E. Raehlmann, Professor Of Ophthalmology at Dorpat, presents a résumé of his experiences as to the visual development of persons blind from birth to whom by a successful operation sight had been restored. We confine ourselves to a few quotations. "Four weeks after the operation of the right eye and a fortnight after that of the left, on April 28th, the first experiments were made on Johann Rubens. April 30th, patient moved his head more than his eyes. He declared he saw perfectly; yet he was unable to recognise any object except his drinking mug, which on the previous day he had felt with his fingers. Also his shoe was not recognised until he had touched it. May 4th, patient could see that a wooden ball differed from a wooden cube, both being of the same color, but was unable to tell that one was round, the other square. Nor could he distinguish the ball from a disc. After much handling the objects he learned to recognise by sight the roundness of the ball and the squareness of the cube, but he remained unable to distinguish the ball from the disc. He learned quickly to grasp objects in the median line of his eyes but had great difficulty in finding them with his hand when placed at an angle before him.
"May 23d, a glass is again presented to the patient; he sees his picture; noticing the frame, he declares the glass to be a picture. (A picture had been presented to him repeatedly.) Now a second face is shown to him in the glass by the side of his own. Patient becomes greatly bewildered, declaring the picture to be familiar to him. Being asked whether it is that of the Professor, he denies the fact, because the Professor stood beside him. Looking over his shoulder he notices the Professor, and seeing him twice he is confounded…. Patient is left alone and remains almost half an hour before the glass. He moves his arm constantly up and down, observing with a smile how the picture in the glass makes the same movements. Requested to touch his nose, he first grasps into the glass, then behind the glass, repeating this several times. His hand then is put on his nose. Now he laughs and touches the several parts of his face, constantly observing the motions of his hand in the glass."
Most instructive cases of diseases of mind are those in which patients cannot help having and obeying certain ideas which are not, however, hallucinations. Dr. Hack Tuke in the fourth article of this number says: "I was consulted once in the case of a lady, the most important symptom of whose disease was that she had to count up to a certain number before doing the most trivial thing; when she turned at night in bed from one side to the other, or when she took out her watch, or in the morning before she rose; when she went downstairs to breakfast, she would suddenly stop on one of the steps and count; at the breakfast table when about to take the tea-pot before touching its handle"; etc. (Arithmomania). Another case. "A young law-student who had distinguished himself at school, one day read the English sentence 'it was not compatible' and shortly after that he found the sentence, 'I like it not' in German. It struck him that the negative in the one case was placed before and in the other after the word negatived, and he commenced to ponder on negations in general. It became an all-important and all-absorbing problem to him. It kept him from work. For some time he proposed questions to himself like: Why do we not have cold blood like some other animals? etc. He is at present in great danger of becoming undecisive and wavering in his actions, for his passion of ruminating on his problem of negatives weakens his will and threatens to destroy his energy." (Folie du doute.) Esquirol calls cases ofZwangsvorstellungen, in which a patient otherwise healthy is forced to pursue a certain trivial thought, "monomanie raisonnante"; Professor Ball, "intellectual impulses." Although hereditary influences most likely play an important part in this disease they seem to originate in emotions, and Régis for this reason calls them "délire émotif," stating that their ultimate cause must be sought in a diseased state of the ganglionic system of the intestines. Dr. Tuke favors Charcot's term "onomatomanie." The disease is aWortbesessenheit, a word-mania. Certain expressions or phrases are pressing heavily upon the patient's consciousness so as to force him irresistibly to think them or to pronounce them again and again. Not all cases can be classified under word-mania, but such cases as doubt-mania (Zweifelsucht) or arithmomania are akin to it. Dr. Tuke's advice is not to fight the disease but to teach the patient to ignore it, to treat it as trivial, for the diseased ideas derive new strength from the opposition made to them.
Professor E. Mach explains Weber's discovery that "if a tuning fork is placed upon the head of a person, one ear being shut, the sound is heard and located in the shut ear," in the following way: The sound passes through the bones of the cranium to the labyrinth of the ear and thence out of the ear into the air, thus taking the inverse direction of other sounds we hear. If the flow in one ear be stopped, the sound-waves are reflected and the drum vibrates stronger. Hence the tone will be heard more plainly in the shut ear and will be located there. Professor Schaefer in the last article of this number describes an experiment in the same line, which in another way—the transmission of sound through air waves being excluded—proves the intercranial conductibility of very weak sounds from ear to ear. (Hamburg and Leipsic: L. Voss.)
SCHRIFTEN DER GESELLSCHAFT FUER PSYCHOLOGISCHE FORSCHUNG. No. 1.
DIE BEDEUTUNG NARCOTISCHER MITTEL FUER DEN HYPNOTISMUS. ByDr.Freiherrn von Schrenck-Notzing.
EIN GUTACHTEN UEBER EINEN FALL VON SPONTANEM SOMNAMBULISMUS. ByProf. Dr. August Forel.
The psychological societies of Munich and Berlin have started under the above title a periodical the first number of which is very promising. Dr. von Schrenck-Notzing makes some critical remarks on Prof. Bernheim's view to consider hypnosis as an increase of suggestibility produced by suggestion. There are observations which do not justify this definition. He then investigates the substitution of narcotics as a means for producing hypnosis and their "suggestive" effects. In the second part of his essay Dr. Schrenck-Notzing speaks about the "suggestive" effects of Indian hemp which in a special preparation under the name of hashish is used in the Orient as a means of intoxication. Reference is made to the Ismaelite secret society "Megalis et Hiemit" (the house of wisdom) consisting of missionaries (Daïs), adepts (Fedaïs) and laymen (Refiks), all of which are bound blindly to obey their grand master (Dai-al-Doal). Hassan, an adept of this society, was obliged to flee, 1090, on account of some quarrels. He founded a similar sect at the head of which stood the old man of the mountains (Shaik-al-Djabal). Their members, especially the lower classes, thehashishin, made themselves formidable in the times of the crusades by their reckless obedience in executing murder and other crimes. The order consisted of 60,000 members and their blind obedience was effected through suggestibility in the state of hashish intoxication. The word assassin is derived from their name. In the year 1255 a Mongolian governor ordered 12,000 hashishin to be executed on account of the dangerous character of their sect. The secret of their formidable obedience appears to have been the method of intoxicating the neophyte before his admission to the order with hashish in some grand mountain scenery and suggesting to him all the pleasures of paradise which he would find in blind faith and unreserved obedience to the old man of the mountain. Contempt of death, insensibility under the severest tortures, and an unspeakable joy in the fulfilment of their leader's command were the result. It can readily be perceived what a dangerous drug hashish is; nevertheless it is said that the cultivation of Indian hemp, especially among some negro tribes of Africa according to the reports of Wissmann, exercises in several respects a good influence. Some of the barbarians of darkest Africa have given up cannibalism and accustom themselves to more civilised habits. The psychical effects of hashish are described as: (1) a feeling of comfort; (2) dissociation of ideas and a lack of their control; (3) illusion concerning space and time; (4) an increased sense of hearing; (5) fixed ideas and delirium; (6) a disturbance of affective states, e. g. suspicion; (7) irresistible impulses; (8) illusions and hallucinations. Dr. v. Schrenck-Notzing freely quotes from Moreau,Du Hashish et de l'aliénation mentale, Etude psychologique(Paris: Masson, 1845), and adds several experiments of his own.
