Desire. ment or appropriation. In these last cases we have action | determined by perceptions. The cases in which the subject is incited to action by ideas as distinct from perceptions require a more detailed consideration; such are the facts mainly covered by the term "desire." By the time that ideas are sufficiently self-sustaining to form trains that are not wholly shaped by the circumstances of the present, entirely new possibilities of action are opened up. We can desire to live again through experiences of which there is nothing actually present to remind us, and we can desire a new experience which as yet we only imagine. We often, no doubt, apply the term to the simpler states mentioned under (e) in the last paragraph: the fox in the fable is said to have desired the grapes he vilified because out of his reach. Again, at the other extreme it is usual to speak of a desire for honour, or for wealth, and the like; but such are not so much single states of mind as inclinations or habitual desires. Moreover, abstractions of this kind belong to a more advanced stage of development than that at which desire begins, and of necessity imply more complicated grounds of action than we can at present examine. The essential characteristics of desire will be more apparent if we suppose a case somewhere between these extremes. A busy man reads a novel at the close of the day, and finds himself led off by a reference to angling or tropical scenery to picture himself with his rods packed en route for Scotland, or booked by the next steamer for the fairyland of the West Indies. Presently, while the ideas of Jamaica or fishing are at least as vividly imagined as before, the fancied preparations receive a rude shock as the thought of his work recurs. Some such case we may take as typical and attempt to analyse it. First of all it is obviously true, at least of such more concrete desires, that what awakens desire at one time fails to do so at another, and that we are often so absorbed or content with the present as not to be amenable to (new) desires at all. A given X or Y cannot, then, be called desirable per se, it is only desirable by relation to the contents of consciousness at the moment. Of what nature is this relation? (1) At the level of psychical life that we have now reached very close and complete connexions have been formed between ideas and the movements necessary for their realization, so that when the idea is vividly present these movements are apt to be nascent. This association is the result of subjective selection—i.e., of feeling-but, being once established, it persists like other associations independently of it. (2) Those movements are especially apt to become nascent which have not been recently executed, which are therefore fresh and accompanied by the organic sensations of freshness, but also those which are frequently executed, and so from habit readily aroused. The latter fact, which chiefly concerns habitual desires, may be left aside for a time. (3) At times, then, when there is a lack of present interests, or when these have begun to wane, or when there is positive pain, attention is ready to fasten on any new suggestion that calls for more activity, requires a change of active attitude, or promises relief. Such spontaneous concentration of attention ensures greater vividness to the new idea, whatever it be, and to its belongings. In some cases this greater vividness may suffice. This is most likely to happen when the new idea affords intellectual occupation, and this is at the time congenial, or with indolent and imaginative persons who prefer dreaming to doing. (4) But when the new idea does not lead off the pent-up stream of action by opening out fresh channels, when, instead of this, it is one that keeps them intent upon itself in an attitude comparable to expectation, then we have desire. In such a state the intensity of the re-presentation is not adequate to the intensity of the incipient actions it has aroused. This is most obvious when the latter are directed towards sensations or percepts, and the former remains only an idea. If it were possible by concentrating attention to convert ideas into percepts, there would be an end of most desires: "if wishes were horses beggars would ride." (5) But our voluntary power over movements is in general of this kind: here the fiat may become fact. When we cannot hear we can at least listen, and, though there be nothing to fill them, we can at least hold out our hands. It would seem, then, that the source of desire lies essentially in this excess of the active reaction above the intensity of the re-presentation (the one constituting the "impulse," the other the "object" of desire, or the desideratum), and that this disparity rests ultimately on the fact that movements have, and sensations have not, a subjective initiative. (6) The impulse or striving to act will, as already hinted, be stronger the greater the available energy, the fewer the present outlets, and, habits apart, the fresher the new opening for activity. (7) Finally, it is to be noted that, when such inchoate action can be at once consummated, desire ends where it begins: to constitute a definite state of desire there must be not only an obstacle to the realization of the desideratum-if this were all we should rather call the state one of wishing-but an obstacle to its realization by means of the actions its representation has aroused. However the desire may have been called forth, its Relation intensity is primarily identical with the strength of this of desire impulse to action, and has no definite or constant relation to feeling. to the amount of pleasure that