The Sense of Sameness.
In Chapter VIII, p. 221, the distinction was drawn1 between two kinds of knowledge of things, bare acquaintance with them and knowledge about them. The possibility of two such knowledges depends on a fundamental psychical2 peculiarity5 which may be entitled "the principle of constancy in the mind's meanings," and which may be thus expressed: "The same matters can be thought of in successive portions of the mental stream, and some of these portions can know that they mean the same matters which the other portions meant." One might put it otherwise by saying that "the mind can always intend, and know when it intends, to think of the Same."
This sense of sameness is the very keel and backbone6 of our thinking. We saw in Chapter X how the consciousness of personal identity reposed7 on it, the present thought finding in its memories a warmth and intimacy8 which it recognizes as the same warmth and intimacy it now feels. This sense of identity of the knowing subject is held by some philosophers to be the only vehicle by which the world hangs together. It seems hardly necessary to say that a sense of identity of the known object would perform exactly the same unifying9 function, even if the sense of subjective10 identity were lost. And without the intention to think of the same outer things over and over again, and the sense that we were doing so, our sense of our own personal sameness would carry us but a little way towards making a universe of our experience.
Note, however, that we are in the first instance speaking of the sense of sameness from the point of view of the mind's structure alone, and not from the point of view of the universe. We are psychologizing, not philosophizing. That is, we do not care whether there be any real sameness in things or not, or whether the mind be true or false in its assumptions of it. Our principle only lays it down that the mind makes continual use of the notion of sameness, and if deprived of it, would have a different structure from what it has. In a word, the principle that the mind can mean the Same is true of its meanings, but not necessarily of aught besides.1 The mind must conceive as possible that the Same should be before it, for our experience to be the sort of thing it is. Without the psychological sense of identity, sameness might rain down upon us from the outer world for ever and we be none the wiser. With the psychological sense, on the other hand, the outer world might be an unbroken flux11, and yet we should perceive a repeated experience. Even now, the world may be a place in which the same thing never did and never will come twice. The thing we mean to point at may change from top to bottom and we be ignorant of the fact. But in our meaning itself we are not deceived; our intention is to think of the same. The name which I have given to the principle, in calling it the law of constancy in our meanings, accentuates12 its subjective character, and justifies13 us in laying it down as the most important of all the features of our mental structure.
Not all psychic3 life need be assumed to have the sense of sameness developed in this way. In the consciousness of worms and polyps, though the same realities may frequently impress it, the feeling of sameness may seldom emerge. We, however, running back and forth14, like spiders on the web they weave, feel ourselves to be working over identical materials and thinking them in different ways. And the man who identifies the materials most is held to have the most philosophic15 human mind.
Conception Defined.
The function by which we thus identify a numerically distinct and permanent subject of disclosure is called CONCEPTION; and the thoughts which are its vehicles are called concepts. But the word 'concept' is often used as if it stood for the object of discourse16 itself; and this looseness feeds such evasiveness in discussion that I shall avoid the use of the expression concept altogether, and speak of 'conceiving state of mind,' or something similar, instead. The word 'conception' is unambiguous. It properly denotes neither the mental state nor what the mental state signifies, but the relation between the two, namely, the function of the mental state in signifying just that particular thing. It is plain that one and the same mental state can be the vehicle of many conceptions, can mean a particular thing, and a great deal more besides. If it has such a multiple conceptual function, it may be called an act of compound conception.
We may conceive realities supposed to be extra-mental, as steam-engine; fictions, as mermaid17; or mere18 entia rationis, like difference or nonentity19. But whatever we do conceive, our conception is of that and nothing else - nothing else, that is, instead of that, though it may be of much else in addition to that. Each act of conception results from our attention singling out some one part of the mass of matter for thought which the world presents, and holding fast to it, without confusion.2 Confusion occurs when we do not know whether a certain object proposed to us is the same with one of our meanings or not; so that the conceptual function requires, to be complete, that the thought should not only say 'I mean this,' but also say 'I don't mean that.'3
Each conception thus eternally remains20 what it is, and never can become another. The mind may change its states, and its meanings, at different times; may drop one conception and take up another, but the dropped conception can in no intelligible21 sense be said to change into its successor. The paper, a moment ago white, I may now see to have been scorched22 black. But my conception 'white' does not change into my conception 'black.' On the contrary, it stays alongside of the objective blackness, as a different meaning in my mind, and by so doing lets me judge the blackness as the paper's change. Unless it stayed, I should simply say 'blackness' and know no more. Thus, amid the flux of opinions and of physical things, the world of conceptions, or things intended to be thought about, stands stiff and immutable23, like Plato's Realm of Ideas.4
Some conceptions are of things, some of events, some of qualities. Any fact, be it thing, event, or quality, may be conceived sufficiently24 for purposes of identification, if only it be singled out and marked so as to separate it from other things. Simply calling it 'this' or 'that' will suffice. To speak in technical language, a subject may be conceived by its denotation25, with no connotation, or a very minimum of connotation, attached. The essential point is that it should be re-identified by us as that which the talk is about; and no full representation of it is necessary for this, even when it is a fully26 representable thing.
In this sense, creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience again. A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of 'Hollo! thingumbob again!' ever flitted through its mind.
