There are unquestionably two sorts of abstraction: 1. "Comparative abstraction, operating upon several real objects, and seizing their resemblances in order to form an abstract idea, which is collective and mediate; collective, because different individuals concur in its formation; mediate, because it requires several intermediate operations." This is the method of the physical sciences, which comprises comparison, abstraction, and generalization. The result in this process is the attainment of a general truth. 2. "Immediate abstraction, not comparative; operating not upon several concretes, but upon a single one, eliminating and neglecting its individual and variable part, and disengaging the absolute part, which it raises at once to its pure form." The parts to be eliminated in a concrete cognition are, first, the quality of the object, and the circumstances under which the absolute unfolds itself; and secondly, the quality of the subject, which perceives but does not constitute it. The phenomena of the me and the not-me being eliminated, the absolute remains. This is the process of rational psychology, and the result obtained is a universal and necessary truth.
"Let us take, as an example, the principle of cause. To be able to say that the event I see must have a cause, it is not indispensable to have seen several events succeed each other. The principle which compels me to pronounce this judgment is already complete in the first as in the last event; it can not change in respect to its object, it can not change in itself; it neither increases nor decreases with the greater or less number of applications. The only difference that it is subject to in regard to us is that we apply it, whether we remark it or not, whether we disengage it or not from its particular application. The question is not to eliminate the particularity of the phenomenon wherein it appears to us, whether it be the fall of a leaf or the murder of a man, in order immediately to conceive, in a general and abstract manner, the necessity of a cause for every event that begins to exist. Here it is not because I am the same, or have been affected in the same manner in several different cases, that I have come to this general and abstract conception. A leaf falls; at the same moment I think, I believe, I declare that this falling of the leaf must have a cause. A man has been killed; at the same instant I believe, I proclaim that this death must have a cause. Each one of these facts contains particular and variable circumstances, and something universal and necessary, to wit, both of them can not but have a cause. Now I am perfectly able to disengage the universal from the particular in regard to the first fact as well as in regard to the second fact, for the universal is in the first quite as well as in the second. In fact, if the principle of causality is not universal in the first fact, neither will it be in the second, nor in the third, nor in the thousandth; for a thousandth is not nearer than the first to the infinite--to absolute universality. It is the same, and still more evidently, with necessity. Pay particular attention to this point; if necessity is not in the first fact, it can not be in any; for necessity can not be formed little by little, and by successive increments. If, on the first murder I see, I do not exclaim that this murder had necessarily a cause, at the thousandth murder, although it shall be proved that all the others had causes, I shall have the right to think that this murder has, very probably, also a cause, but I shall never have the right to say that it necessarily had a cause. But when universality and necessity are already in a single case, that case is sufficient to entitle me to deduce them from it," [225] and we may add, also, to affirm them of every other event that may transpire.
[Footnote 225: ][ (return) ] Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," pp. 57, 58.
The following schema will exhibit the generally accepted results of this method of analysis applied to the phenomena of thought:
(i.) Universal and necessary principles, or primitive judgments from whence is derived the cognition of Absolute Being.
1. The principle of Substance; thus enounced--"every quality supposes a subject or real being."
2. The principle of Causality; "every thing that begins to be supposes a power adequate to its production, i.e., an efficient cause."
3. The principle of Unity; "all differentiation and plurality supposes an incomposite unity; all diversity, an ultimate and indivisible identity."
4. The principle of the Unconditioned; "the finite supposes the infinite, the dependent supposes the self-existent, the temporal supposes the eternal."
(ii.) Universal and necessary principles, or primitive judgments, from which is derived the cognition of the Absolute Reason.