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.'1 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 Abbe 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 Abbe 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 1 So little has this principle of the unity of thought and consciousness been understood, that even Professor Stewart, the great champion of the intellectual philosophy, utterly rejects it, and supposes that the idea which the mind forms of any visible figure is nothing but a rapid succession of the ideas of the several parts. See his reasoning on this subject most ably confuted in a work lately published, entitled An Essay on Consciousness, by John Fearn.'-This Essay, in spite of the disad vantage of the mechanical hypothesis with which it is encumbered, and the technical obscurity of the style, contains, I think, more close and original observation on the individual processes of the human mind, than any work published in this country in the last fifty years. 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. Now, in order to prevent these genera and species, and all rational ideas along with them, from being precipitated into the empty abyss of words prepared for them by these philosophers, it may be proper to ask one question, viz. if we have no idea of genera and species, or of what different things have in common or alike, that is, if the idea is nothing but the name, how is it that we know when to apply the same general name to different particulars, which on this principle can have nothing left to connect them 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 have no general idea of white, nor any general idea of a horse, what have we left to guide us in applying the phrase to any but the first horse, any more than in applying the terms of an unknown tongue to their respective objects? In short, what is it that 'puts the same common name into a capacity of signifying many particulars,' but that common nature or kind which is conceived to belong to them? Condillac says, that without general terms, there would be no general ideas; it appears to me, that without general ideas there could be no general terms. Language without this would be reduced to a heap of proper names, and we should be as completely at a loss to class any object generally from its agreement with others, or to say at sight, this is a man, this is a horse, as to know whether we should call the first man we accidentally met in the street by the name of John or Thomas. The very existence of language is alone a sufficient proof of the power of abstraction in the human mind. It is so far from being true, according to the modern philosophy, that we have neither complex nor general ideas, that, I think, it may be proved to a demonstration that we have and can have no others. I must premise, however, that I do not believe it possible ever to arrive at general or abstract ideas by beginning in Mr. Locke's method with particular images. This faculty of abstraction is by most writers considered as a sort of artificial refinement upon our other ideas, as an excrescence no ways contained in the common impressions of things, nor necessary to the common purposes of life; and is by Mr. Locke altogether denied to be among the faculties of brutes. It is described as the ornament and top-addition of the mind of man, which proceeding from simple sensations upwards is gradually sublimed into the abstract notions of things : 'So from the root Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves On the contrary, I conceive that all our notions, from first to last, are (strictly speaking) general and abstract, not absolute or particular; and that to have a perfectly distinct idea of any one individual object or concrete existence, either as to the parts of which it is composed, or the differences belonging to it, or the circumstances connected with it, would require an unlimited power of comprehension in the human mind, which is impossible. All particular things consist of, and even lead to, an infinite number of other things. Abstraction is therefore a necessary consequence of the limitation of the comprehensive faculty, and mixes itself, more or less, with every act of the understanding, of whatever kind, during every moment of its existence. The same fallacy has led to the rejection of abstract and general ideas which has led to the rejection of complex ones, viz. that of supposing sensible images to be perfectly simple or individual things. But the truth is, that there is no one idea of an individual object which is any thing more than a general and imperfect notion of it: for as there is no such idea which does not relate to a number of complicated impressions and their connections, so we can conceive the whole of no one object. Again, there is no idea of a particular quality of any object, which is perfectly simple and definite, but the result of a number of sensible impressions of the same sort, classed together by the mind under the abstract notion of likeness, or of something common between them, without attending to their difference in other respects. This view of the subject is not, I confess, very obvious at first sight, and requires strong and clear proof, but it also admits of it. The only way to defend our common sense against the sophisms of the moderns is to retort their own analytical distinctions upon them. In looking at any object, as at St. James's Palace, for example, it is taken for granted that the impression I have of it is a perfectly distinct, precise, and definite idea, in which abstraction or generalisation has no concern. Now it appears to me an easy matter to shew that this sensible image of a particular building is itself but a vague and confused notion, not one precise, individual impression, or any number of impressions, distinctly perceived. For I would demand of any one who thinks his senses furnish him with these infallible and perfect images of things, free from all contradiction and perplexity, what is the amount of the knowledge which he has of the object before him? For instance, is the knowledge which he has that St. James's Palace is larger than the houses which are near it, owing to his perceiving, with a glance of the eye, all the bricks of which the front is composed, or can he not tell that it contains a number of windows of different sizes, without distinctly counting them? Let us even suppose that he has this exact knowledge, yet this will not be enough unless he has also a distinct perception of the number and size of the panes of glass in each window, and of every mark, stain, or dent in each brick, otherwise, his idea of each of these particulars will still be general, and his most substantial knowledge built on shadows, that is, composed of a number of parts, of the parts of which he has no knowledge. In the same manner that I form an idea of St. James's Palace, I can form an idea of Pall-Mall, of the adjoining streets, of Westminster, and London, of Paris, of France, and England, and of the different cities and kingdoms of the world. At least, I do not see the point of separation in this progressive scale of our ideas. May I not be able, in looking out of my window, to distinguish, first, a certain object in the distance, then that it is a man, then that it is a person whom I know, and all this before I can distinguish his particular features; and after I can distinguish those features, what do I know or see of them, except their general form, expression, and effect? Little or nothing. Let any one, who is not an artist, or let any one who is, attempt to give an outline from memory of the features of his most intimate friend, and he will feel the truth of this remark. Yet though he does not know the exact turn of any one feature, he will instantly, and without fail, recognise the person the moment he meets him in the street, and that often, merely from catching a glimpse of some part of his dress, or from peculiarity of motion, though he may be quite at a loss to define in what this peculiarity consists, or to account for its impression on him. We may be said to have a particular knowledge of things, in proportion to the number of parts which we distinguish in them. But the real ultimate foundation of all our knowledge is and must be general, that is, made up of masses, not of points, a mere confused result of a number of impressions, not analysed by the mind, since there is no object which does not consist of an infinite number of parts, and we have not an infinite number of distinct ideas, answering to them. The knowledge of every finite being rests in generals, and if we think to exclude all generality from our ideas of things, as implying a want |