Mrs. Fay, a somnambule accused of imposition and fraud, was delivered by the County Court of Zurich to Professor Forel for observation who kept her for several days in his institute. The professor's report to the County Court is very interesting in so far as Mrs. Fay, a woman without education, must be considered as a genuine somnambule exhibiting all the symptoms observed in other cases. She had been a servant girl in Basel and since her fifteenth year fell twice a day in an hypnotic sleep. She married and had several children, her youngest child was born while she was in her hypnotic sleep. She made a living by curing patients who consulted her when asleep, and was punished before on that account for imposition. During one of her hypnotic states patients were introduced to her in the presence of Professor Forel and she made her statements in vague terms as almost all somnambules do. The experiment showed that her diagnosis consisted of random guesses which in exceptional cases happened to be correct; sometimes they were not wholly incorrect, but mostly erroneous. She believes herself to be possessed by a spirit whom she calls "Ernst." Professor Forel without considering the woman as a model of truthfulness, believes in her sincerity. He cured her of her hypnotic sleep on her own request. She stated that the money she earned by curing patients did not make up for the loss she endured by not being able to earn a living by work. Professor Forel succeeded with his cure, but he states in a postscript that the woman having returned to her former surroundings, has since suffered from relapses. (Leipsic: Ambr. Abel.)
PHILOSOPHISCHE MONATSHEFTE. Vol. XXVII. Nos. 3 and 4.
QUANTITAET UND QUALITAET IN BEGRIFF, URTHEIL UNDGEGENSTAENDLICHER ERKENNTNISS. Ein Kapitel der transcendentalenLogik. (Concluded.) ByP. Natorp.
BIBLIOGRAPHIE. By Prof. Dr.F. Ascherson.
The conclusion of Prof. P. Natorp's article onQuantity and Quality in Concept, Judgment, and Objective Cognitionappears to be the most important part of the essay. Professor Natorp is a transcendentalist. He understands Kant in a dualistic sense where the latter says that "the unity of apperception (Einheit der Apperception) is the radical faculty of all our cognition" (Radical-Vermögen aller unserer Erkentniss). Cognition is defined as "limitation of that which isper seinfinite." It is natural that for a transcendentalist the greatest difficulty arises when he attempts to let hisa prioriface the facts of reality. Professor Natorp shows great skill and ingenuity in this respect. It is but consistent with his premisses to arrive at an "invincible dualism," yet he adapts his transcendentalism sufficiently to fulfil the demands of experience. Thus he does not come to a real solution but to amodus vivendi, which is after all the purpose of philosophy.
Professor Natorp considers the synthetic unity not as given, but as to be realised; a concept is created through definition. The data of experience on the other hand are not the defined, but the definable. They are to be defined by the forms of the concepts, and their fundamental forms are quantity and quality. He says: "The definition as this and as that (as something identical) is a function of the concept, but the concept presupposes sensation as the material to be defined. To consider sensation as given in this its absolute identity which is demanded by the concept, is after all an illusion. Therefore positivism and not idealism confounds the demands of cognition with the given reality, thus adjusting facts to our wants of knowledge. Sensation conceived as a datum and not as a postulate is and remains the infinitely definable and never absolutely defined…. It appears easy thus to reduce the dualism of form and matter, concept and sensation, the defined and the definable to one ultimate unity. In one respect positivism succeeds, attributing full definedness, and not mere definableness, to the data; and then, it finds no difficulty in letting the defining function of the concept in its peculiarity disappear by reducing it to a quality of the data."
We do not know to what kind of positivism Professor Natorp refers; yet it seems that it cannot be applied either to Comte's or to Littré's views. Nor does it dispose of the positivism editorially set forth inThe Monist. Positivism, according to Professor Natorp, is at fault in dropping the definite function of the concept. But he endeavors to avoid the opposite mistake also, viz. "to entirely drop the definable, which might be supposed to be a mereX, scarcely representable in clear concepts, or to deduce it from the defining function. This other exaggeration is that of idealism which has found its purest expression in Fichte's philosophy." Professor Natorp by keeping aloof from both errors declares dualism to be insuperable; "dualism," he says, "'is a hard fact'—eine starre Thatsache."
The trouble with transcendentalists, it seems to us, originates in their method of starting with cognition, with the synthetic unity of apperception, with the forms of concepts. Experience means to them the sense-element of sensation, the contents of concepts without their form. They start with a dualism. When they have completed their system of transcendental forms, they find it hard to explain how to change their rigid laws into the constant flux of reality as presented to us by experience. Should the philosopher not rather start from the function of cognising, which in itself is a unity? He will find that cognition, concept, the synthetic unity of apperception, and all the complex laws of transcendental thought are products of the cognising function. If these laws are rigid, we have made them so. We have made them stable, we have fixed them for a certain purpose. Their rigidity is a legitimate fiction for that purpose, but beyond it it finds no application. Pure logic draws distinctions which do not exist in reality; pure mathematics operates with lines which considered as real things are mere nonentities. The dualism between concept and sensation, between thea prioriand thea posteriori, between thought and thing, between form and matter, is not given in experience, for in experience the formal and the material are one inseparable whole; it is the product of cognition. The cognising function differentiates the data of experience into formal and material aspects; the formal being always of a general character serves as a help for systematising and classifying the material. This appears to us the only way of realising a monistic positivism, and no philosophy can be considered as satisfactory until it represents the data of experience or positive facts in a unitary view, i. e. a harmonious conception free of contradictions.
Professor Natorp has still to battle with the Eleatic question. He begins the conclusion of his article with the following words: "Let us consider only the most important results of our deduction. An explanation of 'becoming,' of 'change' has in this way become possible; the solution of the Eleatic problem how 'change' canbeat all, sincebeingmeans unchangeable definedness; or, how becoming can be, since it includes not-being, for being means the transition from not-being into being, or from being into not-being. How can we think this combination of position and negation without contradiction, a combination of position and negation being a contradiction"? This is rather a late flower of Hegelian thought: but, being presented so vigorously and unequivocally, it illustrates clearly the mistake of transcendentalism in starting from abstract concepts or pure thought, thence coming down to the facts of reality. There transcendentalists have to fit their ideas about being and not-being to experience, and finding insuperable difficulties must consistently become dualists. Professor Natorp's solution of the Eleatic question is "to find a method of thought which overcomes the absolute contradiction of position and negation…. This is done by the comprehensive unity, which means identity and at the same time difference, viz. that one is the same as the other and yet not the same."