Most of the objects of our thought, however, are to some degree represented as well as merely pointed27 out. Either they are things and events perceived or imagined, or they are qualities apprehended28 in a positive way. Even where we have no intuitive acquaintance with the nature of a thing, if we know any of the relations of it at all, anything about it, that is enough to individualize and distinguish it from all the other things which we might mean. Many of our topics of discourse are thus problematical, or defined by their relations only. We think of a thing about which certain facts must obtain, but we do not yet know how the thing will look when it is realized. Thus we conceive of a perpetual-motion machine. It is a quœsitum of a perfectly29 definite kind, - we can always tell whether the actual machines offered us do or do not agree with what we mean by it. The natural possibility or impossibility of the thing does not touch the question of its conceivability in this problematic way. 'Round square,' 'black-white-thing,' are absolutely definite conceptions; it is a mere accident, as far as conception goes, that they happen to stand for things which nature lets us sensibly perceive.5
Conceptions Are Unchangeable.
The fact that the same real topic of discourse is at one time conceived as a mere 'that' or 'that which, etc.,' and is at another time conceived with additional specifications30, has been treated by many authors as a proof that conceptions themselves are fertile and self-developing. A conception, according to the Hegelizers in philosophy, 'develops its own significance,' 'makes explicit31 what it implicitly32 contained,' passes, on occasion, 'over into its opposite,' and in short loses altogether the blankly self-identical character we supposed it to maintain. The figure we viewed as a polygon33 appears to us now as a sum of juxtaposed triangles; the number hitherto conceived as thirteen is at last noticed to be six plus seven, or prime; the man thought honest is believed a rogue34. Such changes of our opinion are viewed by these thinkers as evolutions of our conception, from within.
The facts are unquestionable; our knowledge does grow and change by rational and inward processes, as well as by empirical discoveries. Where the discoveries are empirical, no one pretends that the propulsive35 agency, the force that makes the knowledge develop, is mere conception. All admit it to be our continued exposure to the thing, with its power to impress our senses. Thus strychnin, which tastes bitter, we find will also kill, etc. Now I say that where the new knowledge merely comes from thinking, the facts are essentially36 the same, and that to talk of self-development on the part of our conceptions is a very bad way of stating the case. Not new sensations, as in the empirical instance, but new conceptions, are the indispensable conditions of advance.
For if the alleged37 cases of self-development be examined it will be found, I believe, that the new truth affirms in every case a relation between the original subject of conception and some new subject conceived later on. These new subjects of conception arise in various ways. Every one of our conceptions is of something which our attention originally tore out of the continuum of felt experience, and provisionally isolated39 so as to make of it an individual topic of discourse. Every one of them has a way, if the mind is left alone with it, of suggesting other parts of the continuum from which it was torn, for conception to work upon in a similar way. This 'suggestion' is often no more than what we shall later know as the association of ideas. Often, however, it is a sort of invitation to the mind to play, add lines, break number-groups, etc. Whatever it is, it brings new conceptions into consciousness, which latter thereupon may or may not expressly attend to the relation in which the new stands to the old. Thus I have a conception of equidistant lines. Suddenly, I know not whence, there pops into my head the conception of their meeting. Suddenly again I think of the meeting and the equidistance both together, and perceive them incompatible40. "Those lines will never meet," I say. Suddenly again the word 'parallel' pops into my head. 'They are parallels,' I continue; and so on. Original conceptions to start with; adventitious41 conceptions pushed forward by multifarious psychologic causes; comparisons and combinations of the two; resultant conceptions to end with; which latter may be of either rational or empirical relations.
As regards these relations, they are conceptions of the second degree, as one might say, and their birthplace is the mind itself. In Chapter XXVIII I shall at considerable length defend the mind's claim to originality42 and fertility in bringing them forth. But no single one of the mind's conceptions is fertile of itself, as the opinion which I criticise43 pretends. When the several notes of a chord are sounded together, we get a new feeling from their combination. This feeling is due to the mind reacting upon that
group of sounds in that determinate way, and no one would think of saying of any single note of the chord that it 'developed' of itself into the other notes or into the feeling of harmony. So of Conceptions. No one of them develops into any other. But if two of them are thought at once, their relation may come to consciousness, and form matter for a third conception.
Take 'thirteen' for example, which is said to develop into 'prime.' What really happens is that we compare the utterly44 changeless conception of thirteen with various other conceptions, those of the different multiples of two, three, four, five, and six, and ascertain45 that it differs from them all. Such difference is a freshly ascertained46 relation. It is only for mere brevity's sake that we call it a property of the original thirteen, the property of being prime. We shall see in the next chapter that (if we count out æsthetic and moral relations between things) the only important relations of which the mere inspection47 of conceptions makes us aware are relations of comparison, that is, of difference and no-difference, between them. The judgment48 6 + 7 = 13 expresses the relation of equality between two ideal objects, 13 on the one hand and 6 + 7 on the other, successively conceived and compared. The judgments49 6 + 7 > 12, or 6 + 7 < 14, express in like manner relations of inequality between ideal objects. But if it be unfair to say that the conception of 6 + 7 generates that of 12 or of 14, surely it is as unfair to say that it generates that of 13.
