The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Textual Introduction
• Preface to the Third Edition[*]
• Chapter I: Introductory Remarks
• Chapter II: The Relativity of Human Knowledge
• Chapter III: The Doctrine of the Relativity of Human Knowledge, As Held By Sir William Hamilton
• Chapter IV: In What Respect Sir William Hamilton Really Differs From the Philosophers of the Absolute
• Chapter V: What Is Rejected As Knowledge By Sir William Hamilton, Brought Back Under the Name of Belief
• Chapter VI: The Philosophy of the Conditioned
• Chapter VII: The Philosophy of the Conditioned, As Applied By Mr. Mansel to the Limits of Religious Thought
• Chapter VIII: Of Consciousness, As Understood By Sir William Hamilton
• Chapter IX: Of the Interpretation of Consciousness
• Chapter X: Sir William Hamilton’s View of the Different Theories Respecting the Belief In an External World
• Chapter XI: The Psychological Theory of the Belief In an External World
• Chapter XII: The Psychological Theory of the Belief In Matter, How Far Applicable to Mind
• Chapter XIII: The Psychological Theory of the Primary Qualities of Matter
• Chapter XIV: How Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel Dispose of the Law of Inseparable Association
• Chapter XV: Sir William Hamilton’s Doctrine of Unconscious Mental Modifications
• Chapter XVI: Sir William Hamilton’s Theory of Causation
• Chapter XVII: The Doctrine of Concepts, Or General Notions
• Chapter XVIII: Of Judgment
• Chapter XIX: Of Reasoning
• Chapter XX: On Sir William Hamilton’s Conception of Logic As a Science. Is Logic the Science of the Laws, Or Forms, of Thought?
• Chapter XXI: The Fundamental Laws of Thought According to Sir William Hamilton
• Chapter XXII: Of Sir William Hamilton’s Supposed Improvements In Formal Logic
• Chapter XXIII: Of Some Minor Peculiarities of Doctrine In Sir William Hamilton’s View of Formal Logic
• Chapter XXIV: Of Some Natural Prejudices Countenanced By Sir William Hamilton, and Some Fallacies Which He Considers Insoluble
• Chapter XXV: Sir William Hamilton’s Theory of Pleasure and Pain
• Chapter XXVI: On the Freedom of the Will
• Chapter XXVII: Sir William Hamilton’s Opinions On the Study of Mathematics
• Chapter XXVIII: Concluding Remarks
• Appendices
• Appendix A: Manuscript Fragments
• Appendix B: Textual Emendations
• Appendix C: Corrected References
• Appendix D: Bibliographic Index of Persons and Works Cited In the Examination, With Variants and Notes

CHAPTER XVII

The Doctrine of Concepts, or General Notions

we now arrive at the questions which form the transition from Psychology to Logic—from the analysis and laws of the mental operations, to the theory of the ascertainment of objective truth: the natural link between the two being the theory of the particular mental operations whereby truth is ascertained or authenticated. According to the common classification, from which Sir W. Hamilton does not deviate, these operations are three: Conception, or the formation of General Notions; Judgment; and Reasoning. We begin with the first.

On this subject two questions present themselves: first, whether there are such things as General Notions, and secondly, what they are. If there are General Notions, they must be the notions which are expressed by general terms; and concerning general terms, all who have the most elementary knowledge of the history of metaphysics are aware that there are, or once were, three different opinions.

The first is that of the Realists, who maintained that General Names are the names of General Things. Besides individual things, they recognised another kind of Things, not individual, which they technically called Second Substances, or Universals a parte rei. Over and above all individual men and women, there was an entity called Man—Man in general, which inhered in the individual men and women, and communicated to them its essence. These Universal Substances they considered to be a much more dignified kind of beings than individual substances, and the only ones the cognizance of which deserved the names of Science and Knowledge. Individual existences were fleeting and perishable, but the beings called Genera and Species were immortal and unchangeable.

This, the most prevalent philosophical doctrine of the middle ages, is now universally abandoned, but remains a fact of great significance in the history of philosophy; being one of the most striking examples of the tendency of the human mind to infer difference of things from difference of names,—to suppose that every different class of names implied a corresponding class of real entities to be denoted by them. Having two such different names as “man” and “Socrates,” these inquirers thought it quite out of the question that man should only be a name for Socrates, and others like him, regarded in a particular light. Man, being a name common to many, must be the name of a substance common to many, and in mystic union with the individual substances, Socrates and the rest.

In the later middle ages there grew up a rival school of metaphysicians, termed Nominalists, who repudiating Universal Substances, held that there is nothing general except names. A name, they said, is general, if it is applied in the same acceptation to a plurality of things; but every one of the things is individual. The dispute between these two sects of philosophers was very bitter, and assumed the character of a religious quarrel: authority, too, interfered in it, and as usual on the wrong side. The Realist theory was represented as the orthodox doctrine, and belief in it was imposed as a religious duty. It could not, however, permanently resist philosophical criticism, and it perished. But it did not leave Nominalism in possession of the field. A third doctrine arose, which endeavoured to steer between the two. According to this, which is known by the name of Conceptualism, generality is not an attribute solely of names, but also of thoughts. External objects indeed are all individual, but to every general name corresponds a General Notion, or Conception, called by Locke^[*] and others an Abstract Idea. General Names are the names of these Abstract Ideas.

