say that there are immutable natures and essences, andrationesof things, distinct from the individuals that exist without us, is all one as if one should say, that there is in the universe above the orb of matter and body, another superior orb of intellectual being, that comprehends its own immediate objects, that is, the immutablerationesand ideas of things within itself, by which it understands and knows all things without itself.

“And yet notwithstanding though these things exist only in the mind, they are not therefore mere figments of the understanding: for if the subjects of all scientifical theorems were nothing but figments, then all truth and knowledge that is built upon them would257be a mere fictitious thing; and if truth itself, and the intellectual nature be fictitious things, then what can be real or solid in the world? But it is evident, that though the mind thinks of these things at pleasure, yet they are not arbitrarily framed by the mind, but have certain, determinate, and immutable natures of their own, which are independent upon the mind, and which are not blown away into nothing at the pleasure of the same being that arbitrarily made them.

“But we all naturally conceive that those things have not only an eternal, but also a necessary existence, so that they could not ever but be, such and so many as they are, and can never possibly perish or cease to be, but are absolutely undestroyable.

“Which is a thing frequently acknowledged in the writings of both those famous philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. The former of them calling those things, ‘things that were never made, but always are,’ and ‘things that were never made, nor can be destroyed.’ ‘Things ingenerable and unperishable;’QuæPlatonegat gigni sed semper esse(as Tully expresseth it)et ratione et intelligentia contineri. And Philo the Platonical Jew, calls theτὰ Νοητὰ, which are the same things we speak of,ἀναγκαιόταται οὐσίαι, the most necessary essences, that is, such things as could not but be, and cannot possibly not be. And Aristotle himself calls therationesof things in his metaphysics, not onlyχωριστὰandἀκίνητα, things separate from matter and immutable, but alsoἀΐδια, or eternal; and in his ethics likewise, he calls geometrical truthsἀΐδια, eternal things, 1. 3, c. 5; ‘where he makes the geometrical truth concerning the incommensurability betwixt the258diameter and the side of a square, to be an eternal thing.’ Elsewhere he tells us, that ‘Science, properly so called, is not of things corruptible and contingent,’ but of things necessary, incorruptible and eternal. Which immutable and eternal objects of science, in the place before quoted, he described thus: ‘Such a kind of entity of things has neither motion nor generation, nor corruption,’ that is, such things as were never made, and can never be destroyed. To which, he saith, the mind is necessarily determined. For science or knowledge has nothing either of fiction or of arbitrariness in it, but is ‘the comprehension of that which immutably is.’

“Moreover, these things have a constant being, when our particular created minds do not actually think of them, and therefore they are immutable in another sense likewise, not only because they are indivisibly the same when we think of them, but also because they have a constant and never-failing entity; and always are, whether our particular minds think of them or not. For the intelligible natures and essences of a triangle, square, circle, pyramid, cube, sphere, &c., and all the necessary geometrical verities belonging to these several figures, were not the creatures of Archimedes, Euclid, or Pythagoras, or any other inventors of Geometry; nor did then first begin to be; but all theserationesand verities had a real and actual entity before, and would continue still, though all the geometricians in the world were quite extinct, and no man knew them or thought of them. Nay, though all the material world were quite swept away, and also all particular created minds annihilated together with it; yet there is no doubt but the259intelligible natures or essences of all geometrical figures, and the necessary verities belonging to them, would notwithstanding remain safe and sound. Wherefore these things had a being also before the material world and all particular intellects were created. For it is not at all conceivable, that ever there was a time when there was no intelligible nature of a triangle, nor any such thing cogitable at all, and when it was not yet actually true that a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles, but that these things were afterward arbitrarily made and brought into being out of an antecedent nothing or non-entity; so that the being of them bore some certain date, and had a youngness in them, and so by the same reason might wax old, and decay again; which notion he often harps upon, when he speaks of theΕἴδη, or forms of things, as when he says, ‘there is no generation of the essence of a sphere,’ that is, it is a thing that is not made; but always is: and elsewhere he pronounces universally of theΕἴδη, ‘The forms of material things are without generation and corruption,’ and ‘that none makes the form of any thing, for it is never generated.’ Divers have censured Aristotle in some of such passages too much to confound physics and metaphysics together; for indeed these things are not true in a physical, but only in a metaphysical sense. That is, the immediate objects of intellection and science, are eternal, necessarily existent, and incorruptible.”9*

9*“A Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. By Ralph Cudworth, D.D.”—pp. 241—250.