We should say that the Eleatic question will best be understood by a clear comprehension of the function, the purpose, and the products of cognition.
Says Professor Natorp: "Since Kant has restored in its purity the distinction made by the ancients between αἰσθητά and νοητά, φαινόμενον and νοούμενον, the authors of this distinction, the philosophers of Elea are almost nearer to us than Aristotle." The distinction between thought and sensation is indeed of extraordinary importance. Ideas (thoughts) and sensations are different, but the recognition of this difference is no reason to declare dualism as permanently established. Is not the reason of their difference the difference of abstraction made in each case.
By noumena, i. e. thoughts or ideas, we understand all mental symbols representing things. The ideas "man," "manhood," "virtue," etc., are not sensations, but symbols representing some qualities abstracted from sensations. In making the abstraction "idea" we confine the term, i. e. the symbol "idea," to its representative element alone. We leave out of sight that real ideas vibrating through our brain are at the same time nervous structures in actions; we leave also out of sight that they possess the state of awareness in common with sensations. We do it because their representative nature is of paramount importance. However, in making the abstraction "sensation" we do not exclude the state of awareness, we think first of all of the feeling of a sensation and then also of its form, viz. the special sense-impression. "I have a sensation" is almost equivalent to the phrase "I have a feeling"; a sensation of light means a feeling of the effect of ether-waves upon the retina; a sensation of sound is a feeling of the effect of air-waves upon the drum of the ear; etc. Just as much as ether-waves are not light, and air-waves not sound, (the latter being the effect of the former upon specially adapted feeling substance), so also the sensations light and sound are not the ideas we have of light and sound. The ideas of light and sound are symbols representing in feeling substance the sensations light and sound. These symbols, we suppose, have developed from the memory-images of sensations. They must in their turn also be considered as effects. They are the effects of sense-impressions upon specially adapted feeling substance, viz. upon a higher system of nervous structures, not in direct contact with the periphery, but growing upon and from the peripheral sensory reflex centres. The physiological activity of thoughts is accompanied also with the feeling element; or in other words, thoughts are, as much as sensations, states of awareness. Yet they differ from sensations in that they do not contain anything of sense-impressions; the latter being an exclusive characteristic of the action of sensory organs. The memory-picture of blackness is not a sensation and the idea of blackness still less.
The distinction between noumena or things of thought and æstheta or sensations is by no means so distinct as is often assumed; for, as we have seen, the most prominent feature of the noumenon is its representative character. Isolated sense-impressions possess no representative character, but sensations do possess it. Sensations are the connecting link between sense-impressions and thoughts, between meaningless feeling and mental states or mind, i. e. representative states of awareness. Ideas are, as it were, an extract of the representative value contained in sensations. This is my conception of the distinction to be made between αἰσθητά and νοητά, between sense-activity and thought-activity, between the phenomenon and noumenon. It is set forth at length in the discussion with Professor E. Mach in this number. It has been here again set forth at such length, because I am convinced that a final solution of the problem is of great importance. (Heidelberg: George Weiss.)
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MINERVA. Rassegna Internazionale. January, 1891.
Minervawill represent the first Italian venture in the direction of a comprehensive magazine of international reference and literary record. The editors, in stating the aims of their new publication, acknowledge that Italy keenly feels the lack of an international intellectual magazine. In Italy the reading public, and persons of an average culture, still seem to be cut off from all stimulating intellectual contact with the outside civilised world; while beyond the Alps, on the contrary, and across the seas, any book, or a simple magazine-article even, be it written in German, English, or French, and legitimately claim from any point of view a certain importance, is at once read by innumerable persons from San Francisco all the way to St. Petersburg. Through the intellectual medium of their international reviews, these nations seem actually to have realised one of Goethe's most ardent aspirations,—the dream of a noble and humanising "world-literature." Nearly all of the articles contained in the present issue ofMinervaare ably condensed translations and epitomes of articles that have recently appeared in leading English, American, and German reviews and magazines.La Minervais under the direction of Prof. Federico Garlanda of the University of Rome. (Rome: La Società Laziale. Tip Editrice.)
[94]Questions of Philosophy and Psychology.In the Russian language.
FURTHER REMARKS CONCERNING THE TASK OF THIS REVIEW. By the EditorProf. N. Grote.
ETHICS AND EVOLUTION. ByB. N. Beketov.
LETTERS ON COUNT TOLSTOI'S BOOK "FROM LIFE." ByA. A. Kozlow.
CONCERNING THE LAW OF THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY. ByN. N.Strachov.
ON THE NATURE OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS. ByPrince C. N.Trubetzkoi.
THE DOCTRINE OF WILL IN THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. ByK. Ventzel.
REVIEW OF PERIODICALS: 1) Of foreign philosophical Reviews; 2) Of philosophical articles in Russian ecclesiastical papers.
APPENDIX: 1) Materials for the History of Philosophy in Russia; 2) Transactions of the Moscow Psychological Society.
Russia is perhaps that country of all civilised nations of which we know least, and even such authors as Tolstoï who are read all over the world, are perhaps, severed from their surroundings, not correctly understood by us as the Russian understands them. The present magazine,Problems of Philosophy and Psychology, being a strictly scientific periodical, is less peculiarly Russian without entirely losing the national characteristics of its home. The intention of the editor has been to develop and to give a chance for a further development of an independent Russian philosophy. The philosophy of the West, we are informed, does not satisfy the Russian mind; the English philosophy is one-sided empirical, the French mathematical, the German too abstract and logical. The Russian philosophy aspires to bring about a well-balanced and harmonious method of thinking in which reason, sentiment, and action—science, art and religion—are reconciled. Professor Grote, the editor ofProblems of Philosophy and Psychology, by placing the ethical interest in the foreground, hopes that Russian philosophy will become "the salvation of the world from evil."
Among the book reviews we find six pages devoted toThe Ethical Problem, by Dr. Paul Carus, a translation of which was made for us by Prof. A. Gunlogsen of Chicago. We find however that the reviewer, Mr. P. Astafiew, mixes the position of the author up with that of the societies for ethical culture. If he represents the Magazine's view of reconciling Science, Art, and Religion, it is sure that Religion in the shape Of his peculiar creed would get the lion's share. The interest of the little book consists to him in the fact that it clearly characterises a singular anarchical condition; by having lost the old faith, it is utterly unable to replace it. It is an assumption to base ethics and religion on positive and scientific foundations; yet the attempt is curious as a symptom of the times and especially of "enlightened" America.