Realism being no longer extant, nor likely to be revived, the contest at present is between Nominalism and Conceptualism; each of which counts illustrious names among its modern adherents. Sir W. Hamilton professes allegiance to both, affirming “that the opposing parties are really at one.”^* But his general mode of thought, and habitual phraseology, are purely Conceptualist. This is already apparent in the passage I shall first quote, which contains his statement of the fact to be explained. It is preceded by a remark on Abstraction which is perfectly just, and throws great light on the processes of human thought. Abstraction, he says, is simply the concentration of our attention on a particular object, or a particular quality of an object, and diversion of it from everything else. There may be abstraction, therefore, without generalization. “The notion of the figure of the desk before me is an abstract idea,—an idea that makes part of the total notion of that body, and on which I have concentrated my attention, in order to consider it exclusively. This idea is abstract, but it is at the same time individual; it represents the figure of this particular desk, and not the figure of any other body.”^†

There are, therefore, “individual abstract notions;” but there are also “Abstract General Notions.” These are formed

As a popular account of Classification, for learners, to be followed by a more scientific exposition, this fully answers its purpose; but it is expressed in the common language of Conceptualists, and we should naturally conclude from it that the author was a Conceptualist. He however asserts the doctrine of the Nominalists, that there are no general notions, and that the notion suggested by a general name is always singular or individual, to be “not only true but self-evident.” And he quotes as “irrefragable”^† the argument of Berkeley, directed against the very possibility of Abstract Ideas. The passage from Berkeley is in the Introduction to his Principles of Human Knowledge, and is as follows:

It is evident, indeed, that the existence of Abstract Ideas—the conception of the class-qualities by themselves, and not as embodied in an individual—is effectually precluded by the law of Inseparable Association.

In what manner Sir W. Hamilton manages to combine two theories, which in words are, and in substance have always been believed to be, directly contradictory of one another, we learn only from his Lectures on Logic. The hearers of those on Metaphysics, unless the Professor supplied oral elucidations which do not appear in the text, must have been considerably puzzled by finding the task of reconciling the two doctrines thrown entirely on themselves. In the Lectures on Logic, however, an attempt is made to perform it for them. It is there stated, that the General Notion, which Sir W. Hamilton terms a Concept, and which is the notion we form of some “point of similarity”^[*] between individual objects,

This is sound doctrine, but it is pure Nominalism; as the passage first quoted from our author was pure Conceptualism. It is very necessary that I should quote the additional elucidations given in the succeeding Lecture. A Concept or (General) Notion, he there says, is in this distinguished from a “Presentation of Perception, or Representation of Phantasy,” that

But if, as our author says, concepts are “incapable of being realized in thought at all,” except as representations of individual objects, how are they, even potentially, universal? Being mere mental creations, they are nothing except what they can be thought as being; and they cannot be thought as being universal, but only as being part of the thought of an individual object, though the individual object needs not always be the same. This is not a potential universality, though it is an universal potentiality. If, then, the Nominalists are thus completely right, how can it be that the Conceptualists are not wrong?

Our author thinks that the apparent difference between them is a mere case of verbal ambiguity; arising from the “employment of the same terms to express the representations of Imagination, and the notions or concepts of the Understanding.” “A relation,” he says,

We are therefore to understand that although Imagination cannot figure to itself anything general or universal, Thought Proper, or the Comparative Faculty, or the Understanding, can. But I do not believe that Berkeley, whose argument our author declares “irrefragable,” or any other of the great Nominalist thinkers whom he enumerates, would have accepted this distinction. They would, I apprehend, have denied that the attributes included in the so-called General Notion can be ^bthought^b separately, any more than they can be imaged separately. But why do I talk of Berkeley? Sir W. Hamilton has himself negatived the distinction in the very passage just quoted, when he says, “the concept horse cannot, if it remain a concept, that is, a universal attribution, be represented in imagination; but, except it be represented in imagination, it cannot be applied to any object, and except it be so applied, it cannot be realized in thought.” The simple question is, Can the attributes of horse as a class be objects of thought, except as part of a representation of some individual horse? If the Concept cannot exist in the mind except enveloped in the miscellaneous attributes of an individual—which is the truth, and fully recognised as such in the passages quoted from Sir W. Hamilton,—then it can no more be thought separately by the intellect than depicted separately in the imagination.

