Сопсер things as the subjects or starting-points of our dis- by suppressing all the several notes in a tune. They are | not primarily concepts more general than all others in the sense in which animal is more general than man, but rather distinct methods of relating or synthesizing presentations. It is obvious that the whole field of consciousness at any Kant, though he accepted almost unquestioned the logic What is and psychology current in his day, has yet been the occa- moment can never be actually embraced as one. sion, in spite of himself, of materially advancing both, and unified becomes thereby the focus of consciousness and so chiefly by the distinction he was led to make between formal leaves an outlying field; so far unity may be held to imply and transcendental logic. In his exposition of the latter plurality. But it cannot with propriety be said that in a he brings to light the difference between the "functions of simple act of attention the field of consciousness is analysed the understanding" in synthesizing-or, as we might say, into two distinct parts, i.e., two unities, this (now attended organizing-percepts into concepts and the merely analytic to) and the other or the rest (abstracted from). For the subsumption of abc and abd under ab,—a, b, c, and d being not-this is but the rest of a continuum and not itself a what they may. Unlike other concepts, categories as such whole; it is left out but not determined, as the bounding To know two do not in the first instance signify objects of thought how-space is left out when a figure is drawn. ever general, but these functions of the understanding in unities we must connect both together; and herein comes constituting objects. In fine, they all imply some special to light the difference between the unity which is the form process, and into these processes it is the business of of the concept or subject of discourse and the unity of a psychology to inquire. But only the briefest attempt at judgment. The latter is of necessity complex; the former such inquiry is here possible. may or may not be. But in any case the complexity of To begin with what are par excellence formal categories, the two is different. If the subject of thought is not only tion of and among these with that which is the most fundamental clear but distinct-i.e., not merely defined as a whole but unity. and formal of all-How do we come by the conception of having its constituents likewise more or less defined—such unity? Amongst all the ideas we have," says Locke, "as distinctness is due to previous judgments. At any future there is none suggested to the mind by more ways, so there time these may of course be repeated; such are the anais none more simple than that of unity, or one. It has no lytical or explicative judgments of logic. As the mere shadow of variety or composition in it; every object our subject of discourse it is, however, a single unity simulsenses are employed about, every idea in our understand-taneously apprehended; the relation ascertained between ings, every thought of our minds, brings this idea along it and its predicate constitutes the unity of judgment, a with it." And the like with painful iteration has been unity which is comprehended only when its parts are said by almost all English psychologists since. Such con- successively apprehended. sensus notwithstanding, to assign a sensible origin to unity is certainly a mistake,- -one of a class of mistakes already more than once referred to, which consist in transferring to the data of sense all that is implied in the language necessarily used in speaking of them. The term "a sensation" no doubt carries along with it the idea of unity, but the bare sensation as received brings along with it nothing but itself. And, if we consider sensory consciousness merely, we do not receive a sensation, and then another sensation, and so on seriatim; but we have always a continuous diversity of sensations even when these are qualitatively sharply differentiated. Moreover, if unity were an impression of sense and passively received, it would, in common with other impressions, be unamenable to change. We cannot see red as blue, but we can resolve many (parts) into one (whole), and vice versa.2 Unity, then, is the result of an act the occasions for which, no doubt, are at first non-voluntarily determined; but the act is still as distinct from them as is attention from the objects attended to. It is to that movement of attention already described in dealing with ideation (p. 61) that we must look as the source of this category. This same movement, in like manner, yields us temporal signs; and the complex unity formed by a combination of these is what we call number. When there is little or no difference between the field and the focus of attention, unifying is an impossibility, whatever the impressions received may be. On the other hand, as voluntary acts of concentration become more frequent and distinct the variegated continuum of sense is shaped into intuitions of definite things and events. Also, as soon as words facilitate the control of ideas, it becomes possible to single out special aspects and relations of 1 Essay concerning Human Understanding, II. xvi. § 1. "Wir können eines der hier gedruckten Wörter als Eins ansehen, indem wir eine Mannigfaltigkeit von Buchstaben doch in einem abschliessenden Acte zu einem Bilde vereinigen und es von den benachbarten Bildern trennen; wir können es als Vielheit ansehen, wenn wir auf den Uebergang von einem Buchstaben zum andern, jeden Schritt absetzend, achten" (Sigwart, Logik, ii. p. 41). dicho But, though a judgment is always a complex unity, the Law of extent of this complexity seems at first sight to vary as the form of synthesis varies. Formal logic, as we have tomy or duality. seen, by throwing the form of synthesis into the predicate has no difficulty in reducing every judgment to an S is P. But, if we at all regard the matter