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THE principal aim of this work is to study the development of the mind as it abstracts and gen- eralises, and to show that these two operations exhibit a perfect evolution : that is to say, they exist already in perception, and advance by successive and easily determined stages to the more elevated forms of pure symbolism, accessible only to the minority. It is a commonplace to say that abstraction has its degrees, as number its powers. Yet it is not suffi- cient to enunciate this truism ; the degrees must be fixed by clear, objective signs, and these must not be arbitrary. Thus we shall obtain precise knowl- edge of the various stages in this ascending evolution, and stand in less danger of confounding abstractions highly distinct by nature. Moreover, we avoid cer- tain equivocal questions and discussions that are based entirely upon the very extended sense of the terms to abstract and to generalise. Accordingly we have sought to establish three main periods in the progressive development of these operations: (i) inferior abstraction, prior to the ap- pearance of speech, independent of words (though not of all signs) ; (2) intermediate abstraction, accom- panied by words, which though at first accessory, in- crease in importance little by little; (3) superior ah vi THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. straction, where words alone exist in consciousness, and correspond to a complete substitution. 1 These three periods again include subdivisions, transitional forms which we shall endeavor to deter- mine. This is a study of pure psychology, from which we have rigorously to eliminate all that relates to logic, to the theory of knowledge, to first principles of philos- ophy. We are concerned with genesis, with embry- ology, with evolution only. We are thus thrown upon observation, upon the facts wherein mental processes are enunciated, and discovered. Our material, and principal sources of information, lie therefore : (i) for inferior abstracts, in the acts of animals, of children, of uneducated deaf-mutes; (2) for intermediate abstracts, in the development of languages, and the ethnograph- ical documents of primitive or half-civilised peoples ; (3) for superior abstracts, in the progressive constitu- tion of scientific ideas and theories, and of classifica- tions. This volume is a resume of lectures given at the College de France in 1895. It is the first of a forth- coming series, designed to include all departments of psychology : the unconscious, percepts, images, voli- tion, movement, etc. TH. RIBOT. March, 1897. I La parole is here, and subsequently, translated by speech; le mot by words, or language, verbal language being throughout understood. Trans. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. ABSTRACTION PRIOR TO SPEECH. PAGE Two forms of intellectual activity : association and dissocia- tion. Abstraction belongs to the second type. Its posi- tive and negative conditions. It is a case of attention : psychical reinforcement. It is in embryo in concrete operations : in perception, and the image. Its practical character. Generalisation belongs to the first type. Problem of the primum cognitum ; difference or resem- blance ? Hierarchy of general ideas : need of a notation. Three great classes. Lower forms of abstraction and generalisation or pre-linguistic period, characterised by absence of words i ANIMALS. Different observations. Numeration in animals ; what does it consist of ? Mode of formation and characteristics of ge- neric images. Reasoning in animals. Reasoning from particular to particular : how this differs from simple as- sociation. Reasoning by analogy. The logic of images : its two degrees ; its characteristics. Does not admit of substitution; always has a practical aim. Discussion of certain cases 1 1 CHILDREN. Does intelligence start from the general or the particular ? A badly-stated question. Intelligence proceeds from the in- definite to the definite. Characteristics of generic images Vlll THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. PAGE in children ; examples. Numeration ; its narrow limits. Difference between real numeration and perception of a plurality 31 DEAF-MUTES. These furnish the upper limit of the logic of images. Their natural language. Vocabulary. All their signs are ab- stractions. Syntax of position ; disposition of terms ac- cording to order of importance. Intellectual level 39 ANALYTICAL GESTURES. General classification of signs. Gesture, an intellectual, not an emotional, instrument ; its wide distribution. Syntax identical with that of deaf-mutes. Comparison between phonetic language and language of analytical gesture. Reason why speech has prevailed 48 CHAPTER II. Language in animals. The origin of speech ; principal con- temporaneous hypotheses ; instinct, progressive evolution . The cry, vocalisation, articulation. Transitional forms : co-existence of speech and of the language of action ; co- existence of speech and of inarticulate sounds. The de- velopment of speech. Protoplasmic period without gram- matical functions. Roots; two theories: reality, and resi- due of analysis. Did speech begin with words or with phrases ? Successive appearance of parts of speech. Ad- jectives or denominations of qualities. The substantive a contraction of the adjective. Verbs not a primitive phe- nomenon ; the three degrees of abstraction. Terms ex- pressive of relations. Psychological nature of relation, may be reduced to change or movement. Function of analogy 54 CHAPTER III. INTERMEDIATE FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. Division into two classes according to the function of the word. First class. Words not indispensable, and only in a TABLE OF CONTENTS. IX PAGE limited degree the instrument of substitution. Difference between generic imnges and lower concepts. Character- istics of these two classes. Is there continuity between the two ? Nature of the lower forms of intermediate ab- straction, according to languages, numeration, etc. Con- crete-abstract period. Second class. Words are indis- pensable and become an instrument of substitution. Difficulty in finding examples. History of zoological classification : pre-scientific period : Aristotle, Linnaeus, Cuvier, etc., contemporary writers. Progress towards unity 86 CHAPTER IV. HIGHER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. THEIR NATURE. Object of the chapter : What is there in consciousness, when we think by concepts ? The general idea as a psychical state may be reduced to varieties. Investigation of this point : the method pursued. Reduction to three princi- pal types. Concrete type the most widely distributed. Variation ; reply by association of ideas. Visual typo- graphic type : printed words seen and nothing further. Auditory type ; less common. Interrogations by general propositions : same results. Investigation of cases in which words exist alone in consciousness. Is it possible to think with words only ? Role of unconscious knowl- edge. General ideas are intellectual habits. Natural antagonism between the image and the concept. Its causes. Are there general ideas or merely general terms? in CHAPTER V. EVOLUTION OF THE PRINCIPAL CONCEPTS. Section i. The Concept of Number. Return to lower phases : concrete and abstract. Formation of idea of unity. Hypotheses as to its experimental ori- gin : touch, sight, hearing, internal sensations, attention. Unity the result of decomposition, an abstract. The series of numbers. Process of construction. Function of signs : discussions of this subject 137 X THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. PAGE Section II. The Concept of Space. Extension as a concrete fact. Variable and relative charac- teristics. Transition to concrete-abstract period. Space (abstract): the current popular conception the result of imagination. Idle problems. The true concept is the result of dissociation. The notion of "function." Im- agination of an infinite space. Works on ideal geometry: constructive power of the mind ; reinforcement of distinc- tion between space as perceived and conceived 146 Section III. The Concept of Time. Real (concrete) duration : the present, its reality ; its experi- mental determination : maximum and minimum. Repro- duction of duration ; experiments ; indifferent point. Variable and relative characteristics. Origin of concrete notion of time: different hypotheses: external and inter- nal sensations : presumption in favor of the latter. Ab- stract duration (time). First stage, depends on memory and imagination only : corresponds (i) to generic images (representation of duration among the higher animals), and (2) to the concrete-abstract period (intermediate forms of abstraction). Primitive races. Why has time (and not space) been personified. Second stage depends upon ab- straction. Function of the astronomers : measure of time. Infinite time. Current hypotheses as to the psycho- logic process which constitutes the notion of time : sensa- tions and consecutive images : sensations which are feel- ings of tension, of effort. "Temporal signs." Full and empty time 159 Section IV. The Concept of Cause. Psychical elements constituting the concept. Experiential origin of the idea of cause : different solutions have all a common basis. Its primitive individual character. Its extension. Subjective and anthropomorphic period of generic images. Period of reflexion, partial elimination of its subjective character, reduction to an invariable re- lation. The notion of universal causality is acquired and remains a postulate. Two ideas have hindered the devel- opment of this last notion : that of miracles and that of TABLE OF CONTENTS. XI PAGE chance. Transformation of the notion of cause. Rule of scientific research : its position is exterior. Identity of cause and effect. Present form of the principle of uni- versal causality. Two quite distinct notions of cause (force, invariable relation), one of which is alone a con- cept 180 Section V. The Concept of Law. Objective value of general ideas. Two contrary theories. Mere approximations to the psychologist. Three periods in the development of the notion of law. Period of ge- neric images. Primitive sense of the word law. Period of empirical laws, corresponding with the intermediate forms of abstraction. Characteristics : identity of fact and law ; complexity. Period of theoretical or ideal laws, corresponding to medium forms of abstraction. Its fea- tures : simplicity, quantitative determination, ideal for- mula 194 Section VI. The Concept of Species. Its value : contemporaneous discussion of this subject. Com- ponent elements of the concept of species : resemblance, filiation. Difficulties resulting from polymorphism, from alternate generation. Races, varieties. Temporary and provisional objectivity. Genera. Theories of Linnaeus and Agassiz. Shifting character of the classifications above the species. One common point between trans- formists and their opponents : practical value of concepts. Not realities, nor fictions, but approximations. Laws and species dependent on conditions of existence and varying with them 203 CHAPTER VI. CONCLUSION. How was the faculty of abstracting and of generalising con- stituted ? Two principal causes : utility, appearance of inventors. How has it developed ? Three principal di- rections : practical, speculative, scientific. Resumt: nec- essary co-operation of two factors : the one conscious, the other unconscious. . .216 CHAPTER I. THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. ABSTRACTION PRIOR TO SPEECH. SAVE in extremely rare cases, supposing such to occur at all, as perhaps in the instant of surprise, and in states approximating to pure sensation, save in such extremely rare cases, where the mind, like a mirror, passively reflects external impressions, intel- lectual activity may always be reduced to one of the two following types : associating, combining, unifying, ( . / / or dissociating, isolating, and separating. These car- S dinal operations underlie all forms of cognition, from the lowest to the highest, and constitute its unity of composition. Abstraction belongs to the second type. It is a normal and necessary process of the mind, dependent on attention, i. e., on the limitation, willed or spon- taneous, of the field of consciousness. The act of abstraction implies in its genesis both negative and positive conditions, and is the result of these. The negative conditions consist essentially in the fact that we cannot apprehend more than one quality or one aspect, varying according to the circumstances, in any complex whole, because consciousness, like 2 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. the retina, is restricted to a narrow region of clear perception. The positive condition is a state which has been appropriately termed a "psychical reinforcement " of that which is being abstracted, and it is naturally ac- companied by a weakening of that which is abstracted from. The true characteristic of abstraction is this partial increment of intensity. While involving elim- ination, it is actually a positive mental process. The elements or qualities of a percept, or a representation, which we omit do not necessarily involve such sup- pression. We leave them out of account simply be- cause they do not suit our ends for the moment, and are complementary. 1 Abstraction being, then, in spite of negative ap- pearances, a positive operation, how are we to con- ceive it? Attention is necessary to it, but it is more than attention. It is an augmentation of intensity, but it is more than an augmentation of intensity. Suppose a group of representations a-\- b-\- c=d. To abstract from b and c in favor of 0, would ostensibly give a = d (<-)-<:). If this were so, b and c would be retained unaltered in consciousness ; there would be no abstraction. On the other hand, since it is impos- sible for the whole representation d to be suppressed outright, b and c cannot be totally obliterated. They subsist, accordingly, in a residual state which may be termed x, and the abstract representation is hence not a but a -\- x or A. Thus the elements of abstract rep- resentations are the same as those of concrete repre- sentations; only some are strengthened, others weak- 1 Schmidkunz, Ueber die Abstraction. Halle: Strieker, 1889. This little work of forty-three pages contains a good historical and theoretical exposi- tion of the question. THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 3 ened : whence arise new groupings. Abstraction, accordingly, consists in the formation of new groups of representations which, while strengthening certain elements of the concrete representations, weaken other elements of the same. 1 We see from the above that abstraction depends genetically upon the causes which awaken and sustain attention. I have described these causes elsewhere, 2 and cannot here return to their consideration. It is sufficient to remark that abstraction, like at- tention, may be instinctive, spontaneous, and natural ; or reflective, voluntary, and artificial. In the first category the abstraction of a quality or mode of ex- istence originates in some attraction, or from jutility ; hence it is a common manifestation of intellectual life and is even met with, as we shall see, among many of the lower animals. In its second form, the rarer and more exalted, it proceeds less from the qualities of the object than from the will of the subject ; it presupposes a choice, an elimination of negligible elements, which is often laborious, as well as the difficult task of main- taining the abstract element clearly in consciousness. In fine, it is always a special application of the atten- tion which, adapted as circumstances require to ob- servation, synthesis, action, etc., here functions as an instrument of analysis. 