In answer to one of the most important errors in Mr. Astafiew's review, we have to state that basing ethics upon the facts of life, verified and verifiable by science, does not mean that we have to study psychology in order to be moral. A man can lead a moral life without understanding anything of ethics, the science of morality. Ethics is not an indispensable condition of morality. But it is of paramount importance that ethics—as a science—is not an impossibility. The data of moral life, the impulses of duty, of conscience, of the ought, are not mystical or supernatural, i. e. extra-natural, standing in contradiction to other natural facts; they are not, as the intuitionists maintain, "unanalysable," they are not, as Professor Adler, the founder of the Ethical Societies declares, beyond the pale of science; "the ladder of science," he says, "does not reach so far." The data of moral life are facts of the natural development of man and of human society; they can be investigated by science, they can be compared with other natural facts, they can be classified and understood.
A man can throw a stone without understanding anything of Newton's laws, he can build a hut without understanding architecture. Yet for that reason the study of ballistics and of architecture are not useless. The man who has studied architecture may bridge the Niagara, which the mound-builders were unable to do. And if a bridge breaks down while the mounds of the mound-builders are still standing, it proves nothing against architecture. An ethical student may have proposed untenable theories in ethics, he may have preached a wrong morality, and may have gone astray himself: all that would prove nothing against the science of ethics. It is to be expected that ethical knowledge, if it leaveneth the whole lump of human society, will raise man's moral life higher, as surely as our knowledge of architecture made it possible that we now build palaces upon the places where in former times stood the wigwams of the Indians. (Moscow, 1891.)
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General Nature of Thought.—The processes marked off by the psychologist as thinking or thought constitute the highest stage of intellectual elaboration (intellection). By taking our concrete percepts and resolving them into so many abstractions, (qualities or attributes of things, relations between things,) we are enabled to carry out the process of cognition to the furthest point of unification. As long as we view a particular object, or an event, alone apart from other things, we merelyapprehendit. But when we bring it into relation to kindred things wecomprehendit. Thus, we comprehend the tiger by classing it with other members of the feline group. So we comprehend or understand the movement of the steam-engine by assimilating it to the more familiar action of the steam in the kettle in forcing up the lid.
Like imaginative production thinking is nothing but the sum of processes of separation and combination, carried out on sense-material. But in this case the elaborative processes assume a new and peculiar form. It is one thing to build up a pictorial image as the poet does, another thing to elaborate an abstract idea, such as the scientific notion of force, fulcrum, and so forth. We must now try to investigate more thoroughly the nature of this thought-elaboration.
Thought as Activity.—It is evident that the processes here roughly described are active processes, that is to say they involve a special exertion of the forces of attention. In perception, reproduction, and constructive imagination, this active factor is at work. But it is only in thought proper that this activity becomes fully developed. To think of a particular attribute in an object, say the color of a rose, is as we all know a conscious effort or strain. A child first called upon to think about abstract qualities, and the general relations of objects finds the operation difficult and fatiguing. All thinking is in truth an exercise of the higher form of attention, viz. volitional concentration of consciousness. We only think when we have some purpose as the discovery of the likeness or difference among objects, and such a purpose only develops itself as the individual and the race attain a certain measure of development or culture. The child and the savage, like the animal, get on very well without thinking. And even a large proportion of civilised adults think only in an occasional and rudimentary way. Thought is thus in all cases a kind of artificial activity sustained only for short periods and under the stress of impulses or motives which belong to a high stage of intellectual and moral development.
The high degree of activity in thought presumably involves a special amount of that muscular strain which forms the sensuous base of the attitude of attention. To think is thus to concentrate consciousness by aid of energetic motor adjustments. These include the innervation of certain muscles, more particularly those by which movements of the eyes and head are carried out. To think is to keep certain ideational elements in persistent consciousness, and this is probably effected in part at least by an energetic and sustained innervation of particular groups of muscles. To this it may be added that since as we shall see presently all thinking is bringing together in their relations a number of ideational elements, the muscular activity in the case is of a specially difficult kind. Such special muscular efforts would probably effect a cutting off of other elements and so subserve that severe narrowing of consciousness which is so marked a feature in thought.
Directions of Thought-Activity.—This thought-activity may be viewed as having two aspects or as following two directions, which it may be well to view apart, even though, as we shall presently see, they are inseparable aspects of one process. Just as all intellectual elaboration is at once differentiation or separation and integration or combination of what is differentiated, so thought itself is but a higher development of each phase.
a)Analysis, Abstraction.—First of all, then, thought may be viewed as a carrying further and into higher forms the process of differentiation or separation of presentative elements by means of isolating acts of attention. Thus on selectively considering the color of a rose, or the form of a crystal, we are it is evident differentiating what is given in perception as a complex into a number of parts, and rendering one of these specially prominent and distinct. Such thought-separation is commonly spoken of as Analysis, i. e. the taking apart of what is conjoined in a whole, and also as Abstraction or the withdrawal of attention from what is for the moment irrelevant and confining it to one particular point, feature, or quality (Latin ab or abs, and traho).
Here it is evident a special attitude and effort of attention is required. It is one thing to note carefully a presentative complex just as it is, another thing to single out some element of this and fix the attention on it. The peculiar difficulty of this analytic attention is due to the firm coherence of the complex. The child cannot see the color of the orange just because the orange as a whole stands in the way. Hence this analytic attention is abstraction in the fullest sense, that is a deliberate turning aside from what stimulates or attracts this attention at the moment.
Such abstract singling out of an element may be supposed to involve a special modification of the muscular adjustment in attention. Hence perhaps the comparative ease with which we can single out for observation locally distinct features of an object, to which correspond different movements of the sense-organ. On the other hand the great difficulty of mentally separating the color from the form of an object may arise from the common element in the muscular adjustments concerned.
The nature of this process of analysis or abstract attention is best seen in those comparatively simple operations in which an actual presentation-complex as a group of tones or colors is being analysed. The carrying out of such a process of analysis is aided by certain conditions objective or external, and subjective or internal. Thus it is found that the closer the degree of the complication the more difficult the isolating fixation. Thus while it is comparatively easy to attend to one detail of color in an object locally separated from other color-details it is exceedingly difficult to attend to the brightness or the degree of saturation of a color apart from the quality of the tone itself. In the case of tone-masses, again, it is found that certain combinations, more especially that of the octave, are difficult to distinguish because of the tendency in this case to fusion.[95]
[95] This is Stumpf's explanation. See his account of the different degrees of fusion.Tonpsychologieii. p. 65, and p. 127 et seqq.
Coming now to subjective conditions we find that the detection of an element in a complex is aided by a previous familiarity with this apart from its present concomitants. Thus the singling out of the partial tones of a clang is greatly aided by the circumstance that these occur and so are known apart from the ground-tone and thus are more readily picked out and recognised.[96] Again, the separate detection of a presentative element is aided by special interest in the particular material. A fine ear for clang-effect or timbre can more readily fix its attention on this.