thought, it is certain, for example, that "It is an explosion" is less complex than "The enemy explodes the mine." The first answers one question; the second answers three. But as regards the more complex judgment both the process of ascertaining the fact and the language in which it is expressed show that the three elements concerned in it are not synthesized at once. Suppose we start from the explosion,-and changes or movements are not only apt to attract attention first, but, when recognized as events and not as abstracts personified, they call for some supplementing beyond themselves then in this case we may search for the agent at work or for the object affected, but not for both at once. Moreover, if we find either, a complete judgment at once ensues: "The enemy explodes," or "The mine is exploded." The original judgment is really due to a synthesis of these two. But, when the results of former judgments are in this manner taken up into a new judgment, a certain "condensation of thought" ensues. Of this condensation the grammatical structure of language is evidence, though logical manipulation-with great pains-obliterates it. Thus our more complex judgment would take the form"The enemy is now mine-exploding" or "The mine is enemy-exploded," according as one or other of the simpler An examination of other cases judgments was made first. would in like manner tend to show that intellectual synthesis is always-in itself and apart from implications-a binary synthesis. Wundt, to whom belongs the merit of first explicitly stating this "law of dichotomy or duality" as the cardinal principle of discursive thinking, contrasts it with synthesis by mere association. This, as running on ; the continuously, he represents thus-A-B-C-D 3 Wundt, Logik: eine Untersuchung der Principien der Erkenntniss, i. p. 53 sq. Formal categories. Differ ence and likeness. synthesis of thought, on the other hand, he symbolizes by difference—where presentations seem absolutely or totally forms such as the following: AB AB CD AB DE &c. In explanation of this law as a law of intellection it is hardly sufficient to rest it ultimately on the fact "that in a given moment of time only a single act of apperception is possible."1 This applies to all syntheses alike. The point surely is that the one thing attended to in an intellective act is the synthesis of two things, and of two things only, because, as only one movement of attention is possible at a time, only two things at a time can be synthesized. In that merely associative synthesis by which the memorycontinuum is produced attention moves from A to B and thence to C without any relation between A and B being attended to at all, although they must have relations, that of sequence, e.g., at least. The intellective synthesis which follows upon this first resolves the A-B into its elements, and then, if there be any ground for so doing, re-synthesizes them with a consciousness of what the synthesis means.2 The so Passing now to the remaining formal categories Difference, Likeness, Identity-all of which come under the law of duality so far as they imply not a single presentation but some relation between two presentations, we have to seek out the characteristics of the states of mind in which these relations become objects of consciousness, called fundamentum relationis, of course, can be nothing but the two presentations concerned. Just as certain, however, is it that the relation itself involves something more than these. Two equal triangles may be made to coincide, but are not necessarily coincident: Dromio of Ephesus might be mistaken for Dromio of Syracuse, but at least they never mistook each other. And this brings us to the point. As Lotze puts it, "Two impressions a and b are never to be regarded as more than stimuli which, by affecting the conscious subject-in its very nature individual and sui generis—incite to reaction that activity by means of which there arise the new presentations, such as similarity, equality, contrast, &c."3 The activity thus stimulated is what in other words we call the voluntary concentration of attention; to ascertain, then, what these new presentations" of difference, likeness, and so forth are, we must analyse carefully what takes place when two impressions a and b are expressly compared. "Difference," says Hume, "I consider rather as a negation of relation than as anything real or positive. Difference is of two kinds, as opposed either to identity [unity?] or resemblance. The first is called a difference of number, the other of kind." The truth seems rather to be that difference in the sense of numerical difference is so far an element in all relations as all imply distinct correlatives. To this extent even identity-or at least the recognition of it-rests on difference, that form of difference, viz., which is essential to plurality. But absolute difference of kind may be considered tantamount not, indeed, to the negation, but at least to the absence, of all formal relation. That this absolute difference or disparateness, as we may call it affords no ground for relations becomes evident when we consider (I) that, if we had only a plurality of absolutely different presentations, we should have no consciousness at all (comp. p. 45); and (2) that we never compare-although we distinguish, i.e., recognize, numerical different, as are, e.g., a thunderclap and the taste of sugar, or the notion of free trade and that of the Greek accusative. All actual comparison of what is qualitatively different rests upon opposition or contrariety, .e., upon at least partial likeness (comp. p. 46). This being understood, it is noteworthy that the recognition of such unlikeness is, if anything, more "real or positive" than that of likeness, and is certainly the simpler of the two. In the comparison of sensible impressions-as of two colours, two sounds, the lengths or the directions of two lines, &c.