may result from its satisfaction. The feeling directly consequent on desire as a state of want and restraint is one of pain, and the reaction which this pain sets up may either suppress the desire or prompt to efforts to avoid or overcome the obstacles in its way. To inquire into these alternatives would lead us into the higher phases of voluntary action; but we must first consider the relation of desire to feeling more closely. Instances are by no means wanting of very imperious desires accompanied by the clear knowledge that their gratification will be positively distasteful. On the other hand it is possible to recollect or picture circumstances known or believed to be intensely pleasurable without any desire for them being awakened at all: we can regret or admire without desiring. Yet there are many psychologists who maintain that desire is excited only by the prospect of the pleasure that may arise through its gratification, and that the strength of the desire is proportional to the intensity of the pleasure thus anticipated. Quidquid petitur, petitur sub specie boni is their main formula. The plausibility of this doctrine rests partly upon a seemingly imperfect analysis of what strictly pertains to desire and partly on the fact that it is substantially true both of what we may call "presentation-prompted action, which belongs to an earlier stage than desire, and of the more or less rational action that comes later. In the very moment of enjoyment it may be fairly supposed that action is sustained solely by the pleasure received and is proportional to the intensity of that pleasure. But there is here no re-presentation and no seeking; the conditions essential to desire, therefore, do not apply. Again, in rational action, where both are present, it may be true -to quote the words of an able advocate of the view here controverted-that "our character as rational beings is to desire everything exactly according to its pleasure value." 2 But consider what such conceptions as the good, pleasure value, and rational action involve. Here we have foresight and calculation, regard for self as an object of permanent 1 As such an instance may be cited Plato's story of Leontius, the son of Aglaon, in Rep., iv. 439 fin. 2 Bain, Emotions and Will, 3d ed., p. 438. interest,-Butler's cool self-love; but desire as such is | In this there is, of course, no exception to the general principle that action is consequent on feeling,-a greater pleasure being preferred before a less, a less pain before a greater; for, though the feeling that follows upon its satisfaction be less or even change entirely, still the pain of the unsatisfied desire increases as the desire hardens into habit. It is also a point in favour of the position here taken that appetites, which may be compared to inherited desires, certainly prompt to action by present pain rather than by prospective pleasure. interest to ascertain the general mode of its elaboration; but as to this the reader must consult the article PHILOLOGY In entering upon this inquiry we are really passing one of the Distinchardest and fastest lines of the old psychology, that between sense tion beand understanding. So long as it was the fashion to assume a tween multiplicity of faculties the need was less felt for a clear exposition sense of their connexion. A man had senses and intellect much as he and unhad eyes and ears; the heterogeneity in the one case was no more derstandpuzzling than in the other. But for psychologists who do not cut ing. the knot in this fashion it is confessedly a hard matter to explain the relation of the two. The contrast of receptivity and activity hardly avails, for all presentation involves activity and essentially the same activity, that of attention. Nor can we well maintain that the presentations attended to differ in kind, albeit such a view has been held from Plato downwards. Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit prius in sensu: the blind and deaf are necessarily without some concepts that we possess. If pure being is pure nothing, pure thought is equally empty. Thought consists of a certain claboration of sensory and motor presentations and has no content boration are psychologically a priori; on the contrary, what is apart from these. We cannot even say that the forms of this elaepistemologically the most fundamental is the last to be psychologically realized. This is not only true as a fact; it is also true of necessity, in so far as the formation of more concrete concepts is an essential preliminary to the formation of others more abstract, -those most abstract, like the Kantian categories, &c., being thus the last of all to be thought out or understood. And though this formative work is substantially voluntary, yet, if we enter upon it, the form at each step is determined by the so-called matter, and not by us; in this respect "the spontaneity of thought" is not really freer than the receptivity of sense. It is sometimes said that thought is synthetic, and this is true; but imagination is synthetic also; and the processes which yield the ideational train are the only processes at work in intellectual synthesis. Moreover, it would be arbitrary to say at what point the mere generic image Desire naturally prompts to the search for the means ceases and the true concept begins,-so continuous are the two. to its satisfaction and frequently to a mental rehearsal of No wonder, therefore, that English psychology has been prone to various possible courses of action, their advantages and regard thought as only a special kind of perception-perceiving disadvantages. Thus, by the time the ideational continu- the agreement or