Artificial and adventitious utilities produce the same kind of one-sided generalisation. If society pays a man in fame or money to observe and describe certain things, his classification of them will be purely phenomenal. He will classify dogs with wolves and nightshade with potato, and will lump together the whole population of a country in one class, although it consists of the most divers elements—fools and philosophers, rogues and righteous, saints and sinners, patricians and plebeians. These are differences much more important than sameness of nationality, colour, race, or language.
This practice, no doubt, gives symmetrical classifications. The greater classes are subdivided into subordinate classes, and these again into lower classes in a many-stepped series. Gradation occurs also in true generalisation, but not to the same extent.
If we confine our observation to things that are much like each other, the average idea will not be greatly different from a particular idea: this is called lowness in generality. If we run together quadrupeds, bipeds and fishes, we shall have a much higher general idea: the average will be very unlike any concrete animal. The higher we generalise the smaller becomes the content of the idea, but the wider its extension, that is, the realm of objects from which it has been drawn, or which it is considered to represent. The usual practice is to generalise by fine gradations. Get the general idea of sheep, then of cow, then of horse; then average the averages. The result is much the same if we run all the objects together and average them in one operation, but the slower process gives the neater results. The gradations of generality are distinguished by names such as (beginning from below) variety, species, genus, class, family, kingdom.
'Conceptualism' is the metaphysical doctrine now prevalent with respect to general ideas. They are regarded not as objects nor as essences, but as forms of consciousness depending more or less on our own mental activity. This is true enough so far as it goes, but without a substantial plasm to hold the 'concept' its formation and endurance are quite inexplicable.
XIII—MATTER
Matter is the name given to the most general idea we can form of objects. It is supposed to cover all of them. In other words, the content or 'essence' of the idea is the attribute or attributes common to all objects without exception. It is the universal objective minimum—the least objective experience consistent with the experience being objective. Some have attempted to define this general idea more precisely by identifying it with some abstract property such as extension, resistance, etc. An object may be material without offering any resistance to human energy, as a beam of light. A material object may also be without extension, as a sound or smell. The only quality left to matter is bare objectivity, namely, that it is a form of consciousness excited in a mind by some other mind, not occurring spontaneously. This seems to me the only true connotation of matter.
Matter is not the antithesis of mind; it is a mere affection of mind. The two are not in any proper sense co-ordinate or equipollent. They are to each other somewhat in the relation of a mirror to an image reflected from it. Mind is to each of us a concrete primary experience—the feeling of personal power and identity. Matter is a general idea arising from the comparison of objects in consciousness. No two things could well be more diverse.
Since general ideas are products of our own mental energy, and matter the most general of all, it is the farthest removed from the concrete objective condition, and so it is literally true that we never objectively perceive matter though we constantly perceive material objects. It is as impossible to see, touch, or taste matter as it is to ride the general idea Equus or dine off the general idea nourishment. In denying the objectivity of matter we do not deny the objective reality of things: we merely decline to confound a general idea with the objects that have contributed to form it. We decline to be mystics, in the sense defined by J. S. Mill[10]. The belief in the external existence of matter is a form of mysticism; the Hindus call it maya, meaning illusion.
Some metaphysicians argue that since phenomena appear only in conjunction, we are compelled by the constitution of our nature to think of them conjoined in and by something, and this imaginary foundation and cement is another meaning of the word 'matter.'