-we find it easier in some cases to have the two impressions that are compared presented together, in others to have first one presented and then the other. But either way the essential matter is to secure the most effective presentation of their difference, which in every case is something positive and, like any other impression, may vary in amount from bare perceptibility to the extremest distance that the continuum to which it belongs will admit. Where no difference or distance at all is perceptible, there we say there is likeness or equality. Is the only outcome, then, that when we pass from ab to ac there is a change in consciousness, and that when ab persists there is none? To say this is to take no account of the operations (we may symbolize them as ac -abcb, ab- ab=0) by which the difference or the equality results. The change of presentation (be) and absence of change (0) are not here what they are when merely passive occurrences, so to put it. This is evident from the fact that the former is but a single presentation and the latter no presentation at all. The relation of unlikeness, then, is distinguished from the mere "position" of change by (1) the voluntary concentration of attention upon ab and ac with a view to the detection of this change as their difference, and by (2) the act, relating them through it, in that they are judged unlike to that extent. The type of comparison is such superposition of geometrical lines or figures (as, e.g., in Euclid Ì. iv.): if they coincide we have concrete equality; if they do not their difference is a line or figure. or figure. All sensible comparisons conform essentially to this type. In comparing two shades we place them side by side, and passing from one to the other seek to determine not the absolute shade of the second but its shade relative to the first,-in other words, we look out for contrast. We do not say of one "It is dark," for in the scale of shades it may be light, but "It is darker"; or vice versa. there is no distance or contrast we simply have not two impressions, and, as said-if we consider the difference by itself-no impression at all. Two coincident triangles must be perceived as one. The distinction between the one triangle thus formed by two coinciding and the single triangle rests upon something extraneous to this bare presentation of a triangle that is one and the same in both The marks of this numerical distinctness may be various: they may be different temporal signs, as in reduplications of the memory-continuum; or they may be constituents peculiar to each, from which attention is for the moment abstracted, any one of which suffices to give the common or identical constituent a new setting. In general, it may be said (1) that the numerical distinctness of the related terms is secured in the absence of all qualitative difference solely by the intellectual act which has so unified each as to retain what may serve as an individual mark; and (2) that they become related as "like" either in virtue of the active adjustment to a change of impression which their partial assimilation defeats, or in virtue of an anticipated continuance of the impression which this cases. assimilation confirms. Where It is in keeping with this analysis that we say in common Identity. speech that two things in any respect similar are so far the same; that, e.g., the two Dromios T "The one so like the other As could not be distinguished but by names had the same complexion and the same stature just as we say they had the same mother. This ambiguity in the word "same," whereby it means either individual identity or indistinguishable resemblance, has been often noticed, and from a logical or objective point of view justly complained of as " engendering fallacies in otherwise enlightened understandings." But apparently no one has inquired into its psychological basis, although more than one writer has admitted that the ambiguity is one "in itself not always to be avoided." It is not enough to trace the confusion to the existence of common names and to cite the forgotten controversies of scholastic realism. We are not now concerned with the conformity of thought to things or with logical analysis, but with the analysis of a psychological process. The tendency to treat presentations as if they were copies of things-the objective bias, as we may call it is the one grand obstacle to psychological observation. Some only realize with an effort that the idea of extension is not extended; no wonder, then, if it should seem "unnatural" to maintain that the idea of two like things does not consist of two like ideas. But, assuming that both meanings of identity have a psychological justification, it will be well to distinguish them and to examine their connexion. Perhaps we might term the one "material identity" and the other "individual identity," following the analogy of expressions such as "different things but all made of the same stuff," the same person but entirely changed." Thus there is unity and plurality concerned in both, and herein identity or sameness differs from singularity or mere oneness, which entails no relation. But the unity and the plurality are different in each, and each is in some sort the converse of the other. In the one, two different individuals partially coincide; in the other, one individual is partially different; the unity in the one case is an individual presentation, in the other is the presentation of an individual. time, or localize or project them into the same place, a careful analysis shows only that we detect no difference of temporal and local signs respectively, in other words, have only special cases of comparison. ณ As regards the real categories, it may be said generally Real that these owe their origin in large measure to the an- categories. thropomorphic or mythical tendency of human thought,τὸ ὅμοιον τῷ ὁμοίῳ γινώσκεσθαι. Into the formation of these conceptions two very distinct factors enter-(1) the facts