Myth and Science / An Essay

by Tito Vignoli

Three modes or degrees of abstract representations occur in the progressive exercise of the intellectual faculty; these, combined with the special apprehensions of the individual memory, and with imaginative types, constitute the life of human thought, and are the conditions by which we attain to rational knowledge. While the specific mythical type may take the place of the general type in the logical exercise of thought, and may suffice for an imaginative comprehension of the system of the world, the abstract conception intervenes in the daily necessity for communication between these general mythical types, and serves to cement them together, thus rendering the commerce of ideas among men and in the human mind more easy.

The abstract conceptions which are formed in this way may be divided into three classes—physical, moral, and intellectual. To begin with the first; it is impossible for human speech to point out and define a subject or phenomenon in the series to which it belongs by resemblance, identity, or analogy, unless there is already in the mind a conception which includes the general qualities, or quality proper to the series of similar phenomena; this is essentially an abstract type, but it primarily assumes a concrete form. I cannot say that anything is white or heavy, until by repetitions of the same sensation I have been able to combine in a single conception the sensations diffused over an infinite number of objects. The genesis of these conceptions is found in the comparative explicit judgment which depends on the memory for the necessary conditions of its formation.

The typical and abstract idea of white has not merely a nominal value, as it is asserted in some schools of thought, for an empty term could express no idea, whereas this idea is perfectly clear. Neither is it a real thing, but rather an ideal reality, not a pure abstraction of the spirit, extracted, so to speak, from the material substance. The conception of whiteness formed by the comparative judgment is limited by the perception of the concrete, external fact perceived as one special quality among all other qualities in nature, and it is therefore a physiological fact of inward consciousness.

In the abstract idea of white or whiteness we do not only picture to ourselves a quality common to many things, but by this term, and by the idea which corresponds to it, the same sensation is actually present to our inward intuition, or the same quality of the sensation which was previously generated by our external senses in a concrete form. Although, therefore, the idea is generic, the sensation itself is represented to the mind in the form of a concrete perception. It is not concrete in the sense of belonging to a special object or definite form, as it is presented to the outward perception, but only so far as there is actually an inward and physiological sensation of whiteness, which the word recalls to the memory. There can be no mental confusion with the quality of red, or of any colour, when I speak or think of what is white.

When I speak or think of any object as white, I and others perfectly understand what is meant, and a representation of this quality is instantly formed in our minds, in the generic type which was gradually constituted by primitive man by the combination of numerous special sensations, obvious to the sight, and subsequently expressed in speech.

In order that the word which corresponds to the quality may have a given sense, it is necessary to perceive the form of the concrete sensation which gave rise to it; for although the representation is indefinite or generic, that is, not obvious to the external senses, yet it is not physiologically distinct from the sensation of the quality described; the perception of that quality is present by the aid of memory to the inner consciousness.

It is therefore evident that the physiological elements of consciousness are actually contained in so-called abstract ideas, although it is sometimes asserted that they are purely spiritual and intellectual acts, remote from every physiological process of fact and sense. An actual physiological fact (colour in this instance) corresponds to the idea in the nervous centres, and reproduces the sensation due to the perception of special objects, whose physical quality of whiteness we have perceived, and this sensation makes part of the abstract, or rather indefinite conception.

In fact, all which is not actually present to the mind—and the present is an infinitesimal fraction of knowledge—is reproduced by the memory, and this is effected by the molecular movements of the human brain, and by what may be called the ethereal modifications which took place when the sensations, perceptions, and acts first occurred. If the cells vibrate, and the organs of the brain are affected by the recollection of past ideas and acts, just as when they actually occurred (and this appears from Schiff's experiences as to the increase of the brain in heat and volume during dreams), this vibration will be still more marked when any quality which affects our senses is reproduced in the mind.

The particular form of the quality as it appears in a definite object is certainly wanting in the abstract conception; it remains in the first stage of pure sensation, like a spontaneous act of observation, and it is transformed into apprehension by the mental faculty. But the inward consciousness of the quality is actual, psychical, and physical. The abstract conception is a psychical symbol composed of idea and consciousness, or rather of act and consciousness; both are fused into a logical conception of indefinite form, yet consisting of real elements, that is, of cerebral motions and of sensations.

Estimated according to its genuine value, therefore, an abstract conception may be divided into three classes—physical, moral, and intellectual. Whiteness and colours in general, levity and weight, hardness, sound, and the like qualities, are all abstract types which belong to the physical class. Goodness, virtue, love, hatred, and anger must be assigned to the moral class; and equality, identity, number, and quantity, etc., to the intellectual class. Such abstract conceptions, without which human speech would be impossible, did not in the case of primitive man take the explicit and reflex form in which they are presented by mature science, and it is expedient to inquire what character they really assumed in the spontaneous exercise of thought and speech.