The only essential distinction between the human race and animals, which from time immemorial has been attributed to a special cognitive faculty peculiar to mankind, called Reason, is based upon the fact that man owns a class of representations which is not shared by any animal. These are conceptions, therefore abstract, as opposed to intuitive, representations, from which they are nevertheless derived. The immediate consequence of this is, that animals can neither speak nor laugh; but indirectly all those various, important characteristics which distinguish human from animal life are its consequence. For, through the supervention of abstract representation, motivation has now changed its character. Although human actions result with a necessity no less rigorous than that which rules the actions of animals, yet through this new kind of motivation—so far as here it consists in thoughts which render elective decision (i.e. a conscious conflict of motives) possible—action with a purpose, with reflection, according to plans and principles, in concert with others, &c. &c., now takes the place of mere impulse given by present, perceptible objects; but by this it gives rise to all that renders human life so rich, so artificial, and so terrible, that man, in this Western Hemisphere, where his skin has become bleached, and where the primitive, true, profound religions of his first home could not follow him, now no longer recognises animals as his brethren, and falsely believes them to differ fundamentally from him, seeking to confirm this illusion by calling them brutes, giving degrading names to the vital functions which they have in common with him, and proclaiming them outlaws; and thus he hardens his heart against that identity of being between them and himself, which is nevertheless constantly obtruding itself upon him.
Still, as we have said, the whole difference lies in this—that, besides the intuitive representations examined in the last chapter, which are shared by animals, other, abstract representations derived from these intuitive ones, are lodged in the human brain, which is chiefly on this account so much larger than that of animals. Representations of this sort have been called conceptions,[115] because each comprehends innumerable individual things in, or rather under, itself, and thus forms a complex.[116] We may also define them as representations drawn from representations. For, in forming them, the faculty of abstraction decomposes the complete, intuitive representations described in our last chapter into their component parts, in order to think each of these parts separately as the different qualities of, or relations between, things. By this process, however, the representations necessarily forfeit their perceptibility; just as water, when decomposed, ceases to be fluid and visible. For although each quality thus isolated (abstracted) can quite well be thought by itself, it does not at all follow that it can be perceived by itself. We form conceptions by dropping a good deal of what is given us in perception, in order to be able to think the rest by itself. To conceive therefore, is to think less than we perceive. If, after considering divers objects of perception, we drop something different belonging to each, yet retain what is the same in all, the result will be the genus of that species. The generic conception is accordingly always the conception of every species comprised under it, after deducting all that does not belong to every species. Now, as every possible conception may be thought as a genus, a conception is always something general, and as such, not perceptible. Every conception has on this account also its sphere, as the sum-total[117] of what may be thought under it. The higher we ascend in abstract thought, the more we deduct, the less therefore remains to be thought. The highest, i.e. the most general conceptions, are the emptiest and poorest, and at last become mere husks, such as, for instance, being, essence, thing, becoming, &c. &c.—Of what avail, by the way, can philosophical systems be, which are only spun out of conceptions of this sort and have for their substance mere flimsy husks of thoughts like these? They must of necessity be exceedingly empty, poor, and therefore also dreadfully tiresome.
Now as representations, thus sublimated and analysed to form abstract conceptions, have, as we have said, forfeited all perceptibility, they would entirely escape our consciousness, and be of no avail to it for the thinking processes to which they are destined, were they not fixed and retained in our senses by arbitrary signs. These signs are words. In as far as they constitute the contents of dictionaries and therefore of language, words always designate general representations, conceptions, never perceptible objects; whereas a lexicon which enumerates individual things, only contains proper names, not words, and is either a geographical or historical dictionary: that is to say, it enumerates what is separated either by Time or by Space; for, as my readers know, Time and Space are the principium individuationis. It is only because animals are limited to intuitive representations and incapable of any abstraction—incapable therefore of forming conceptions—that they are without language, even when they are able to articulate words; whereas they understand proper names. That it is this same defect which excludes them from laughter, I have shown in my theory of the ridiculous.[118]
On analyzing a long, continuous speech made by a man of no education, we find in it an abundance of logical forms, clauses, turns of phrase, distinctions, and subtleties of all sorts, correctly expressed by means of grammatical forms with their inflections and constructions, and even with a frequent use of the sermo obliquus, of the different moods, &c. &c., all in conformity with rule, which astonishes us, and in which we are forced to recognise an extensive and perfectly coherent knowledge. Still this knowledge has been acquired on the basis of the perceptible world, the reduction of whose whole essence to abstract conceptions is the fundamental business of the Reason, and can only take place by means of language. In learning the use of language therefore, the whole mechanism of Reason—that is, all that is essential in Logic—is brought to our consciousness. Now this can evidently not take place without considerable mental effort and fixed attention, for which the desire to learn gives children the requisite strength. So long as that desire has before it what is really available and necessary, it is vigorous, and it only appears weak when we try to force upon children that which is not suited to their comprehension. Thus even a coarsely educated child, in learning all the turns and subtleties of language, as well through its own conversation as that of others, accomplishes the development of its Reason, and acquires that really concrete Logic, which consists less in logical rules than in the proper application of them; just as the rules of harmony are learnt by persons of musical talent simply by playing the piano, without reading music or studying thorough-bass.—The deaf and dumb alone are excluded from the above-mentioned logical training through the acquirement of speech; therefore they are almost as unreasonable as animals, when they have not been taught to read by the very artificial means specially adapted for their requirements, which takes the place of the natural schooling of Reason.