of what in the stricter sense we call "self-consciousness," and (2) certain spatial and temporal relations among our presentations themselves. On the one hand, it has to be noted that these spatial and temporal relations are but the occasion or motive and ultimately perhaps, we may say, the warrant for the analogical attribution to things of selfness, efficiency, and design, but are not directly the source of the forms of thought that thus arise. On the other hand, it is to be noted also that such forms, although they have an independent source, would never apart from suitable material come into actual existence. If the followers of Hume err in their exclusive reliance upon "associations naturally and even necessarily generated by the order of our sensations" (J. S. Mill), the disciple of Kant errs also who relies exclusively on "the synthetic unity of apperception." The truth is that we are on the verge of error in thus sharply distinguishing the two at all; if we do so momentarily for the purpose of exposition it behoves us here again to remember that mind grows and is not made. The use of terms like "innate," priori," "necessary," "formal," &c., without further qualification leads only too easily to the mistaken notion that all the mental facts so named are alike underived and original, independent not only of experience but of each other; whereas but for the forms of intuition the forms of thought would be impossible, that is to say, we should never have a self-consciousness at all if we had not previously learnt to distinguish occupied and unoccupied space, past and present in time, and the like. But, again, it is equally true that, if we could not feel and move as well as receive impressions, and if experience did not repeat itself, we should never attain even to this level of spatial and temporal intuition. Kant shows a very lame and halting recognition of this dependence of the higher forms on the lower both in his schematism of the categories, and again in correcting in his Analytic the opposition of sense and understanding as respectively receptive and active with which he set out in his Esthetic. Still, although what are called the subjective and objective factors of real knowledge advance together, the former is in a sense always a step ahead. We find again without us the permanence, individuality, efficiency, and adaptation we have found first of all within (comp. p. 56, b and d). But such primitive imputation of personality, though it facilitates a first understanding, soon proves itself faulty and begets the contradictions which have been one chief motive to philosophy. We The many vexed questions that arise concerning indi- smile at the savage who thinks a magnet must need food Rentvidual identity are metaphysical rather than psychological. and is puzzled that the horses in a picture remain for ever blentity. But it will serve to bring out the difference between the still; but few consider that underlying all common-sense two forms of identity to note that an identification cannot thinking there lurks the same natural precipitancy. We be established solely by qualitative comparison; an alibi or attribute to extended things a unity which we know only a breach of temporal continuity will turn the flank of the as the unity of an unextended subject; we attribute to strongest argument from resemblance. Moreover, resem-changes among these extended things what we know only blance itself may be fatal to identification when the law when we act and suffer ourselves; and we attribute further of being is change. But, while temporal and spatial de- both to them and their changes a striving for ends which terminations are essential to individual identity, they have, we know only because we feel. In asking what they are, strictly speaking, no individual identity of their own. how they act, and why they are thus and thus, we assimiWhen we speak of two impressions occurring at the same late them to ourselves, in spite of the differences which Comp. J. S. Mill, Logic, bk. i. ch. iii. § 11, and Examination of lead us by and by to see a gulf between mind and matter. Hamilton, 34 ed., ch. xiv. p. 306, note; also Meinong, "Hume-Studien Such instinctive analogies have, like other analogies, to be I., Wiener Sitzungberichte (Phil. Hist. C.), vol. ci. p. 709. confirmed, refuted, or modified by further knowledge, ie., Material In material identity the unity is that of a single preidentity. sentation, whether simple or complex, which enters as a common constituent into two or more others. It may be possible of course to individualize it, but as it emerges in a comparison it is a single presentation and nothing more. On account of this absence of individual marks this single presentation is what logicians call "abstract"; but this is not psychologically essential. It may be a generic image which has resulted from the neutralization of individual marks, but it may equally well be a simple presentation, like red, to which such marks never belonged. We come here from a new side upon a truth which has been already expounded at length, viz., that presentations are not given to us as individuals but as changes in a continuum. Time and space-the instruments, as it were, of individualization, which are presupposed in the objective sciences-are psychologically later than this mere differentiation. Indi XX. II Causality. by the very insight into things which these analogies have | mind which according to Hume constitutes the whole of our idea As it must here suffice to examine one of these categories, let us take that which is the most important and central of the three, viz., causality or the relation of cause and effect, as that will necessarily throw some light upon the constitution of the others. To begin, we must distinguish three things, which, though very different, are very liable to be confused. (1) Perceiving in a definite case, e.g., that on the sun shining a stone