1 Schmidkunz, loc. cit. This author, who rightly insists upon the positive character of abstraction (which is too frequently considered as a negation) ob- serves that no concept, not even that of infinity, is in its psychological gene- sis the result of negation, for, " in order to deduce from the idea of a finite thing the idea of infinity, it is first necessary to abstract from that thing its quality of finality, which is certainly a positive act ; subsequently, in order to reach infinity, it is sufficient either constantly to increase the time, magni- tude, and intensity of the finite, which is a positive process; or to deny the limits of the finite, which is tantamount to denying the negation." 2 Psychology of Attention. Chicago : The Open Court Publishing Co. I 4 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. A deeply-rooted prejudice asserts that abstraction is a mental act of relative infrequency. This fallacy obtains in current parlance, where "abstract" is a synonym of difficult, obscure, inaccessible. This is a psychological error resulting from an incomplete view: all abstraction is illegitimately reduced to its higher forms.J The faculty of abstracting, from the lowest to the highest degrees, is constantly the same : its devel- lopment is dependent on that of (general) intelligence land of language ; but it exists in embryo even in those 'primitive operations which are properly concerned with the concrete, i. e., perception and representation. Several recent authors have emphasised this point. 1 Perception is par excellence the faculty of cognising the concrete. It strives to embrace all the qualities If) of its object without completely succeeding, because it is held in check by an internal foe, the natural tendency of the mind to simplify and to eliminate. The same horse, at a given moment, is not perceived in the same manner by a jockey, a veterinary surgeon, a painter, and a tyro. To each of these, certain qual- ities, which vary individually, stand in relief, and others recede into the background. Except in cases of methodical and prolonged investigation (where we have observation, and not perception) there is always an unconscious selection of some principal character- istics which, grouped together, become a substitute for totality. It must not be forgotten that perception is pre-eminently a practical operation, that its main- spring is interest or utility, and that in consequence we neglect i. e., leave in the field of obscure con- sciousness whatever at the moment concerns neither 1 See especially Hoeffding, Psychologic. German translation. Second Edition, pp. 223 et seq THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 5 our desires nor our purpos'es. It would be superflu- ous to review all the forms of perception (visual, aud- itory, tactile, etc.), and to show that they are gov- erned by this same law of utility ; but it should be remarked that the natural mechanism by which the strengthened elements and the weakened elements are separated, is a rude cast of what subsequently be- comes abstraction, that the same forces are in play, and are ultimately reducible to some definite direction given to the attention. With the image, the intermediate stage between percept and concept, the reduction of the object rep- resented to a few fundamental features is still more marked. Not merely is there among the different representations which I may have of some man, dog, or tree, one that for the time being necessarily ex- cludes the others (my oak tree perforce appears to me in summer foliage, tinted by autumn, or bereft of leaves, in bright light or in shade), but even this indi- vidual, concrete representation which prevails over the others is no more than a sketch, a reduction of re- ality with many details omitted. Apart from the excep- tionally gifted men in whom mental vision and men- tal audition are perfect, and wholly commensurate (as it would seem) with perception, the representations which we call exact are never so, except in their most general features. Compare the image we have with our eyes closed of a monument, with the percep- tion of the monument itself; the remembrance of a melody with its vocal or instrumental execution. In \ the average man, the image, the would-be copy of re- ality invariably suffers a conspicuous impoverishment, which is enormous in the less lavishly endowed ; it is 6 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. here reduced to a mere schema, limited to the infe- rior concepts. Doubtless it may be objected that the work of dis- sociation in perception and representation is incom- plete and partial. It would be strange and illogical indeed if the abstract were to triumph in the very heart of the concrete ; we do but submit that it is here in germ, in embryonic shape. And hence, when ab- straction appears in its true form, as the conscious- ness of one unique quality isolated from the rest, it is no new manifestation but a fruition, it is a simplifica- tion of simplifications. The state of consciousness thus attained, by the fixation of attention on one quality exclusively, and by its ideal dissociation from the rest, becomes, as we know, a notion which is neither individual nor gen- eral, but abstract, and this is the material of gen- eralisation. The sense of identity, the power of apprehending resemblances, is, as has justly been said, "the keel and backbone of our thinking " ; without it we should be lost in the incessant stream of things. 1 Are there in nature any complete resemblances, any absolutely similar events? It is extremely doubtful. It might be supposed that a person who reads a sentence sev- eral times in succession, who listens several times to the same air, who tastes all the four quarters of the same fruit, would experience in each case an identical perception. But this is not so. A little reflexion will show that besides differences in time, in the varying moods of the subject, and in the cumulative effect of repeated perceptions, there is at least between the first perception and the second, that radical difference 1 W. James, Psychology. Vol. I., p. 459. THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 7 which separates the new from the repeated. In fact, the material given us by external and internal experi- ence consists of resemblances alloyed by differences which vary widely in degree, in other words, analo- gies. The perfect resemblance assumed between things vanishes as we come to know them better. At first sight a new people exhibits to the traveller a well- determined general type ; later, the more he observes, the more the apparent uniformity is resolved into va- rieties. "I have taken the trouble," says Agassiz, "to compare thousands of individuals of the same species; in one case I pushed the comparison so far as to have placed side by side 27,000 specimens of one and the same shell (genus Neretina). I can assure you that in these 27,000 specimens I did not find two that were perfectly alike." Is this faculty of grasping resemblances the sub- strate of generalisation primitive, in the absolute signification of the word? Does it mark the first awak- ening of the mind, in point of cognition? For several contemporary writers (Spencer, Bain, Schneider, and others) the consciousness of difference is the primor- dial factor ; the consciousness of resemblance comes later. Others uphold the opposite contention. 1 As a matter of fact this quest for the primum cognitum is 1 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology. Vol. I., Part 2, Chapter II. Bain ( in the last chapter of Emotions and Will ) says that nothing more fun- damental can possibly be assigned as a mark of intelligence than the feeling of difference between consecutive or co-existing impressions, "There are cases, however, where agreement imparts the shock requisite for rousing the intellectual wave ; but it is agreement so qualified as to be really a mode of difference." For a review and ample discussion of this problem see Ladd's Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, Chapter XIV. The earlier psychol- ogists, in considering the " faculty of comparison" which acts by resem- blance and difference, as primordial, had observed the same fact, although they described it in different terms. M THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. beyond our grasp ; like all genetical questions, it eludes our observation and experience. No conclusion can be formed save on purely log- ical arguments, and each side advances reasons that carry a certain weight. There is, moreover, at the bottom of the whole discussion, the grave error of identifying the embryonic state of the mind with its adult forms, and of presupposing a sharp initial dis- tinction between discrimination and assimilation. The question must remain open, incapable of positive so- lution by our psychology. The incontestable truth with regard to the mind, as we know it in its devel- oped and organised state, is that the two processes advance part passu, and are reciprocally causative. In sum, abstraction and generalisation considered as elementary acts of the mind, and reduced to their simplest conditions, involve two processes : i. The former, abstraction, implies a dissociative process, operating on the raw data of experience. It has subjective causes which are ultimately reducible to attention. It has objective causes which may be due to the fact that a determinate quality is given us as an integral part of widely different groups. "Any total impression whose elements are never experienced apart must be unanalysable. If all cold things were wet and all wet things cold, if all liquids were transparent and no non-liquid were transparent, we should scarcely discriminate between coldness and wetness and scarcely ever invent separate names for liquidity and transparency What is associated now with one thing and now with another tends to become dissociated from either, and to grow into an object of abstract contemplation by the mind. One THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 9 might call this the law of dissociation by varying con- comitants." 1 2. The latter, generalisation, originates in associa- tion by resemblance, but even in its lowest degree it rises beyond this, since it implies a synthetic act of fusion. It does not, in fact, consist in the successive excitation of similar or analogous percepts, as in the case where the image of St. Peter's in Rome suggests to me that of St. Paul's in London, of the Pantheon in Paris, and of other churches with enormous dimen- sions, of like architecture, and with gigantic domes. It is a condensation. The mind resembles a crucible with a precipitate of common resemblances at the bottom, while the differences have been volatilised. In proportion as we recede from this primitive and elementary form, the constitution of the general idea demands other psychological conditions which cannot be hastily enumerated. And thus we reach the principal aim of the present work, which purports, not to reinforce the time-worn dispute as to the nature of abstraction and generalisa- tion, but to pursue these operations step by step in their development, and multiform aspects. Directly we pass beyond pure individual representation we reach an ascending scale of notions which, apart from the general character possessed by all, are extremely heterogeneous in their nature, and imply distinct men- tal habits. The question so often discussed as to "What takes place in the mind when we are thinking by general ideas?" is not to be disposed of in one definite answer, but finds variable response according to the circumstances. In order to give an adequate reply, the principal degrees of this scale must first be 1 W. James, Psychology. Vol. I., pp. 502 and 506. IO THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. determined. And for this we require an objective no- tation which shall give them some external, though not arbitrary, mark. The first distinguishing mark is given by the ab- sence or presence of words. Abstraction and general- isation, with no possible aid from language, constitute the inferior group which some recent writers have designated by the appropriate name of generic images^ a term which clearly shows their intermediate na- ture between the pure image, and the general notion, properly so-called. The second class, which we have termed intermedi- ate abstraction, implies the use of words. At their lowest stage these concepts hardly rise above the level of the generic image : they can be reduced to a vague schema, in which the word is almost a super- fluous accompaniment. At a stage higher the parts are inverted : the representative schema becomes more and more impoverished, and is obliterated by the word, which rises in consciousness to the first rank. IThis term is borrowed from the well-known works of Gallon on com- posite photographs, which are scarcely more than twenty years old. Huxley in his book on Hume (Chapter IV.) appears to be the first who introduced it into psychology, as shown by the following passage : "This mental opera- tion may be rendered comprehensible by consideringwhat takes place in the formation of compound photographs when the images of the faces of six sitters, for example, are each received on the same photographic plate, for a sixth of the time requisite to take one portrait. The final result is that all those points in which the six faces agree are brought out strongly, while all those in which they differ are left vague ; and thus what may be termed a generic portrait of the six is produced. Thus our ideas of single complex im- pressions are incomplete in one way, and those of numerous, more or less similar, complex impressions are incomplete in another way; that is to say, they are generic. . . . And hence it follows that our ideas of the impressions in question are not, In the strict sense of the word, copies of those impres- sions; while at the same time they may exist in the mind independently of language." Romanes employs the word "recept" for ''generic images," as marking their intermediate place between the "percept" which is below, and the " concept " which is above them. THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 1 1 Finally, the third class, that of the higher concepts, has for its distinguishing mark that it can no longer be represented. If any image arises in consciousness it does not sensibly assist the movement of thought, and may even impede it. Everything, apparently at least, is subordinated to language. This enumeration of the stages of abstraction can for the present only be given roughly and broadly. Every phase of its evolution should be studied in itself, and accurately determined by its internal and external characteristics. As to the legitimacy, the ob- jective and practical value, of this schematic distribu- tion, nothing less than a detailed exploration from one end to the other of our subject, can confirm or over- throw it. We shall begin, then, with the lower forms, dwell- ing upon these at some length, because they are usu- ally neglected, or altogether omitted. This is the pre- linguistic period of abstraction and generalisation : words are totally wanting ; they are an unknown fac- tor. How far is it possible without the aid of lan- guage to transcend the level of perception, and of consecutive images, and to attain a more elevated in- tellectual standpoint? In replying empirically, we have three fairly copious sources of information : ani- mals, children who have not yet acquired speech, and uneducated deaf-mutes. ANIMALS. It is a commonplace to say that animal psychol- ogy is full of obscurities and difficulties. These arise mainly with regard to the question now occupying us ; for we are concerned with ascertaining, not 12 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. whether animals perceive, remember, and even, when their organisation is sufficiently advanced, imagine (which no one denies), but if they are capable in the intellectual order of still better and greater achieve- ments. The common opinion is in the negative ; yet this may rest entirely upon ambiguity of language. Without prejudging anything, we must interrogate the facts