Under the influence of such notions as these, men260were led away from the real object of Classification; which remained, till a late period in metaphysical inquiry, not at all understood. Yet the truth appears by no means difficult to find, if we only observe the steps, by which the mind acquires its knowledge, and the exigencies which give occasion to the contrivances to which it resorts.

Man first becomes acquainted with individuals. He first names individuals. But individuals are innumerable, and he cannot have innumerable names. He must make one name serve for many individuals. It is thus obvious, and certain, that men were led to class solely for the purpose of economizing in the use of names. Could the processes of naming and discourse have been as conveniently managed by a name for every individual, the names of classes, and the idea of classification, would never have existed. But as the limits of the human memory did not enable men to retain beyond a very limited number of names; and even if it had, as it would have required a most inconvenient portion of time, to run over in discourse, as many names of individuals, and of individual qualities, as there is occasion to refer to in discourse, it was necessary to have contrivances of abridgment; that is, to employ names which marked equally a number of individuals, with all their separate properties; and enabled us to speak of multitudes at once.78

78The doctrine that “men were led to class solely for the purpose of economizing in the use of names,” is here reasserted in the most unqualified terms. The author plainly says that if our memory had been sufficiently vast to contain a name for every individual, the names of classes and the idea of classification would never have existed. Yet how (I am obliged to ask) could we have done without them? We could not have dispensed with names to mark the points in which different individuals resemble one another: and these are class-names. The fact that we require names for the purpose of making affirmations—of predicating qualities—is in some measure recognised by the author, when he says “it would have required a most inconvenient portion of time to run over in discourse as many names of individualsand of individual qualitiesas there is occasion to refer to in discourse.” But what is meant by an individual quality? It is notindividualqualities that we ever have occasion to predicate. It is true that the qualities of an object are only the various ways in which we or other minds are affected by it, and these affections are not the same in different objects, except in the sense in which the word same stands for exact similarity. But we never have occasion to predicate of an object the individual and instantaneous impressions which it produces in us. The only meaning of predicating a quality at all, is to affirm a resemblance. When we ascribe a quality to an object, we intend to assert that the object affects us in a manner similar to that in which we are affected by a known class of objects. A quality, indeed, in the custom of language, does not admit of individuality: it is supposed to be one thing common to many; which, being explained, means that it is the name of a resemblance among our sensations, and not a name of the individual sensations which resemble. Qualities, therefore, cannot be predicated without general names; nor, consequently, without classification. Wherever there is a general name there is a class: classification, and general names, are things exactly coextensive. It thus appears that, without classification, language would not fulfil its most important function. Had we no names but those of individuals, the names might serve as marks to bring those individuals to mind, but would not enable us to make a single assertion respecting them, except that one individual is not another. Not a particle of the knowledge we have of them could be expressed in words.—Ed.

261It was impossible that this process should not be involved in obscurity, and liable to great262misapprehension, so long as the manner, in which words become significant, was unexplained. After this knowledge was imparted, and pretty generally diffused, the value of it seemed for a long time to be little understood.