[96] According to Helmholtz this previous familiarity with the elements of a composite whole when it gives rise to a vivid expectation may produce an illusory analysis, as when certain opticians affirmed that they could detect the supposed constituents of green, blue, and yellow, in that color. SeePhysiol. Optik, p. 273.
Such special interest works mainly through what is known as practice. What we are accustomed to note, and exercised in picking out from its surroundings, we are able to detect readily. This effect of practice in facilitating analysis or abstract attention to this and that constituent of a presentation-complex is abundantly shown throughout the whole domain of recent experimental inquiry into the nature and relations of sensation.
Of course all such analytical separation of presentative constituents is limited by certain conditions in our sensibility. Thus the limits of local discrimination obviously confine the range of isolating attention to local detail in our tactual and visual presentations. Since too such isolation is differentiation, i. e. the singling out of some trait or feature different in quality or intensity from surrounding features, it follows that our abstraction is in all cases limited by our discrimination. We cannot separately fixate a local detail of color if this is not qualitatively distinguishable from its surroundings, nor a local detail of form if this is not distinguishable in luminous intensity from its entourage. Similarly with respect to the difficult analysis of complex tone-presentations or clangs and taste-presentations, as the mixed flavors of a dish.
b)Synthesis: Conscious Relating.—In the second place all thought is integrating or combining, or, as it is commonly expressed, a process of Synthesis. In thinking we never merely isolate or abstract. We analytically resolve the presentative complexes of our concrete experience only in order to establish certain relations among them. The most appropriate term for all such conscious relating or discernment of relation is Comparison.
All our sensational or presentative material is given in certain relations or connections, including the relation of coexistence, or coinherence in a substance, of the several qualities of a thing. Thus the several parts of an extended body stand in certain spatial relations one to another, one part being situated to the right of the other, and the object as a whole being above and behind another object, and so forth. To these space-relations must be added the time-relations of all events, such as the movements of objects, their changes of form, and so forth. Lastly with these 'external' relations are given the so-called 'internal' relations of difference and likeness. The colors, forms, and so forth that present themselves from time to time exhibit a large variety of such relations.
As long as we perceive or imagine the concrete object as such we have only a vague 'implicit' knowledge of these relations. Thus a child in looking at a house seesimplicitlythe chimney in a definite spatial relation to the mass of the building, but the clear explicit grasp of the relation is a subsequent process going beyond perception and involving a rudiment of what we mark off as thought. In like manner when in recollection we recall a sequence of experiences, we may implicitly recognise one as following another; yet it is only by a process of thought that we explicitly single out this relation for special consideration.
The same holds good with regard to the all-comprehensive relations of dissimilarity and similarity. A child in perceiving a particular object, say a tree, differentiates it from surrounding objects, other trees, the background of the sky, etc., and in recognising a familiar object as his toy, or as an orange, he assimilates it to previous like presentations. But in these cases the consciousness of difference and likeness is implicit only. It is some way from this implicit or unconscious discrimination and assimilation to comparison proper, issuing in a clear or explicit consciousness of a relation of likeness or of unlikeness.
It follows from this that thought grows by insensible gradations out of the lower intellective operations. The perception of objects in space, and still more, the recollection of events in time, is itself an incipient subconscious stage of the thought process, i. e. grasp of relations. Hence our demarcations of the spheres of sense and thought, of concrete or pictorial and abstract representations, are not to be taken absolutely. The germ of thought is present throughout, yet as we shall see presently it is a considerable step from the implicit to the explicit seizing of these relations.[97]
[97] Cf. Lotze,Mikrokosmus, English translation, i. p. 655; Ward, article "Psychology,"Encycl. Britannica, p. 75.
All such explicit grasp of relation involves a new direction of adjustive effort, or of (volitional) attention. Just as the analytic resolution of a complex demands a special effort in the way of limited concentration and resistance to irrelevant concomitants, so the comparison of two presentations in order to discern their relation imposes a further special task in the shape of a comprehensive grasp. The special difficulties of the process are manifest. Comparative attention to two presentations, say two colors in local, or two tones in temporal juxtaposition is not merely the carrying out of a simple adjustive process in one direction only, but the carrying out of a double and yet co-ordinated adjustive process.
The fact that there is a general tendency to simple modes of adjustment subserving a comparatively simple structure or pattern of consciousness, and the fact that complex simultaneous adjustments, as in the case of doing different things at the same time, and in that of the synthetic relating process of thought, are rare and acquired with difficulty, suggest that a special nervous process is involved, consisting of a double and divergent stream of innervation, each branch of which has to be kept going in certain relations of time, as also of proportionate strength, with the other branch.
The process of synthetic or relating activity just described may take the direction of consciously grasping the relations immediately presented along with presentation, and more particularly the co-existence of attributes in the same object, and the space and time relations of presentations. To note the juxtaposition of yellow and white in a daisy or the co-existence of its form and color, or the spatial inclusion of its yellow centre in an extended whole, is evidently to discern relations and so to carry out a process of conscious synthesis.
It is however in discerning the most comprehensive relations of likeness and unlikeness that thought shows itself most clearly to be a synthetic process. Thinking has in a special manner to do with the detection of similarity and dissimilarity or difference. Such relating by way of difference or agreement is what we ordinarily understand by comparison.
The relations of similarity and dissimilarity as comprehensive relations connecting presentations remote as well as proximate in time are spoken of as internal and thus marked off from the external relations of time and place. It is true as we have just seen that they are involved along with the latter. Thus in discerning the relations of the parts of an object, we must differentiate them. Yet the two modes of relating are distinct. I discriminate two colors in local juxtaposition notquâjuxtaposed butquâdifferent in their quality. The juxtaposition may greatly assist the discriminative process, but this circumstance does not make the juxtaposition and the qualitative difference one whit less distinct as relations.
It may be added that the greater comprehensiveness of the so-called internal relations is seen in the circumstance that the relations of time and place, just like the separate qualities or attributes of objects, are themselves modes of similarity and dissimilarity. Thus the relation of local contiguity between two elements is somethingcommonto these and other contiguous pairs. Moreover, it is evident that in such a case each element is recognised as having a different position from the other. Similarity with the temporal relations of events.
Comparison.—We may now glance at the operations here brought under the head of comparison, the bringing of different presentative or representative materials before the mind simultaneously and keeping them in consciousness in order to note their relations of similarity or dissimilarity. Here as in the case of Analysis or Abstraction we shall illustrate the process by selecting relatively simple modes of the operation carried out on immediately presented sense-material.
Likeness and Difference.—We may here assume that likeness and unlikeness are two perfectly distinct relations. To apprehend a similarity between two sensations, say tones, is an intellectual process which we all recognise as radically unlike that of apprehending a difference.