to hand, and link them as closely as possible in our interpretation. As to the facts themselves we may be sparing of detail ; they are to be found in special treatises, and it is superfluous to repeat them in these pages. It is moreover evident that a large portion of the animal kingdom may be neglected. In its lowest regions it is so remote from us, and has so obscure and scant a psychology, that nothing can be learned from it. In the higher forms alone can we have any chance of finding what we seek, i. e., (i) equivalents of con- cepts, (2) processes comparable with reasoning. In the immense realm of the invertebrates, the highest psychical development is, by general ac- knowledgment, met with among the social Hymenop- tera ; and the capital representatives of this group are the ants. To these we may confine ourselves. De- spite their tiny size, their brain, particularly among the neuters, is remarkable in structure "one of the most marvellous atoms," says Darwin, " in all matter, not excepting even the human brain." Injuries to this organ, which are frequent in their sanguinary com- bats, cause disorders quite analogous to those ob- served in mammals. It is useless to recall what every one knows of their habits : their organisation of labor, varied methods of architecture, their wars, plundering and rape, practice of slavery, methods of education, THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 13 and (in certain species) their agricultural labors, har- vesting, construction of granaries, 1 etc. We, on the contrary, must examine the exceptional cases in which the ants depart from their general habits ; for their ability to abstract, to generalise, and to reason, can only be established by new adaptations to unaccus- tomed circumstances. The following may serve as examples : "A nest was made near one of our tramways," says Mr. Belt, ' ' and to get to the trees, the leaves of which they were harvesting, the ants had to cross the rails, over which the cars were continually passing and re-passing. Every time they came along a num- ber of ants were crushed to death. They persevered in crossing for some time, but at last set to work and tunnelled underneath each rail. One day, when the cars were not running, I stopped up the tunnels with stones ; but although great numbers carrying leaves were thus cut off from the nest, they would not cross the rails, but set to work making fresh tunnels under- neath them." Another observer, Dr. Ellendorf, who has carefully studied the ants of Central America, recounts a simi- lar experience. These insects cut off the leaves of trees and carry them to their nests, where they serve various purposes. One of their columns was return- ing laden with spoils. "I placed a dry branch, nearly a foot in diameter, obliquely across their path, which was lined on either side by an impassable barrier of high grass, and pressed it down so tightly on the ground that they IFor details see Romanes, Animal Intelligence, Chapters III. and V. As to the probability of their possessing means of communication for assistance in their co-operative labors see below, Chapter II. 14 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL TPEAS. could not creep underneath. The first comers crawled beneath the branch as far as they could, and then tried to climb over, but failed owing to the weight on their heads. . . . They then stood still as if awaiting a word of command, and I saw with astonishment that the loads had been laid aside by more than a foot's length of the column, one imitating the other. And now work began on both sides of the branch, and in about half an hour a tunnel was made beneath it. Each ant then took up its burden again, and the march was resumed in the most perfect order." They also show considerable inventiveness in the construction of bridges. It appears from numerous observations that they know how to place straws on the surface of water, and to keep them in equilibrium or unite their several ends together with earth, mois- ten them with their saliva, restore them when de- stroyed, and to construct a highway made of grains of sand, etc. (Reaumur.) They even employ living bridges: "The ground about a maple tree having been smeared with tar so as to check their ravages, the first ants who attempted to cross stuck fast. But the others were not to be thus entrapped. Turning back to the tree they carried down aphides which they deposited on the tar one after another until they had made a bridge over which they could cross the tarred spot without danger." 1 I shall cite no observations on the intelligence of wasps and bees, but I wish to note one rudi- mentary case of generalisation. Huber remarked that bees bite holes through the base of corollas when these are so long as to prevent them from reaching the honey in the ordinary way. They only resort to 1 Romanes. Animal Intelligence, Chapter III. THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 15 this expedient when they find they cannot reach the nectar from above ; " but having once ascertained this, they forthwith proceed to pierce the bottoms of all the flowers of the same species." Doubtless asso- ciation and habit may be invoked here, but before these were produced, was there not an extension of like to like ? For the higher animals I shall also restrict myself to the upper types. We shall of course reject all ob- servations relating to "performing" animals, all ac- quirements due to education and training by man, as also the cases in which, as in the beaver, there is a perplexing admixture of instinct so called (a specific property), and adaptation, varying according to time and place. The elephant has a reputation for intelligence which may be somewhat exaggerated. His psychol- ogy is fairly well known. We may cite a few charac- teristic traits that bear upon our subject. He will tear up bamboo canes from the ground, break them with his feet, examine them, and repeat the operation until he has found one that suits him ; he then seizes the branch with his trunk and uses it as a scraper to remove the leeches which adhere to his skin at some inaccessible part of his body. "This is a frequent occurrence, such scrapers being used by each ele- phant daily." When he is tormented by large flies he selects a branch which he strips of its leaves, except at the top, where he leaves a fine bunch. " He will deliberately clean it down several times, and then lay- ing hold of its lower end he will break it off, thus ob- taining a fan or switch about five feet long, handle in- cluded. With this he keeps the flies at bay. Say what we may, these are both really bona fide imple- 1 6 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. ments, each intelligently made for a definite pur- pose." "What I particularly wish to observe," says an experienced naturalist, "is that there are good rea- sons for supposing that elephants possess abstract ideas ; fof instance, I think it is impossible to doubt that they acquire through their own experience no- tions of hardness and weight, and the grounds on which I arrTlecl to think this are as follows. A cap- tured elephant, after he has been taught his ordinary duty, say about three months after he is taken, is taught to pick up things from the ground and give them to his mahout sitting on his shoulders. Now for the first few months it is dangerous to require him to pick up anything but soft articles, such as clothes, because the things are often handed up with consid- erable force. After a time, longer with some elephants than others, they appear to take in a knowledge of the nature of the things they are required to lift, and the bundle of clothes will be thrown up sharply as before, but heavy things, such as a crowbar or piece of iron chain, will be handed up in a gentle manner ; a sharp knife will be picked up by its handle and placed on the elephant's head, so that the mahout can also take it by the handle. I have purposely given elephants things to lift which they could never have seen before, and they were all handled in such a manner as to con- vince me that they recognised such qualities as hard- ness, sharpness, and weight." Lloyd Morgan, who, in his books on comparative psychology, is evidently disposed to concede as small a measure of intelligence to animals as possible, com- ments upon the above observation as follows : l 1C. Lloyd Morgan. Animal Life and Intelligence, Chapter IX., p. 364. THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. I 7 "Are we to suppose that these animals possess abstract ideas? I reply That depends upon what is meant by abstract ideas. If it is implied that the ab- stract ideas are isolates; that is, qualities considered quite apart from the objects of which they are charac- teristic, I think not. But if it be meant that elephants, in a practical way, ' recognise such qualities as hard- ness, sharpness, and weight,' as predominant elements in the constructs they form, I am quite ready to as- sent to the proposition." I agree fully with this conclusion, adding the one remark that between the pure abstract notion and the "predominant " notion so called, there is only a dif- ference of degree. If the predominant element is not isolated, detached, and fixed by a sign, it is certainly near being so, and deserves on this ground to be called an abstract of the lower order. The observation of Houzeau has been frequently quoted respecting dogs, which, suffering from thirst in arid countries, rush forty or fifty times into the hol- lows that occur along their line of march in the hope of finding water in the dry bed. They could not be attracted by the smell of the water, nor by the sight of vegetation, for these are wanting. They must thus be guided b} T general ideas, which are doubtless of an extremely simple character, and, in some measure, supported by experience." It is on this account that the term "generic im- age " would in my opinion be preferable for describ- ing cases of this character. " I have frequently seen not only dogs, but horses, mules, cattle, and goats, go in search of water in places which they had never visited before. They are guided by general principles, because they go to these 1 8 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. watering places at times when the latter are perfectly dry. 1 Undoubtedly it may be objected that associa- tion of images here plays a preponderating part. The sight of the hollows recalls the water which, though absent, forms part of a group of sensations which has been perceived many times ; but since the generic image is, as we shall see later, no more than an al- most passive condensation of resemblances, these facts clearly indicate its nature and its limits. I shall merely allude without detailed comment to the numerous observations on the aptitude of dogs and cats for finding means to accomplish their aims, the anecdotes of their mechanical skill, and the ruses (so well described by G. Leroy) which the fox and the hare employ to outwit the hunter, "when they are old and schooled by experience ; since it is to their knowledge of facts that they owe their exact and prompt inductions." The most intelligent of all ani- mals, the higher orders of monkeys, have not been much studied in their wild state, but such observa- tions as have been made, some of which have been contributed by celebrated naturalists, fix with suffi- cient distinctness the intellectual level of the better endowed. The history of Cuvier's orang-outang has been quoted to satiety. The more recent books on comparative psychology contain ample testimony to their ability to profit by experience 2 and to construct instruments. A monkey, not having the strength to lift up the lid of a chest, employed a stick as a lever. "This use of a lever as a mechanical instrument is an action to which no animal other than a monkey has IHouzeau, Etudes sur iesfacultes mentales des animaux. Vol. II., p. 264 et Beq. The same author gives an example of generalisation in bees. 2 Darwin, The Descent of Man, Vol. I., Chapter III. THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. IQ ever been known to attain." Another monkey ob- served by Romanes, also "succeeded by methodical investigation, without assistance, in discovering for himself the mechanical principle of the screw ; and the fact that monkeys well understand how to use stones as hammers, is a matter of common observa- tion." They are also skilful in combining their strat- agems, as in the case of one who, being held captive by a chain, and thus unable to reach a brood of duck- lings, held out a piece of bread in one hand, and on tempting a duckling within his reach, seized it by the other, and killed it with a bite in the breast." l One mental operation remains which must be ex- amined separately, and in its study we shall pursue the same method, wherever it occurs, throughout this work. The process in question has the advantage of being perfectly definite, of restricted scope, com- pletely evolved, and accessible to research in all the phases of its development, from the lowest to the highest. It is that of numeration. Are there animals capable of counting? G. Leroy is, I believe, the first who answered this question in the affirmative, in a passage which is worth transcrib- ing, although it has been often quoted. "Among the various ideas which necessity adds to the experience of animals, that of number must not be overlooked. Animals count, so much is certain ; and although up to the present time their arithmetic appears weak, it may perhaps be possible to strengthen it. In coun- tries where game is preserved, war is made upon magpies because they steal the eggs of other birds. .... And in order to destroy this greedy family at a blow, game-keepers seek to destroy the mother while l Romanes, loc. eft., Chapter XVII. 2O THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. sitting. To do this it is necessary to build a well- screened watch-house at the foot of the tree where the nests are, and in this a man is stationed to await the return of the parent bird, but he will wait in vain if the bird has been shot at under the same circum- stances before To deceive this suspicious bird, the plan was hit upon of sending two men into the watch-house, one of them passed on while the other remained ; but the magpie counted and kept her dis- tance. The next day three went, and again she per- ceived that only two withdrew. It was eventually found necessary to send five or six men to the watch- house in order to put her out of her calculation This phenomenon, which is repeated as many times as the attempt is made, is one of the most extraordi- nary instances of the sagacity of animals." Since then the question has been repeatedly taken up. Lub- bock devotes to it the three last pages of his book The Senses of Animals. According to his observations on the nests of birds, one egg may be taken from a nest in which there are four, but if we take away two, the bird generally deserts its nest. The solitary wasp provisions its cell with a fixed number of victims. Sand wasps are content with one. One species of Eumenes prepares five victims for its young, another species ten, another fifteen, another twenty-four ; but the number of the victims is always the same for the same species. How does the insect know its charac- teristic number? 1 An experiment, methodically conducted by Ro- manes, proved that a chimpanzee can count correctly 1 At the end of the passage in question there is an extraordinary account of the arithmetical powers of a dog which Lubbock explains by "thought reading." I omit this instance, since we are deliberately rejecting all rare or doubtful cases. THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 21 as far as five, distinguishing the words which stand for one, two, three, four, five, and at command de- liver the number of straws requested of her. 1 Although the observations on this point are not yet sufficiently varied and extended to enable us to speak of them as we should wish, it must be remarked that the cases cited are not alike, and that it would be illegitimate to reduce them all to one and the same psychological mechanism. 