This notion of a Concept as something which can be thought, but “cannot in itself be depicted to sense or imagination,”^* is supported, as we saw, by calling it a relation. “As the result of a comparison,” a concept “necessarily expresses a relation:”^† and “a relation cannot be represented in imagination.”^[*] If a concept is a relation, what relation is it, and between what? “As the result of a comparison,” it must be a relation of resemblance among the things compared. I might observe that a concept, which is defined by our author himself “a bundle of attributes,”^[†] does not signify the mere fact of resemblance between objects; it signifies our mental representation of that in which they resemble; of the “common circumstance”^[‡] which Sir W. Hamilton spoke of in his exposition of Classification. The attributes are not the relation, they are the fundamentum relationis. This objection, however, I can afford to wave. However inappropriate the expression, let us admit that a concept is a relation. But if a relation cannot be represented in imagination, our author has just said that “the two terms, the two relative objects,”^[§] can. The relation, according to him, though it cannot be imagined, can be thought. But can a relation be thought without thinking the related objects between which it exists? Assuredly, no: and this impossibility can the less be denied by Sir W. Hamilton, as it is the basis on which he founds his theory of Consciousness—of the direct apprehension of the Ego and the Non-ego. Consequently, when we think a relation, we must think it as existing between some particular objects which we think along with it: and a Concept, even if it be the apprehending of a relation, can only be thought as individual, not as general.

The true theory of Concepts needs not, I think, be sought farther off than in our author’s own account of their origin. “In the formation,” he says,

Let me remark, in passing, the fresh ^crecognition^c in the last sentence, of an important principle, already several times adverted to, in the theory of Naming.

The formation, therefore, of a Concept, does not consist in separating the attributes which are said to compose it, from all other attributes of the same object, and enabling us to conceive those attributes, disjoined from any others. We neither conceive them, nor think them, nor cognise them in any way, as a thing apart, but solely as forming, in combination with numerous other attributes, the idea of an individual object. But, though thinking them only as part of a larger agglomeration, we have the power of fixing our attention on them, to the neglect of the other attributes with which we think them combined. While the concentration of attention actually lasts, if it is sufficiently intense, we may be temporarily unconscious of any of the other attributes, and may really, for a brief interval, have nothing present to our mind but the attributes constituent of the concept. In general, however, the attention is not so completely exclusive as this; it leaves room in consciousness for other elements of the concrete idea: though of these the consciousness is faint, in proportion to the energy of the concentrative effort; and the moment the attention relaxes, if the same concrete idea continues to be contemplated, its other constituents come out into consciousness. General concepts, therefore, we have, properly speaking, none; we have only complex ideas of objects in the concrete: but we are able to attend exclusively to certain parts of the concrete idea: and by that exclusive attention, we enable those parts to determine exclusively the course of our thoughts as subsequently called up by association; and are in a condition to carry on a train of meditation or reasoning relating to those parts only, exactly as if we were able to conceive them separately from the rest.

What principally enables us to do this is the employment of signs, and particularly the most efficient and familiar kind of signs, viz. Names. This is a point which Sir W. Hamilton puts well and strongly, and there are many reasons for stating it in his own language.

The rationale of this is, that when we wish to be able to think of objects in respect of certain of their attributes—to recall no objects but such as are invested with those attributes, and to recall them with our attention directed to those attributes exclusively—we effect this by giving to that combination of attributes, or to the class of objects which possess them, a specific Name. We create an artificial association between those attributes and a certain combination of articulate sounds, which guarantees to us that when we hear the sound, or see the written characters corresponding to it, there will be raised in the mind an idea of some object possessing those attributes, in which idea those attributes alone will be suggested vividly to the mind, our consciousness of the remainder of the concrete idea being faint. As the name has been directly associated only with those attributes, it is as likely, in itself, to recall them in any one concrete combination as in any other. What combination it shall recall in the particular case, depends on recency of experience, accidents of memory, or the influence of other thoughts which have been passing, or are even then passing, through the mind: accordingly, the combination is far from being always the same, and seldom gets itself strongly associated with the name which suggests it; while the association of the name with the attributes that form its conventional signification, is constantly becoming stronger. The association of that particular set of attributes with a given word, is what keeps them together in the mind by a stronger tie than that with which they are associated with the remainder of the concrete image. To express the meaning in Sir W. Hamilton’s phraseology, this association gives them an unity^* in our consciousness. It is only when this has been accomplished, that we possess what Sir W. Hamilton terms a Concept; and this is the whole of the mental phænomenon involved in the matter. We have a concrete representation, certain of the component elements of which are distinguished by a mark, designating them for special attention; and this attention, in cases of exceptional intensity, excludes all consciousness of the others.

Sir W. Hamilton thinks, however, that we can form, though scarcely preserve, concepts without the aid of signs. “Language,” he says, “is the attribution of signs to our cognitions of things. But as a cognition must have been already there, before it could receive a sign; consequently, that knowledge which is denoted by the formation and application of a word, must have preceded the symbol which denotes it.” A sign, however, he continues, in one of his happiest specimens of illustration,

Mr. Mansel, who agrees with Sir W. Hamilton in the essentials of his doctrine of Concepts, goes beyond him on this point, being of opinion that without signs we could not form concepts at all.^[*] The objection, that we must have had the concept before we could have given it a name, he meets by the suggestion that names when first used are names only of individual objects, but being extended from one object to another under the law of Association by Resemblance, they become specially associated with the points of Resemblance, and thus generate the Concept. In Mr. Mansel’s opinion, no one, “without the aid of symbols,” can advance