Yet while the consciousness of likeness and that of difference are thus radically distinct, as psychical processes, it is evident that the relations of likeness and difference are presented together in close connection. As we all know similarity discloses itself in the midst of difference. This is obvious in the case of all complex presentations, as when we assimilate two objects on the ground of a color resemblance. Not only so, since even in the case of sensation-elements (e. g. color-sensations) likeness is a thing of degree shading off from perfect likeness or indistinguishableness to just recognisable affinity, it follows that here, too, likeness and difference are given together in mutual implication.
Since resemblance and difference are thus uniformly presented together, it is to be expected that comparison will commonly include the two processes, assimilation and discrimination. And this is so. We see likeness amid difference, e. g. a common trait in two faces along with striking dissimilarities. On the other hand we contrast two objects in respect of somecommonquality as color, form, beauty and so forth, which common element constitutes the ground orfundamentumof the comparison.
At the same time it is evident that the one process usually, if not in all cases, preponderates over the other. We are now specially interested in the likeness of two objects, say two faces, or two literary styles, the moment after, perhaps, in their differences. Accordingly we may say that comparison is the noting of likeness against a dimly apprehended background of difference, or a difference against a dimly apprehended background of similarity.
Conditions of Comparison.—Comparison whether specially directed to likeness or unlikeness has certain common conditions. As in the case of Abstraction these conditions may be divided into objective, or those involved in the nature or concomitants of the presentations considered as external objects, or objects of common perception; and subjective or those connected with the nature of the individual mind. As I have given a full account[98] of these elsewhere, I must content myself here with a general remark or two on the subject.
[98] InMind, x. p. 489 et seqq.
Of the objective conditions the most important are the following: (a) There must be a moderate and favorable degree of strength or intensity in the presentations to be compared. We compare fairly bright colors better than very dull ones. (b) The common factor orgroundof comparison must be sufficiently distinct. We cannot compare two tones in respect of pitch if this is unsteady. (c) Comparison is greatly aided by juxtaposition in space or time. Thus local proximity is a condition of a nice comparison of colors. With respect to temporal conditions it was found by Fechner and has been confirmed by others that immediate succession is more helpful to comparison than simultaneity. We compare sensations of weight, tone, etc., best of all when they are made to succeed one another.
With respect to subjective conditions, comparison will, it is obvious, be assisted by a good power of concentration. It will also be aided by a special sensibility for, and interest in, the particular sensuous material: witness the musician's comparison of tones as to pitch, purity, etc. Lastly reference may be made to special preparation or mental preadjustment. It is manifest that if we are expecting to see two things like one another we shall in general be more disposed to do so; similarly if we are on the lookout for difference.
It may be added that there is a special interest in likenessas such, and also in difference. Such interest predisposes a person to detect the one relation rather than the other. Hence the familiar observation that some people are particularly acute in seeing likenesses, e. g. in faces, whereas others are habitually more observant of differences.
Connection between Analysis and Comparison.—There is a close connection between the two directions of thought-activity just dealt with. To begin with, it has become evident that in the processes of comparison, analysis is always involved. Sometimes the analysis seems to precede the comparison, as when we are asked to compare two flowers in respect of their color. In other cases it appears rather as the result of comparison. Thus it is by successive comparisons of different members of a class of things, as flowers, that we gradually come to analyse out the common features of the group.
While comparison thus involves abstraction, abstraction even in the case of a single object may be said to involve the rudiments of comparison. Thus in analytically singling out for consideration the spherical form of a rain drop, we implicitly and subconsciously assimilate it to other previously known spherical objects. But for this vague imperfect accompaniment of assimilation, the analytic separation of the constituent would be difficult if not impossible. Such a subconscious reference to one or more similar things helps to direct the operation of analysis by intensifying and rendering prominent for the moment the particular constituent assimilated through the addition of an ideational element to the sensation.[99]
[99] This is well brought out by W. James,Principles of Psychology, i. p. 434 et seqq.
It follows that the thought-process is one process having two aspects or distinguishable factors. Either of these may become predominant according to special circumstances. In this way we obtain two varieties of operation, viz. Analysis or Abstraction, in which the recognition of likeness is subconscious, and Assimilative Comparison where the process of analysis is preliminary and subordinate to a conscious apprehension of likeness.
A somewhat like relation holds between analysis as a subconscious process of differentiation and a conscious act of discrimination. Thus in analysing a clang we must, agreeably to what was said above, have a vague impression of the difference between one tone and another. And such subconscious differentiation readily becomes the starting-point in a full conscious apprehension by an act of comparing attention of the differences between the several ingredients.[100]
[100] Stumpf uses the term Analysis for the mere vague detection of plurality of elements in a sensation-complex which he considers to be distinct from, and preliminary to a discrimination of them as different one from the other.Tonpsychologieii. p. 104 et seqq.
Thus far we have been occupied with the two fundamental processes in thought and we have illustrated these in their simplest form as employed about presentations or their equivalents, concrete representations. But as already pointed out what we mean by thought is the representation of things as classes or generalities. All the more interesting and momentous problems relating to thought, such as the question whether the lower animals think or reason as we do, have reference to suchgeneralthinking. We have now to examine the processes involved in this thinking.
These fully developed thought-processes are marked off by the use of what is known as the general idea or notion such asmanorvirtue. Such general ideas when reduced to a precise form as by the logician are spoken of as concepts. And since the science of logic assumes thinking to take place by help of such conceptual products we may also speak of these full or explicit thought-processes as Conceptual Thought.[101]
[101] The use of such expressions must not, however, blind us to the fact that a concept strictly speaking is something logical, anidealform of the general idea rarely if ever realised in our actual thinking processes. Of this more presently.
General Ideas and their Formation.—In seeking to trace the development of this general thinking we have first of all to consider the nature and origin of general ideas. It is evident that we only think about things generally in a distinct manner when we are able to form such ideas. Thus I cannot think out the proposition 'The mushroom is a fungus' until I am able to form the general ideas mushroom and fungus. The difficult problems respecting the nature of thought, its relation to language, and its extension beyond man to the lower animals, have been discussed in close connection with the nature and origin of general ideas.
A general idea may for our present purpose be defined as an idea having a general import or reference. Thus a child's idea of dog, home, or father, becomes general when he consciously employs the term as the sign of this, that, and any other particular object which may answer to a certain description or be found to present certain characteristic attributes or traits; or, as the logicians express it, a general idea is a representation of a general class of things.[102]
[102] The reader must be careful to distinguish the meaning of the term class as here used from its meaning when applied to a definite number of objects viewed as a collection, as a class of children in a school. In thinking of man as a (logical) class I do not represent a definite number at all; nor do I represent men as a collection. It would be more correct to say that I am representing in a more or less distinct way the fact that this, that, and an indefinite list of other things are related as like or answering to one description. How this mode of representation is effected will appear presently.
