[CHAPTER III.]
LOGIC OF RECEPTS.
We have seen that the great border-land, or terra media, lying between particular ideas and general ideas has been strangely neglected by psychologists, and we may now be prepared to find that a careful exploration of this border-land is a matter of the highest importance for the purposes of our inquiry. I will, therefore, devote the present chapter to a full consideration of what I have termed generic ideas, or recepts.
It has already been remarked that, in order to form any of these generic ideas, the mind does not require to combine intentionally the particular ideas which go to construct it: a recept differs from a concept in that it is received, not conceived. The percepts out of which a recept is composed are of so comparatively simple a character, are so frequently repeated in observation, and present among themselves resemblances or analogies so obvious, that the mental images of them run together, as it were, spontaneously, or in accordance with the primary laws of merely sensuous association, without requiring any conscious act of comparison. This is a truth which has been noticed by several previous writers. For instance, I have in this connection already quoted a passage from M. Taine, and, if necessary, could quote another, wherein he very aptly likens what I have called recepts to the unelaborated ore out of which the metal of a concept is afterwards smelted. And still more to the purpose is the following passage, which I take from Mr. Sully:—“The more concrete concepts, or generic images, are formed to a large extent by a passive process of assimilation. The likeness among dogs, for example, is so great and striking that when a child, already familiar with one of these animals, sees a second, he recognizes it as identical with the first in certain obvious respects. The representation of the first combines with the representation of the second, bringing into distinct relief the common dog features, more particularly the canine form. In this way the images of different dogs come to overlap, so to speak, giving rise to a typical image of dog. Here there is very little of active direction of the mind from one thing to another in order to discover where the resemblance lies: the resemblance forces itself upon the mind. When, however, the resemblance is less striking, as in the case of more abstract concepts, a distinct operation of active comparison is involved.”[26]
Similarly, M. Perez remarks, “the necessity which children are under of seeing in a detached and scrappy manner in order to see well, makes them continually practise that kind of abstraction by which we separate qualities from objects. From those objects which the child has already distinguished as individual, there come to him at different moments particularly vivid impressions.... Dominant sensations of this kind, by their energy or frequency, tend to efface the idea of the objects from which they proceed, to separate or abstract themselves.... The flame of a candle is not always equally bright or flickering; tactile, sapid, olfactory, and auditive impressions do not always strike the child’s sensorium with the same intensity, nor during the same length of time. This is why the recollections of individual forms, although strongly graven on their intelligence, lose by degrees their first precision, so that the idea of a tree, for instance, furnished by direct and perfectly distinct memories, comes back to the mind in a vague and indistinct form, which might be taken for a general idea.”[27]
Again, in the opinion of John Stuart Mill, “It is the doctrine of one of the most fertile thinkers of modern times, Auguste Comte, that besides the logic of signs, there is a logic of images, and a logic of feelings. In many of the familiar processes of thought, and especially in uncultured minds, a visual image serves instead of a word. Our visual sensations, perhaps only because they are almost always present along with the impressions of our other senses, have a facility of becoming associated with them. Hence, the characteristic visual appearance of an object easily gathers round it, by association, the ideas of all other peculiarities which have, in frequent experience, co-existed with that appearance; and, summoning up these with a strength and certainty far surpassing that of merely casual associations which it may also raise, it concentrates the attention on them. This is an image serving for a sign—the logic of images. The same function may be fulfilled by a feeling. Any strong and highly interesting feeling, connected with one attribute of a group, spontaneously classifies all objects according as they possess, or do not possess, that attribute. We may be tolerably certain that the things capable of satisfying hunger form a perfectly distinct class in the mind of any of the more intelligent animals; quite as much as if they were able to use or understand the word food. We here see in a strong light the important truth that hardly anything universal can be affirmed in psychology except the laws of association.”[28]
Furthermore, Mansel tersely conveys the truth which I am endeavouring to present, thus:—“The mind recognizes the impression which a tree makes on the retina of the eye: this is presentative consciousness. It then depicts it. From many such pictures it forms a general notion, and to that notion it at last appropriates a name.”[29] Almost in identical language the same distinction is conveyed by Noiré thus:—“All trees hitherto seen by me may leave in my imagination a mixed image, a kind of ideal representation of trees. Quite different from this is the concept, which is never an image.”[30]
And, not to overburden the argument with quotations, I will furnish but one more, which serves if possible with still greater clearness to convey exactly what it is that I mean by a recept. Professor Huxley writes:—“An anatomist who occupies himself intently with the examination of several specimens of some new kind of animal, in course of time acquires so vivid a conception of its form and structure, that the idea may take visible shape and become a sort of waking dream.”[31]
Although the use of the word “conception” here is unfortunate in one way, I regard it as fortunate in another: it shows how desperate is the need for the word which I have coined.