We have merely studied general ideas in so far as they have an assignable origin in experience, and do not transcend its limits. Are there, as some maintain, notions anterior to any sensory intuition—that can by no means nor effort be derived from empirical data? It is not our part to discuss this question. The thesis—whether or no it be legitimate—is a contention in favor of innate ideas, and in whatever fashion it is conceived (à priori forms, hereditary disposition, cerebral conformation), it is the problem of the ultimate constitution of human intelligence, which we have rigorously eliminated from our present subject.
FOOTNOTES
[1] La parole is here, and subsequently, translated by speech; le mot by words, or language,—verbal language being throughout understood.—Trans.
[2] Schmidkunz, Ueber die Abstraction. Halle: Stricker, 1889. This little work of forty-three pages contains a good historical and theoretical exposition of the question.
[3] Schmidkunz, loc. cit. This author, who rightly insists upon the positive character of abstraction (which is too frequently considered as a negation) observes that no concept, not even that of infinity, is in its psychological genesis the result of negation, for, “in order to deduce from the idea of a finite thing the idea of infinity, it is first necessary to abstract from that thing its quality of finality, which is certainly a positive act; subsequently, in order to reach infinity, it is sufficient either constantly to increase the time, magnitude, and intensity of the finite, which is a positive process; or to deny the limits of the finite, which is tantamount to denying the negation.”
[4] Psychology of Attention. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co.
[5] See especially Hoeffding, Psychologie. German translation. Second Edition, pp. 223 et seq.
[6] W. James, Psychology. Vol. I., p. 459.
[7] Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology. Vol. I., Part 2, Chapter II.—Bain (in the last chapter of Emotions and Will) says that nothing more fundamental can possibly be assigned as a mark of intelligence than the feeling of difference between consecutive or co-existing impressions. “There are cases, however, where agreement imparts the shock requisite for rousing the intellectual wave; but it is agreement so qualified as to be really a mode of difference.” For a review and ample discussion of this problem see Ladd’s Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, Chapter XIV. The earlier psychologists, in considering the “faculty of comparison” which acts by resemblance and difference, as primordial, had observed the same fact, although they described it in different terms.
[8] W. James, Psychology. Vol. I., pp. 502 and 506.