This is a step in advance of Sir W. Hamilton’s doctrine, but is open to the same criticism, namely, that after showing all Concepts to be concrete and individual, it endeavours to make out by an indirect process, a sort of abstract existence for them. According to Mr. Mansel, signs are necessary to concepts, because signs alone can give this abstract existence. Signs are wanted, to emancipate our mental apprehension from the conditions of space and time which are in all our concrete representations. The other miscellaneous attributes which have to be cast out, do not, he seems to think, embarrass the formation of the Concept; but it is hampered by the conditions of space and time, and only by means of a sign can we get rid of these. But do we get rid of them by employing signs? To take Mr. Mansel’s own instance: When we establish our concept of a shilling by a verbal description of the coin, does the description enable us to conceive a shilling as not occupying any space? When we think of a shilling, either by name or anonymously, is not the circumstance of occupying space called up as an inevitable part of the mental representation? Not, indeed, the circumstance of occupying a given part of space; but if that is what Mr. Mansel means, it would follow that we need signs to enable us to form a mental representation even of an individual object, provided it be moveable: for the same object does not always occupy the same part of space. The truth is, that the condition of space cannot be excluded; it is an essential part of the concept of Body, and of every kind of bodies. But any given space, or any given time, is not a part of the concept, any more than any of the slight peculiarities in which one shilling differs from another are part of the concept of a shilling. Some space and time, and some individual peculiarities, are always thought along with the concept, and make up the whole, of which it can only be thought as a part: but these are not directly recalled by the class-name, and the attributes composing the concept are. Mr. Mansel, therefore, has not, I conceive, hit the mark: but in the passages which follow, there is real power of metaphysical discrimination.

These remarks of Mr. Mansel remove, as it seems to me, the only real argument for the supposition that Concepts, or what are called General Notions, are formed without the aid of signs. But the counter-doctrine must be received with an important reservation. Signs are necessary, but the signs need not be artificial; there are such things as natural signs. The only reality there is in the Concept is, that we are somehow enabled and led, not once or accidentally, but in the common course of our thoughts, to attend specially, and more or less exclusively, to certain parts of the presentation of sense or representation of imagination which we are conscious of. Now, what is there to make us do this? There must be something which, as often as it recurs either to our senses or to our thoughts, directs our attention to those particular elements in the perception or in the idea: and whatever performs this office is virtually a sign; but it needs not be a word; the process certainly takes place, to a limited extent, in the inferior animals; and even with human beings who have but a small vocabulary, many processes of thought take place habitually by other symbols than words. It is a doctrine of one of the most fertile thinkers of modern times, Auguste Comte, that besides the logic of signs, there is a logic of images, and a logic of feelings.^[*] In many of the familiar processes of thought, and especially in uncultured minds, a visual image serves instead of a word. Our visual sensations—perhaps only because they are almost always present along with the impressions of our other senses—have a facility of becoming associated with them. Hence, the characteristic visual appearance of an object easily gathers round it, by association, the ideas of all other peculiarities which have, in frequent experience, coexisted with that appearance: and, summoning up these with a strength and certainty far surpassing that of the merely casual associations which it may also raise, it concentrates the attention on them. This is an image serving for a sign—the logic of images. The same function may be fulfilled by a feeling. Any strong and highly interesting feeling, connected with one attribute of a group, spontaneously classifies all objects according as they possess or do not possess that attribute. We may be tolerably certain that the things capable of satisfying hunger form a perfectly distinct class in the mind of any of the more intelligent animals; quite as much so as if they were able to use or understand the word food. We here see in a strong light the important truth, that hardly anything universal can be affirmed in psychology except the laws of association. As almost all general propositions which can be laid down respecting Mind, are consequences of these laws, so do these ultimate laws, in varying cases, generate different derivative laws; and are continually raising up exceptions to the empirical generalizations yielded by direct psychical observation, which, so far as true, being mere cases of the wider laws, are always limited by them.