1. The case of insects is the most embarrassing. It is but candid to state a non liquet, since to attrib- ute their achievements to unconscious numeration, or to some special equivalent instinct, is tantamount to saying nothing. Besides, we are not concerned with anything relating to instinct. 2. The case of the monkey and his congeners stands high in the scale : it is a form of concrete nu- meration which we shall meet again in children, and in the lowest representatives of humanity. 3. All the other cases resemble the alleged "arith- metic" of G. Leroy's magpie and similar observa- tions. I see here not a numeration, but a perception of plurality, which is something quite different. There are in the brain of the animal a number of co-existing perceptions. It knows if all are present, or if some are lacking ; but a consciousness of difference be- tween the entire group, and the diminished defective group, is not identical with the operation of counting. It is a preliminary state, an . introduction, nothing more, and the animal does not pass beyond this stage, does not count in the exact sense of the word. We shall see further on that observations with young chil- dren furnish proofs in favor of this assertion, or at 1 Mental Evolution in Man, Chapter III., p. 58. I 22 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. least show that it is not an unfounded presumption, but the most probable hypothesis. We may now without further delay (while reserv- ing the facts which are to be studied in the sequel to this chapter) attempt to fix the nature of the forms of abstraction, and of reasoning, accessible to the higher animal types. i. The generic image results from a spontaneous fu- jjion of images, produced by the repetition of similar, or very analogous, events. It consists in an almost passive process of assimilation ; it is not intentional, and has for its subject only the crudest similarities. There is an accumulation, a summation of these re- semblances ; they predominate by force of numbers, for they are in the majority. Thus there is formed a solid nucleus which predominates in consciousness, an abstract appurtenant to all similar objects ; the differ- ences fall into oblivion. Huxley's comparison of the composite photographs (above cited) renders it need- less to dwell on this point. Their genesis depends on the one hand on experience ; only events that are frequently repeated can be condensed into a generic image : on the other hand on the affective dispositions of the subject (pleasure, pain, etc.), on interest, and on practical utility, which render certain perceptions predominant. They require, accordingly, no great intellectual development for their formation, and there can be no doubt that they exist quite low down in the animal scale. TJhe infant of four or five months very probably possesses a generic image of the human form and of some similar objects. It may be re- marked, further, that this lower form of abstraction can occur also in the adult and cultivated man. If, e. g. , we are suddenly transported into a country THE LOWER FORMS Of ABSTRACTION. 23 whose flora is totally unknown to us, the repetition of experiences suggests an unconscious condensa- tion of similar plants ; we classify them without knowing their names, without needing to do so, and without clearly apprehending their distinguish- ing characteristics, those namely which constitute the true abstract idea of the botanist. In sum, the generic image comes half way between individual representation, and abstraction properly so called. It results almost exclusively from the faculty of apprehending resemblances. The role of dissocia- tion is here extremely feeble. Everything takes place, as it were, in an automatic, mechanical fashion, in consequence of the unequal struggle set up in con- sciousness between the resemblances which are strengthened, and the differences, each of which re- mains isolated. 2. It has been said that the principal utility of ab- ; straction is as an instrument in ratiocination. We may--^ say the same of generic images. By their aid animals reason. This subject has given rise to extended dis- cussion. Some writers resent the mere suggestion that ants, elephants, dogs, and monkeys, should be able to reason. Yet this resentment is based on noth- ing but the extremely broad and elastic signification of the word reasoning an operation which admits of many degrees, from simple, empirical consecutiveness to the composite, quantitative reasoning of higher mathematics. It is forgotten that there are here, as for abstraction and for generalisation, embryonic forms those, i. e., which we are now studying. Taken in its broadest acceptation, reasoning is an operation of the mind which consists in passing from the known to the unknown ; in passing from what is 24 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. immediately given, to that which is simply suggested by association and experience. The logician will unquestionably find this formula too vague, but it must necessarily be so, in order to cover all cases. Without pretending to any rigorous enumeration, beyond all criticism, we can, in intellectual develop- ment, distinguish the following phases in the ascend- ing order : perceptions and images (memories) as point of departure ; association by contiguity, asso- ciation by similarity ; then the advance from known to unknown, by reasoning from particular to particu- lar, by analogical reasoning, and finally by the perfect forms of induction and deduction, with their logical periods. Have all these forms of reasoning a common substrate, a unity of composition? In other words, can they be reduced to a single type of induction ac- cording to some, of deduction according to others? Although the supposition is extremely probable, it would not be profitable to discuss the question here. We must confine ourselves to the elementary forms which the logicians omit, or despise, for the most part, but which, to the psychologist, are intellectual pro- cesses as interesting as any others. Without examining whether, as maintained by J. S. Mill, all inference is actually from particular to particular (general propositions being under this hy- pothesis only simple reminders, brief formulae serving as a base of operations) it is clear that we have in it the simplest form of mental progress from the known to the unknown. At the same time it is more than mere association, though transcending it only in de- gree. Association by similarity is not, as we have seen, identical with formation of generic images ; this last implies fusion, mental synthesis. So, too, rea- THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 25 soning from particular to particular implies something more than simple association ; it is a state of expecta- tion equivalent to a conclusion in the empirical order ; it is an anticipation. The animal which has burned itself in swallowing some steaming food, is on its guard in future against everything that gives off steam. Here we have more than simple association between two anterior experiences (steam, burning) ; and this state "differs from simple associative sug- gestion, by the fact that the mind is less occupied with the memory of past burns than with the expecta- tion of a repetition of the same fact in the present in- stance ; that is to say, that it does not so much recall the fact of having once been burnt as it draws the conclusion that it will be burnt." 1 Otherwise expressed, he is orientated less towards the past than towards the future. Granted that this tendency to believe that what has occurred once or twice will occur invariably, is a fruitful source of error, it remains none the less a logical operation (judgment or ratiocination) containing an element more than association : an inclusion of the future, an implicit affirmation expressed in an act. Doubtless, between these two processes, association, inference from particular to particular the difference is slight enough ; yet in a study of genesis and evolution, it is just these transitional forms that are the most impor- tant. Reasoning by analogy is of a far higher order. It is the principal logical instrument of the child and of primitive man : the substrate of all extension of Ian-. 1 J. Sully, The Human Mind, I., 460. The author gives excellent diagrams to represent the difference in the two cases. For reasoning from particular to particular, cf. also J. S. Mill, Logic, II., Chapter III., p. 3; Bradley, Log.c, II., Chapter II., p. a. bir 26 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. guage, of vulgar and empirical classifications, of myths, of the earliest, quasi-scientific knowledge. 1 It is the commencement of induction, differing from the latter, not in form, but in its imperfectly established content. "Two things are alike in one or several characteristics ; a proposition stated is true of the one, therefore it is true of the other. A is analogous to B; m is true of A, therefore m is true of B also." So runs the formula of J. S. Mill. The animal, or child, which when ill-treated by one person extends its hatred to all others that resemble the oppressor, reasons by analogy. Obviously this procedure from known to unknown will vary in degree, from zero to the point at which it merges into complete induction. With these general remarks, we may return to the logic of animals or rather to the sole kind of logic possible without speech. This is, and can only be, a logic of images (Romanes employs a synonymous ex- pression, logic of recepts}, which is to logic, properly so called, what generic images are to abstraction and to generalisation proper. This denomination is neces- sary ; it enables us to form a separate category, well defined by the absence of language ; it permits us, in speaking of judgment and ratiocination in ani- aaals, and in persons deprived of speech, to know ex- actly what meaning is intended. It follows that there are two principal degrees in the logic of images. i. Inference from particular to particular. The bird which finds bread upon the window, one morn- ing, comes back next day at the same hour, finds it again, and continues to come. It is moved by an as- l/ re analogy, consult Stern's monograph, Die Analogie itn volksthum- lichen Denken, Berlin, 1894. THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 27 sociation of images, plus the state of awaiting, of an- ticipation, as described above. 2. Procedure by analogy. This (at least in its . higher forms in animal intelligence) presupposes men- tal construction : the aim is definite, and means to at- tain it are invented. To this type I should refer the cases cited above of ants digging tunnels, forming bridges, etc. The ants are wont to practise these operations in their normal life ; their virtue lies in the power of dissociation from their habitual conditions, from their familiar ant-heap, and of adaptation to new and unknown cases. The logic of images has characteristics which per- tain to it exclusively, and which may be summarised as follows : i. As material it employs concrete representations \ > or generic images alone, and cannot escape from this p domain. It admits of fairly complex constructions, but not of substitution. The tyro finds no great difficulty in solving problems of elementary arithmetic (such as : 15 workmen build a wall 3 metres high in 4 days; how long will it take 4 men to build it?), because he uses the logic of signs, replacing the concrete facts by figures, and working out the relations of these. The logic of images is absolutely refractory to attempts at substitution. And while it thus acts by representation only, its progress even within this limit is necessarily very slow, encumbered, and embarrassed by useless details, for lack of adequate dissociation. At the same time it may, in the adult who is practised in ratiocina- tion, become an auxiliary in certain cases ; I am even tempted to regard it as the main auxiliary of con- structive imagination. It would be worth while to as- certain, from authentic observations, what part it 28 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. plays in the inventions of novelists, poets, and artists. In a polemic against Max Muller, who persists in af- firming that it is radically impossible to think and rea- son without words, a correspondent remarks : "Having been all my life since school-days engaged in the practice of architecture and civil en- gineering, I can assure Prof. Max Muller that design- ing and invention are done entirely by mental pic- tures. I find that words are only an encumbrance. In fact, words are in many cases so cumbersome that other methods have been devised for imparting knowl- edge. In mechanics the graphic method, for in- stance." 1 2. Its aim is always practical. It should never V be forgotten that at the outset, the faculty of cogni- tion is essentially utilitarian, and cannot be otherwise, because it is employed solely for the preservation of the individual (in finding food, distinguishing ene- mies from prey, and so on). Animals exhibit only applied reasoning, tested by experience ; they feel about and choose between several means, their se- lection being justified or disproved by the final issue. Correctly speaking, the logic of images is neither true nor false ; these epithets are but half appropriate. It succeeds or fails ; its gauge is success or defeat ; and as we maintained above that it is the secret spring of aesthetic invention, let it be noticed that here again there is no question of truth or error, but of creating a successful or abortive work. Accordingly, it is only by an unjustifiable restric- tion that the higher animals can be denied all func- 1 Three Introductory Lectures on the Science of Thought, delivered at the Royal Institution, appendix, p. 6, letter 4; Chicago, 1888. It should, however, be remembered that the writer who thus uses the logic of images has a mind preformed by the logic of signs : which is not the case with animals. THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 2Q tions beyond that of association, all capacity for infer- ence by similarity. W. James (after stating that, as a rule, the best examples of animal sagacity "may be perfectly accounted for by mere contiguous associa- tion, based on experience"), arrives virtually at a conclusion no other than our own. After recalling the well-known instance of arctic dogs harnessed to a sledge and scattering when the ice cracked to distrib- ute their weight, he thus explains it : "We need only suppose that they have individually experienced wet skins after cracking, that they have often noticed cracking to begin when they were huddled together and that they have observed it to cease when they scattered." Granting this assumption, it is none the less true that associations by contiguity are no more than the material which serves as a substratum for in- ference by similarity, and for the act which follows. Again, a friend of James, accompanied by his dog, went to his boat and found it filled with dirt and water. He remembered that the sponge was up at the house, and not caring to tramp a third of a mile to get it, he enacted before his terrier (as a forlorn hope) the necessary pantomime of cleaning the boat, saying: "Sponge, sponge, go fetch the sponge." The dog trotted off and returned with it in his mouth, to the great surprise of his master. Is this, properly speaking, an act of reasoning? It would only be so, says James, if the terrier, not finding the sponge, had brought a rag, or a cloth. By such substitution he would have shown that, notwithstanding their differ- ent appearance, he understood that for the purpose in view, all these objects were identical. "This substi- tution, though impossible for the dog, any man but the stupidest could not fail to do." I am not sure of 3a Among all these hypotheses we may choose or not choose ; and while we have dwelt briefly on this de- bated problem, whose literature is copious, we may yet have said too much on what is mere conjecture. One certain fact remains, that notwithstanding the theory by which speech is likened to an instinct breaking forth spontaneously in man it was at its origin so weak, so inadequate and poor, that it per- force leaned upon the language of gesture to become intelligible. Specimens of this mixed language are still surviving among inferior races that have nothing in common between them, inhabiting regions of the earth with no common resemblances. In some cases speech coexists with the language of action (Tasmanians, Greenlanders, savage tribes of Brazil, Grebos of Western Africa, etc.). Gesture is here indispensable for giving precision to the vocal sounds ; it may even modify the sense. Thus, in one of these idioms, ni ne signifies " I do it," or "You do 1 Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, pp. 377-379. SPEECH. 