The conceptions of 12, 13, and 14 are each and all generated by individual acts of the mind, playing with its materials. When, comparing two ideal objects, we find them equal, the conception of one of them may be that of a whole and of the other that of all its parts. This particular case is, it seems to me, the only case which makes the notion of one conception evolving into another sound plausible50. But even in this case the conception, as such, of the whole does not evolve into the conception, as such, of the parts. Let the conception of some object as a whole be given first. To begin with, it points to and identifies for future thought a certain that. The 'whole' in question might be one of those mechanical puzzles of which the difficulty is to unlock the parts. In this case, nobody would pretend that the richer and more elaborate conception which we gain of the puzzle after solving it came directly out of our first crude conception of it, for it is notoriously the outcome of experimenting with our hands. It is true that, as they both mean that same puzzle, our earlier thought and our later thought have one conceptual function, are vehicles of one conception. But in addition to being the vehicle of this bald unchanging conception, 'that same puzzle,' the later thought is the vehicle of all those other conceptions which it took the manual experimentation52 to acquire. Now, it is just the same where the whole is mathematical instead of being mechanical. Let it be a polygonal53 space, which we cut into triangles, and of which we then affirm that it is those triangles. Here the experimentation (although usually done by a pencil in the hands) may be done by the unaided imagination. We hold the space, first conceived as polygonal simply, in our mind's eye until our attention wandering to and fro within it has carved it into the triangles. The triangles are a new conception, the result of this new operation. Having once conceived them, however, and compared them with the old polygon which we originally conceived and which we have never ceased conceiving, we judge them to fit exactly into its area. The earlier and later conceptions, we say, are of one and the same space. But this relation between triangles and polygon which the mind cannot help finding if it compares them at all, is very badly expressed by saying that the old conception has developed into the new. New conceptions come from new sensations, new movements, new emotions, new associations, new acts of attention, and new comparisons of old conceptions, and not in other ways, Endogenous prolification is not a mode of growth to which conceptions can lay claim.
I hope, therefore, that I shall not be accused of huddling54 mysteries out of sight, when I insist that the psychology55 of conception is not the place in which to treat of those of continuity and change. Conceptions form the one class of entities56 that cannot under any circumstances change. They can cease to be, altogether; or they can stay, as what they severally are; but there is for them no middle way. They form an essentially discontinuous system, and translate the process of our perceptual experience, which is naturally a flux, into a set of stagnant57 and petrified58 terms. The very conception of flux itself is an absolutely changeless meaning in the mind: it signifies just that one thing, flux, immovably. - And, with this, the doctrine59 of the flux of the concept may be dismissed, and need not occupy our attention again.6
'Abstract' Ideas.
We have now to pass to a less excusable mistake. There are philosophers who deny that associated things can be broken asunder60 at all, even provisionally, by the conceiving mind. The opinion known as Nominalism says that we really never frame any conception of the partial elements of an experience, but are compelled, whenever we think it, to think it in its totality, just as it came.
I will be silent of mediæval Nominalism, and begin with Berkeley, who is supposed to have rediscovered the doctrine for himself. His asseverations against 'abstract ideas' are among the oftenest quoted passages in philosophic literature.
"It is agreed," he says, "on all hands that the qualities or modes of things do never really exist each of them apart by itself, and separated from all others, but are mixed, as it were, and blended together, several in the same object. But, we are told, the mind being able to consider each quality singly, or abstracted from those other qualities with which it is united, does by that means frame to itself abstract ideas. . . . After this manner, it is said, we come by the abstract idea of man, or, if you please, humanity, or human nature; wherein it is true there is included color, because there is no man but has some color, but then it can be neither white, nor black, nor any particular color, because there is no one particular color wherein all men partake. So likewise there is included stature61, but then it is neither tall stature nor low stature, nor yet middle stature, but something abstracted from all these. And so of the rest. . . . .Whether others have this wonderful faculty62 of abstracting their ideas, they best can tell: for myself, I find indeed I have a faculty of imagining or representing to myself the ideas of those particular things I have perceived and of variously compounding and dividing them. . . . I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the body. But then, whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some particular shape and color. Likewise the idea of man that I frame to myself must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny63, a straight, or a crooked64, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above described. And it is equally impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear; and the like may be said of all other abstract general ideas whatsoever65. . . . And there is ground to think most men will acknowledge themselves to be in my case. The generality of men which are simple and illiterate66 never pretend to abstract notions. It is said they are difficult, and not to be attained67 without pains and study. . . . Now I would fain know at what time it is men are employed in surmounting68 that difficulty, and furnishing themselves with those necessary helps for discourse. It cannot be when they are grown up, for then it seems they are not conscious of any such painstaking69; it remains therefore to be the business of their childhood. And surely the great and multiplied labor51 of framing abstract notions will be found a hard task for that tender age. Is it not a hard thing to imagine that a couple of children cannot prate70 together of their sugar-plums and rattles71 and the rest of their little trinkets, till they have first tacked72 together numberless inconsistencies, and so framed in their minds abstract general ideas, and annexed73 them to every common name they make use of?"7