disagreement of ideas and the ideas themselves um has become, mainly by the comparatively passive work-founding observation with experiment or invention, the act of as mainly the products of association. Yet this is much like coning of association, sufficiently developed to furnish thinking a cave-man in betaking himself to a drifting tree with that of Noah material, motives are forthcoming for thinking to begin. in building himself an ark. In reverie, and even in understanding It is obviously impossible to assign any precise time for the communications of others, we are comparatively passive specthis advance; like all others, it is gradual. Fitfully, in tators of ideational movements, non-voluntarily determined. But strange circumstances and under strong excitement, the in thinking or "intellection," as it has been conveniently termed, there is always a search for something more or less vaguely conlower animals give unmistakable signs that they can under-ceived, for a clue which will be known when it occurs by seeming to satisfy certain conditions. Thinking may be broadly described In so doing we start as solving a problem,-finding an AX that is B. start from a comparatively fixed central idea or intuition and work along the several diverging lines of ideas associated with it, hence far the aptest and in fact the oldest description of thought is that it is discursive. Emotional excitement-and at the outset the Intellection. stand and reason. 2 natural man does not think much in cold blood-quickens the flow little attention. At first the control acquired is but very imperfect It must here be noted that, though we still retain our psychological standpoint, the higher development of the individual is only possible Without language we should be mutually exclusive and impenetrable, Wrough intercourse with other individuals, that is to say, through society. like so many physical atoms; with it each several mind may transcent its own limits and share the minds of others. mankind would have a natural history as other animals have; but As a herd of individuals personality can only emerge out of intercourse with persons, and of such intercourse language is the means. addition of a transparent and responsive world of minds to the dead But, important as is this individuals of external things, the development of our psychological still remains a purely individual development. The only that the materials of this development no longer consist of nothing that the mate and it is of the highest importance to keep it in sight but presentations elaborated by a single mind in accordance with psychical laws. But that combination of individual experiences that converts subjective idiosyncrasy and isolation into the objectivity and solidarity of Universal Mind only affects the individual in accordance with psychical laws, and we have no need therefore to overstep our per domain in studying the advance from the nou rational phase from this or that sort of objects and a more or less accurate survey of to the phase of reason. 2 Locke, so often misrepresented, expressed this truth according to his lights in the following:-"The earth will not appear painted with flowers nor the fields covered with verdure whenever we have a mind to it. Just thus is it with our understanding: all that is voluntary in our knowledge is the employing or withholding any of our faculties them" (Essay, iv. 13, 2). tion. formed without it. The name of a thing or action becomes | immediately perceive the absurdity of that proposition."2 for one who knows the name as much an objective mark How intimately the two are connected is shown by the or attribute as any quality whatever can be. The form surprises that give what point there is to puns, and by the and colour of what we call an (C orange" are perhaps even small confusion that results from the existence of homomore intimately combined with the sound and utterance nymous terms. The question thus arises-What are the of this word than with the taste and fragrance which we properly ideational elements concerned in thought? Over regard as strictly essential to the thing. But, whereas its this question psychologists long waged fight as either essential attributes often evade us, we can always com- nominalists or conceptualists. The former maintain that mand its nominal attribute, in so far as this depends upon what is imaged in connexion with a general concept, such movements of articulation. By uttering the name (or as triangle, is some individual triangle "taken in a certain hearing it uttered) we have secured to us, in a greater or light," while the latter maintain that an "abstract idea” less degree, that superior vividness and definiteness that is formed embodying such constituents of the several parpertain to images reinstated by impressions: our idea ticulars as the concept connotes, but dissociated from the approximates to the fixity and independence of a percept specific or accidental variations that distinguish one par(comp. p. 57 above). With young children and uncultured ticular from another. As often happens in such controminds—who, by the way, commonly "think aloud "—the versies, each party saw the weak point in the other. gain in this respect is probably more striking than those The nominalists easily showed that there was no distinct not confined to their mother-tongue or those used to an abstract idea representable apart from particulars; and analytical handling of language at all realize.1 When the conceptualists could as easily show that a particular things are thus made ours by receiving names from us and presentation "considered in a certain light" is no longer we can freely