67 it," according to the gesture of the speaker. The Bushman vocabulary is so incomplete and has to be reinforced by so many mimic signs, that it cannot be understood in the dark. In order to converse at night, the tribe is obliged to gather round the fire. In other cases, speech coexists with inarticulate sounds (Fuegians, Hottentots, certain tribes of North America) which travellers have compared, respec- tively, to clinking and clapping. These sounds have been classified according to the physiological process by which they are produced, into four (or even six) species : dental, palatal, cerebral, lateral ; it is im- possible to translate them by an articulated equiv- alent. "Their clappings survive," says Sayce, "as though to show us how man, when deprived of speech, can fix and transmit his thought by certain sounds." Among the Gallas, the orator haranguing the assem- bly marks the punctuation of his discourse by cracking a leather thong. The blow, according to its force, indicates a comma, semi-colon, or stop; a violent blow makes an exclamation. 1 It was advisable to recall these mixed states in which articulate language had not yet left its primi- tive vein. They are transitional forms between pure pantomime and the moment when speech conquered its complete independence. n. In passing from the origin of speech to the study of its development, we enter upon firmer ground. Although this development has not occurred uniformly in every race, and the linguists who are here our 1 For documents, consult especially Tylor, Primitive Culture, V ; Sayc- 5 Principles of Comparative Philology, I., 17. 68 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. guides do not always agree in fixing its phases, it is nevertheless the surest indication of the march of the human mind in its self-analysis in passing from ex- treme confusion to deliberate differentiation ; while the materials are sufficiently abundant to admit of an objective study of intellectual psychogenesis, based upon language. This attempt has nothing in common with the " general or philosophical grammar " of the beginning of this century. The Idealogues who founded this had the pretension, while taking language as their basis, to analyse the fundamental categories of intelli- gence : substance, quality, action, relation. A laud- able enterprise, but one which, by reason of the method employed, could only be abortive. Knowing only the classical or modern languages, the products of a long civilisation, they had no suspicion of the embryonic phases ; accordingly, they made a theoret- ical construction, the work of logicians rather than of psychologists. Any positive genetic investigation was inaccessible to them ; they were lacking in material, and in instruments. If by a comparison borrowed from geology, the adult languages are assimilated to the quaternary layer ; the tertiary, secondary, and primary strata will correspond with certain idioms of less and less complexity, which themselves contain the fossils of psychology. These lower forms the semi-organised or savage languages which are a hun- dred times more numerous than the civilised lan- guages are now familiar to us ; hence there is an immense field for research and comparison. This re- trogression to the primitive leads to a point that sev- eral linguists have designated by a term borrowed from biology: it is the protoplasmic state "without SPEECH. 69 functions of grammatical categories" (Hermann Paul). How is it that speech issued from this undifferentiated state, and constituted little by little its organs and functions? This question is interesting to the linguist on certain sides, to the psychologist on others. For us it consists in seeking how the human mind, through long groping, conquered and perfected its instrument of analysis. I. At the outset of this evolution, which we are to follow step by step, we find the hypothesis of a prim- itive period, that of the roots so called, and it is worth our while to pause over this a little. Roots whatever may be our opinion as to their origin are in effect general terms. But in what sense? Chinese consists of 500 monosyllables which, thanks to varieties of intonation, sufficed for the con- struction of the spoken language ; Hebrew, according to Renan, has about 500 roots ; for Sanskrit there is no agreement. According to a bold hypothesis of Max Muller, it is reducible to 121, perhaps less, and "these few seeds have produced the enormous intellectual vegetation that has covered the soil of India from the most distant antiquity to the present day." 1 What- ever their number may be, the question for us re- duces itself into knowing their primitive intellectual content, their psychological value. Here we are con- fronted by two very different theses. For one camp, roots are a reality ; for the other, they are the simple residuum of analysis. " Roots are the phonetic types produced by a force inherent in the human mind ; they were created by nature," etc., etc. Thus speaks Max Muller. Whitney, who is rarely of the same mind, says, notwithstanding, 1 This list may be found in The Science of Thought, p. 406. 7O THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. that all the Indo-European languages are descended from one primitive, monosyllabic language, "that our ancestors talked with one another in simple syllables indicative of ideas of prime importance, but wanting all designation of their relations." In the other camp it is sustained that roots are the result of learned analysis, but that there is nothing to prove that they really existed (Sayce) ; that they are reconstructed by comparison and generalisation ; that, e. g., in the Aryan languages, roots bear much the same relation to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin words as Platonic ideas to the objects of the real world" (Br6al). It has been calculated that the number of articulate sounds which the human voice is capable of producing amounts to three hundred and eighty- five. These sounds, for physiological reasons, con- stitute a fundamental theme in the various words created by man. Later on, linguists in comparing the vocables used in different languages, established the frequent recurrence of certain sounds common to several words. These have been isolated, but we must not see in them aught besides extracts. More- over, "the first stammerings of man have nothing in common with phonetic types so arrested in form and abstract in signification, as dhd, to place, vid, to see, man, to think, and other analogous words." To sum up. In the first thesis roots come into existence, ab initio ; words are derived from them by reduplication, flexions, affixes, suffixes, etc. ; they are the trunk upon which a whole swarm of languages has proliferated. In the second thesis, words come first ; then the common element disengaged by analysis, but which SPEECH. 71 never existed as such in the pure and primitive con- dition. Whether the one opinion or the other be adopted, I see no conclusion to be drawn from it save that the first terms designated qualities or manners of being, varying with the race. The first thesis seems the more apt in revealing to us the primitive forms of ab- straction and generalisation. If it be selected despite its fragility, one finds in the list of roots (even when most reduced) an extraordinary mixture of terms ap- plied to the most disparate things (e. g., tears, break, measure, milk, to choose, to clean, to vomit, cold, to fear, etc.). To assert with Max Muller (from whom I borrow the preceding terms) that "these are the one hundred and twenty-one original concepts, the primitive intellectual baggage of the Aryan family " is to employ an unfortunate formula, for nothing could less resemble concepts than the contents of this list. If the second thesis be adopted, the root then being nothing but " the exposed kernel of a family of words," "a phonogram," analogous to composite photographs, formed like these by a condensation of the similari- ties between several terms, then clearly primitive ab- straction and generalisation must be sought in words, and not in roots. 1 1 How were primitive terms (roots or words) formed? A much-debated and still unsolved question. Man had at his disposal one primary element, the interjection. By all accounts this remained sterile, unfertile ; it did not give birth to words; it remained in articulate language as a mark of its emo- tional origin. A second proceeding was that of imitation with the aid of sound, onomatopoeia. From antiquity to the present time, it has been re- garded as the parent, par excellence. This was accepted by Renan, Whitney, Tylor, H. Paul, etc.; rejected by M. Muller, Brgal, P. Regnaud, etc. No one disputes the formation of many words by onomatopoeia, but those who ques- tion its value as a universal process say that "if in certain sounds of our idioms we seem to hear an imitation of the sounds of nature, we must recol- lect that the same noises are represented by quite different sounds in other languages, which are also held by those who utter them to be onomatopoeia. 72 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. II. Leaving this question which, from its relation to that of the origin of speech, shares in the same ob- scurity, we have further to ask if the primitive terms (whatever nature be attributed to them) were, prop- erly speaking, words or phrases? Did man initially give utterance to simple denominations, or to affirma- tions and negations? On this point all linguists seem to be in agreement. "Speech must express a judg- ment." In other words it is always a phrase. "Lan- guage is based on the phrase, not on the single word : we do not think by means of words, but by means of phrases." 1 This phrase may be a single word, or composite, formed by confusion of words as in the so-called ag- glutinative, polysynthetic, holophrastic languages, or two words, subject and attribute ; or three distinct words, subject, attribute, and copula ; but beneath all these forms the fundamental function is unalter- ably to affirm or deny. The same remark has been made of children. "We must," says Preyer, "reject the general notion that children first employ substantives, and afterwards verbs. My son, at the age of twenty-three months first used an adjective to express a judgment, the first which he enunciated in his maternal tongue ; he said Thus it would be more just to say that we hear the sounds of nature through the words to which our ear has been accustomed from infancy " (Breal). I have observed that those who study the spontaneous formation of language in children, claim for them but little onomatopoeism. On the other hand, a word created by undoubted onomatopoeia is sometimes by means of associa- tion, or of strange analogies, transferred successively to so many objects that all trace of the transformations of meaning may be lost, and the imita- tive origin actually denied. Such was Darwin's case, cited above, where the onomatopoeia of the duck finally served to designate all liquids, all that flies, all pieces of money. If the successive extensions of the term had not been observed, who could have recovered its origin ? ISayce, lac. cit., IV., 3-5. SPEECH. 73 heiss (hot) for 'the milk is too warm.' Later on, the proposition was made in two words : heim-mimi, ' I want to go home and drink some milk' (// home, ffimi=milk). Taine and others have cited several ob- servations of the same order. 1 According to some authors, all language that has reached complete development has perforce passed through the three successive periods of monosyllab- ism, polysynthetism, and analysis ; so that the idioms that remain monosyllabic or agglutinative would cor- respond to an arrest in development. To others, this is a hypothesis, only, to be rejected. However this may be (and it is not a question that we need to examine), it seems rash to assert, with Sayce, "that the division of the phrase into two parts, subject and predicate, is a pure accident, and that if Aristotle had been Mexi- can (the Aztec language was polysynthetic), his sys- tem of logic would have assumed a totally different form." The appearance and evolution of analytical language is not pure accident, but the result of men- tal development. It is impossible to pass from syn- thesis to analysis without dividing, separating, and arraying the isolated parts in a certain order. The logic of a Mexican Aristotle might have differed from our own in its form ; but it could not have constituted itself without fracture of its linguistic mould, without setting up a division, at least in theory, between the elements of the discourse. The unconscious activity by which certain idioms made towards analysis, and passed from the period of envelopment to that of de- IWe cannot doubt, however, that there is in the child ('and so too for primitive man) a period of pure and simple denomination, when, in the face of perceived objects, he utters a word, as a spontaneous action, a reflex, with no understood affirmation. But this act is rather the prelude, and attempt at speech, an advance towards language proper. 74 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. velopment, imposed upon them a successive order. Polysynthetic languages have been likened to the per- formance of children who want to say everything at once, their ideas all surge up together and form a conglomeration. 1 Evidently this method must be given up, or we must renounce all serious progress in anal- ysis. To sum up the psychological value of the phrase, independently of its multiple forms, we may conclude by the following remarks of Max Muller: "We imagine that language is impossible without sentences, and that sentences are impossible without the copula. This view is both right and wrong. If we mean by sentence an utterance consisting of sev- eral words, and a subject, and a predicate, and a cop- ula, it is wrong. . . . When the sentence consists only of subject and predicate, we may say that a copula is understood, but the truth is that at first it was not ex- pressed, it was not required to be expressed ; in prim- itive languages it was simply impossible to express it. To be able to say vir est bonus, instead of vir bonus, is one of the latest achievements of human speech." 8 in. The evolution of speech, starting from the proto- plasmic state without organs or functions, and acquir- ing them little by little, proceeding progressively from indefinite to definite, from fluid to fixed state, can only be sketched in free outline. In details it falls 1 There is in Iroquois a word that signifies, "I demand money from those who have come to buy garments from me." Esquimaux is equally rich in terms of this sort. Yet we must recognise that these immense composite words, themselves formed from abbreviated and fused words, virtually imply the beginning of decomposition. 2 Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, ed. 1891, p. 196. SPKECH. 