The note, so bravely struck by Berkeley, could not, however, be well sustained in face of the fact patent to every human being that we can mean color without meaning any particular color, and stature without meaning any particular height. James Mill, to be sure, chimes in heroically in the chapter on Classification of his 'Analysis'; but in his son John the nominalistic voice has grown so weak that, although 'abstract ideas' are repudiated74 as a matter of traditional form, the opinions uttered are really nothing but a conceptualism ashamed to call itself by its own legitimate75 name.8 Conceptualism says the mind can conceive any quality or relation it pleases, and mean nothing but it, in isolation76 from everything else in the world. This is, of course, the doctrine which we have professed77. John Mill says:
"The formation of a Concept does not consist in separating the attributes which are said to compose it from all other attributes of the same object, and enabling us to conceive those attributes, disjoined from any others. We neither conceive them, nor think them, nor cognize them in any way, as a thing apart, but solely78 as forming, in combination with numerous other attributes, the idea of an individual object. But, though meaning them only as part of a larger agglomeration79, we have the power of fixing out attention on them, to the neglect of the other attributes with which we think them combined. While the concentration of attention lasts, if it is sufficiently intense, we may be temporarily unconscious of any of the other attributes, and may really, for a brief interval80, have nothing present to our mind but the attributes constituent81 of the concept. . . . General concepts, therefore, we have, properly speaking, none; we have only complex ideas of objects in the concrete: but we are able to attend exclusively to certain parts of the concrete idea: and by that exclusive attention we enable those parts to determine exclusively the course of our thoughts as subsequently called up by association; and are in a condition to carry on a train of meditation82 or reasoning relating to those parts only, exactly as if we were able to conceive them separately from the rest."9
This is a lovely example of Mill's way of holding piously83 to his general statements, but conceding in detail all that their adversaries84 ask. If there be a better description extant, of a mind in possession of an 'abstract idea,' than is contained in the words I have italicized, I am unacquainted with it. The Berkeleyan nominalism thus breaks down.
It is easy to lay bare the false assumption which underlies85 the whole discussion of the question as hitherto carried on. That assumption is that ideas, in order to know, must be cast in the exact likeness86 of whatever things they know, and that the only things that can be known are those which ideas can resemble. The error has not been confined to nominalists. Omnis cognito fit per assimilationem cognoscentis et cogniti has been the maxim87, more or less explicitly88 assumed, of writers of every school. Practically it amounts to saying that an idea must be a duplicate edition of what it knows10 - in other words, that it can only know itself - or, more shortly still, that knowledge in any strict sense of the word, as a self-transcendent function, is impossible.
Now our own blunt statements about the ultimateness of the cognitive89 relation, and the difference between the 'object' of the thought and its mere 'topic' or 'subject of discourse' (cf. pp. 275 ff.), are all at variance90 with any such theory; and we shall find more and more occasion, as we advance in this book, to deny its general truth. All that a state of mind need do, in order to take cognizance of a reality, intend it, or be 'about' it, is to lead to a remoter state of mind which either acts upon the reality or resembles it. The only class of thoughts which can with any show of plausibility91 be said to resemble their objects are sensations. The stuff of which all our other thoughts are composed is symbolic92, and a thought attests93 its pertinency94 to a topic by simply terminating, sooner or later, in a sensation which resembles the latter.
But Mill and the rest believe that a thought must be what it means, and mean what it is, and that if it be a picture of an entire individual, it cannot mean any part of him to the exclusion95 of the rest. I say nothing here of the preposterously96 false descriptive psychology involved in the statement that the only things we can mentally picture are individuals completely determinate in all regards. Chapter XVIII will have something to say on that point, and we can ignore it here. For even if it were true that our images were always of concrete individuals, it would not in the least follow that our meanings were of the same.
The sense of our meaning is an entirely98 peculiar4 element of the thought. It is one of those evanescent and 'transitive' facts of mind which introspection cannot turn round upon, and isolate38 and hold up for examination, as an entomologist passes round an insect on a pin. In the (somewhat clumsy) terminology99 I have used, it pertains100 to the 'fringe' of the subjective state, and is a 'feeling of tendency,' whose neural101 counterpart is undoubtedly102 a lot of dawning and dying processes too faint and complex to be traced. The geometer, with his one definite figure before him, knows perfectly that his thoughts apply to countless103 other figures as well, and that although he sees lines of a certain special bigness, direction, color, etc., he means not one of these details. When I use the word man in two different sentences, I may have both times exactly the same sound upon my lips and the same picture in my mental eye, but I may mean, and at the very moment of uttering the word and imagining the picture, know that I mean, two entirely different things. Thus when I say: "What a wonderful man Jones is!" I am perfectly aware that I mean by man to exclude Napoleon Bonaparte or Smith. But when I say: "What a wonderful thing Man is!" I am equally well aware that I mean to include not only Jones, but Napoleon and Smith as well. This added consciousness is an absolutely positive sort of feeling, transforming what would otherwise be mere noise or vision into something understood; and determining the sequel of my thinking, the later words and images, in a perfectly definite way. We saw in Chapter IX that the image per se, the nucleus104, is functionally105 the least important part of the thought. Our doctrine, therefore, of the 'fringe' leads to a perfectly satisfactory decision of the nominalistic and conceptualistic controversy106, so far as it touches psychology. We must decide in favor of the conceptualists, and affirm that the power to think things, qualities, relations, or whatever other elements there may be, isolated and abstracted from the total experience in which they appear, is the most indisputable function of our thought.