manipulate them in idea, it becomes easier merely a particular presentation nor yet a mere crowd of mentally to bring together facts that logically belong presentations. The very thing to ascertain is what this together, and so to classify and generalize. For names consideration in a certain light implies. Perhaps a speedier set us free from the cumbersome tangibility and particu- end might have been put to this controversy if either party larity of perception, which is confined to just what is pre- had been driven to define more exactly what was to be sented here and now. But as ideas increase in generality understood by image or idea. Such ideas as are possible they diminish in definiteness and unity; they not only to us apart from abstraction are, as we have seen, revived become less pictorial and more schematic, but they become percepts, not revived sensations, are complex total re-prevague and unsteady as well, because formed from a num- sentations made up of partial re-presentations (comp. p. ber of concrete images only related as regards one or two 57). Reproductive imagination is so far but a faint constituents, and not assimilated as the several images of rehearsal of actual perceptions, and constructive imaginathe same thing may be. The mental picture answering tion but a faint anticipation of possible perceptions. In to the word "horse" has, so to say, body enough to either case we are busied with elementary presentations remain a steady object when under attention from time complicated or synthesized to what are tantamount to to time; but that answering to the word "animal" is intuitions, in so far as the forms of intuition remain in the perhaps scarcely twice alike. The relations of things could idea, though the fact, as tested by movement, &c., is thus never be readily recalled or steadily controlled if the absent. The several partial re-presentations, however, names of those relations, which as words always remain which make up an idea might also be called ideas, not concrete, did not give us a definite hold upon them,- merely in the wide sense in which every mental object make them comprehensible. Once these "airy nothings may be so called, but also in the narrower sense as secondhave a name, we reap again the advantages a concrete ary presentations, i.e., as distinguished from primary preconstituent affords: by its means that which is relevant sentations or impressions. But such isolated images of becomes more closely associated, and that which is irrele- an impression, even if possible, would no more be intuitions vant-abstracted from-falls off. When what answers to than the mere impression itself would be one: taken alone the logical connotation or meaning of a concept is in this the one would be as free of space and time as is the other. way linked with the name, it is no longer necessary that Till it is settled, therefore, whether the ideational elements such "matter or content" should be distinctly present in concerned in conception are intuitive complexes or someconsciousness. It takes time for an image to raise its thing answering to the ultimate elements of these, nothing associates above the threshold; and, when all are there, further can be done. there is more demand upon attention in proportion. There is thus a manifest economy in what Leibnitz happily styled "symbolic," in contrast to "intuitive" thinking. Our power of efficient attention is limited, and with words for counters we can, as Leibnitz remarks, readily perform operations involving very complex presentations, and wait till these operations are concluded before realizing and spreading out the net result in sterling coin. Thought But this simile must not mislead us. In actual thinking and idea- there never is any complete separation between the symbol and the ideas symbolized: the movements of the one are never entirely suspended till those of the other are complete. "Thus," says Hume, "if, instead of saying, that in war the weaker have always recourse to negotiation, we should say, that they have always recourse to conquest, the custom which we have acquired of attributing certain relations to ideas still follows the words and makes us In the case of what are specially called "concrete" as distinct from "abstract" conceptions-if this rough-andready, but unscientific, distinction may be allowed the idea answering to the concept differs little from an intuition, and we have already remarked that the generic image (Gemeinbild of German psychologists) constitutes the connecting link between imagination and conception. But even concerning these it is useless to ask what does one imagine in thinking, e.g., of triangle or man or colour. We never-except for the sake of this very inquiry— attempt to fix our minds in this manner upon some isolated conception; in actual thinking ideas are not in consciousness alone and disjointedly but as part of a context. When the idea "man" is present, it is present in some proposition or question, as-Man is the paragon of animals; In man there is nothing great but mind; and so on. is quite clear that in understanding or mentally verifying such statements very different constituents out of the 1 Ruskin, in his Fors Clavigera, relates that the sight of the word 2 Treatise of Human Nature, pt. i. § vii. (Green and Grose's ed.) 3 So Hume, op. cit., p. 456. General and growth whole complex "man" are prominent in each. Further, what is present to consciousness when a general term is understood will differ, not only with a different context, but also the longer we dwell upon it: we may either analyse its connotation or muster its denotation, as the context 