The names of the ideas which are thus mentally clustered, are exempt from that ambiguity which we saw belonged to the names of both classes of sensible ideas. The names of sensible ideas generally stand for the sensations as well as the ideas. The names of the mental ideas are not transferable to sensations. But they are subject to another uncertainty, still more fertile in confusion, and embarrassment.
As the combinations are formed arbitrarily, or in other words, as the ideas of which they are composed, are more or less numerous, according to pleasure, and each man of necessity forms his own combination, it very often happens, that one man includes something more or something less than another man in the combination to which they both give the same name. Using the same words, they have not exactly the same ideas. In the term piety, for example, a good catholic includes many things which are not included in it by a good protestant. In the term good manners, an Englishman of the present day does not include the same ideas which were included in it by an Englishman two centuries ago; still less those which are included in it by foreigners of habits and usages dissimilar to our own. Prudence, in the mind of a man of rank and fortune, has a very different meaning from what it bears in the minds of the 142 frugal and industrious poor. Under this uncertainty in language, it not only happens that men are often using the same expressions when they have different ideas; but different, when they have the same ideas.[44]
[44] There is some need for additional elucidation of the class of complex ideas distinguished (under the name of Mixed Modes) by Locke, and recognised by the author of the Analysis, as “put together in a great degree at our discretion;” as “those which the mind forms arbitrarily,” so that “the ideas of which they are composed are more or less numerous according to pleasure, and each man of necessity forms his own combination.” From these and similar phrases, interpreted literally, it might be supposed that in the instances given, a centaur, a mountain of gold, comfort, meanness, fear, courage, temperance, ignorance, republic, aristocracy, monarchy, piety, good manners, prudence—the elements which constitute these several complex ideas are put together premeditatedly, by an act of will, which each individual performs for himself, and of which he is conscious. This, however, happens only in cases of invention, or of what is called creative imagination. A centaur and a mountain of gold are inventions: combinations intentionally made, at least on the part of the first inventor; and are not copies or likenesses of any combination of impressions received by the senses, nor are supposed to have any such outward phenomena corresponding to them. But the other ideas mentioned in the text, those of courage, temperance, aristocracy, monarchy, &c., are supposed to have real originals outside our thoughts. These ideas, just as much as those of a horse and a tree, are products of generalization and abstraction: they are believed to be ideas of certain points or features in which a number of the clusters of sensations which we call real objects agree: and instead of being formed by intentionally putting together simple ideas, they are formed by stripping off, or rather, by not attending to, such of the simple sensations or ideas entering into the 143 clusters as are peculiar to any of them, and establishing an extremely close association among those which are common to them all. These complex ideas, therefore, are not, in reality, like the creations of mere imagination, put together at discretion, any more than the complex ideas, compounded of the obvious sensible qualities of objects, which we call our ideas of the objects. They are formed in the same manner as these, only not so rapidly or so easily, since the particulars of which they are composed do not obtrude themselves upon the senses, but suppose a perception of qualities and sequences not immediately obvious. From this circumstance results the consequence noticed by the author, that this class of complex ideas are often of different composition in different persons. For, in the first place, different persons abstract their ideas of this sort from different individual instances; and secondly, some persons abstract much better than others; that is, take more accurate notice of the obscurer features of instances, and discern more correctly what are those in which all the instances agree. This important subject will be more fully entered into when we reach that [part] of the present work which treats of the ideas connected with General Terms.—Ed.
SECTION II.
NOUNS ADJECTIVE.
As the purpose of language is to denote sensations and ideas; to mark them for our own use, or to give indication of them to our fellow men; it is obvious that the names of sensations and ideas are the fundamental parts of language. But as ideas are very numerous, and the limits of the human memory admit the use of only a limited number of marks or names, various contrivances are employed to make one name serve as many purposes as possible.
Of the contrivances for making the use of each word as extensive as possible, we have already adverted to one of great importance; that of arranging ideas in classes, and making one name stand for each individual of the class. When the classes are large, one word or mark serves to name or indicate many individuals.
But when, for the sake of economizing names, those classes have been made as large as possible, we often find occasion for breaking them down into smaller parcels, or sub-classes, and speaking of these sub-classes by themselves.
An example will render what is here expressed sufficiently plain. The term sound, is the name of a large class of ideas or sensations; for it is equally the name of both; the sound of thunder, the sound of a cannon, the whistling of the wind, the voice of a man, the howling of a dog, and so on.