Universals.
After abstractions, universals! The 'fringe,' which lets us believe in the one, lets us believe in the other too. An individual conception is of something restricted, in its application, to a single case. A universal or general conception is of an entire class, or of something belonging to an entire class, of things. The conception of an abstract quality is, taken by itself, neither universal nor particular.11 If I abstract white from the rest of the wintry landscape this morning, it is a perfectly definite conception, a self-identical quality which I may mean again; but, as I have not yet individualized it by expressly meaning to restrict it to this particular snow, nor thought at all of the possibility of other things to which it may be applicable, it is so far nothing but a 'that,' a 'floating adjective,' as Mr. Bradley calls it, or a topic broken out from the rest of the world. Properly it is, in this state, a singular - I have 'singled it out;' and when, later, I universalize or individualize its application, and my thought turns to mean either this white or all possible whites, I am in reality meaning two new things and forming two new conceptions.12 Such an alteration107 of my meaning has nothing to do with any change in the image I may have in my mental eye, but solely with the vague consciousness that surrounds the image, of the sphere to which is is intended to apply. We can give no more definite account of this vague consciousness than has been given on pp. 249-266. But that is no reason for denying its presence.13
But the nominalists and traditional conceptualists find matter for an inveterate108 quarrel in these simple facts. Full of their notion that an idea, feeling, or state of consciousness can at bottom only be aware of its own quality; and agreeing, as they both do, that such an idea or state of consciousness is a perfectly determinate, singular, and transitory thing; they find it impossible to conceive how it should become the vehicle of a knowledge of anything permanent or universal. "To know a universal, it must be universal; for like can only be known by like," etc. Unable to reconcile these incompatibles, the knower and the known, each side immolates109 one of them to save the other. The nominalists 'settle the hash' of the thing known by denying it to be ever a genuine universal; the conceptualists despatch110 the knower by denying it to be a state of mind, in the sense of being a perishing segment of thoughts' stream, consubstantial with other facts of sensibility. They invent, instead of it, as the vehicle of the knowledge of universals, an actus purus intellectûs, or an Ego111, whose function is treated as quasi-miraculous and nothing if not awe-inspiring, and which it is a sort of blasphemy112 to approach with the intent to explain and make common, or reduce to lower terms. Invoked113 in the first instance as a vehicle for the knowledge of universals, the higher principle presently is made the indispensible vehicle of all thinking whatever, for, it is contended, "a universal element is present in every thought." The nominalists meanwhile, who dislike actus puros and awe-inspiring principles and despise the reverential mood, content themselves with saying that we are mistaken in supposing we ever get sight of the face of an universal; and that what deludes114 us is nothing but the swarm115 of 'individual ideas' which may at any time be awakend by the hearing of a name.
If we open the pages of either school, we find it impossible to tell, in all the whirl about universal and particular, when the author is talking about universals in the mind, and when about objective universals, so strangely are the two mixed together. James Ferrier, for example, is the most brilliant of anti-nominalist writers. But who is nimble-witted enough to count, in the following sentences from him, the number of times he steps from the known to the knower, and attributes to both whatever properties he finds in either one?
"To think is to pass from the singular or particular to the idea [concept] or universal. . . . Ideas are necessary because no thinking can take place without them. They are universal, inasmuch as they are completely divested116 of the particularity which characterizes all the phenomena117 of mere sensation. To grasp the nature of this universality is not easy. Perhaps the best means by which this end may be compassed is by contrasting it with the particular. It is not difficult to understand that a sensation, a phenomenon of sense, is never more than the particular which it is. As such, that is, in its strict particularity, it is absolutely unthinkable. In the very act of being thought, something more than it emerges, and this something more cannot be again the particular. . . . Ten particulars per se cannot be thought of any more than one particular can be thought of; . . . there always emerges in thought an additional something, which is the possibility of other particulars to an indefinite extent. . . . .The indefinite additional something which they are instances of is a universal. . . . The idea or universal cannot possibly be pictured in the imagination, for this would at once reduce it to the particular. . . . This inability to form any sort of picture or representation of an idea does not proceed from any imperfection or limitation of our faculties118, but is a quality inherent in the very nature of intelligence. A contradiction is involved in the supposition that an idea or a universal can become the object either of sense or of the imagination. An idea is thus diametrically opposed to an image."14
The nominalists, on their side, admit a quasi-universal, something which we think as if it were universal, though it is not; and in all that they say about this something, which they explain to be 'an indefinite number of particular ideas,' the same vacillation119 between the subjective and the objective points of view appears. The reader never can tell whether an 'idea' spoken of is supposed to be a knower or a known. The authors themselves do not distinguish. They want to get something in the mind which shall resemble what is out of the mind, however vaguely120, and they think that when that fact is accomplished121, no farther questions will be asked. James Mill writes:15
"The word, man, we shall say, is first applied122 to an individual; it is first associated with the idea of that individual, and acquires the power of calling up the idea of him; it is next applied to another individual and acquires the power of calling up the idea of him; so of another and another, till it has become associated with an indefinite number, and has acquired the power of calling up an indefinite number of those ideas indifferently. What happens? It does call up an indefinite number of the ideas of individuals as often as it occurs; and calling them in close connection, it forms a species of complex idea of them. . . . It is also a fact, that when an idea becomes to a certain extent complex, from the multiplicity of the ideas it comprehends, it is of necessity indistinct; . . . and this indistinctness has, doubtless, been a main cause of the mystery which has appeared to belong to it. . . . It thus appears that the word man is not a word having a very simple idea, as was the opinion of the realists; nor a word having no idea at all, as was that of the [earlier] nominalists; but a word calling up an indefinite number of ideas, by the irresistible123 laws of association, and forming them into one very complex and distinct, but not therefore unintelligible124, idea."
