The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Ribot - Enquete sur les idées generales
When one thinks, reads, or hears a general term, what arises in consciousness immediately and without reflection, above the sign? R. said to many men and women of diverse characters and occupations: "I am going to pronounce several words; I want you to tell me immediately and without reflection, if the word calls up nothing in your mind, or if it calls up something, and what." An answer which took more than five or six seconds was considered nil or doubtful. Words used were fourteen, in increasing degrees of abstractness: dog, animal, color, form, justice, goodness, virtue, law, number, force, time, connexion, cause, infinite. Some answered to all or some of these; others to a few; 900 answers were written out. These were of three types, the concrete type, consisting in the immediate and spontaneous substitution of a particular case (fact or individual) for the general term; the typographical type, the linking of the concept to a clear vision of a printed word, without anything more; the auditory type or auditory image (here was R.'s most noteworthy case, a literary physician who found every word "sounding in his ears"; he talked aloud in writing his books). R. tried the words in the simplest possible prepositional form (such as to suggest nothing), and got the same results: the psychological and the logical unit have the same effect. But 53 per 100 of the answers were "nothing"; e.g. to cause the answer was, "I can think of nothing." R., through consideration of the theories of unconscious cerebration or thinking and symbolic, thinking, concludes that one learns to understand a concept as one learns to march, dance, or fence, i.e. by habit or organic memory. General terms cover an organized knowledge (un savoir organisé); general ideas are the habits in the intellectual order; conception has varying forms, but only one essential character, the role of the word. These results are only intended for those who can judge about carrying on the work.