The evolution of general ideas

by Th. Ribot

“Whatever diversity may exist between metaphysical systems, they are all founded upon the express or implied supposition that there is a fixed correspondence between concepts and their filiations on the one hand and things and their mode of interdependence on the other. This fundamental error is in great part due to a delusory view of the function of language as an aid to the formation and fixation of concepts. Roughly stated, concepts are the meanings of words; and the circumstances that words primarily designate things, or at least objects of sensation and their sensible interactions, has given rise to certain fallacious assumptions which, unlike the ordinary infractions of the laws of logic, are in a sense natural outgrowths of the evolution of thought (not without analogy to the organic diseases incident to bodily life) and may be termed structural fallacies of the intellect. These assumptions are:

“1. That every concept is the counterpart of a distinct objective reality, and that hence there are as many things, or natural classes of things, as there are concepts or notions.

“2. That the more general or extensive concepts and the realities corresponding to them pre-exist to the less general, more comprehensive, concepts and their corresponding realities; and that the latter concepts and realities are derived from the former, either by a successive addition of attributes or properties, or by a process of evolution, the attributes or properties of the former being taken as implications of those of the latter.

“3. That the order of the genesis of concepts is identical with the order of the genesis of things.

“4. That things exist independently of and antecedently to their relations; that all relations are between absolute terms; and that therefore whatever reality belongs to the properties of things is distinct from that of the things themselves.”

The differences between this procedure and that proper to the third (or scientific) direction need hardly be enumerated.

Here the advance is step by step, without for an instant losing hold of the thread that leads back to the starting-point of experience. Even where the mind takes giant strides, or leaps across the intermediate generalisations, it pauses to verify its results and to take up the thread it had loosed for the moment. This is the typical process. Since it formed the basis of our discussion of the intermediate and higher forms of abstraction, we need not here return to it. Yet in conclusion, it is well to recall once more what makes it of sterling value.

To reduce the essentials of abstraction and generalisation to the exclusive use of the word (or sign) as is customary, is an error that can only be explained by the time-honored neglect of the function of the unconscious in psychology. The sign is no more than an instrument of simplification, an abbreviated formula. When the mind works with the aid of concepts, the co-operation of two factors, the one conscious, the other unconscious or subconscious, is required, in order that its labor may be legitimate and fruitful: on the one hand, we have words or signs, accompanied sometimes by a vague representation; on the other hand, a latent, potential, organised knowledge. We endeavored above ([Ch. IV.]) to show how this couple forms and fixes itself. The mechanism is invariably the same, without exception. Whether we keep up a trivial conversation by means of the abstract terms which compose our languages, or whether we ascend to the highest generalisations, there is in the mental state no more than a difference in degree; there is no difference in nature. Beneath the words that are the clear factors, exists the dumb travail, the vague invocation, of the organised experience that gives life to them. Without this unconscious factor which may, often does, become conscious, there is nought but illusion. When we induct, deduct, traverse a long series of abstractions to demonstrate or to discover, the useful work consists in new relations which establish themselves in our organised potential knowledge; words are no more than the instruments that commence the task, facilitate and mark its phases. When the mind is grappling with the highest abstractions, and climbs from height to height, what preserves it from catastrophe, and guarantees against error, is the quantity and quality of the unconscious material stored up beneath the words. The entomologist who at first sight, and immediately, classifies one insect among millions of species, acts in virtue of his long experience, impressed firmly in his memory with salient characteristics: he proceeds from the sensory data to the name. In the inverse operation, when he merely enunciates the name, all this acquired knowledge is the substrate. The existence of these conscious-unconscious couples is, so to speak, a rule in psychology: general ideas are but a particular case, perhaps the least well-known: hence we previously likened them ([Ch. IV.]) to mental habits.

It follows that in proportion as we ascend in generalisation we rise, not into vacuity, as has been said, but into the simple—as also, it must be confessed, into the approximate. The relatively empty concepts (there are none that are absolutely void of content) are the product of a discontinuous generalisation which prevents descent without interruption or omission into the concrete. Of course these are chiefly encountered in the world of pure speculation. They are names representing a knowledge that is incomplete, partial, inadequate, or ill-organised; they correspond not to elimination of what is useless, but to deficit of what is necessary. Having no possible contact with reality, they float in an unreal atmosphere, and are material for a fragile and quickly crumbling architecture. The aim of thinking by concepts is to substitute for complex states, simpler conditions that may be turned and re-turned in every possible sense, in order the better to discover their relations: whereas here, by the nature of things, the unconscious activity, the labor that operates silently in the lower strata, is applied to a soil that is full of faults and fissures, and can but project a false light into consciousness.

It has frequently been stated that symbolic thought is thinking by substitution. This formula is admissible only when we recognise that the substitute supposes, nay expects, the actual existence of that for which it is substituted. Substitution is valid in consciousness, but not for the total operation. To sum up in a word: the psychology of abstraction and generalisation, is in a great measure the psychology of the unconscious.