[25] The more elaborate analysis of German psychologists has yielded five orders instead of three; namely, Wahrnehmung, Anschauung, Vorstellungen, Erfahrungsbegriff, and Verstandesbegriff. But for the purposes of this treatise it is needless to go into these finer distinctions.
[26] Outlines of Psychology, p. 342. The italics are mine. It will be observed that Mr. Sully here uses the term “generic” in exactly the sense which I propose.
[27] First Three Years of Childhood, English trans., pp. 180-182.
[28] Examination of Hamilton’s Philosophy, p. 403.
[29] To this, Max Müller objects on account of its veiled conceptualism—seeing that it represents the “notion” as chronologically prior to the “name” (Science of Thought, p. 268). With this criticism, however, I am not concerned. Whether “the many pictures” which the mind thus forms, and blends together into what Locke terms a “compound idea,” deserve, when so blended, to be called “a general notion” or a “concept”—this is a question of terminology of which I steer clear, by assigning to such compound ideas the term recepts, and reserving the term notions, or concepts, for compound ideas after they have been named.
[30] Logos, p. 175, quoted by Max Müller, who adds:—“The followers of Hume might possibly look upon the faded images of our memory as abstract ideas. Our memory, or, what is often equally important, our oblivescence, seems to them able to do what abstraction, as Berkeley shows, never can do; and under its silent sway many an idea, or cluster of ideas, might seem to melt away till nothing is left but a mere shadow. These shadows, however, though they may become very vague, remain percepts; they are not concepts” (Science of Thought, p. 453). Now, I say it is equally evident that these shadows are not percepts: they are the result of the fusion of percepts, no one of which corresponds to their generic sum. Seeing, then, that they are neither percepts nor concepts, and yet such highly important elements in ideation, I coin for them the distinctive name of recepts.
[31] Life of Hume, p. 96.
[32] Steinthal and Lazarus, however, in dealing with the problem touching the origin of speech, present in an adumbrated fashion this doctrine of receptual ideation with special reference to animals. For instance, Lazarus says, “Es gibt in der gewöhnlichen Erfahrung kein so einfaches Ding von einfacher Beschaffenheit, dass wir es durch eine Sinnesempfindung wahrnehmen könnten; erst aus der Sammlung seiner Eigenschaften, d. h. erst aus der Verbindung der mehreren Empfindungen ergibt sich die Wahrnehmung eines Dinges: erst indem wir die weisse Farbe sehen, die Härte fühlen und den süssen Geschmack empfinden, erkennen wir ein Stück Zucker” (Das Leben der Seele (1857), 8, ii. 66). This and other passages in the same work follow the teaching of Steinthal; e.g. “Die Anschauung von einem Dinge ist der Complex der sämmtlichen Empfindungserkenntnisse, die wir von einem Dinge haben ... die Anschauung ist eine Synthesis, aber eine unmittelbare, die durch die Einheit der Seele gegeben ist.” And, following both these writers, Friedrich Müller says, “Diese Sammlung und Einigung der verschiedenen Empfindungen gemäss der in den Dingen verbundenen Eigenschaften heisst Anschauung” (Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, i. 26). On the other hand, their brother philologist, Geiger, strongly objects to this use of the term Anschauung, under which, he says, “wird theils etwas von der Sinneswahrnehmung gar nicht Unterschiedenes verstanden, theils auch ein dunkles Etwas, welches, ohne dass die Bedingungen und Ursachen zu erkennen sind, die Einheit der Wahrnehmungen zu kleineren und grössern Complexen bewirken soll.... So dass ich eine solche ‘Synthesis’ nicht auch bei dem Thiere ganz ebenso wie bei dem Menschen voraussetze: ich glaube im Gegentheile, dass es sich mit der Sprache erst entwickelt” (Ursprung der Sprache, 177, 178). Now, I have quoted these various passages because they serve to render, in a brief and instructive form, the different views which may be taken on a comparatively simple matter owing to the want of well-defined terms. No doubt the use of the term Anschauung by the above writers is unfortunate; but by it they appear to me clearly to indicate a nascent idea of what I mean by a recept. They all three fail to bring out this idea in its fulness, inasmuch as they restrict the powers of non-conceptual “synthesis” to a grouping of simple perceptions furnished by different sense-organs, instead of extending it to a synthesis of syntheses of perceptions, whether furnished by the same or also by different senses. But these three philologists are all on the right psychological track, and their critic Geiger is quite wrong in saying that there can be no synthesis of (non-conceptual) ideas without the aid of speech. As a matter of fact the dunkles Etwas which he complains of his predecessors as importing into the ideation of animals, is an Etwas which, when brought out into clearer light, is fraught with the highest importance. For, as we shall subsequently see, it is nothing less than the needful psychological condition to the subsequent development both of speech and thought. The term Apperception as used by some German psychologists is also inclusive of what I mean by receptual ideation. But as it is also inclusive of conceptual, nothing would here be gained by its adoption. Indeed F. Müller expressly restricts its meaning to conceptual ideation, for he says, “Alle psychischen Processe bis einschliesslich zur Perception lassen sich ohne Sprache ausführen und vollkommen begreifen, die Apperception dagegen lässt sich nur an der Hand der Sprache denken” (loc. cit. i., 29).
[33] As stated in a previous foot-note, this truth is well exhibited by M. Binet, loc. cit.
[34] The word Logic is derived from λόγος, which in turn is derived from λέδω, to arrange, to lay in order, to pick up, to bind together.