75 within neither our subject nor our cognisance. But the successive points of this differentiation, which creates grammatical forms, and parts of discourse, are under an objective form the history of the devel- opment of intelligence, inasmuch as it abstracts, gen- eralises, analyses, and tends towards an ever-growing precision. The completely developed languages and we are speaking only of such bear throughout the print of the unconscious labor that has fashioned them for centuries: they are a petrified psychology. We must return to the roots or primitive terms, whatever may be their nature. Two distinct catego- ries are generally admitted : pronominal or demon- strative roots, verbal or predicative roots. The first form a small group that properly indicate rather the relative position of the speaker, than any concrete quality. They are equivalent to here, there, this, that, etc. They are few in number, and very simple in their phonetic relations : a vowel or vowel followed by a consonant. Many linguists refuse to admit them as roots, and think they have dropped from the second class by attenuation of meaning. 1 Possibly they are a survival of gesture language. The second (verbal or predicative) is the only class that interests us. These have swarmed in abun- dance. They indicate qualities or actions ; that is the important point. The first words denominated attri- butes or modes of being ; they were adjectives, at least in the measure in which a fixed and rigid termi- nology can be applied to states in process of forming. Primitive man was everywhere struck with the quali- ties of things, ergo words were all originally appella- 1 Whitney, The Life and Growth of Language, Chap. X. Sayce, op. cit., VI., 28, rejects them absolutely. 76 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. tive. They expressed one of the numerous character- istics of each object ; they translated a spontaneous and natural abstraction : another proof of the pre- cocious and indispensable nature of this operation. From its earliest developments intelligence has tended to simplify, to substitute the part for the whole. The unconscious choice of one attribute among many oth- ers depends on various causes ; doubtless on its pre- dominance, but above all on the interest it has for man. "A people," remarks Renan, "have usually many words for what most interests them." Thus, in ebrew, we find 25 synonyms for the observance of the law; 14 for faith in God; n for rain, etc. In Arabic, the lion has 500 names, the serpent 200, money more than 80; the camel has 5,744, the sword 1,000 as befits a warrior race. The Lapp whose lan- guage is so poor, has more than 30 words to designate the reindeer, an animal indispensable to his life. 1 These so-called synonyms each denominate a particu- lar aspect of things ; they witness to the abundance of primitive abstractions. This apparent wealth soon becomes an embarrass- ment and an encumbrance. Instead of 100 distinct terms, one generic substantive, plus one or two epi- thets, would suffice. But the substantive was not born of the deliberate desire to obviate this inconvenience. It is a specialisation, a limitation of the primitive meaning. Little by little the adjective lost its qualifi- cative value, to become the name of one of the objects qualified. Thus in Sanskrit deva (shining) finally sig- nified the god; sourya (the dazzling) became the sun; akva (rapid) the name of a horse, etc. This meta- morphosis of adjective into substantive by a speciali 1 Renan, Histoirc glnirale des langues sfmitiques, pp. 128 and 363. SPEECH. 77 sation of the general sense occurs even in our actual languages; as, e. g., when we say in French un bril- liant (diamond); le volant (of a machine); un ban (of bread, coxmting-house, bank, etc.). What is only an accident now was originally a constant process. 1 Thus the substantive was derived from the primitive adjec- tive ; or rather, within the primitive organism, adjec- tive-substantive, a division has been produced, and two grammatical functions constituted. Many other remarks could be made on the deter- mination of the substantive by inflexions, declensions, the mark of the gender (masculine, feminine, neuter); I shall confine myself to what concerns number, since we are proposing to consider numeration under all its aspects. Nothing appears more natural and clear-cut than the distinction between one and several ; as soon as we exceed pure unity, the mother of numbers, plu- rality appears to us to be homogeneous in all its de- grees. It has not been so from the beginning. This is proved by the existence of the dual in an enormous number of languages: Aryan, Semitic, Turanian, Hot- tentot, Australian, etc. One, two, were counted with precision ; the rest was vague. According to Sayce, the word ''three" in Aryan language at first signified "what goes beyond." It has been supposed that the dual was at first applied to the paired parts of the body: the eyes, the arms, the legs. Intellectual pro- gress caused it to fall into disuse. At the close of the period of first formation which 1 We can see how little the real order of evolution resembles the theo- retical order of the XVIII. century, evolved from pure reasoning: "The com- plex notions of substances were the first known, since they came from the senses, and must therefore have been the first to have names" (Condillacj. "With regard to adjectives, the notion must have developed with exceeding difficulty, since every adjective is an abstract term, and abstraction is a pain- ful, or unnatural operation " (J. J. Rousseau). 78 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. we have been considering, the sentence was only a defaced organism reproduced by one of the following forms: (i) that; (2) that shining ; (3) that sun, that shining. 1 The verb is still absent. With it we enter on the period of secondary forma- tion. It was long held to be an indisputable dogma that the verb is the word par excellence (verbuni), the necessary and exclusive instrument of an affirmation. Yet there are many inferior idioms which dispense with it, and express affirmation by crude, roundabout processes, with no precision, most frequently by a juxtaposition: snow white the snow is white ; drink me wine = I drink (or shall drink) wine, etc. Plenty of examples can be found in special works. In fact, the Indo-European verb is, by origin, an adjective (or substantive) modified by a pronoun : v^tfraw/ carrier-me, I carry. It is to be regretted that we cannot follow the details of this marvellous construction, the result of unconscious and collec- tive labor that has made of the verb a supple instru- ment, suited for all expressions, by the invention of moods, voices, and tenses. We may note that, as re- gards tenses, the distinction between the three parts of duration (which seems to us so simple) appears to have been established very slowly. Doubtless it can be asserted that it existed, actually, in the mind of primitive man, but that the imperfection of his verbal instrument failed in translating it. However this may be, it is a moot point whether the verb, at the outset, expressed past or present. It seems at first to have translated a vague conception of duration, of continu- ity in action; it was at first "durative," a past which still continues, a past-present. The adjective notion 1 P. Regnaud, Origine et philosophic du langage, p. 317 SPEECH. 79 contained in the verb, indefinitely as to time, only became precise by little and little. The distinction between the moments of duration did not occur by the same process in all languages, and in some, highly developed, otherwise like the Semitic languages, it remained very imperfect. 1 The main point was to show how the adjective- substantive, modified by the adjunction of pronominal elements, constituted another linguistic organ, and losing its original mark little by little, became the verb with its multiple functions. The qualificatory character fundamental to it makes of it an instrument proper to express all degrees of abstraction and gen- eralisation from the highest to the lowest, to run up the scale of lower, medium, and higher abstractions. Ex., to drink, eat, sleep, strike; higher, to love, pray, instruct, etc. ; higher still, to act, exist, etc. The supreme degree of abstraction, i. e., the moment at which the verb is most empty of all concrete sense, is found in the auxiliaries of the modern analytical lan- guages. These, says Max Miiller, occupy the same place among the verbs, as abstract nouns among the substantives. They date from a later epoch, and all had originally a more material and more expressive character. Our auxiliary verbs had to traverse a long series of vicissitudes, before they reached the desic- cated, lifeless form that makes them so appropriate to the demands of our abstract prose. Habere, which is now employed in all Roman languages to express simply a past time, at first signified "to hold fast," "to retain." The author continues, retracing the history of sev- lOn this point, consult especially Sayce, op. cit., II., 9, and P. Regnaud, ep.cit., pp. 296-299. 80 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. eral other auxiliary verbs. Among them all there is one that merits particular mention on account of its divagations : this is the verb etre, verb par excellence, verb substantive, unique; direct or understood expres- sion of the existence that is everywhere present. The monopoly of affirmation, and even the privilege of an immaterial origin have been attributed to it. 1 In the first place, it is not met with under any form in cer- tain languages which supplement its absence by di- vers processes. In the second, it is far from being primitive; it is derived, according to the idioms, from multiple and sufficiently discordant elements : to breathe, live, grow (Max Miiller) ; to breathe, grow, remain, stand upright (stare} (Whitney). Hitherto we have examined only the stable, solid parts of speech. There remain such as are purely transitive, translating a movement of thought, expres- sive of relation. Before we study these under their linguistic form, it is indispensable to take up the standpoint of pure psychology, and to know in the first place what is the nature of a relation. This can the less be avoided inasmuch as the question has scarcely been treated of, save by logicians, or after their fashion, and many very complete treatises of psychology do not bestow on it a single word. 2 "A relation," says Herbert Spencer, "is a state of IThe word 2tre is irreducible, indecomposable, primitive, and wholly in- tellectual. I know no language in which the French word fire is expressed by a corresponding word representing a sensible idea. Hence it is not tru ; that all the roots of the language are in last resort signs of sensory ideas." (V. Coutin, Histoire de la phil. au XIII sitcle, 1841, II., p. 274.) 2 For the psychology of relation consult Herbert Spencer, Psychology, I., p. 65, II., pp., 360 et seq.; James, Psychology, I., pp., 203 et seq. The latter gives the history of the subject, which is very brief, and remarks that the idealogues form an honorable exception to the general abstention. Thtr- Destutt de Tracy established a distinction between feelings of sensation ami feelings of relation. SPEECH. 8 I consciousness which unites two other states of con- sciousness." Although a relation is not always a link in the rigorous sense, this definition has the great ad- vantage of presenting it as a reality, as a state existing by itself, not a zero, a naught of consciousness. It possesses intrinsic characters : (i) It is indecompos- able. There are in consciousness greater and less states; the greater (e. g., a perception) are compos- ite, hence accessible to analysis; they occupy an ap- preciable and measurable time. The lesser (relation) are naturally beyond analysis; rapid as lightning, they appear to be outside time. (2) It is dependent. Remove the two terms with which it is intercalated, and the relation vanishes ; but it must be noted that the terms themselves presuppose relations; for, ac- cording to Spencer's just remark, " There are neither states of consciousness without relations, nor relations without states of consciousness." In fact : to feel or- think a relation, is to feel or think a change. But this psychical state may be studied otherwise than by internal observation, and the subsequent in- terpretation. It lends itself to an objective study, be- cause it is incarnated in certain words. When I say, red and green, red or green, there are in either case, not two, but three states of consciousness; the sole difference is in the intermediate state which corres- ponds with an inclusion or an exclusion. So, too, all our prepositions and conjunctions {for, by, if, but, because} envelop a mental state, however attenuated. The study of languages teaches us that the expression of relations is produced in two ways, forming, as it were, two chronological layers. The most ancient is that of the cases or declen- sions: a highly complex mechanism, varying in marked 82 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. degree with the idioms, and consisting in appositions, suffixes, or modifications of the principal theme. But these relations have only acquired their proper linguistic organ, specialised for this function, by means of prepositions and conjunctions. They are wanting in many languages; gesture being then substituted for them. The principal parts of the discourse are solitary, juxtaposed without links after the manner of the phrases used by children. Others, somewhat less poor, have only two conjunctions: and, but. In short, the terms on which devolved the expression of rela- tions are of late formation, as it were, organs de luxe. In the analytical languages, prepositions and con- junctions are nouns or pronouns diverted from their primitive acceptation, which have acquired a value expressive of transition, condition, subordination, co- ordination, and the rest. The psychological notion common to the greater number, if not to all, is that of a movement. "All relations expressed by preposi- tions can be referred to repose, and to movement in space and time, i. e., to those with which the locative, accusative (movement of approximation) and ablative (movement of departure) correspond in declension." 1 It may be admitted that this consciousness of move- ment, of change, which is no more, fundamentally, than the sense of different directions of thought, belongs less to the category of clear notions than to that of subconscious states, of tendencies, of actions, which explains why the terms of relation are wholly wanting, or rare, and only conquered their autonomy at a late period. With these, the progressive work of differentiation is accomplished. Discourse has now its materials and 1 Regnaud, op. cit., pp. 304 et seq. SPEECH. 83 its cement ; it is capable of complex phrases wherein all is referred and subordinated to a principal state, contrary to those ruder essays which could only attain to simple phrases, denuded of connective apparatus. We have rapidly sketched this labor of organo- ' genesis, by which language has passed from the amor- phous state to the progressive constitution of special- ised terms and grammatical functions : an evolution wholly comparable with that which, in living bodies, starts from the fecundated ovule, to attain by division of labor among the higher species to a fixed adjust- ment of organs and functions. "Languages are nat- ural organisms, which, without being independent of human volition, are born, grow, age, and die, accord- ing to determined laws." (Schleicher.) They are in a state of continuous renovation, of acquisition, and of loss. In civilised languages, this incessant meta- morphosis is partially checked by enforced instruc- tion, by tradition, and respect for the great literary works. In savage idioms where these coercive meas- ures are lacking, the transformation at times occurs with such rapidity that they become unrecognisable at the end of a few generations. Spoken language, as a psycho-physiological mech- anism, is regulated in its evolution by physiological and psychological laws. Among the former (with which we are not con- cerned), the principal is the law of phonetic altera- tion, consisting in the displacement of an articulation in a determined direction. It is dependent on the vocal organ ; thus, after the Germanic invasion, the Latin which this people spoke fell again under the power of physiological influences which modified it profoundly. 