Now I grant that Mr. Locke’s own principles, and a physical consideration of the mind, do lead to the conclusion here stated, that is, to an absurdity; and it is from thence I have endeavoured to show more than once that those principles, and the considering the mind as a physical thing, are themselves absurd. How a term can be complex otherwise than from the complexity of its meaning, that is, of the idea attached to it, is difficult to understand.
As to the other position, that we have no general ideas, but that it is the terms only that are general and abstract, Mr. Tooke has borrowed this piece of philosophy from Mr. Locke, who borrowed it from Hobbes. ‘Universality’ says Mr. Locke, as quoted by our author, ‘belongs not to things, which are all of them particular in their existence. When, therefore, we quit particulars, the generals that rest are only creatures of our own; their general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put into of signifying or representing many particulars.’ I have, however, before shown how very loose, uncertain, and wavering, Mr. Locke’s reasoning on this subject is, though I cannot agree with Mr. Tooke that it is therefore ‘very different from that incomparable author’s usual method of proceeding.’ There is one question which may be asked with respect to this statement, which, if fairly answered, will perhaps, decide the point in dispute: viz. if there is no general nature in things, or if we have no general idea of what they have in common or the same, how is it that we know when to apply the same general terms to different particulars, which on this principle will have nothing left to connect them together in the mind? For example, take the words, a white horse. Now say they, it is the terms which are general or common, but we have no general or abstract idea corresponding to them. But if we had no general idea of white, nor any general idea of a horse, we should have nothing more to guide us in applying this phrase to any but the first horse, than in applying the terms of an unknown tongue to their respective objects. For it is the idea of something general or common between the several objects, which can alone determine us in assigning the same name to things which, considered as particulars, or setting aside that general nature, are perfectly distinct and independent. Without this link in the mind, this general perception of the qualities of things, the terms a white horse could no more be applied, and would, in fact, be no more applicable to animals of this description generally, than to any other animal. In short, what is it that ‘puts the same common name into a capacity of signifying many particulars,’ but that those particulars are, and are conceived to be of the same kind? That is, general terms necessarily imply a class of things and ideas. Language without this would be reduced to a heap of proper names: and we should be just as much at a loss to name any object generally, from its agreement with others, as to know whether we should call the first man we met in the street by the name of John or Thomas. The existence and use of general terms is alone a sufficient proof of the power of abstraction in the human mind; nor is it possible to give even a plausible account of language without it. But Mr. Tooke has on all possible occasions sacrificed common sense to a false philosophy and epigrammatic logic. In opposition to this author’s assertion, that we have neither complex nor abstract ideas, I think it may be proved to a demonstration that we have no others. If our ideas were absolutely simple and individual, we could have no idea of any of those objects which in this erring, half-thinking philosophy are called individual, as a table or a chair, a blade of grass, or a grain of sand. For every one of these includes a certain configuration, hardness, colour, &c. i.e. ideas of different things, and received by different senses, which must be put together by the understanding before they can be referred to any particular thing, or form one idea. Without the cementing power of the mind, all our ideas would be necessarily decomposed and crumbled down into their original elements and flexional parts. We could indeed never carry on a chain of reasoning on any subject, for the very links of which this chain must consist, would be ground to powder. No two of these atomic impressions could ever club together to form even a sensible point, much less should we be able ever to arrive at any of the larger masses, or nominal descriptions of things. All nature, all objects, all parts of all objects would be equally ‘without form and void.’ The mind alone is formative, to borrow the expression of a celebrated German writer, or it is that alone which by its pervading and elastic energy unfolds and expands our ideas, that gives order and consistency to them, that assigns to every part its proper place, and that constructs the idea of the whole. Ideas are the offspring of the understanding, not of the senses. In other words, it is the understanding alone that perceives relation, but every object is made up of a bundle of relations. In short, there is no object or idea which does not consist of a number of parts arranged in a certain manner, but of this arrangement the parts themselves cannot be conscious. A ‘physical consideration of the senses and the mind’ can never therefore account for our ideas, even of sensible objects. Mr. Locke’s own principles do indeed exclude all power of understanding from the human mind. The manner in which Hobbes and Berkeley have explained the nature of mathematical demonstration upon this system shows its utter inadequacy to any of the purposes of general reasoning, and is a plain confession of the necessity of abstract ideas. Mr. Hume considers the principle that abstraction is not an operation of the mind, but of language, as one of the most capital discoveries of modern philosophy, and attributes it to Bishop Berkeley. Berkeley has however only adopted the arguments and indeed almost the very words of Hobbes. The latter author in the passage which has been already quoted says, ‘By this imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter signification, we turn the reckoning of the consequences of things imagined in the mind into a reckoning of the consequences of appellations. For example, a man that hath no use of speech at all, such as is born and remains perfectly deaf and dumb, if he set before his eyes a triangle, and by it two right angles, (such as are the corners of a square figure) he may by meditation compare and find that the three angles of that triangle are equal to those two right angles that stand by it. But if another triangle be shewn him different in shape from the former, he cannot know without a new labour, whether the three angles of that also be equal to the same. But he that hath the use of words, when he observes that such equality was consequent not to the length of the sides, nor to any other particular thing in his triangle, but only to this, that the sides were straight and the angles three, and that that was all for which he named it a triangle, will boldly conclude universally, that such equality of angles is in all triangles whatsoever; and register his invention in these general terms: Every triangle hath its three angles equal to two right ones. And thus the consequence found in one particular, comes to be registered and remembered as an universal rule; and discharges our mental reckoning of time and place, and delivers us from all labour of the mind saving the first, and makes that which was found true here and now to be true in all times and places.’—Leviathan, p. 14.