Now it is evident that general ideas as thus defined are reached slowly and by degrees. It is exceedingly doubtful whether any of the lower animals possess them. The baby does not possess them and even after attaining to speech remains for a long time with only the rudiments of them. In their perfected articulate form as required for exact scientific thought they are confined to a few highly trained minds.
Generic Images.—The first stage in the formation of such general ideas is the welding together of a number of concrete images into what has been called a generic image. The idea tree or house may be taken as an example. Such generic images appear to be formed by a process of assimilative cumulation. Let us suppose that a child after observing one dog, sees a second. In this case the strong resemblance in the second to the first effects a process of assimilation analogous to automatic or "unconscious" assimilation. That is to say, the percept corresponding to the second animal is instantly fused with the surviving image of the first by reason of easily apprehended points of likeness. By such successive assimilations a cumulative effect is produced which has been likened to that of the superposition of a number of photographic impressions received from different members of a class, (e. g. criminal,) whereby common features get accentuated and so a typical form is produced.[103]
[103] For an account of such composite photographic pictures, and their analogy to generic (mental) images, see Mr. F. Galton'sInquiries into Human Faculty. Appendix, "Generic Images."
Such a process of deepening and accentuating common traits and effacing individual or variable ones can only be looked on as a tendency never perfectly fulfilled. Interesting differences would in all cases tend to reinstate themselves. Thus my own generic image of a church happens to be a building with a tall spire, because the finest church in my native town was of this form. Recent examples would also tend to contribute variable peculiarities. Thus the baby's generic image of a dog might have the distinguishing characters of the dog last seen.
This process of cumulative assimilation would be largely passive and independent of those active processes of comparison, just described. It would further be capable of being carried forward (to some extent at least) independently of language. Hence we may, with some degree of confidence, attribute generic images to the child before he comes to the use of words and to many of the lower animals. Thus it is highly probable that a baby of six months forms a generic image of the human face out of the percepts answering to its mother's face, nurse's face, etc., and that when suffering from loneliness it has this image in its mind. Similarly a predatory animal may be supposed to compound a generic image out of the percepts gained from this, that, and the other specimen of his prey, so that when seized with hunger, this typical image is recalled.
In order to illustrate what is meant by a generic image, it is important to take the case of a pure representation detached from a presentation. Thus we cannot say that because a diving bird recognises a new sheet of water, it must have at the moment, a generic image answering to water. The recognition of a thing does not imply a distinct representation of the thing as previously seen. The presentative and representative ingredients are fused in this case, or to express it otherwise, the image is latent and undeveloped. Similarly with respect to such rudimentary processes of conception or general ideation as those here considered. We can only attribute a developed and detached generic image to baby or animal when we have reason to think that these occur in the absence of percepts, e. g. in states of desire, in dreams, and so forth.[104]
[104] The argument in support of the proposition that generic images, or (as the writer calls them) "recepts" are actually reached by the lower animals is ably set forth by Dr. Romanes,Mental Evolution in Man, p. 51 et seqq.
Relation of Generic Image to General Idea.—The question still remains how far such generic images are, properly speaking,generalideas in the sense defined above. Is, for example, the typical face that is pictured by the lonely infant thought of as something common to this, that, and the other concrete object? Does it carry with it any clear consciousness of a general class of things? There is no certain proof that this is so. It must be remembered here that the mental image corresponding to one and the same individual object, as the infant's mother, is composite also and in the same way as the generic image. Thus the baby forms the image of its mother out of a number of practically unlike percepts, corresponding to varying appearances of the object in different positions, different light, different dress, and so forth.[105] Generic images accordingly differ not in kind, but only in degree (viz. proportion of common to variable feature taken up and accentuated) from particular or concrete images. And so long as they remain merely pictorialimages, there seems no reason to attribute to them any general function or import.
[105] Cf. Taine,On Intelligence, Part i, Book ii, Ch. 2.
The true process of conception, as generalisation or general ideation, that is a conscious representation of something as common to many as distinguished from one, involves the active processes of thought, analysis and synthesis, abstraction and comparison. It is only when the child begins consciously to break up its images to mark off this element or feature from that, and by help of such analysis discerns and demarcates common features that general thought properly so called, appears. In this way it reaches a distinct idea at once of an individual thing and of general or common aspects among individuals. We have now to examine into this true thought-process.
Transition to Conception Proper.—The transition from merely imagining to thinking proper is effected by processes of reflective attention in which abstraction and comparison play a chief part. In order to understand how this occurs we may suppose the process of automatic assimilation checked by the introduction of some impressive difference. Thus a child proceeds to play with a visitor's dog and finds it wanting in the friendly sentiments of his own pet. Here difference which, in the earlier stage of automatic assimilation, remained indistinct in the background of consciousness, is brought forward. The unlikeness ofmoralein spite of the likeness ofphysiqueis forced on his attention, the present percept is separated from and opposed to the image, and a step is taken in marking off likeness from surrounding difference.
As differences thus come into distinct view and impress themselves on the mind as the constant accompaniment of likenesses, a new and explicit grasp of likeness-in-difference ensues. This starts from a mental separation of the several perceptual constituents of the generic image, and a reflective comparison of these one with another, so as to demarcate common features or likenesses from peculiar features or unlikeness. Such comparison, or series of comparisons, begins with incomplete analysis and vague apprehension of likeness and ends in a more complete analysis and more definite apprehension of likeness. In this way, for example, the child waking up to differences among apples, goes back on his various experiences, and by noticing and setting aside variability of taste, size, etc., gets a clear grasp of the common essential features. Such a conscious active separation of definite points of resemblance from among a confusing mass of difference is what psychologists and logicians more especially mean by Abstraction.
Differentiation of Notions of Individual and Class.—As was pointed out just now the coexistence of likeness with unlikeness in the child's experience, may mean one of two things, viz. persistence or identity of one individual object, in spite of certain changes, or a general similarity among a number of different individuals. The process of conception is sometimes described as if the child started with a definite knowledge of individuals and then proceeded to generalise or form a class-idea. There is, however, every reason for saying that the two modes of interpreting likeness-in-difference are reached concurrently and by processes largely similar. Thus it seems most reasonable to suppose that the baby which 'da-das' every bearded person it sees is as yet clearly conscious neither of individuality nor of generality. In other words we must not assume that it is stupidly confounding its sire with a stranger, or, on the other hand, forming an idea of a general class. At this stage the child merely recognises certain interesting similarities and proceeds to express the fact. We have to suppose that the clear apprehension of individual sameness is reached but slowly and in close connection with the first clear consciousness of different things attached by a bond of likeness.