Words become significant purely by association. A word is pronounced in conjunction with an idea; it is pronounced again and again; and, by degrees, the idea and the word become so associated, that the one can never occur without the other. To take first the example of an individual object. The word, St. Paul’s, has been so often named in conjunction with the idea of a particular building, that the word, St. Paul’s, never occurs without calling up the idea of the building, nor the idea of the building without calling up the name, St. Paul’s. The effect of association is similarly exemplified in connecting the visible mark with the audible. Children learn first to speak. They learn next to read. In learning to speak, they associate the audible mark with their sensations and ideas; the sound tree is associated with the sight of the tree, or the idea of the tree. In learning to read, a new association has to be formed. Thewritten wordis avisiblesign of theaudiblesign. What reading accomplishes, by degrees, is, to associate the visible sign so closely with the audible, that at the same instant with the sight of the word the sound of it, and with the sound of it the sense, occurs.

After the explanations which have been already263given, no difficulty can remain about the manner in which names come to signify theindividualsof which they are appointed to be the marks.

Let us now, proceeding to the simplest cases first, and by them expounding such as are more complicated, suppose that our name of one individual is applied to another individual. Let us suppose that the word, foot, has been first associated in the mind of the child with one foot only; it will in that case call up the idea of that one, and not of the other. Here is one name, and one thing named. Suppose next, that the same name, foot, begins to be applied to the child’s other foot. The sound is now associated not constantly with one thing, but sometimes with one thing, and sometimes with another. The consequence is, that it calls up sometimes the one, and sometimes the other. Here two things, the two feet, are both of them associated with one thing, the name. The one thing, the name, has the power of calling up both, and in rapid succession. The word foot suggests the idea of one of the feet; this foot with its name, is a complex idea; and this complex idea suggests its like, the other foot with its name.

This is a peculiar and a highly important case of association; but not the less simple and indisputable. We have already sufficiently exemplified the two grand cases of the formation of complex ideas by association;—that in which the ideas of synchronous sensations are so concreted by constant conjunction as to appear, though numerous, only one; of which the ideas of sensible objects, a rose, a plough, a house, a ship, are examples;—and that in which the ideas of successive sensations are so concreted; of which, the idea of a264tune in music, the idea of the revolution of a wheel, of a walk, a hunt, a horse-race, are instances.

It is easy to see wherein the present case agrees with, and wherein it differs from, those familiar cases. The word, man, we shall say, is first applied to an individual; it is first associated with the idea of that individual, and acquires the power of calling up the idea of him; it is next applied to another individual, and acquires the power of calling up the idea of him; so of another, and another, till it has become associated with an indefinite number, and has acquired the power of calling up an indefinite number of those ideas indifferently. What happens? It does call up an indefinite number of the ideas of individuals, as often as it occurs; and calling them up in close connexion, it forms them into a species of complex idea.

There can be no difficulty in admitting that association does form the ideas of an indefinite number of individuals into one complex idea; because it is an acknowledged fact. Have we not the idea of an army? And is not that precisely the ideas of an indefinite number of men formed into one idea? Have we not the idea of a wood, or a forest; and is not that the idea of an indefinite number of trees formed into one idea? These are instances of the concretion of synchronous ideas. Of the concretion of successive ideas indefinite in number, the idea of a concert is one instance, the idea of a discourse is another, the idea of the life of a man is another, the idea of a year, or of a century, is another, and so on. The idea, which is marked by the term “race of man,” is complex in both ways, for it is not only the idea of the present generation, but of all successive generations.

265It is also a fact, that when an idea becomes to a certain degree complex, from the multiplicity of the ideas it comprehends, it is of necessity indistinct. Thus the idea of a figure of one thousand sides is incurably indistinct; the idea of an army is also indistinct; the idea of a forest, or the idea of a mob. And one of the uses of language, is, to enable us, by distinct marks, to speak with distinctness of those combinations of ideas, which, in themselves, are too numerous for distinctness. Thus, by our marks of numbers, we can speak, with the most perfect precision, of a figure not only of a thousand, but of ten thousand sides, and deduce its peculiar properties; though it is as impossible, by the idea, as by the sensations, to distinguish one of a thousand, from one of a thousand and one, sides.