Berkeley had already said:16
"A word becomes general by being made the sign, not of an abstract general idea, but of many several particular ideas, any one of which it indifferently suggests to the mind. An idea which, considered in itself, is particular, becomes general by being made to represent or stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort."
'Stand for,' not know; 'becomes general,' not becomes aware of something general; 'particular ideas,' not particular things - everywhere the same timidity about begging the fact of knowing, and the pitifully impotent attempt to foist125 it in the shape of a mode of being of 'ideas.' If the fact to be conceived be the indefinitely numerous actual and possible members of a class, then it is assumed that if we can only get enough ideas to huddle126 together for a moment in the mind, the being of each several one of them there will be an equivalent for the knowing, or meaning, of one member of the class in question; and their number will be so large as to confuse our tally97 and leave it doubtful whether all the possible members of the class have thus been satisfactorily told off or not.
Of course this is nonsense. An idea neither is what it knows, nor knows what it is; nor will swarms127 of copies of the same 'idea,' recurring128 in stereotyped129 form, or 'by the irresistible laws of association formed into one idea,' ever be the same thing as a thought of 'all the possible members' of a class. We must mean that by an altogether special bit of consciousness ad hoc. But it is easy to translate Berkeley's, Hume's, and Mill's notion of a swarm of ideas into cerebral130 terms, and so to make them stand for something real; and, in this sense, I think the doctrine of these authors less hollow than the opposite one which makes the vehicle of universal conceptions to be an actus purus of the soul. If each 'idea' stand for some special nascent131 nerve-process, then the aggregate132 of these nascent processes might have for its conscious correlate a psychic 'fringe,' which should be just that universal meaning, or intention that the name or mental picture employed should mean all the possible individuals of the class. Every peculiar complication of brain-processes must have some peculiar correlate in the soul. To one set of processes will correspond the thought of an indefinite taking of the extent of a word like man; to another set that of a particular taking; and to a third set that of a universal taking, of the extent of the same word. The thought corresponding to either set of processes, is always itself a unique and singular event, whose dependence133 on its peculiar nerve-process I of course am far from professing134 to explain.17
Truly in comparison with the fact that every conception, whatever it be of, is one of the mind's immutable posses-
sions, the question whether a single thing, or a whole class of things, or only an unassigned quality, be meant by it, is an insignificant135 matter of detail. Our meanings are of singulars, particulars, indefinites, and universals, mixed together in every way. A singular individual is as much conceived when he is isolated and identified away from the rest of the world in my mind, as is the most rarefied and universally applicable quality he may possess - being, for example, when treated in the same way.18 From every point of view, the overwhelming and portentous136 character ascribed to universal conceptions is surprising. Why, from Plato and Aristotle downwards137, philosophers should have vied with each other in scorn of the knowledge of the particular, and in adoration138 of that of the general, is hard to understand, seeing that the more adorable knowledge ought to be that of the more adorable things, and that the things of worth are all concretes and singulars. The only value of universal characters is that they help us, by reasoning, to know new truths about individual things. The restriction139 of one's meaning, moreover, to an individual thing, probably requires even more complicated brain-processes than its extension to all the instances of a kind; and the mere mystery, as such, of the knowledge, is equally great, whether generals or singulars be the things known. In sum, therefore, the traditional universal-worship can only be called a bit of perverse140 sentimentalism, a philosophic 'idol141 of the cave.'
It may seem hardly necessary to add (what follows as a matter of course from pp. 229-237, and what has been implied in our assertions all along) that nothing can be conceived twice over without being conceived in entirely different states of mind. Thus, my arm-chair is one of the things of which I have a conception; I knew it yesterday and recognized it when I looked at it. But if I think of it to-day as the same arm-chair which I looked at yesterday, it is obvious that the very conception of it as the same is an additional complication to the thought, whose inward constitution must alter in consequence. In short, it is logically impossible that the same thing should be known as the same by two successive copies of the same thought. As a matter of fact, the thoughts by which we know that we mean the same thing are apt to be very different indeed from each other. We think the thing now in one context, now in another; now in a definite image, now in a symbol. Sometimes our sense of its identity pertains to the mere fringe, sometimes it involves the nucleus, of our thought. We never can break the thought asunder and tell just which one of its bits is the part that lets us know which subject is referred to; but nevertheless we always do know which of all possible subjects we have in mind. Introspective psychology must here throw up the sponge; the fluctuations142 of subjective life are too exquisite143 to be arrested by its coarse means. It must confine itself to bearing witness to the fact that all sorts of different subjective states do form the vehicle by which the same is known; and it must contradict the opposite view.
