[118] According to logicians a general name denotes certain things (members of a class) and connotes certain qualities in these things. For the terms denotation and connotation those of extension and intension are often substituted. See Jevons, Elementary Lessons on Logic, Lesson v.
Formation of more Abstract Notions.—A similar process of comparison and abstraction clinched by a linguistic sign takes place in the formation of those general ideas which answer to few common qualities, and are altogether removed from the plane of the generic image, as for example 'animal.' It is obvious that we cannot compound a quasi-concrete image of animal as we can, roughly at least, compound an image of dog. There is no common form running through the vast variety of animals that renders this possible.[119] There is indeed an image-element here, for in thinking of animals most people probably image imperfectly one of the more familiar quadrupeds. Here the general representative function of the image is still more evident. A child cannot form the idea animal till he has attained a considerable skill in the use of verbal signs as general. For to represent animal (in general) is to repress the tendency to image particular concrete examples, and to give peculiar and exclusive prominence to a few properties, such as spontaneous movement, sensation, which can only be grasped by a special effort of abstraction; and can only be brought before the mind by the medium of a verbal sign.
[119] Cf. Lotze, Logic, p. 38.
These higher steps in the thought-process become possible by means of the verbally embodied results of the lower steps. It is after the child has formed the general ideas, dog, horse, and so forth, that he climbs to the more difficult, more comprehensive, and more abstract idea, animal. In this way, we may say with Hamilton, that language is to the mind what the arch is to the tunnel, the necessary precondition of all advanced thought-work.
It is not meant by this that the child progresses regularly from notions of a comparatively small range to more comprehensive ones. It must be remembered that it is often easier for a child to form an idea of a larger class or genus than of one of its constituent sub-classes or species, viz. when the form presents prominent easily discernible points of likeness, and when the distinctive features of the latter are obscure. Thus the child uses the name tree before he uses the name oak-tree, and so forth. This is what is meant by saying that the child sees likenesses before he sees differences.
In this brief account of the name-embodied concept reference has been made only to those names which grammarians call nouns, and of these only to such as are names of things. By the same mental process by which the child reaches the idea orange, it reaches the idea yellow, round, and so forth. The clear use of adjectives as qualifying epithets marks a higher stage of analysis than the first use of names, viz. the separating out for special consideration of single qualities in things. Hence in the imitative speech of the child, the first use of adjectives follows by an appreciable interval that of names.[120] This separate apprehension of single qualities becomes still more distinct when abstract nouns such as whiteness, height, come to be used. As the etymology of such names shows they come after concrete names in the development of the thought of the race and community, and are invented by help of such concrete names. The individual only acquires the use of these abstract names when intelligence has developed under the stimulating and controlling influence of education.
[120] One or two adjectives as ni-ni (nice) are used along with nouns from the first, but these probably so far as names are on the level of nouns, i. e. names of things as concrete wholes. It must not be supposed however, that the child or the race begins with a clear apprehension of any one class of words. The several classes of words distinguished by the grammarian are confused at first and are only differentiated as intelligence advances. All that is meant here is, that the child knows and names things as concrete wholes before it begins to qualify them, or discern particular qualities in them. On the differentiation of nouns etc., in the early use of language, see Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, p. 219 et seqq. and p. 295 et seqq.
It is only when analysis is thus carried up to the point of a separate consideration of single qualities that the class-notion, the representative of a group of qualities, becomes definite and concise. A perfectly clear general idea of a class means one of the constituent elements of which we can separately attend to and name.
Conception as Dependent on Social Environment.—It is evident from this brief sketch of the development of the general idea that it is a process that is largely dependent on the action of the social environment. Language is pre-eminently the invention and instrument of social life. It is the medium by which we communicate one to another our ideas, wishes, and so forth. In the early years of life the undeveloped intelligence of the child is continually roused to activity through his desire to enter into the system of language which he finds others using. In this way the results of ages of thought-processes embodied in the language of educated men and women are brought to bear on the growing mind, and these constitute a main ingredient in the educational influence of the community upon the individual. The profound and far reaching influence of this medium of common word-embodied ideas is clearly seen in the arrest of intellectual development when contact with the general mind through language is excluded, as in the case of neglected deaf-mutes. As Professor Huxley says, "A race of dumb men deprived of all communication with those who could speak would be little indeed removed from the brutes."[121]
[121] Quoted by Professor Horatio Hale, in The Origin of Language, p. 42.