84 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. Among the latter, the principal is the law nf gnal- -y> tl ie great artisan in the extension of languages. It is a law of economy, the basis of which is general- isation, the faculty of seizing on real or supposed re- semblances. The word remains invariable, but the mind gives it different applications : it is a mask cov- ering in turn several faces. It suffices to open a dic- tionary to see how ingenious and perilous is this un- conscious labor. Such a word has only a few lines ; it has no brilliant record. Such another fills pages ; first we see it in its primitive sense ; then from anal- ogy to analogy from accident to accident it departs from it more and more, and ends by having quite a contrary meaning. 1 Hence it has been said that "the object of a true etymology is to discover the laws that have regulated the evolution of thought." Among primitive people, the process that entails such devia- tions from the primitive sense, is sometimes of strik- ing absurdity ; or at least appears to us as such by reason of the strange analogies that serve the exten- \ sion of the word. Thus : certain Australian tribes gave the names of mussels (niuyuni), to books because they open and close like shell-fish ; and many other no less singular facts could be cited. Much more might be said as to the role of analogy, but we must adhere to our subject. In conclusion : it is to be regretted that linguistic psychology attracts so few people, and that many re- cent treatises on psychology, excellent on all other points, do not devote a single line to language. Yet this study, especially if comparative, from the lowest to the most subtle forms, would throw at least as 1 It is superfluous to give examples of such a well-known fact. See Dar- mesteter, The Life of Words. SPEECH. 85 much light on the mechanism of the intelligence as other highly accredited processes. Physiological psy- chology is much in vogue, since it is rightly concluded that if the facts of biology, normal and morbid, are being studied by naturalists and physicians, they are available to psychologists also, under another aspect. So too for languages: comparative philology has its own aim, psychology another, proper to it. It is in- credible that any one who, with sufficient linguistic equipment, should devote himself to the task, would fail to find adequate return for his labors. CHAPTER III. INTERMEDIATE FORMS OF ABSTRACTION, HAVING thus acquainted ourselves with this new factor speech which as an instrument of ab- straction becomes steadily more and more important, we can take up our subject from the point at which we left it. In passing from the absence to the presence of the word, from the lower to the intermediate forms of abstraction, we must again insist on our principal aim : viz., to prove that abstraction and generalisa- tion are functions of the completely evolved mind. They exist in embryo in perception, and in the image, and at their extreme limit involve suppression of all concrete representation. This conclusion will hardly be contradicted. The difficulty is to follow the evo- lution step by step, stage after stage, and to note the difference by objective marks. For intermediate abstraction, this operation is very simple. It implies the use of words ; it has passed the level of prelinguistic abstraction and generalisa- tion. We may go farther, and always with the aid of words establish two classes within the total cate- gory of mean abstraction : i. The lower forms, bordering on generic images, whose objective mark is the feeble participation of the INTERMEDIATE FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 87 word : it can indeed be altogether foregone, and is only in the least degree an instrument of substitution. 2. The higher forms, approximating to the class of pure concepts, and having as their objective mark the fact that words are indispensable, since these have now become an instrument of substitution, though still accompanied by some sensory representation. The legitimacy of this division can be justified only by a detailed comparison of the two classes. Before giving examples that determine the nature and intellectual trend of the lower forms, a theoretical question presents itself which cannot be eluded, albeit any profound discussion of it belongs to the theory of cognition rather than to psychology. It is as follows : Is the difference between generic images and the lowest concepts, one of nature or of degree? This question has sometimes been propounded in a less general and more concrete form ; Is there any radical difference, any impassable gulf between animal intelli- gence 1 in its higher, and human intelligence in its lower aspects? Some authors give an absolute nega- tion, others admit community of nature, and of transi- tional forms. I shall first reject as inadmissible the argument that identifies abstraction with the use of words. Taine seems at times to admit this : "We think," he says, "the abstract characters of things by means of the abstract names that are our abstract ideas, and the formation of our ideas is no more than the forma- 1 Intelligence is taken here in its restricted sense, as the synonym of ab- stracting, generalising, judging, reasoning. 88 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. tion of names which are substitutes." 1 Clearly if ab- straction is impossible without words, this operation could only begin with speech. All that was said above (Chap. I) proves the inanity of such an assertion. Let us, in order to discuss the question profitably, sum up the principal characteristics of generic images on the one hand, of inferior concepts on the other. Generic images are : (i) simple and of the practical order; (2) the result of often-repeated experiences; (3) extracts from very salient resemblances ; (4) a condensation into a visual, auditory, tactile, or olfac- tory representation. They are the fruit of passive as- similation. The inferior concepts most akin to them, which we are studying in the present instance, are in char- acter : (i) less simple ; (2) less frequently repeated in experience ; (3) they assume as material, similarities ^ mingled with sufficiently numerous differences ; (4) ' they are fixed by a word. They are the fruit of active assimilation. It may be said that the two classes, when thus op- posed to each other, present but minimal differences, save for the addition of words.- For the moment, in- deed, the word is only an instrument handled by a bad workman, who ignores its efficacy and highest significance, as will be proved below. But were it otherwise, and were the delimitation between the two classes in no way fluctuating, the thesis of a progres- sive evolution must needs be given up, unless it be admitted to begin only with the appearance of speech. 2 IDe I' intelligence, Vol. I., Bk. IV., Chap. I., p. 254, first edition. ZV I 'intelligence, I., Bk. iv., chap, i, p. 254, first ed. INTERMEDIATE FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 89 Romanes describes the passage from the generic image to the concept as follows : "Water-fowl adopt a somewhat different mode of alighting upon land, or even upon ice, from that which they adopt when alighting upon water; and those kinds which dive from a height (such as terns and gannets) never do so upon land or ice. These facts prove that these animals have one recept answering to a solid substance, and another answering to a fluid. Similarly a man will not dive from a height over hard ground, or over ice, nor will he jump into water in the same way as he jumps upon land. In other words, like the water-fowl, he has two distinct recepts, one of which answers to solid ground, and the other to an unresisting fluid. But unlike the water-fowl, he is able to bestow upon each of these recepts a name, and thus to raise them both to the level of concepts. So far as the practical purposes of locomotion are concerned, it is, of course, immaterial whether or not he thus raises his recepts into concepts ; but, as we have seen, for many other purposes it is of the high- est importance that he is able to do this. Now, in order to do it, he must be able to set his recept before his own mind as an object of his own thought : before he can bestow upon these generic ideas the names of "solid" and "fluid," he must have cognised them as ideas. Prior to this act of cognition, these ideas dif- fered in no respect from the recepts of a water-fowl ; neither for the requirements of his locomotion is it needful that they should : therefore, in so far as these requirements are concerned, the man makes no call upon his higher faculties of ideation. But, in virtue of this act of cognition whereby he assigns a name to an idea known as such, he has created for himself go THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. and for purposes other than locomotion a priceless possession; he has formed a concept." 1 In point of fact, the transition is not so simple. Romanes omits the intermediate stages : for with fluid and liquid we penetrate into a more elevated order of concepts than those immediately bordering on the generic image. What he well brings out is that the bare introduction of words does not explain every- thing. It must not be forgotten that if the higher de- velopment of the intelligence depends upon the higher development of abstraction, which itself depends upon the development of speech, this last is conditioned, not simply by the faculty of articulation, which exists among many animals, but by anterior cerebral condi- tions that have to be sought out. For these, we must return to the distinction loosely established above, between passive and active assimilation. We know that the fundamental mech- anism of cognition may be reduced to two antagonistic processes, association and dissociation, assimilation and dissimilation ; to combine, to separate ; in brief, analysis and synthesis. 2 In the formation of the gen- eric image, as we have seen, assimilation plays the principal part ; the mind works only upon similarities. In proportion as we recede from this point, we have the contrary ; the mind works more and more upon differences ; the primitive and essential operation is a dissociation ; the fusion of similarities only appears later. The further back we go, the more analysis preponderates, because we are pursuing resemblances 1 Mental Evolution in Man, pp. 74 and 75. 2 As Paulhan remarks, " L'abstraction et les idees abstraites " (Revue Philosophique, Jan., 1889, p. 26 et seq.), these two processes are initially linked one with the other, so that we land analytical syntheses, and synthetical anal- yses. INTERMEDIATE FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 91 more and more hidden by differences. Coarser minds do not rise above palpable similarities. The peasant who hears a dialect or patois closely akin to his own understands nothing of it ; it is another language to him ; whereas even a mediocre linguist immediately perceives the identity of words that differ only in ac- cent. We may represent the differences between generic images, and these general notions that most nearly approximate to them, by the following symbol : I. ABCde II. Abcde ABCef xyzAf ABCgh, etc. gAhkm, etc. where each line corresponds to an object, and each letter to one of the principal characters of the object. Table I is that of the generic image. A part, ABC, is constantly repeated in each experience ; moreover, it is in relief, as indicated by the capitals; the elimi- nation of differences is almost passive, self-caused ; they are forgotten. Table II is that of a fairly simple general notion. Here A has to be disengaged from all the objects in which it is included. It still has a salient character, indicated by capitals, and recurring in each object ; but as it is merged in the differences, as it represents but a poor fraction of the total event, it is not disen- gaged spontaneously; it exacts a preliminary labor of dissociation and elimination. Thus understood, the difference between the two processes consists only in the faculty of greater or less dissociation, and we are in no way authorised in assuming a difference of nature. But the question may be propounded in a different 92 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. manner, more precise and more embarrassing. I formulate it thus : the generic image is never, the concept is always a judgment. We know that for logicians (formerly at any rate) the concept is the simple and primitive element ; next comes the judg- ment, uniting two or several concepts; then ratiocina tion, combining two or several judgments. For the psychologist, on the contrary, affirmation is the fun- damental act ; the concept is the result of judgments (explicit or implicit), of similarities with exclusion of differences. If in addition to this we recall what was said above: that speech commences with phrases only, that in its simplest form it is the word-phrase ; then the debated question may be thus transformed : Is there, between the generic image and judgment in its lower forms, a break in continuity, or a passage by slow transformation? For the partisans of the first theory, the appear- ance of judgment is a "passage of the Rubicon" (Max Muller). It is as impossible to deny this as to affirm it positively and indisputably. Romanes, who makes a stand against the "passage of the Rubicon," admits the following stages in the development of signs, taken as indicative of the development of intel- ligence itself. 1. The indicative sign; gesture or pronominal root ; a dog barking for a door to be opened, etc. 2. The denotative sign which is affixed to particu- lar objects, qualities, or actions; for example, the parrot which on seeing a person utters the name of the person, or some word which it has associated with him, and which for the animal has become the dis- tinctive mark of the person. 3. The connotative or attributive sign, which, INTERMEDIATE FORMS OF ABSTRACTION. 93 rightly or wrongly, is attributed to an entire class of objects having a common quality; for instance, the child which applies the word star to everything that shines. 4. The denominative sign ; or the intentional em- ployment of the sign as such, with a full appreciation of its value ; for example, the word star in its meaning to the astronomer. 5. The predicative sign, or a proposition formed by the apposition of two denominative signs. 1 This hierarchical order, while in some measure open to criticism, indicates at least schematically the progressive passage from the concrete to the higher abstractions, and may therefore be accepted. It is clear that the two first stages scarcely pass beyond the concrete. To the third, Romanes attaches capital importance: judgment begins with it. It may, however, be asked if affirmation really exists at this stage. For my own part I am inclined to admit it as included in the gen- eric image in its highest degree (for here too there are degrees), under the form not of a proposition, but of an action. The hunting dog assuredly possesses generic images of man and of different kinds of game, under the visual and more especially the olfactory form. When it starts off on the scent of its master, of a hare, or of a partridge, this is surely a judgment of a certain kind, an affirmation, the least doubtful of all, seeing that it is an act. The absence of verbal expression and of logical information in no way alters the fundamental nature of the mental state. We have already (Chap. I.) spoken of practical judgments and ratiocinations ; it is needless to reiterate. 