The ordinary Psychology of 'ideas' constantly talks as if the vehicle of the same thing-known must be the same recurrent state of mind, and as if the having over again of the same 'idea' were not only a necessary but a sufficient condition for meaning the same thing twice. But this recurrence144 of the same idea would utterly defeat the existence of a repeated knowledge of anything. It would be a simple reversion into a pre-existant state, with nothing gained in the interval, and with complete unconsciousness of the state having existed before. Such is not the way in which we think. As a rule we are fully aware that we have thought before of the thing we think of now. The continuity and permanency of the topic is of the essence of our intellection. We recognize the old problem, and the old solutions; and we go on to alter and improve and substitute one predicate for another without ever letting the subject change.
This is what is meant when it is said that thinking consists in making judgments. A succession of judgments may all be about the same thing. The general practical postulate145 which encourages us to keep thinking at all is that by going on to do so we shall judge better of the same things than if we do not.19 In the successive judgments, all sorts of new operations are performed on the things, and all sorts of new results brought out, without the sense of the main topic ever getting lost. At the outset, we merely have the topic; then we operate on it; and finally we have it again in a richer and truer way. A compound conception has been substituted for the simple one, but with full consciousness that both are of the Same.
The distinction between having and operating is as natural in the mental as in the material world. As our hands may hold a bit of wood and a knife, and yet do naught146 with either; so our mind may simply be aware of a thing's existence, and yet neither attend to it nor discriminate147 it, neither locate nor count nor compare nor like nor dislike nor deduce it, nor recognize it articulately as having been met with before. At the same time we know that, instead of staring at it in this entranced and senseless way, we may rally our activity in a moment, and locate, class, compare, count, and judge it. There is nothing involved in all this which we did not postulate at the very outset of our introspective work: realities, namely, extra mentem, thoughts, and possible relations of cognition between the two. The result of the thoughts' operating on the data given to sense is to transform the order in which experience comes into an entirely different order, that of the conceived world. There is no spot of light, for example, which I pick out and proceed to define as a pebble148, which is not thereby149 torn from its mere time- and space-neighbors, and thought in conjunction with things physically150 parted from it by the width of nature. Compare the form in which facts appear in a text-book of physics, as logically subordinated laws, with that in which we naturally make their acquaintance. The conceptual scheme is a sort of sieve151 in which we try to gather up the world's contents. Most facts and relations fall through its meshes152, being either too subtle or insignificant to be fixed153 in any conception. But whenever a physical reality is caught and identified as the same with something already conceived, it remains on the sieve, and all the predicates and relations of the conception with which it is identified become its predicates and relations too; it is subjected to the sieve's network, in other words. Thus comes to pass what Mr. Hodgson calls the translation of the perceptual into the conceptual order of the world.20
In Chapter XXII we shall see how this translation always takes place for the sake of some subjective interest, and how the conception with which we handle a bit of sensible experience is really nothing but a teleological154 instrument. This whole function of conceiving, of fixing, and holding fast to meanings, has no significance apart from the fact that the conceiver is a creature with partial purposes and private ends. There remains, therefore, much more to be said about conception, but for the present this will suffice.
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1
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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psychical
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| adj.有关特异功能现象的；有关特异功能官能的；灵魂的；心灵的 | |
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psychic
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| n.对超自然力敏感的人；adj.有超自然力的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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peculiarity
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| n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖 | |
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backbone
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| n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气 | |
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reposed
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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unifying
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| 使联合( unify的现在分词 )； 使相同； 使一致； 统一 | |
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subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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flux
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| n.流动；不断的改变 | |
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accentuates
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| v.重读( accentuate的第三人称单数 )；使突出；使恶化；加重音符号于 | |
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justifies
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| 证明…有理( justify的第三人称单数 )； 为…辩护； 对…作出解释； 为…辩解（或辩护） | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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mermaid
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| n.美人鱼 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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nonentity
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| n.无足轻重的人 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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scorched
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| 烧焦，烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（植物）枯萎，把…晒枯； 高速行驶； 枯焦 | |
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immutable
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| adj.不可改变的，永恒的 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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denotation
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| n.（明示的）意义；指示 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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apprehended
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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specifications
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| n.规格；载明；详述；（产品等的）说明书；说明书( specification的名词复数 )；详细的计划书；载明；详述 | |
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explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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implicitly
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| adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地 | |
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polygon
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| n.多边形；多角形 | |
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rogue
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| n.流氓；v.游手好闲 | |
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propulsive
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| adj.推进的 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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isolate
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| vt.使孤立，隔离 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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incompatible
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| adj.不相容的，不协调的，不相配的 | |
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adventitious
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| adj.偶然的 | |
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originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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criticise
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| v.批评，评论；非难 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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ascertain
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| vt.发现，确定，查明，弄清 | |
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ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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experimentation
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| n.实验，试验，实验法 | |
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polygonal
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| adj.多角形的，多边形的 | |
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huddling
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| n. 杂乱一团, 混乱, 拥挤 v. 推挤, 乱堆, 草率了事 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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entities
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| 实体对像； 实体，独立存在体，实际存在物( entity的名词复数 ) | |
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stagnant
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| adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的 | |
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petrified
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| adj.惊呆的；目瞪口呆的v.使吓呆，使惊呆；变僵硬；使石化(petrify的过去式和过去分词) | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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asunder
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| adj.分离的，化为碎片 | |
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stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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tawny
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| adj.茶色的，黄褐色的；n.黄褐色 | |
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crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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illiterate
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| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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surmounting
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| 战胜( surmount的现在分词 )； 克服（困难）； 居于…之上； 在…顶上 | |
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painstaking