To say that the child's knowledge begins with the concrete individual is not to say that it attains a clear consciousness of what we mean by an individual thing persisting and the same (in spite of change) before it begins to generalise. We must remember that the cognition of a thing as persistent and continuous is the result of lengthy and complex processes of comparative reflection. To individualise is thus to think just as to generalise is to think.[106] In truth, the psychological development of the idea of individuality proceeds along with that of generality, each being grasped as a different way of interpreting partial similarity among our percepts.[107]
[106] Hence the logician can speak of the idea answering to a proper name as a singularconcept. See Lotze,Logic, p. 34.
[107] The question of the priority in the individual of the knowledge of the individual or of the general class, the question known as theprimum cognitumhas been much discussed in connection with the linguistic problem whether names are first used as proper names or as general names.
The Process of Generalisation.—When once this differentiation of the individual idea from the class idea has advanced far enough the process of generalisation proper, or the grasp of common or general qualities, is able to be carried out in the way usually described by psychologists. That is to say, a number of individual things, represented as such, are now compared, the attention withdrawn by a volitional effort, from points of difference and concentrated on points of likeness (abstraction) and so a true process of generalisation carried out.
The common account of the process of conception here followed, as a sequence of three stages, Comparison, Abstraction, and Generalisation, rather describes the ideal form of the process as required by logic than the mental process actually carried out. As we saw above a vague analysis or abstraction precedes that methodical comparison of things by which the abstraction becomes precise and perfect, that is to say, definite points of likeness (or unlikeness) are detected. With regard to generalisation it has been pointed out that a rudimentary form of this process is involved in abstraction. To see the roundness of the ball is vaguely and implicitly to assimilate the ball to other round objects. It is to be added that an imperfect grasp of general features as such (commonly) precedes the methodical process here described. The child realises in a measure, the general function of the name 'horse' before he carries out a careful comparative analysis of the horse-characters. At the same time the use of the word generalisation is important, as marking off the clear mental grasp of the class-idea as such, that is the idea of an indeterminate number, of objects, known and unknown, answering to a certain description.[108]
[108] On the relation of Abstraction to Generalisation see Hamilton'sLectures, Vol. ii, Lec. xxxv.
Conception and Naming.—We have so far supposed that the processes of conception are carried out without any help from language. But it is exceedingly doubtful whether any such orderly process as that just described, the comparison of a number of percepts and the marking off of common attributes could be carried out without the aid of words or some equivalent. It is probable that even the clear grasp of individual things as unities and as permanent identical things, depends on the use of a name (proper name) which as one and the same sound seems to mark in an emphatic way the continued oneness of the object.[109] And the same applies still more manifestly to the apprehension of a general class of things. It is certain that in later life at least all clear general thinking takes place by help of language. The general idea is held together, and retained by means of a name; and, as already pointed out, it is very uncertain whether in the absence of such general signs, the infant or the lower animal ever attains to a clear consciousness of the 'one in the many,' the common aspect of a number of different objects.
[109] It seems to follow that animals cannot attain the clear consciousness of individual things as permanent unities, as we attain it.
Is Generalisation Possible Without Language?—The question how far we can generalise or form a general idea apart from the use of names or other signs is one of the standingcrucesin psychology. If we judge by introspective examination of our own minds we do no doubt now and again carry on processes of thought of a quasi-general character with little if any help from words. Yet it is doubtful whether we attain a clear consciousness of thegeneralityof our thinking in this case. It must be remembered too that even if we can, as is alleged, employ a particular image or succession of images as representative of generalities without any aid from language (as when we intuitively follow the proof of a particular case in geometry and at the same time recognise its general validity) we are employing powers of thought that have been developed by help of language.[110]
[110] On the nature of such speechless thought see Venn,Empirical Logic, p. 147.
If now we turn from the developed to the undeveloped mind, and ask whether children think apart from the use of language, we find the question exceedingly difficult. It has been alleged that a born mute reached prior to his mastery of a deaf-mute language the highly abstract idea of maker or creator and applied this to the world or sum of objects about him.[111] It must be borne in mind however, that born mutes make a certain spontaneous use of articulate sounds or signs, and such articulations, though unintelligible to others, and not even heard by themselves, may be of great assistance in carrying out the process of Abstraction. It must be further remembered that a child understands others' words and may probably make some internal use of them as signs before he proceeds to imitatively articulate them.
[111] See a very interesting account of the experience of a born mute by Prof. S. Porter, in an article "Is Thought Possible without Language?" in thePrinceton Review, January, 1881.
Lastly with respect to the lower animals, while it must be admitted that they display something closely resembling the germ of general thinking, it is manifest that we cannot in their case, be certain of the degree of clear consciousness of generality attained. The actions of a fox caught in a difficulty and inventing a way of escape seem indistinguishable from those of a man thinking by help of general ideas and general rules: yet the mental process may after all be non-ceptual, and pictorial. It seems safe therefore to conclude that apart from verbal or other general signs the full consciousness of generality does not arise.[112]
[112] It must be remembered that some of the most intelligent of the lower animals, e. g. ants, have a system of tactual signs analogous to our language. On the whole subject of the germ of linguistic and conceptional power in animals, see Romanes,Mental Evolution in Man, Chap. v and following.
Psychological Function of General Names.—A name is commonly defined as a mark or sign by the help of which the idea of a thing may be called up in our own mind or in the mind of another. Signs are either self-explaining, as in the case of a drawing, or an imitative gesture, or conventionally attached to objects as the larger number of linguistic signs or names, the symbols used in music, etc.[113] Language signs consist either of articulated sounds or other percept-producing movements, as the finger movements[114] used by the deaf and dumb.
[113] Articulate sounds so far as imitative (onomatopoetic) words, are of course to be classed with self-explaining signs.
[114] On the general function and the possible varieties of language-signs, tone-language, gesture-language, etc., see Romanes,Mental Evolution in Man, Chap. v and following. Cf. Venn,Empirical Logic, Chap. vi.
A name may be given to one thing (proper name) or to a general class (common or general name). In either case, as explained above, the name psychologically considered is the expression or indication of a similarity among our percepts. To name a thing is thus the outward manifestation of a process of assimilation.
The name (articulation-sound complex) becomes attached to the idea it stands for by a process of contiguous integration. Looking at it as accompanying and perfecting the process of assimilation, we may say that a name, whether as employed by ourselves or as heard used by others, becomes specially associated with, and so expressive of, some similar feature or features of our perceptual experience. Thus the name 'home' specially emphasises the recurring or constant features of the child's surroundings, the name 'horse' the common features of structure in the objects so named. The name thus becomes specially attached to, and so a mark of the effects of superposition of common presentative elements in our experience.
This is well brought out in Herbart's view that the general idea is the result of "apperception," or the coalescence of a new presentation with previous like representations (apperceptive masses). Such apperceptive fusion or assimilation would according to Herbart help to explain the prominence or distinct emergence of the common element in a new presentation, and the falling back of the particular or variable features into indistinct consciousness.[115]