Bishop Berkeley gives the same view of the nature of abstract reasoning in the introduction to his ‘Principles of Human Knowledge.’ ‘But here,’ he says, ‘it will be demanded how we can know any proposition to be true of all particular triangles, except we have first seen it demonstrated of the abstract idea of a triangle, which agrees equally to all. To which I answer, that though the idea I have in view, whilst I make the demonstration be, for instance, that of an isosceles rectangular triangle, whose sides are of a determinate length, I may nevertheless be certain it extends to all other rectilinear triangles of what sort or bigness soever. And that because neither the right angle nor the equality nor the determinate length of the sides are at all concerned in the demonstration. ’Tis true, the diagram I have in view includes all these particulars, but then there’s not the least mention made of them in the proof of the proposition. It is not said the three angles are equal to two right ones, because one of them is a right angle, or because the sides comprehending it are of the same length; which sufficiently shows that the right angle might have been oblique and the sides unequal, and for all that the demonstration have held good. And for this reason it is that I conclude that to be true of any oblique angular or scalenon, which I had demonstrated of a particular right angled equicrural triangle, and not because I demonstrated the proposition of the abstract idea of a triangle.’—Page 34.
This answer does not appear to me satisfactory. It amounts to this, that though the diagram we have in view includes a number of particular circumstances, not applicable to other cases, yet we know the principle to be true generally, because there is not the least mention made of these particulars in the proof of the proposition.
When it is asserted that we must necessarily have the idea of a particular size whenever we think of a man in general, all that is intended I believe is that we must think of a particular height. This idea it is supposed must be particular and determinate, just as we must draw a line with a piece of chalk, or make a mark with the slider of a measuring instrument in one place and not in another. I think it may be shown that this view of the question is also extremely fallacious and an inversion of the order of our ideas. The height of the individual is thus resolved into the consideration of the lines terminating or defining it, and the intermediate space of which it properly consists is entirely overlooked. For let us take any given height of a man, whether tall, short, or middle-sized, and let that height be as visible as you please, I would ask whether the actual length to which it amounts does not consist of a number of other lengths, as if it be a tall man, the length will be six feet, and each of these feet will consist of as many inches, and those inches will be again made up of decimals, and those decimals of other subordinate and infinitesimal parts, which must be all distinctly perceived and added together before the sum total which they compose can be pretended to be a distinct, particular, or individual idea. In any given visible object we have always a gross, general idea of something extended, and never of the precise length; for this precise length as it is thought to be is necessarily composed of a number of lengths too many, and too minute to be separately attended to or jointly conceived by the mind, and at last loses itself in the infinite divisibility of matter. What sort of distinctness or individuality can therefore be found in any visible image or object of sense, I cannot well conceive: it seems to me like seeking for certainty in the dancing of insects in the evening sun, or for fixedness and rest in the motions of the sea. All particulars are nothing but generals, more or less defined according to circumstances, but never perfectly so. The knowledge of any finite being rests in generals, and if we think to exclude all generality from our ideas of things, as implying a want of perfect truth and clearness, we must be constrained to remain in utter ignorance. Let any one try the experiment of counting a flock of sheep driven fast by him, and he will soon find his imagination unable to keep pace with the rapid succession of objects; and his idea of a particular number slide into the general notion of multitude: not that because there are more objects than he can possibly count he will think there are none, or that the word flock will present to his mind a mere name without any idea corresponding to it. Every act of the attention, every object we see or think of, offers a proof of the same kind.
The application of this view of the subject to explain the difference between the synthetical and analytical faculties, between generalization and abstraction in the proper acceptation of this last word, between common sense or feeling and understanding or reason, demands a separate essay.
I do not think it possible ever to arrive at the truth upon these, or to prove the existence of general or abstract ideas, by beginning in Mr. Locke’s method with particular ones. This faculty of abstraction or generalization (to use the words indifferently) is indeed by most considered as a sort of artificial refinement upon our other ideas, as an excrescence, no ways contained in the common impressions of things, nor scarcely necessary to the common purposes of life; and is by Mr. Locke altogether denied to be among the faculties of brutes. It is the ornament and top-addition of the mind of man which proceeding from simple sensation upwards, is gradually sublimed into the abstract notions of things: ‘so from the root springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves more airy, last the bright consummate flower.’ On the other hand, I imagine that all our notions from first to last are, strictly speaking, general and abstract, not absolute and particular, and that this faculty mixes itself more or less with every act of the mind, and in every moment of its existence.
Lastly, I conceive that the mind has not been fairly dealt with in this and other questions of the same kind. The difficulty belonging to the notion of abstraction or comprehension it is perhaps impossible ever to clear up: but that is no reason why we should discard those operations from the human mind any more than we should deny the existence of motion, extension, or curved lines in nature, because we cannot explain them. Matter alone seems to have the privilege of presenting difficulties and contradictions at any time, which pass current under the name of facts; but the moment any thing of this kind is observed in the understanding, all the petulance of logicians is up in arms. The mind is made the mark on which they vent all the modes and figures of their impertinence; and metaphysical truth has in this respect fared like the milk-white hind, the emblem of pure faith, in Dryden’s fable, which
‘Has oft been chased
With Scythian shafts and many winged wounds