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| adj.苦干的；艰苦的，费力的，刻苦的 | |
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prate
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| v.瞎扯，胡说 | |
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rattles
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| （使）发出格格的响声， （使）作嘎嘎声( rattle的第三人称单数 )； 喋喋不休地说话； 迅速而嘎嘎作响地移动，堕下或走动； 使紧张，使恐惧 | |
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tacked
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| 用平头钉钉( tack的过去式和过去分词 )； 附加，增补； 帆船抢风行驶，用粗线脚缝 | |
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annexed
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| [法] 附加的，附属的 | |
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repudiated
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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agglomeration
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| n.结聚，一堆 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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constituent
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| n.选民；成分，组分；adj.组成的，构成的 | |
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meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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piously
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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adversaries
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| n.对手，敌手( adversary的名词复数 ) | |
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85
underlies
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| v.位于或存在于（某物）之下( underlie的第三人称单数 )；构成…的基础（或起因），引起 | |
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likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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maxim
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| n.格言，箴言 | |
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explicitly
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| ad.明确地，显然地 | |
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cognitive
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| adj.认知的，认识的，有感知的 | |
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variance
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| n.矛盾，不同 | |
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plausibility
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| n. 似有道理, 能言善辩 | |
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symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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attests
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| v.证明( attest的第三人称单数 )；证实；声称…属实；使宣誓 | |
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pertinency
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| 有关性，相关性，针对性； 切合性 | |
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exclusion
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| n.拒绝，排除，排斥，远足，远途旅行 | |
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preposterously
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| adv.反常地；荒谬地；荒谬可笑地；不合理地 | |
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tally
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| n.计数器，记分，一致，测量；vt.计算，记录，使一致；vi.计算，记分，一致 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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99
terminology
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| n.术语；专有名词 | |
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100
pertains
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| 关于( pertain的第三人称单数 )； 有关； 存在； 适用 | |
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neural
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| adj.神经的，神经系统的 | |
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102
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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103
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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104
nucleus
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| n.核，核心，原子核 | |
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105
functionally
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| adv.机能上地，官能地 | |
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106
controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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107
alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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108
inveterate
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| adj.积习已深的，根深蒂固的 | |
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immolates
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| vt.宰杀…作祭品（immolate的第三人称单数形式） | |
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despatch
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| n./v.(dispatch)派遣；发送；n.急件；新闻报道 | |
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111
ego
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| n.自我，自己，自尊 | |
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112
blasphemy
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| n.亵渎，渎神 | |
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113
invoked
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| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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114
deludes
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| v.欺骗，哄骗( delude的第三人称单数 ) | |
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115
swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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116
divested
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| v.剥夺( divest的过去式和过去分词 )；脱去（衣服）；2。从…取去…；1。（给某人）脱衣服 | |
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117
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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118
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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119
vacillation
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| n.动摇；忧柔寡断 | |
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120
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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121
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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122
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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123
irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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125
foist
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| vt.把…强塞给，骗卖给 | |
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126
huddle
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| vi.挤作一团；蜷缩；vt.聚集；n.挤在一起的人 | |
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127
swarms
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| 蜂群，一大群( swarm的名词复数 ) | |
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128
recurring
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| adj.往复的，再次发生的 | |
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129
stereotyped
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| adj.(指形象、思想、人物等)模式化的 | |
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130
cerebral
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| adj.脑的，大脑的；有智力的，理智型的 | |
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nascent
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| adj.初生的，发生中的 | |
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132
aggregate
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| adj.总计的，集合的；n.总数；v.合计；集合 | |
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133
dependence
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| n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属 | |
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134
professing
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| 声称( profess的现在分词 )； 宣称； 公开表明； 信奉 | |
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insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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136
portentous
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| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
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137
downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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138
adoration
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| n.爱慕，崇拜 | |
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139
restriction
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| n.限制，约束 | |
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140
perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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141
idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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142
fluctuations
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| 波动，涨落，起伏( fluctuation的名词复数 ) | |
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143
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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144
recurrence
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| n.复发，反复，重现 | |
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145
postulate
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| n.假定，基本条件；vt.要求，假定 | |
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146
naught
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| n.无，零 [=nought] | |
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147
discriminate
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| v.区别，辨别，区分；有区别地对待 | |
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148
pebble
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| n.卵石，小圆石 | |
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149
thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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150
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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151
sieve
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| n.筛，滤器，漏勺 | |
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152
meshes
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| 网孔( mesh的名词复数 )； 网状物； 陷阱； 困境 | |
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153
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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154
teleological
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| adj.目的论的 | |
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