We have now attained a theory of Classification, of Class Notions, and of Class Names, which is clear, free from difficulties, and, in its essential elements, understood and assented to by Sir W. Hamilton. With the exception of a few minor matters, I find no fault in his theory. It is where his theory ends and his practice begins, that I am obliged to diverge from him. His theory is a complete condemnation of his practice. His theory is that of Nominalism; but he affirms, in opposition to every Conceptualist, that Nominalism and Conceptualism are the same, and on this justification expounds all the operations of the intellect in the language, and on the assumptions, of Conceptualism. If a Concept does not exist as a separate or independent object of thought, but is always a mere part of a concrete image, and has nothing that discriminates it from the other parts except a special share of attention, guaranteed to it by special association with a name; what is meant by the paramount place assigned to Concepts in all the intellectual processes? Can it be right to found the whole of Logic, the entire theory of Judgment and Reasoning, upon a thing which has merely a fictitious or constructive existence? Is it correct to say that we think by means of Concepts? Would it not convey both a clearer and a truer meaning, to say that we think by means of ideas of concrete phænomena, such as are presented in experience or represented in imagination, and by means of names, which being in a peculiar manner associated with certain elements of the concrete images, arrest our attention on those elements? Sir W. Hamilton has told us that a concept cannot, as such, be “realized in thought,” or “elicited into consciousness.”^[*] Can it be, that we think and reason by means of that which cannot be thought, of which we cannot become conscious? Of course Sir W. Hamilton did not mean, nor do I, that we cannot think or be conscious of the attributes which are said to compose the concept; but we can only be conscious of them as forming a representation jointly with other attributes which do not enter into the concept. And the difference between the parts of the same representation which are inside and those which are outside what is called the concept, is not that the former are attended to and the latter not, for neither of these is always true. It is, that foreseeing that we shall frequently or occasionally desire to attend only to the former, we have made for ourselves, or have received from our predecessors, a contrivance for being reminded of them, which also serves for fixing our exclusive attention upon them when called to mind. To say, therefore, that we think by means of concepts, is only a circuitous and obscure way of saying that we think by means of general or class names.^*d To give an intelligible idea of the fact, we always need to translate it out of the former language into the latter. It is possible, no doubt, so to define the terms that both expressions shall mean the same thing. But the less appropriate language has the immense disadvantage, that it cannot be used without tacitly assuming that these mere parts of our complex concrete perceptions and ideas have a separate mental existence, which is admitted not to belong to them. No one, more fully than Sir W. Hamilton, recognises the true theory; but the acknowledgment only serves him as an excuse for delivering himself up unreservedly to all the logical consequences of the false theory. To read the account which he and Mr. Mansel, in common with the great majority of modern logicians, give of our intellectual processes—which they always make to consist essentially of some operation practised upon concepts—no one would ever imagine that concepts were not complete, rounded off, distinct and separate possessions of the mind, habitually dealt with by it quite apart from anything else; and this, in the general opinion of Conceptualists, they are: but according to Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, they are secretly, all the while, incapable of being thought except as parts of something else which has always to be dealt with along with them, but which these philosophers, in their expositions, suppress as completely, as if they had forgotten that its necessary presence is part of their theory. For these and other reasons, I ^fthink that the words Concept, General Notion, and other phrases of like import, convenient as they are for the lighter and every-day uses of philosophical discussion, should be abstained from where precision is required^f . Above all, I hold that nothing but confusion ever results from introducing the term Concept into Logic, and that instead of the Concept of a class, we should always speak of the signification of a class name.^*

The signification of a class name has two aspects, corresponding to the distinction to which Sir W. Hamilton attaches so much importance, between the Extension and the Comprehension of a concept; which is merely a bad expression for the distinction between the two modes of signification of a concrete general name. Most names are still, what according to Mr. Mansel they all were originally, names of objects;^[*] and do not cease to be so by becoming class names; but, though names of objects, they become expressive of certain attributes of those objects, and when predicated of an object, they affirm of it those attributes. The name is said, in the language of logicians, to denote the objects and connote the attributes. White denotes chalk and other white substances, and connotes the particular colour which is common to them. Bird denotes eagles, sparrows, crows, geese, and so forth, and connotes life, the possession of wings, and the other properties by which we are guided in applying the name. The various objects denoted by the class name are what is meant by the Extension of the concept, while the attributes connoted are its Comprehension. It must be remarked, however, that the Extension is not anything intrinsic to the concept; it is the sum of all the objects, in our concrete images of which, the concept is included: but the Comprehension is the very concept itself, for the concept means nothing but our mental representation of the sum of the attributes composing it.

And here it is important to take notice of a psychological truth, which forms an additional reason for preferring the expression that we think by general names, to that of thinking by concepts. Since the concept only exists as a part of a concrete mental state; if we say that we think by means of it, and not by the whole which it is a part of, it ought at least to be the part by which we think. Since that is the only distinction between it and the remainder of the presentation or representation in which it is embedded, at least that distinction should be real: all which enters into the concept ought to be operative in thought. So far is this from being true, that in our processes of thought, seldom more than a part, sometimes a very small part, of what is comprehended in the concept, is attended to, or comes into play. This is forcibly stated, though in Conceptualist phraseology, by Mr. Mansel. “We can,” he says,

The attempt to stand at once on two incompatible theories, leads to strange freaks of expression. Mr. Mansel describes us as thinking by means of concepts which we are incapable of forming, and do not even attempt to form, but use the signs instead. Yet he will not consent to call this thinking by the signs, but insists that it is the concepts which are even in this case the “instruments of thought.” It is surely a very twisted logical position which, when he is so entirely right in what he has to say, compels him to use so strangely contorted a mode of saying it.