becomes warm, we may say the sun makes the stone warm. This is a concrete instance of predicating the causal relation. In this there is, explicitly at all events, no statement of a general law or axiom, such as we have when we say (2) "Every event must have a cause," a statement commonly known as the principle of causality. This again is distinct from what is on all hands allowed to be an empirical generalization, viz., (3) that such and such particular causes have invariably such and such particular effects. With these last psychology is not directly concerned at all: it has only to analyse and trace to its One point in the analysis of the causal relation Hume may be The subjective origin and the after-projection we must admit, Perhaps the source of this element in the relation will become 1 Treatise of Human Nature, pt. iii., § xiv., "Of the idea of necessary connexion." irresistibly determined to imagine an apple when he hears its name And, had Hume not confused the two differ ent inquiries, that concerning the origin of the idea of causation and Keeping to the former and simpler question, it would seem that 2 Hume here has Locke and Berkeley specially in view. Locke as a patient and acute inquirer was incomparably better as a psychologist than a man addicted to literary foppery like Hume, for all his genius, could possibly be. On the particular question, see Locke, ii. 21, 3-5. all. It is not a case of sequence between two separable impressions; for we cannot really make the indefinite regress that such logical distinctions as that between the conscious subject and its acts implies. Moreover, our activity as such is not directly presented at all: we are, being active; and further than this psychological analysis will not go. There are, as we have seen, two ways in which this activity is manifested, the receptive or passive and the motor or active in the stricter sense-(comp. p. 44) and our experience of these we project in predicating the causal relation. But two halves do not make a whole; so we have no complete experience of effectuation, for the simple reason that we cannot be two things at once. We are guided in piecing it together by the temporal and spatial relations of the things concerned. Hence, perhaps, some of the antinomies that beset this conception. In its earliest form, then, the so-called necessary connexion of cause and effect is perhaps nothing more than that of physical constraint. To this, no doubt, is added the strength of expectation-as Hume supposed-when the same effect has been found invariably to follow the same cause. Finally, when upon a basis of associated uniformities of sequence a definite intellectual elaboration of such material ensues, the logical necessity of reason and consequent finds a place, and so far as deduction is applicable cause and reason become interchangeable ideas.1 Object. The mention of logical necessity brings up a topic already inciivity of dentally noticed, viz., the objectivity of thought and cognition genthought. erally (comp. pp. 55, 77). The psychological treatment of this topic is tantamount to an inquiry into the characteristics of the states of mind we call certainty, doubt, belief-all of which centre round the one fact of evidence. Between the certainty that a proposition is true and the certainty that it is not there may intervene continuous grades of uncertainty. We may know that A is sometimes B, or sometimes not; or that some at least of the conditions of B are present or absent; or the presentation of A may be too confused for distinct analysis. This is the region of probability, possibility, more or less obscurity. Leaving this aside, it will be enough to notice those cases in which certainty may be complete. With that certainty which is absolutely objective, i.e., with knowledge, psychology has no direct concern; it is for logic to furnish the criteria by which knowledge is ascertained. objective determination. As Dr Bain puts it, "The leading fact Presentation of Self, Self-Consciousness, and Conduct. of such relations that the conception of self is completed. The earliest and to the last the most important element in self- Self and what we might perhaps term its root or material element-is that the body. variously styled the organic sensations, vital sense, cœnæsthesis, or somatic consciousness. This largely determines the tone of the 3 See BELIEF, vol. iii. p. 532. 4 A large, though certainly diminishing, school of thinkers would entirely demur to such a proposal. "This personality," says one, "like all other simple and immediate presentations, is indefinable . . . it can be analysed into no simpler elements; for it is revealed to us in all the clearness of an original intuition" (Mansel, Metaphysics, p. 182). Such an objection arises from that confusion between psychology and epistemology which we have met already several times before (as, c.g., in the case of space, p. 53, and of unity, p. 79). The fact is that a conception that is logically "simple and immediate," in such wise as to be underivable from others, and therefore indefinable, may be-we might almost say will be-psychologically the result of a long process of development; for the more abstract a concept is, i.c., the more fundamental in epistemological structure, the more thinking there has been to elaborate it. The most complex integrations of experience are needed to furnish the ideas of its ultimate elements. Such ideas when reached have intellectually all the clearness of an original intuition, no doubt; but they are not therefore to be coufounded with what is psychologically a simple and immediate presentation. It was in this last sense that idealists like Berkeley and Kant denied any presentation of self as much as sceptics like Hume. Self is psychologically a product of thought, not a datum of sense; hence, while Berkeley called it a "notion and Kant an idea of the reason," Hume treated it as a philosophical fiction. |