I have thus given the best account which it is in my power to give of the understanding, as that conscious, comprehensive principle, which is the source not only of judgment and reasoning, but which is implied in every possible idea of the mind, or conception even of sensible objects. Every such object, it has been shewn, is made up of a number of individual impressions, yet how these perfectly detached, and desultory impressions should of themselves contain or produce a knowledge of their relations to each other, of their order, number, likeness, distances, limits, &c. by which alone they can be connected into one whole—without being first communicated to the same conscious principle of thought, to one diffusive, and yet self-centered intellect, one undivided active spirit, co-extended with the object, and yet ever present to itself, that

‘Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line,’

it is difficult to imagine. There is no idea that is not evolved from this coinstantaneous power in the mind. The activity which Shakespeare ascribes to Ariel is not greater than that which is necessary to the production of the meanest thought. ‘Jove’s light’nings more momentary and sight-outrunning are not!’

An English Metaphysician.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED (ON ABSTRACTION)

The Morning Chronicle.][April 8, 1814.

I am aware that the long digression on the formation of our ideas, with which I troubled you in my last, will be looked upon as rhapsody and extravagance by the strictest sect of those who are called philosophers. The understanding has been set aside by these ingenious persons as an awkward incumbrance, since they conceived it practicable to carry on the whole business of thought and reason by a succession of individual images and sensible points. The fine network of the mind, the intellectual cords that bind and hold our scattered perceptions together, and form the living line of communication between them, are dissolved and vanish before the clear light of modern metaphysics, as the gossamer is dissipated by the sun. The adepts in this system smile at the contradictions involved in the supposition of perceiving the relations between different things, and say that the common theory of the understanding leads to the absurdity that the mind may attend to two ideas at once, which is with them impossible. What I have endeavoured to establish, is, that if the mind cannot have more than one idea at a time, it can never have any, since all the ideas we know of consist of more than one; and though the conviction we have of attending to different impressions at once, when we compare, distinguish, judge, reason, &c. has been gratuitously resolved into a deception of the mind, mistaking a rapid succession of objects for a joint conception of them, yet it will hardly be pretended that we deceive ourselves in thinking we have any ideas at all. Whether the advocates for this hypothesis will sit down contented under the total dissipation of all thought, the utter privation of all ideas, to which, by their own arguments, they will have reduced themselves, it remains for them to determine. We have seen that Mr. Tooke resolves the complexity of our ideas into the complexity of the terms made use of. How a term can be complex, otherwise than from the complexity of its meaning, that is, of the idea attached to it, is by no means easy to understand. Other writers, to avoid the seeming contradiction of supposing the mind to divide its attention between different objects, have suggested the instant of its passing from one to the other as the true point of comparison between them; or that the time when it had the idea of both together, was the time when it had an idea of neither. To such absurdities are ingenious men driven by setting up argument against fact, and denying the most obvious truths for which they cannot account, like the sophist who denied the existence of motion, because he could not understand its nature. It might perhaps be deemed a sufficient answer to those who build systems and lay down learned propositions on the principle that the mind can comprehend but one idea at a time, to say that they consequently can have no meaning in what they write, since when they begin a sentence, they cannot have the least idea what will be the end of it, and by the time they get there, must totally forget the beginning.—‘Peace to all such.’[[12]]

Mr. Horne Tooke justly complains of the uncertainty, confusion, and laxity of Mr. Locke’s reasoning on the subject of abstract ideas, though I cannot agree with him that it is therefore ‘very different from that incomparable author’s usual method of proceeding.’—See Essay on Human Understanding, vol. ii. p. 15, &c.

I am quite at a loss to determine, from Mr. Locke’s various statements, whether he really supposed the abstraction to be in the ideas, or merely in the terms. There is none of this wavering and perplexity in the minds of his French commentators, none of this suspicion of error, and anxious desire to correct it; no unforeseen objections arise to stagger their natural confidence in themselves; it is all the same light, airy, self-complacency, not a speck is seen to sully the clear sky of their philosophy, not a wrinkle disturbs the smooth and smiling current of their thoughts. In the Logic of the Abbé Condillac, that manual of the modern sciolist, the question of abstract ideas is settled and cleared from all difficulties, past, present, and to come, with as little expence of thought, time, and trouble, as possible. The Abbé demonstrates with ease.

‘But what in truth,’ he asks, ‘is the reality which a general and abstract idea has in the mind? It is nothing but a name; or if it is any thing more, it necessarily ceases to be abstract and general. If in thinking of a man in general I contemplate anything in this word, besides the mere denomination, it can only be by representing to myself some one man; and a man can no more be a man in the abstract in my mind than in nature. Abstract ideas are therefore only denominations. This confirms what we have already demonstrated, how necessary words are to us; for if we had no general terms, we should have no abstract ideas; if we had no abstract ideas, we should have neither genera nor species; and without genera and species, we could reason upon nothing. To speak, to reason, to form general and abstract ideas, are then in fact the same thing; and this truth, simple as it is, might pass for a discovery. Certainly, men in general have not even had a notion of it.’—Logic, p. 136.