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 confounded 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. Conception, then, is not identical with imagination, although 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." activity be comparable to that of the savant who sorts 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 fruitbearing combinations. Moreover, thinking does not begin with a conscious abstraction of attention from recognized differences in the way logicians describe. The actual The distinctive character of this intellectual synthesis process of generalization, for the most part at all events, character lies, we have seen, in the fact that it is determined entirely is much simpler. The same name is applied to different by what is synthesized, whether that be the elementary things or events because only their more salient features of intel. Constituents of intuitions or general relations of whatever are perceived at all. Their differences, so far from being lection. kind among these. It differs, therefore, in being selective consciously and with effort left out of account, often canfrom the synthesis of ideation, which rests upon contiguity not be observed when attention is directed to them to and unites together whatever occurs together. It differs the inexperienced all is gold that glitters. Thus, and as also from any synthesis, though equally voluntary in its an instance of the principle of progressive differentiation. initiation, which is determined by a purely subjective already noted (p. 42), we find genera recognized before preference, in that intellection depends upon objective species, and the species obtained by adding on differences, relations alone. Owing to the influence of logic, which not the genus by abstracting from them. Of course such has long been in a much more forward state than psycho- vague and indefinite concepts are not at first logically logy, it has been usual to resolve intellection into compari- general: they only become so when certain common eleson, abstraction, and classification, after this fashionments are consciously noted as pertaining to presentations ABCM and ABCN are compared, their differences M and in other respects qualitatively different, as well as numerN left out of sight, and the class notion ABC formed ically distinct. But actually thinking starts from such including both; the same process repeated with ABC and more potential generality as is secured by the association ABD yields a higher class notion AB; and so on. But of a generic image with a name. So far the material of our ideational continuum is not a mere string of ideas of thought is always general,-is freed, that is, from the concrete things, least of all such concrete things as this local and temporal and other defining marks of percepts. view implies. Not till our daily life resembles that of a museum porter receiving specimens will our higher mental : The process of thinking itself is psychologically much better described as (1) an analysis and (2) a re-synthesis of as ana this material already furnished by the ideational trains. resemblance or difference in these or in other respects, it becomes Thought The logical resolution of thought into hierarchies of con- by the very fact of being the central object of thought pro tanto a cepts arranged like Porphyry's tree, into judgments uniting unity, and all that can be affirmed concerning it may so far be regarded as its property or attribute. It is, as we have seen, the lytic. such concepts by means of a logical copula, &c, is the out- characteristic of every completed concept to be a fixed and indecome of later reflexion-mainly for technical purposes- pendent whole, as it were, crystallized out of the still-fluent matrix upon thought as a completed product, and entirely pre- of ideas. Moreover, the earliest objects of thought and the earliest supposes all that psychology has to explain. concepts must naturally be those of the things that live and move The logical about us; hence, then-to seek no deeper reason for the presenttheory of the formation of concepts by generalization (or this natural tendency, which language by providing distinct names abstraction) and by determination (or concretion)-i.e., by powerfully seconds, to reify or personify not only things but every the removal or addition of defining marks-assumes the element and relation of things which we can single out, or, in previous existence of the very things to be formed, for other words, to concrete our abstracts. It is when things have reached this stage that logic begins. But ordinary, so-called forthese marks or attributes-X's and Y's, A's and B's-are mal, logic, which intends to concern itself not with thinking but themselves already concepts. Moreover, the act of gener- only with the most general structure of thought, is debarred from alizing or determining is really an act of judgment, so that recognizing any difference between concepts that does not affect the logician's account of conception presupposes judgment, inevitably into that compartmental logic or logic of extension their relations as terms in a proposition. As a consequence it drifts while at the same time his account of judgment presup- which knows nothing of categories or predicables, but only of the poses conception. But this is no evil; for logic does not one relation of whole and part qualitatively considered. It thus essay to exhibit the actual genesis of thought but only an pushes this reduction to a common denomination to the utmost: ideal for future thinking. Psychologically-that is to say, its terms, grammatically regarded, are always names and symbolize classes or compartments