[103] For an account of such composite photographic pictures, and their analogy to generic (mental) images, see Mr. F. Galton's Inquiries into Human Faculty. Appendix, "Generic Images."
Such a process of deepening and accentuating common traits and effacing individual or variable ones can only be looked on as a tendency never perfectly fulfilled. Interesting differences would in all cases tend to reinstate themselves. Thus my own generic image of a church happens to be a building with a tall spire, because the finest church in my native town was of this form. Recent examples would also tend to contribute variable peculiarities. Thus the baby's generic image of a dog might have the distinguishing characters of the dog last seen.
This process of cumulative assimilation would be largely passive and independent of those active processes of comparison, just described. It would further be capable of being carried forward (to some extent at least) independently of language. Hence we may, with some degree of confidence, attribute generic images to the child before he comes to the use of words and to many of the lower animals. Thus it is highly probable that a baby of six months forms a generic image of the human face out of the percepts answering to its mother's face, nurse's face, etc., and that when suffering from loneliness it has this image in its mind. Similarly a predatory animal may be supposed to compound a generic image out of the percepts gained from this, that, and the other specimen of his prey, so that when seized with hunger, this typical image is recalled.
In order to illustrate what is meant by a generic image, it is important to take the case of a pure representation detached from a presentation. Thus we cannot say that because a diving bird recognises a new sheet of water, it must have at the moment, a generic image answering to water. The recognition of a thing does not imply a distinct representation of the thing as previously seen. The presentative and representative ingredients are fused in this case, or to express it otherwise, the image is latent and undeveloped. Similarly with respect to such rudimentary processes of conception or general ideation as those here considered. We can only attribute a developed and detached generic image to baby or animal when we have reason to think that these occur in the absence of percepts, e. g. in states of desire, in dreams, and so forth.[104]
[104] The argument in support of the proposition that generic images, or (as the writer calls them) "recepts" are actually reached by the lower animals is ably set forth by Dr. Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, p. 51 et seqq.
Relation of Generic Image to General Idea.—The question still remains how far such generic images are, properly speaking, general ideas in the sense defined above. Is, for example, the typical face that is pictured by the lonely infant thought of as something common to this, that, and the other concrete object? Does it carry with it any clear consciousness of a general class of things? There is no certain proof that this is so. It must be remembered here that the mental image corresponding to one and the same individual object, as the infant's mother, is composite also and in the same way as the generic image. Thus the baby forms the image of its mother out of a number of practically unlike percepts, corresponding to varying appearances of the object in different positions, different light, different dress, and so forth.[105] Generic images accordingly differ not in kind, but only in degree (viz. proportion of common to variable feature taken up and accentuated) from particular or concrete images. And so long as they remain merely pictorial images, there seems no reason to attribute to them any general function or import.
[105] Cf. Taine, On Intelligence, Part i, Book ii, Ch. 2.
The true process of conception, as generalisation or general ideation, that is a conscious representation of something as common to many as distinguished from one, involves the active processes of thought, analysis and synthesis, abstraction and comparison. It is only when the child begins consciously to break up its images to mark off this element or feature from that, and by help of such analysis discerns and demarcates common features that general thought properly so called, appears. In this way it reaches a distinct idea at once of an individual thing and of general or common aspects among individuals. We have now to examine into this true thought-process.
Transition to Conception Proper.—The transition from merely imagining to thinking proper is effected by processes of reflective attention in which abstraction and comparison play a chief part. In order to understand how this occurs we may suppose the process of automatic assimilation checked by the introduction of some impressive difference. Thus a child proceeds to play with a visitor's dog and finds it wanting in the friendly sentiments of his own pet. Here difference which, in the earlier stage of automatic assimilation, remained indistinct in the background of consciousness, is brought forward. The unlikeness of morale in spite of the likeness of physique is forced on his attention, the present percept is separated from and opposed to the image, and a step is taken in marking off likeness from surrounding difference.
As differences thus come into distinct view and impress themselves on the mind as the constant accompaniment of likenesses, a new and explicit grasp of likeness-in-difference ensues. This starts from a mental separation of the several perceptual constituents of the generic image, and a reflective comparison of these one with another, so as to demarcate common features or likenesses from peculiar features or unlikeness. Such comparison, or series of comparisons, begins with incomplete analysis and vague apprehension of likeness and ends in a more complete analysis and more definite apprehension of likeness. In this way, for example, the child waking up to differences among apples, goes back on his various experiences, and by noticing and setting aside variability of taste, size, etc., gets a clear grasp of the common essential features. Such a conscious active separation of definite points of resemblance from among a confusing mass of difference is what psychologists and logicians more especially mean by Abstraction.