PSYCHOLOGY 77 whole complex " man " are prominent in each. Further, what is present to consciousness when a general term is imderstood will differ, not only with a different context, but also the longer we dwell upon it : we may either ana- lyse its connotation or muster its denotation, as the con- text or the cast of our minds may determine. Thus what is relevant is alone prominent, and the more summary the attention we bestow the less the full extent and intent of the concept are displayed. To the nominalist's objection, that it is impossible to imagine a man without imagining him as either tall or short, young or old, dark or light, and so forth, the conceptualist might reply that at all events percepts may be clear without being distinct, that we can recognize a tree without recognizing what kind of tree it is, and that, moreover, the objection proves too much : for, if our image is to answer exactly to fact, we must represent not only a tall or a short man but a man of definite nature, one not merely either light or dark, but of a certain precise complexion. But the true answer rather is that in conceiving as such we do not necessarily imagine a man or a tree at all, any more than if such an illustration may serve in writing the equation to the parabola we necessarily draw a parabola as well. The individuality of a concept is thus not to be con- founded with the sensible concreteness of an intuition either distinct or indistinct, and " the pains and skill " which Locke felt were required in order to frame what he called an abstract idea are not comparable to the pains and skill that may be necessary to discriminate or decipher what is faint or fleeting. The material " framed " consists no doubt of ideas, if by this is meant that in thinking we work ultimately with the ideational continuum, but what results is never a mere intuitive complex nor yet a mere group of such. The concept or " abstract idea " only emerges when a certain intelligible relation is established among the members of such a group ; and the very same intuition may furnish the material for different concepts as often as a different geistiges Band is drawn between them. The stuff of this bond, as we have seen, is the word, and this brings into the foreground of consciousness when necessary those elements whether they form an , intuition or not which are relevant to the concept. Con- | ception, then, is not identical with imagination, although i the two terms are still often, and were once generally, regarded as synonymous. The same ultimate materials occur in each ; but in the one they start with and retain a sensible form, in the other they are elaborated into the form which is called " intelligible." ieil The distinctive character of this intellectual synthesis roer lies, we have seen, in the fact that it is determined entirely , by what is synthesized, whether that be the elementary j* constituents of intuitions or general relations of whatever
- io kind among these. It differs, therefore, in being selective
! from the synthesis of ideation, which rests upon contiguity and unites together whatever occurs together. It differs
- also from any synthesis, though equally voluntary in its
initiation, which is determined by a purely subjective preference, in that intellection depends upon objective . relations alone. Owing to the influence of logic, which has long been in a much more forward state than psycho- logy, it has been usual to resolve intellection into compari- son, abstraction, and classification, after this fashion : ABCM and ABCN are compared, their differences M and N left out of sight, and the class notion ABC formed
- including both ; the same process repeated with ABC and
ABD yields a higher class notion AB ; and so on. But our ideational continuum is not a mere string of ideas of ' concrete things, least of all such concrete things as this [ view implies. Not till our daily life resembles that of a museum porter receiving specimens will our higher mental activity be comparable to that of the savant who sorts such specimens into cases and compartments. What we perceive is a world of things in continual motion, waxing, waning, the centres of manifold changes, affecting us and apparently affected by each other, amenable to our action and, as it seems, continually interacting among themselves. Even the individual thing, as our brief analysis of percep- tion attempts to show (comp. pp. 55, 56), is not a mere sum of properties which can be taken to pieces and distributed like type, but a whole combined of parts very variously related. To understand intellection we must look at its actual development under the impetus of practical needs, rather than to logical ideals of what it ought to be. Like other forms of purposive activity, thinking is primarily undertaken as a means to an end, and especially the end of economy. It is often easier and always quicker to manipulate ideas than to manipulate real things ; to the common mind the thoughtful man is one who " uses his head to save his heels." In all the arts of life, in the growth of language and institutions, in scientific explana- tion, and even in the speculations of philosophy, we may remark a steady simplification in the steps to a given end or conclusion, or what is for our present inquiry the same thing the attainment of better results with the same means. The earliest machines are the most cum- brous and clumsy, the earliest speculations the most fanci- ful and anthropomorphic. Gradually imitation yields to invention, the natural fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc to methodical induction, till what is essential and effective is realized and appreciated and what is accidental and inert is discarded and falls out of sight. In this way man advances in the construction of a complete mental clue or master-key to the intricacies of the real world, but this key is still the counterpart of the world it enables us to control and explain. To describe the process by which such insight is attained as a mere matter of abstraction deserves the stigma of "soulless blunder" which Hegel applied to it. Of course if attention is concentrated on X it must pro tanto be abstracted from Y, and such command of attention may require "some pains and skill." But to see in this invariable accompaniment of thinking its essential feature is much like the schoolboy's saying that engraving consists in cutting fine shavings out of a hard block. The great thing is to find out what are the light-bearing and fruit- bearing combinations. Moreover, thinking does not begin with a conscious abstraction of attention from recognized differences in the way logicians describe. The actual process of generalization, for the most part at all events, is much simpler. The same name is applied to different things or events because only their more salient features are perceived at all. Their differences, so far from being consciously and with effort left out of account, often can- not be observed when attention is directed to them : to the inexperienced all is gold that glitters. Thus, and as an instance of the principle of progressive differentiation already noted (p. 42), we find genera recognized before species, and the species obtained by adding on differences, not the genus by abstracting from them. Of course such vague and indefinite concepts are not at first logically general : they only become so when certain common ele- ments are consciously noted as pertaining to presentations in other respects qualitatively different, as well as numer- ically distinct. But actually thinking starts from such more potential generality as is secured by the association of a generic image with a name. So far the material of thought is always general, is freed, that is, from the local and temporal and other defining marks of percepts. The process of thinking itself is psychologically much better described as (1) an analysis and (2) a re-synthesis of