The same important psychological fact is excellently illustrated by Sir W. Hamilton in one of the very best chapters of his works, the Tenth Lecture on Logic, in which it is stated as follows:

The word does not always serve the purpose of fixing our attention on the whole of the attributes which it connotes; some of them may be only recalled to mind faintly, others possibly not at all: a phænomenon ^heasily^h to be accounted for by the laws of Obliviscence. But the part of the attributes signified which the word does recal, may be all that it is necessary for us to think of, at the time and for the purpose in hand; it may be a sufficient part to set going all the associations by means of which we proceed through that thought to ulterior thoughts. Indeed, it is because part of the attributes have generally sufficed for that purpose, that the habit is acquired of not attending to the remainder. When the attributes not attended to are really of no importance for the end in view, and if attended to would not have altered the results of the mental process, there is no harm done: much of our valid thinking is carried on in this manner, and it is to this that our thinking processes owe, in a great measure, their proverbial rapidity. This kind of thinking was called, by Leibnitz, Symbolical. A passage of one of the early writings of that eminent thinker, in which it is brought to notice with his accustomed clearness, is translated by Sir W. Hamilton, from whom I re-quote it.

Yet the elements which are thus habitually left out, and of which in the case of a composite notion, if Leibnitz is right, some must be left out, are really parts of the signification of the name, and if the word Concept has any meaning, are parts of the concept. Leibnitz accordingly knew better than to say, as Mr. Mansel says^[*] and Sir W. Hamilton implies, that even in these cases we think by means of the concept. According to him we sometimes think entirely without the concept, generally only by a part of it, which may be the wrong part, or an insufficient part, but which may be, and in all sound thinking is, sufficient. On this point, therefore, a false apprehension of the facts of thought is conveyed by the doctrine which speaks of Concepts as its instrument. Leibnitz would perhaps have said, that the name is the instrument in one of the two kinds of thinking, and the concept in the other. The more reasonable doctrine surely is, that the name is the instrument in both; the difference being, that in one case it does the whole, and in the other only a part, perhaps the minimum, of the work for which it is intended and fitted, that of reminding us of the portions of our concrete mental representations which we expect that we shall have need of attending to.

In summary; if the doctrine, that we think by concepts, means that a concept is the only thing present to the mind along with the individual object which (to use Sir W. Hamilton’s language) we think under the concept, this is not true: since there is always present a concrete idea or image, of which the attributes comprehended in the concept are only, and cannot be conceived as anything but, a part. Again, if it be meant that the concept, though only a part of what is present to the mind, is the part which is operative in the act of thought, neither is this true: for what is operative is, in a great majority of cases, much less than the entire concept, being that portion only which we have retained the habit of distinctly attending to. In neither of these senses, therefore, do we think by means of the concept: and all that is true is, that when we refer any object or set of objects to a class, some at least of the attributes included in the concept are present to the mind; being recalled to consciousness and fixed in attention, through their association with the class-name.

Before leaving this part of the subject, it seems necessary to remark, that Sir W. Hamilton is by no means consistent in the extension which he gives to the signification of the word Concept. In most cases in which he uses it, he makes it synonymous with General Notion, and allows concepts of classes only, not of individuals.^* It is thus that he expressly defines the term. “A Concept,” he says, “is the cognition or idea of the general character or characters, point or points, in which a plurality of objects coincide.”^† “Concept,” he says again, “is convertible with general notion, or more correctly, notion simply.”^‡ He speaks of the extending of the term to our direct knowledge of individuals, as an “abusive employment” of it.^§ He also says, “Notions and Concepts are sometimes designated by the style of general notions,—general conceptions. This is superfluous, for in propriety of speech, notions and concepts are, in their very nature, general.”^¶ In certain places, however, he speaks of concepts of individuals. “If I think of Socrates as son of Sophroniscus, as Athenian, as philosopher, as pugnosed, these are only so many characters, limitations, or determinations which I predicate of Socrates, which distinguish him from all other men, and together make up my notion or concept of him.”^∥ And again, “When the Extension of a concept becomes a minimum, that is, when it contains no other notions under it, it is called an individual.”^** And further on,

But, in the sequel of the same exposition, he again seems to surrender this use of the word Concept as an improper one, saying, “If a concept be an individual, that is, only a bundle of individual qualities, it is . . . not a proper abstract concept at all, but only a concrete representation of Imagination.”^† And indeed, no other doctrine is consistent with the proposition elsewhere laid down by our author (though founded, as I think, on an error), that the “words Conception, Concept, Notion, should be limited to the thought of what cannot be represented in imagination, as the thought suggested by a general term.”^‡

Mr. Mansel, on the contrary, justifies the phrase, concept of an individual, maintaining that “the subjects of all logical judgments are concepts.”^§ “The man,” he says,

If this be so, one of two things follows. Either, if I met with a person who exactly corresponded to the concept I have formed of Cæsar, I must suppose that this person actually is Cæsar, and lived in the century preceding the birth of Christ; or else, I cannot think of Cæsar as Cæsar, but only as a Cæsar; and all those which are mistakenly called proper names are general names, the names of virtual classes, signifying a set of attributes which carry the name with them, wherever they are found. Either theory seems to be sufficiently refuted by stating it. Surely the true doctrine is that of Sir W. Hamilton, that what is called my concept of Cæsar is the presentation in imagination of the individual Cæsar as such. Mr. Mansel might have learnt better from Reid, who says “Most words (indeed all general words) are the signs of ideas: but proper names are not; they signify individual things, and not ideas.”^* And again, soon after:

The whole of Reid’s doctrine respecting names and general notions is not only far more clear, but nearer to the true doctrine of the connotation of names, than Sir W. Hamilton’s or Mr. Mansel’s.^‡

[[*] ]See Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Works, Vol. II, pp. 138-9 (Bk. II, Chap. xxxii, §§6-8).