§ 27. The Utility of Conceptions.
The fundamental essence of our Reason or thinking faculty is, as we have seen, the power of abstraction, or the faculty of forming conceptions: it is therefore the presence of these in our consciousness which produces such amazing results. That it should be able to do this, rests mainly on the following grounds.
It is just because they contain less than the representations from which they are drawn, that conceptions are easier to deal with than representations; they are, in fact, to these almost as the formula of higher arithmetic to the mental operations which give rise to them and which they represent, or as a logarithm to its number. They only contain just the part required of the many representations from which they are drawn; if instead we were to try to recall those representations themselves by means of the imagination, we should, as it were, have to lug about a load of unessential lumber, which would only embarrass us; whereas, by the help of conceptions, we are enabled to think only those parts and relations of all these representations which are wanted for each individual purpose: so that their employment may be compared to doing away with superfluous luggage, or to working with extracts instead of plants themselves—with quinine, instead of bark. What is properly called thinking, in its narrowest sense, is the occupation of the intellect with conceptions: that is, the presence in our consciousness of the class of representations we now have before us. This is also what we call reflection: a word which, by a figure of speech borrowed from Optics, expresses at once the derivative and the secondary character of this kind of knowledge. Now it is this thinking, this reflection, which gives man that deliberation, which is wanting in animals. For, by enabling him to think many things under one conception, but always only the essential part in each of them, it allows him to drop at his pleasure every kind of distinction, consequently even those of Time and of Space, and thus he acquires the power of embracing in thought, not only the past and the future, but also what is absent; while animals are in every respect strictly bound to the present. This deliberative faculty again is really the root of all those theoretical and practical achievements which give man so great a superiority over animals; first and foremost, of his care for the future while taking the past into consideration; then of his premeditated, systematic, methodical procedure in all undertakings, and therefore of the co-operation of many persons towards a common end, and, by this, of law, order, the State, &c. &c.—But it is especially in Science that the use of conceptions is important; for they are, properly speaking, its materials. The aims of all the sciences may, indeed, in the last resort, be reduced to knowledge of the particular through the general; now this is only possible by means of the dictum de omni et nullo, and this, again, is only possible through the existence of conceptions. Aristotle therefore says: ἄνευ μὲν γὰρ τῶν καθόλου οὐκ ἔστιν ἐπιστήμην λαβεῖν[119] (absque universalibus enim non datur scientia). Conceptions are precisely those universalia, whose mode of existence formed the argument of the long controversy between the Realists and Nominalists in the Middle Ages.
§ 28. Representatives of Conceptions. The Faculty of Judgment.
Conceptions must not be confounded with pictures of the imagination, these being intuitive and complete, therefore individual representations, although they are not called forth by sensuous impressions and do not therefore belong to the complex of experience. Even when used to represent a conception, a picture of the imagination (phantasm) ought to be distinguished from a conception. We use phantasms as representatives of conceptions when we try to grasp the intuitive representation itself that has given rise to the conception and to make it tally with that conception, which is in all cases impossible; for there is no representation, for instance, of dog in general, colour in general, triangle in general, number in general, nor is there any picture of the imagination which corresponds to these conceptions. Then we evoke the phantasm of some dog or other, which, as a representation, must in all cases be determined: that is, it must have a certain size, shape, colour, &c. &c.; even though the conception represented by it has no such determinations. When we use such representatives of conceptions however, we are always conscious that they are not adequate to the conceptions they represent, and that they are full of arbitrary determinations. Towards the end of the first part of his Twelfth Essay on Human Understanding, Hume expresses himself in agreement with this view, as also Rousseau in his "Discours sur l'Origine de l'Inégalité."[120] Kant's doctrine, on the contrary, is a totally different one. The matter is one which introspection and clear reflection can alone decide. Each of us must therefore examine himself as to whether he is conscious in his own conceptions of a "Monogram of Pure Imagination à priori;" whether, for instance, when he thinks dog, he is conscious of something entre chien et loup; or whether, as I have here explained it, he is either thinking an abstract conception through his Reason, or representing some representative of that conception as a complete picture through his imagination.
All thinking, in a wider sense: that is, all inner activity of the mind in general, necessitates either words or pictures of the imagination: without one or other of these it has nothing to hold by. They are not, however, both necessary at the same time, although they may co-operate to their mutual support. Now, thinking in a narrower sense—that is, abstract reflection by means of words—is either purely logical reasoning, in which case it keeps strictly to its own sphere; or it touches upon the limits of perceptible representations in order to come to an understanding with them, so as to bring that which is given by experience and grasped by perception into connection with abstract conceptions resulting from clear reflection, and thus to gain complete possession of it. In thinking therefore, we seek either for the conception or rule to which a given perception belongs, or for the particular case which proves a given conception or rule. In this quality, thinking is an activity of the faculty of judgment, and indeed in the first case a reflective, in the second, a subsuming activity. The faculty of judgment is accordingly the mediator between intuitive and abstract knowledge, or between the Understanding and the Reason. In most men it has merely rudimentary, often even merely nominal existence;[121] they are destined to follow the lead of others, and it is as well not to converse with them more than is necessary.