A somewhat like relation holds between analysis as a subconscious process of differentiation and a conscious act of discrimination. Thus in analysing a clang we must, agreeably to what was said above, have a vague impression of the difference between one tone and another. And such subconscious differentiation readily becomes the starting-point in a full conscious apprehension by an act of comparing attention of the differences between the several ingredients.[100]
[100] Stumpf uses the term Analysis for the mere vague detection of plurality of elements in a sensation-complex which he considers to be distinct from, and preliminary to a discrimination of them as different one from the other. Tonpsychologie ii. p. 104 et seqq.
Thus far we have been occupied with the two fundamental processes in thought and we have illustrated these in their simplest form as employed about presentations or their equivalents, concrete representations. But as already pointed out what we mean by thought is the representation of things as classes or generalities. All the more interesting and momentous problems relating to thought, such as the question whether the lower animals think or reason as we do, have reference to such general thinking. We have now to examine the processes involved in this thinking.
These fully developed thought-processes are marked off by the use of what is known as the general idea or notion such as man or virtue. Such general ideas when reduced to a precise form as by the logician are spoken of as concepts. And since the science of logic assumes thinking to take place by help of such conceptual products we may also speak of these full or explicit thought-processes as Conceptual Thought.[101]
[101] The use of such expressions must not, however, blind us to the fact that a concept strictly speaking is something logical, an ideal form of the general idea rarely if ever realised in our actual thinking processes. Of this more presently.
General Ideas and their Formation.—In seeking to trace the development of this general thinking we have first of all to consider the nature and origin of general ideas. It is evident that we only think about things generally in a distinct manner when we are able to form such ideas. Thus I cannot think out the proposition 'The mushroom is a fungus' until I am able to form the general ideas mushroom and fungus. The difficult problems respecting the nature of thought, its relation to language, and its extension beyond man to the lower animals, have been discussed in close connection with the nature and origin of general ideas.
A general idea may for our present purpose be defined as an idea having a general import or reference. Thus a child's idea of dog, home, or father, becomes general when he consciously employs the term as the sign of this, that, and any other particular object which may answer to a certain description or be found to present certain characteristic attributes or traits; or, as the logicians express it, a general idea is a representation of a general class of things.[102]
[102] The reader must be careful to distinguish the meaning of the term class as here used from its meaning when applied to a definite number of objects viewed as a collection, as a class of children in a school. In thinking of man as a (logical) class I do not represent a definite number at all; nor do I represent men as a collection. It would be more correct to say that I am representing in a more or less distinct way the fact that this, that, and an indefinite list of other things are related as like or answering to one description. How this mode of representation is effected will appear presently.
Now it is evident that general ideas as thus defined are reached slowly and by degrees. It is exceedingly doubtful whether any of the lower animals possess them. The baby does not possess them and even after attaining to speech remains for a long time with only the rudiments of them. In their perfected articulate form as required for exact scientific thought they are confined to a few highly trained minds.
Generic Images.—The first stage in the formation of such general ideas is the welding together of a number of concrete images into what has been called a generic image. The idea tree or house may be taken as an example. Such generic images appear to be formed by a process of assimilative cumulation. Let us suppose that a child after observing one dog, sees a second. In this case the strong resemblance in the second to the first effects a process of assimilation analogous to automatic or "unconscious" assimilation. That is to say, the percept corresponding to the second animal is instantly fused with the surviving image of the first by reason of easily apprehended points of likeness. By such successive assimilations a cumulative effect is produced which has been likened to that of the superposition of a number of photographic impressions received from different members of a class, (e. g. criminal,) whereby common features get accentuated and so a typical form is produced.[103]