[* ]Lectures, Vol. II, p. 296; and foot-note to Reid, p. 412n.

[† ]Lectures, Vol. II, pp. 287-8.

[* ]Ibid., pp. 288-90.

[† ]Ibid., pp. 297-8.

[* ]Ibid., pp. 298-300. [Hamilton is quoting from Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, §§vii, viii, x, in Works, Vol. I, pp. 5-8.]

[[*] ]Lectures, Vol. III, p. 125.

[† ]Ibid., pp. 128-9.

[* ]Ibid., p. 131.

[a-a]+Source, 67, 72 [printer’s error in 651, 652]

[* ]Ibid., pp. 134-6.

[† ]Ibid., Vol. II, p. 312.

[‡ ]Ibid., Vol. III, p. 136. The words he means are Begriff and Anschauung. See foot-note to Reid, p. 412n.

[b-b]651thought

[* ]Mansel, Prolegomena Logica, p. 15. What a mere play upon words the distinction is, is shown by Mr. Mansel’s saying, a few pages later, “In every complete act of conception, the attributes forming the concept are contemplated as coexisting in a possible object of intuition.” (P. 29.) So that they are “depicted to imagination;” only they are not depicted separately.

[† ]Lectures, Vol. III, p. 128.

[[*] ]Ibid., Vol. II, p. 312.

[[†] ]Ibid., Vol. III, p. 129.

[[‡] ]Ibid., Vol. II, p. 298.

[[§] ]Ibid., p. 312.

[* ]Ibid., Vol. III, pp. 132-3.

[c-c]651, 652 illustration afforded

[* ]Ibid., p. 137.

[* ]One of the best and profoundest passages in all Sir W. Hamilton’s writings, is that in which he points out (though only incidentally) what are the conditions of our ascribing Unity to any aggregate. “Though it is only by experience we come to attribute an external unity to aught continuously extended, that is, consider it as a system or constituted whole; still, in so far as we do so consider it, we think the parts as held together by a certain force, and the whole, therefore, as endowed with a power of resisting their distraction. It is, indeed, only by finding that a material continuity resists distraction, that we view it as more than a fortuitous aggregation of many bodies, that is, as a single body. The material universe, for example, though not de facto continuously extended, we consider as one system in so far, but only in so far, as we find all bodies tending together by reciprocal attraction.” (“Dissertations on Reid,” [Note D,] pp. 852-3.)

[* ]Lectures, Vol. III, pp. 138-40.

[[*] ]See Prolegomena Logica, p. 15.

[* ]Ibid., pp. 15-17.

[† ]By intuitions Mr. Mansel means the Anschauungen of Kant, or what Mr. Mansel himself otherwise calls Presentations of Sense, to which he adds Representations of Imagination [see Prolegomena Logica, pp. 9-14].

[* ]Ibid., pp. 19-20, and 29-31.

[[*] ]See Système de politique positive, ou Traité de sociologie, instituant la religion de l’humanité, 4 vols. (Paris: Mathias, et al., 1851-54), Vol. I, p. 450.

[[*] ]Lectures, Vol. III, pp. 135, 134; cf. p. 306 above.

[* ]It is for want of apprehending this view of the matter that Sir W. Hamilton (Lectures, Vol. III, pp. 31-2) brings a charge of self-contradiction against Archbishop Whately, because, having in the commencement and throughout his treatise on Logic, represented Reasoning as the object-matter of that science, he, in certain passages, says that Logic is entirely conversant with the use of language. [Cf. Richard Whately, Elements of Logic (London: Mawman, 1828), pp. 1 and 56n.] This is a contradiction only from Sir W. Hamilton’s point of view. If Archbishop Whately’s had been the same—if he had thought as Sir W. Hamilton did respecting Concepts, considered as the object-matter of Reasoning—he would have been justly liable to the imputation cast upon him. But the Archbishop’s two statements are perfectly consistent, if we suppose his opinion to have been, that the formation of Concepts, and the subsequent process of combining them in arguments, are themselves processes of language. This doctrine (which is in fact Mr. Mansel’s [see Prolegomena Logica, pp. 15-32, 56-69]) Sir W. Hamilton deems too absurd to be imputed to the Archbishop (Discussions, p. 138). Yet he fancies himself a Nominalist, and does understand and assent to all the arguments of Nominalism. Unfortunately an intelligent assent to one of two conflicting doctrines is in his case no guarantee against holding, for all practical purposes eof thoughte , the other.