of things. From this point of view all dischronologically—the judgment is first. The growing mind, parity among concepts, save that of contradictory exclusion, and we may suppose, passes beyond simple perception when all connexion, save that of partial coincidence, are at an end. some striking difference in what is at the moment perceived Of a piece with this are the logical formula for a simple judgment, is the occasion of a conflict of presentations (comp. p. 62). X is Y, and the corresponding definitions of judgment as the comThe stalking hunter is not instantly recognized as the de-parison of two concepts and the recognition of their agreement or disagreement. It certainly is possible to represent every judg stroying biped, because he crawls on all fours; or the scare- ment as a comparison, although the term is strictly adequate to crow looks like him, and yet not like him; for, though it only one kind and is often a very artificial description of what stands on two legs, it never moves. There is no immedi- actually happens. But for a logic mainly concerned with inference— i.e., with explicating what is implicated in any given statements ate assimilation: percept and idea remain distinct till, on concerning classes-there is nothing more to be done but to ascertain being severally attended to and compared, what is there agreements or disagreements; and the existence of these, if not is known in spite of the differences. Recognition under necessarily, is at least most evidently represented by spatial relasuch circumstances is in itself a judgment; but of more tions. Such representation obviously implies a single ground of comparison only and therefore leaves no room for differences of account is the further judgment involved in it or accomcategory. The resolution of all concepts into class concepts and panying it—that which connects the new fact with the that of all judgments into comparisons thus go together. On this old idea. Though actually complex, as the result of a view if a concept is complex it can only be so as a class combination; combination of impressions, generic images are not necesand, if the mode of its synthesis could be taken account of at all, this could only be by treating it as an element in the combination sarily known as complexes when they first enter into like the rest :-iron is a substance, &c., virtue a quality, &c., distance judgments; as the subjects of such judgments they are a relation, &c., and so on. There is much of directly psychological but starting-points for predication,-It crawls; It does interest in this thoroughgoing reduction of thought to a form which not move; and the like. Such impersonal judgments, makes its consistency and logical concatenation conspicuously evident. But of the so-called matter of thought it tells us nothing, according to most philologists, are in fact the earliest; And, as said, there are many forms in that matter of at least equal and we may reasonably suppose that by means of them moment, both for psychology and for epistemology; these formal our generic images have been partially analysed, and have logic has tended to keep out of sight. attained to something of the distinctness and constancy of logical concepts. But the analysis is rarely complete: a certain confused and fluctuating residuum remains behind. The psychological concept merges at sundry points into those cognate with it,-in other words, the continuity of the underlying memory-train still operates; only the ideal concepts of logic are in all respects totus, teres, atque rotundus. Evidence of this, if it seem to any to require proof, is obtainable on all sides, and, if we could recover the first vestiges of thinking, would be more abundant still. Logical But, if we agree that it is through acts of judgment which suc- In It has generally been under the bias of such a formal or computational logic that psychologists, and especially English psychologists, have entered upon the study of mind. They have brought with them an analytic scheme which affords a ready place for sensations or "simple ideas" as the elements of thought, but none for any differences in the combinations of these elements. Sensations being in their very nature concrete, all generality becomes an affair of names; and, as Sigwart has acutely remarked, sensationalism and nominalism always go together. History would have borne him out if he had added that a purely formal logic tends in like manner to be nominalistic (see LOGIC, vol. xiv. p. 791). If we are still to speak of the elements of thought, we Forms of must extend this term so as to include not only the sensory synthesis. elements we are said to receive but three distinct ways in which this pure matter is combined :-(1) the forms of intuition,"-Time and Space; (2) the real categories,Substance, Attribute, State, Act, Effect, End or Purpose, &c.—the exact determination of which is not here in place; and (3) certain formal (logical and mathematical) categories, -as Unity, Difference, Identity, Likeness. These can no more be obtained by such a process of abstraction and generalization as logicians and psychologists alike have been wont to describe than the melody could be obtained 1 See Wundt, Logik, i. p. 107 sq., where this process is happily styled "die kategoriale Verschiebung der Begriffe.' 2 Comp. Hamilton: "To judge (pive, judicare) is to recognize the relation of congruence or of confliction in which two concepts, two individual things, or a concept and an individual, compared together, stand to each other" (Lectures on Logic, i. p. 225). 3 As to these it must suffice to refer to what has been already said; comp. pp. 53 and 64 sq. |