Thus, when the word man calls up the ideas of an indefinite number of individuals, not only of all those to whom I have individually given the name, but of all those to whom I have in imagination given it or imagine it will ever be given, and forms all those ideas into one,—it is evidently a very complex idea, and, therefore, indistinct; and this indistinctness has, doubtless, been the main cause of the mystery, which has appeared to belong to it. That this, however, is the process, is an inevitable result of the laws of association.

It thus appears, that the word,man, is not a word having a very simple idea, as was the opinion of the Realists; nor a word having no idea at all, as was that of the Nominalists; but a word calling up an indefinite number of ideas, by the irresistible laws of association, and forming them into one very266complex, and indistinct, but not therefore unintelligible, idea.

It is thus to be seen, that appellatives, or general names, are significant, in two modes. We have frequently had occasion to recur to the mode in which the simple ideas of sensation are associated or concreted, so as to form what we call the complex ideas of objects. Thus, I have the complex ideas of this pen, this desk, this room, this man, this handwriting. The simple ideas, so concreted into a complex idea in the case of each individual, are one thing signified by each appellative; and this complex idea of the individual, concreted with another, and another of the same kind, and so on without end, is the other of the things which are signified by it. Thus, the word rose, signifies, first of all, a certain odour, a certain colour, a certain shape, a certain consistence, so associated as to form one idea, that of the individual; next, it signifies this individual associated with another, and another, and another, and so on; in other words, it signifies the class.

The complexity of the idea, in the latter of the two cases, is distinguished by a peculiarity from that of the former. In applying the name to the odour, and colour, and so on, of the rose, concreted into one idea, the name is not the name of each of the sensations taken singly, only of all taken together. In applying the name to rose, and rose, and rose, without end, the name is at once a name of each of the individuals, and also the name of the complex association which is formed of them. This too, is itself a peculiar association. It is not the association of a name with a number of particulars clustered together267as one; but the association of a name with each of an indefinite number of particulars, and all those particulars associated back again with the name.

This peculiarity may require a little further explanation. It is well known, that between an idea, and the name which stands for it, there is a double association. The name calls up the idea in close association, and the idea calls up the name in equally close association; and this they have a tendency to do in a series of repetitions; the name bringing up the idea, the idea the name, and then the name the idea again, and so on, for any number of times. This is, in great part, the way in which language is learned, as we observe by the repetitions to which children are prone. And this, indeed, is what, in many cases, we mean when we speak of dwelling upon an idea. It is a familiar observation, that no idea dwells in the mind, or can; for it has innumerable associations, and whatever association occurs, of course, displaces that by which it is introduced. But if the idea which thus displaces it, again calls it up, and these two go on calling up one another, that which is the more interesting of the two appears to be that which alone is occupying the attention. This alternation is frequent between the name and the idea.

Now, then, let the word, man, be supposed, first of all, the name of an individual; it becomes associated with the idea of the individual, and acquires the power of calling up that idea. Let us next suppose it applied to one other individual, and no more: it becomes associated with this other idea; and it now has the power of calling up either. The following is, then, a very natural train:—1, The name occurs; 2, the name268suggests the idea of one of the individuals; 3, that idea suggests the name back again; 4, the name suggests the idea of the second individual. All this may pass, and, after sufficient repetition, does pass, with the rapidity of lightning. Suppose, now, that the name is associated, with the ideas not of two individuals, but of many; the same train may go on; the name exciting the idea of one individual, that idea the name, the name another individual, and so on, to an indefinite extent; all in that small portion of time of which the mind takes no account. The combination thus formed stands in need of a name. And the name, man, while it is the name of every individual included in the process, is also the name of the whole combination; that is, of a very complex idea.