1 it is also 4 i. Addition and subtraction are two inverse oper- ations whose results are mutually exclusive : they are the sole primitive numerical functions." 1 The simplicity and solidity of this process result from its being always identical with itself, and al- 1 Liard, La science positive et la mltaphysique, p. 226. It should be remarked that the process by subtraction is met with even among uncivilised people, though very rarely. The plan of making numerals by subtraction, says Tylor (op. cit., I., p. 264), is known in North America, and is well shown in the Aino language of Yesso, where the words for 8 and 9 obviously mean "two from ten," " one from ten." EVOLUTION OF THE PRINCIPAL CONCEPTS. 143 though the series of numbers is unlimited, some one term of the sequence is rigorously determined, be- cause it can always be brought back to its point of departure, unity. In this labor of construction by continuous repetition, two psychological facts are to be noted : 1. No sooner is unity passed, in the elaboration of numbers, than intuition fails altogether. Directly we reach 5, 6, 7, etc. (the limit varies with the individ- ual), objects can no longer be perceived or represented together : there is now no more in consciousness than the sign, the substitute for the absent intuition : each number becomes a sum of unities fixed by a name. 2. For our unity-type we substitute higher unities, which admit of simplification. Thus in the predom- inating decimal system, ten and a hundred are unities ten and a hundred times larger than unity, properly so called. They may be of any given magnitude : the Hindus, whose exuberant imagination is well known, invented the koti, equivalent to four billions three hun- dred and twenty-eight millions of years, for calculat- ing the life of their gods ; each koti represents a single day of the divine life. 1 Inversely, we may consider the unity-type as a sum of identical parts, and represent 1= T $ or --gg, etc. A tenth, a hundredth, are unities ten times, a hundred times, smaller than unity properly so called, but they obey the same laws in the formation of fractional numbers. l"The childish and savage practice of counting on the fingers and toes lies at the foundation of our arithmetical science. Ten seems the most con- venient arithmetical basis offered by systems founded on hand-counting, but twelve would have been better, and duodecimal arithmetic is in fact a pro- test against the less convenient decimal arithmetic in ordinary use. The case is the not uncommon one of high civilisation bearing evident traces of the rudeness of its origin in ancient barbaric life." (Tylor, loc. cit., I. p. 272 ) 144 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. It is well for the psychologist to note the privileged position of what we term the unity-type, or simply i. It originates in experience, because unity, even when concrete, and apprehended by gross perception, ap- pears as a primitive element, special and irreducible. So long as the mind confines itself to perceiving or imagining, there is in the passage from one object to two, three, or four objects, or inversely in the passage from four objects to three, two, or only one, an aug- mentation or diminution. But below unity in the first case, and above unity in the second, there is no longer any mental representation ; unity seems to border on nonentity and to be an absolute beginning. From this privileged point the mind can follow two opposite directions, by an identical movement : the one towards the infinitely great, with constant augmentation ; the other towards the infinitely small, with constant diminution but in one sense or the other, infinity is a never exhausted possibility. Here we reach the much disputed question of infinite num- ber : psychology is not concerned with this. For some, infinite number has an actual existence. For others, it only exists potentially, i. e., as an intellectual opera- tion which may, as was said above, add or subtract, without end or intermission. 1 III. The importance of signs, as the instruments of abstraction and generalisation, is nowhere so well shown as in their multiple applications to discrete or continuous quantity. The history of the mathemat- ical sciences is in part that of the invention, and use of symbols of increasing complexity, whose efficacy is clearly manifested in their theoretical or practical 1 For the most recent view of this discussion, with the arguments on either side, see Couturat: De rinfini mathtmatique (1896). 2nd part. Bk. III. EVOLUTION OF THE PRINCIPAL CONCEPTS. 145 results. In the first place, words were substituted for the things that were held to be numerable ; next, par- ticular signs, or figures ; later still, with the invention of algebra, letters took the place of figures, or at any rate assumed their function and part in the problem to be solved ; later still, the consideration of geomet- rical figures was replaced by that of their equations ; finally, the use of new symbols corresponded with cal- culations for infinitesimal quantities, negative quanti- ties, and imaginary numbers. These symbols are such a powerful auxiliary to the labor of the mathematicians that those among them who affect philosophy have gladly discoursed upon their nature and intrinsic value. They seem to be divided into two camps. One faction attribute reality to the symbols, or at least incline that way. It is the introduction of the nomina numina into mathematics. They maintain that these pretended conventions are only the expression of necessary relations which the mind is obliged, on account of their ideal nature, to represent by arbitrary signs, but which are not invented by caprice, or by the necessity of the individual mind since this con- tents itself with laying hold of that which is offered by the nature of the things. Do we not see moreover that the labor accomplished by their aid is, with neces- sary modifications, applicable to reality? To the other, symbols are but means, instruments, stratagems. They mock at those who "look upon relations once symbolised as things which have in themselves an a priori scientific content, as idols, which we supplicate to reveal themselves " (Renou- vier). Signs, whatever the)' may be, are nothing more than conventions : negative quantities represent a [46 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. change in the direction of thought. Imaginary num- bers "represent important relations under a simple and abridged form." Symbols are an aid in surmount- ing difficulties, as, empirically, the lever and its de- velopments serve for the lifting of weights. "It is not calculation," said Poinsot, "that is the secret of this art which teaches us to discover ; but the atten- tive consideration of things, wherein the intellect seeks above all to form an idea of them, endeavoring by analysis properly so called to decompose them into other more simple ideas, and to review them again subsequently as if they had been formed by the union of those simpler things of which it had full knowledge." 1 In sum : numbers consist in a series of acts of in- tellectual apprehension, susceptible of different direc- tions, and of almost unlimited applications. They serve for comparison, for measurement, for putting order into a variety of things. If we compare now the two extremes, viz., the first attempt at infantine numeration and the highest numerical inventions of the mathematician, we must recognise the notion of number to be a fine example of the complete evolu- tion of the faculty of abstraction, as applied to a par- ticular case, the principal stages of which we have been able to note in bringing out the ever-increasing importance of signs. SECTION II. THE CONCEPT OF SPACE. The idea of space has given rise to so many the- ories that it is difficult to restrain ourselves within the strict limits of psychology, and of our particular sub- ICournot, op.cit., I., p. 331 et seq. Renouvier, Logique, I., pp. 377-394. Poinsot, Thtorie nouvelle de la rotation ties corps, p. 78. EVOLUTION OF THE PRINCIPAL CONCEPTS. 147 ject. Whether or no this concept be innate, given & priori or derived from our cerebral constitution, we have here setting aside all question of origin only to inquire by what ways and means we attain full con- sciousness of it and determine it to be a fundamental concept. In order to follow its development we must neces- sarily set out from experience ; since space, like num- ber or time, is perceived before it is conceived. For the sake of clearness and precision, let us designate the primitive concrete data, the result of perception, as extension, and the concept, the result of abstraction, as space properly so called. I. At the outset what is given us by intuition is extension under a concrete form. What first becomes known to us is not space but a limited and determined extension what the child can hold in its hand, reach by a movement of its arms, later on the room which it crosses with uncertain steps ; it is a street, a square traversed, a journey made by carriage or by train, the horizon which the eye embraces, the nebulae vaguely seen in the nocturnal sky, etc. All this is concrete and measurable, and can be reduced to a measure, i. e., to a concrete extension such as the metre and its fractions. These different extensions, although given by the senses, and therefore concrete, are already abstract ; since they co-exist with other qualities (resistance, color, cold, heat, etc.) from which a spontaneous anal- ysis separates them, in order to consider them indi- vidually. This analysis is translated by the common terms, long, short, high, deep, near, far, to the right, to the left, in front, behind, etc. By a simplification which occurred much later (for 148 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. it implies the foundation of geometry) tin's somewhat confused and incoherent list is replaced by a more rational analysis : height, breadth, depth, distance, position. It marks the transition from the concrete- abstract to the abstract period. It is in fact certain that before constituting itself as a science founded upon reasoning, geometry traversed a semi-empirical stage, it was born of practical needs the necessity of measuring fields, building houses, and the rest. More- over certain great mathematicians have by no means disdained to admit its relations with experience : Gauss called it the "science of the eye," and Sylvester de- clared "that most if not all the chief ideas of modern mathematics originated in observation." Let us, without insisting further, recollect that ex- tension is given us by touch and sight. Touch is par excellence the sense of extension : thus geometry re- duces the problems of equality or inequality to super- positions, and all measure of extension is finally re- ducible to tactile and muscular sensations. The terms touch and vision ought in fact to be completely co- extensive, representing not merely a passive impres- sion upon the cutaneous surface, or the retina, but an active reaction of the motor elements proper to the sensorial organs. The term acoustic space has recently come into use. Much work has been done on the semi-circular canals, leaving no doubt as to the part they play in the sense of bodily equilibrium ; a some authors have even local- ised a " space-sense" in them. Miinsterberg relates from his personal experience that while the vestibule IFor a summary of these investigations, see the chapter "Sensations of Orientation " in Prof. E. Mach's Popular Scientific Lectures, 3rd ed., Chicago, 1898; and for original discussions of the whole subject of space-sensations, see the same author's Analysis of the Sensations, Chicago, 1897. Trans. EVOLUTION OF THE PRINCIPAL CONCEPTS. 149 and the cochlea receive excitations whence result the purely qualitative sensations of sound (height, in- tensity, etc.), the semi-circular canals receive others which depend upon the position of the source of the sound : these excitations would produce reflexes, prob- ably in the cerebellum, the purpose of which would be to bring the head into the position best adapted for clear audition. The synthesis of sounds, of the modifications perceived in the canals, and of the afore- said movements (or images of movement) would con- stitute the elements of an acoustic space. Wundt, who opposes this theory, sees nothing more in the semi-circular canals than internal tactile organs, auxil- iary to external touch. 1 Leaving this hypothesis of acoustic space (which is by no means well-established), we know from nu- merous observations that the different modalities of tactile and visual extension, notably that of distance, are only known with precision after much groping and long apprenticeship. 2 Extension under all its aspects, whether perceived or imagined, presents according to constitution, age, or circumstances, a character of variability which is in complete contrast with the stability and fixity of the IMiinsterberg, Beitriige zur experimen. Psychologie, pp. 182 et seq. Wundt, Physiol. Psychologie, 4th ed., II. pp. 95-96. JThis is not the place to enter into the well-known discussion between the "nativists" and the "empiricists." To the former all sensation, visual or tactile, contains from its outset a quantum of extension which is the prim- itive element, and the foundation for our spatial constructions. For the others there are only local signs, tactile or visual, and movements whose synthesis suffices to constitute all the modalities of existence. Whichever hypothesis be adopted, the extension in point is always that given by concrete data (not that of space conceived in the abstract) directly cognised accord- ing to some, a genetic construction according to others. This discussion has no direct relation with our subject: for the full debate see Ribot's Psychologie alltmande contemporaine, Ch. V. James (Psychology, II. Ch. XX.) has recently taken up the nativistic theory, giving new arguments in its favor. 150 THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. concept of space. The conditions of this relativity have been exposed at length by Herbert Spencer. "A creature without eyes cannot have the same concep- tion of space as one that has eyes ; and it is the same with the congenitally blind as compared with those who are in full possession of their eyesight ; and for the creature whose locomotion is rapid and powerful as compared with the creature which moves slowly and painfully. Our bodily bulk and organic dimen- sions also affect conceptions of space ; distances which seemed great to the boy seem moderate to the man, and buildings once thought imposing in height and mass dwindle into insignificance. Without speaking of nervous subjects, who illusively imagine their bod- ies enormously large or infinitely small, there are also transient and momentary states of the organ- ism which considerably modify the consciousness of space ; thus, De Quincy, describing some of his opium dreams, says that "buildings and landscapes were ex- hibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity." 1 "Deliberate anal- ysis of their movements," says Lotze, "is so little practised by women that it can be asserted without fear of error that such expressions as mbolic thought, 132, 226. Symbolism, complete, 109. Symbols, 145. Taine, 33, 34, 73. 87. 129. Temporal signs, 178. Ten, the most convenient arithmeti- cal basis, 143. Thermodynamics, 192. Time, origin of the concept of, 159; consciousness of, 164 et seq ; sense of, 164; conception of infinite, 174; measure of, 174 et seq ; psycho- logical process by which its primi- tive notion is constituted in con- sciousness, 175 et seq. Time-perception, simple repetition the elements of, 176; the work of attention, 178. Tracy, Destutt de, 80. Tylor, 43, 50, 67, 71, 99, 142, 143. Unconscious activity, 132. Unconscious, the, 224 ; psychology of the, 226. Unity, idea of, 138; abstract, 141. Unity-type, 143. Utility, 218, 219; law of, 5. Van Ende, 170. Venn, J., 188. 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