One other question, respecting classification, may still seem to require solution; namely, what it is by which we are determined in placing such and such things together in a class in preference to others; what, in other words, is the principle of Classification? I answer, that, as it is for the purpose of naming, of naming with greater facility, that we form classes at all; so it is in furtherance of that same facility that such and such things only are included in one class, such and such in another. Experience teaches what sort of grouping answers the purposes of naming best; under the suggestions of that experience, the application of a general word is tacitly and without much of reflection regulated; and by this process, and no other, it is, that Classification is performed. It is the aggregation of an indefinite number of individuals, by their association with a particular name.

It may seem that this answer is still very general269and that to make the explanation sufficient, the suggestions by which experience recommends this or that classification should be particularized. For the purpose of the present chapter, however, namely, to shew that the business of Classification is merely a process of naming, and is all resolvable into association, the observation, though general, is full and satisfactory. The detail of the purposes to be answered by general terms belongs more properly to the next head of Discourse, and as far as the development of the mental phenomena seems to require it, will there be presented.

It may still be useful to advert to the three principal cases into which Classification may be resolved; 1, that of objects considered as synchronical; 2, that of objects considered as successive; 3, that of feelings. The first is exemplified in the common classes of sensible objects, as men, horses, trees, and so on; and requires no further explanation. The second is exemplified in the classes of events, denoted by such words, as Birth, Death, Snowing, Thundering, Freezing, Flying, Creeping. By these words there is always denoted one antecedent and one consequent, generally more, sometimes a long train of them. And it is obvious that each of them is, at once, the name of each instance individually, and of all taken generally together. Thus, Freezing, is not the name of an individual instance of freezing only, but of that and of all other instances of Freezing. The same is the case with other words of a still more general, and thence more obscure signification, as Gravitation, Attraction, Motion, Force, &c.; which words have this additional source of confusion, that they are270ambiguous, being both abstract and concrete. When we say that there is a third case of classification, relating to Feelings, it does not mean that the two former do not relate to feelings: for when we say, that we classify objects, as men, horses, &c.;—or events, as the sequences named births, deaths, and so on;—it is obvious that our operation is about our own feelings, and nothing else; as the objects, and their successions, are, to us, the feelings merely which we thus designate. But as there are feelings which we do thus designate; and feelings which we do not; it is convenient, for the purpose of teaching, to treat of them apart. The Feelings, of this latter kind, which we classify, are either single feelings, or trains. Thus, Pain is the name of a single feeling, and the name both of an individual instance, and of indefinite instances, forming a most extensive class. Memory is the name not of a single feeling or idea, but of a train; and it is the name not only of a single instance, but of all instances of such a train, that is, of a class. The same is the case with Belief. It is the name of a train consisting of a certain number of links; and it is the name not only of an individual instance of such trains, but of all instances, forming an extensive class. Imagination is another instance of the same sort of classification. So also is Judgment, and Reasoning, and Doubting, and we might name many more.

It is easy to see, among the principles of Association, what particular principle it is, which is mainly concerned in Classification, and by which we are rendered capable of that mighty operation; on which, as its basis, the whole of our intellectual structure is reared. That principle is Resemblance. It seems to271be similarity or resemblance which, when we have applied a name to one individual, leads us to apply it to another, and another, till the whole forms an aggregate, connected together by the common relation of every part of the aggregate to one and the same name. Similarity, or Resemblance, we must regard as an Idea familiar and sufficiently understood for the illustration at present required. It will itself be strictly analysed, at asubsequentpart of this Inquiry.

So deeply was the sagacious mind of Plato, far more philosophical than that of any who succeeded him, during many ages, struck with the importance of Classification, that he seems to have regarded it as the sum of all philosophy; which he described, as being the faculty of seeing “theONEin theMANY, and theMANYin theONE;” a phrase which, when stripped from the subtleties of the sophists whom he exposed, and from the mystical visions of his successors, of which he never dreamed, is really a striking expression of what in classification is the matter of fact. His error lay, in misconceiving theONE; which he took, not for the aggregate, but something pervading the aggregate.7980

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