[d]651, 652 [footnote appears at the end of this paragraph; moved in 67 presumably because another note was added at that place]

[f-f]651, 652 consider it nothing less than a misfortune, that the words Concept, General Notion, or any other phrase to express the supposed mental modification corresponding to a class name, should ever have been invented

[* ][67] Dr. M‘Cosh says, “I think it desirable to have a phrase to denote, not the ‘signification of a class name,’ but the thing signified by the class name; and the fittest I can think of is Concept.” But the “thing signified” by the class name is the class; the various objects called by the name: and class is a sufficient name for these, nor has the word Concept, to my knowledge, ever been predicated of them, but only of Sir W. Hamilton’s “bundles of attributes.” ([Examination,] pp. 276-7.) gDr. M‘Cosh’s use of the word Concept, for the thing conceived, not the conception, is, I believe, peculiar to himself.g

I must add, that the chapter of Dr. M‘Cosh from which I am now quoting, that headed “The Logical Notion,” contains much sound philosophy, and little with which I disagree except the persistent impression which the author keeps up throughout the chapter that I do disagree with him. [Ibid., Chap. xix, pp. 267-84.]

[[*] ]Prolegomena Logica, pp. 25-32.

[* ]Ibid., pp. 31-2.

[* ]Lectures, Vol. III, pp. 171-2.

[h-h]651, 652, 67 easy

[* ]Ibid., p. 181. [From Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis, in Opera Philosophica, ed. Johann Eduard Erdmann (Berlin: Eichler, 1840), pp. 79-80.] It will be remarked that Leibnitz here employs the word Intuitive in a sense entirely different from that which British metaphysicians, and Sir W. Hamilton himself, attach to the word. In Leibnitz’s sense, we cognise a thing intuitively in as far as we are conscious of the attributes of the thing itself; symbolically in as far as we merely think of its name, as standing for an aggregate of attributes, without having all, or perhaps any, of those attributes present to our mind. I cannot help being surprised that Sir W. Hamilton should have regarded this distinction of Leibnitz as coinciding with that of Kant and the modern German thinkers between Begriff and Anschauung, in other words, Concept and Presentation. Sir W. Hamilton considers Begriff to be a name for “the symbolical notions of the understanding,” in contrast with Anschauung, which means “the intuitive presentations of Sense and representations of Imagination.” (Ibid., p. 183.) He is right as to Anschauung, but as for “symbolical notions of the understanding,” our thinking is called by Leibnitz symbolical exactly in so far as it takes place without any “notions,” any concept or Begriff at all, by virtue of the mere knowledge that there is a Begriff which the word represents, and which we could recal if we wanted it. When thinking is completely symbolical, the meaning of the word is eliminated from thought, and only the word remains: as in Leibnitz’s own illustration from algebra.

[[*] ]Prolegomena Logica, pp. 44-8.

[* ]Lectures, Vol. III, pp. 119, 121, 126, 127, 128, 130, cum multis aliis.

[† ]Ibid., p. 122.

[‡ ]Discussions, p. 283n.

[§ ]Lectures, Vol. III, p. 121.

[¶ ]Ibid., p. 126.

[∥ ]Ibid., p. 78.

[** ]Ibid., p. 146.

[* ]Ibid., p. 148.

[† ]Ibid., p. 152.

[‡ ]Foot-note to Reid, p. 360n.

[§ ]Prolegomena Logica, p. 63.

[¶ ]Ibid., p. 62.

[* ]Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Works, p. 404. By ideas Reid here means (as he fully explains) attributes.

[† ]Ibid., p. 412.

[‡ ]Accordingly, when Sir W. Hamilton contends, in opposition to Reid, that there are definitions which are not nominal but notional, since they have for their object “the more accurate determination of the contents of a notion,” (foot-note to Reid, p. 691n,) there is no real difference of meaning between them: the contents of a notion being simply the connotation of a name.

Sir W. Hamilton enters, at some length, into the explanation of what is meant by the clearness, and the distinctness, of Concepts. A concept, according to him, is clear, if we can distinguish it as a whole from other concepts; distinct, if we can discriminate the characters or attributes of which it is the sum (Lectures, Vol. III, p. 158). The last statement is intelligible, but what does the first mean? If we do not know of what characters the concept is composed, seeing that it has no existence but in those characters, how can we know it so as to distinguish it from other concepts? Our author certainly had not a clear conception of what makes a conception clear; and the proof is, that he adopts as part of his text a quotation from Esser’s Logic, in which Esser makes the clearness of a concept to depend on our being able to distinguish, not the concept itself, but the objects included under it; on our being able, in short, to apply the class-name correctly. According to Esser, “a concept is said to be clear, when the degree of consciousness by which it is accompanied is sufficient to discriminate” not itself from other concepts, but “what we think in and through it, from what we think in and through other notions:” and “notions absolutely clear” are “notions whose objects” (not as Sir W. Hamilton says, themselves) cannot “possibly be confounded with aught else, whether known or unknown.” (Ibid., pp. 160-1. [Cf. Wilhelm Esser, System der Logik, 2nd ed. (Munster: Theissing, 1830), pp. 91-2.]) So that, according to Esser, the clearness of a concept has reference to its Extension, the distinctness to its Comprehension. This is not the only instance in which our author helps out his own expositions by passages from other authors, written from a point of view more or less different from his own.

[* ]It is for want of apprehending this view of the matter that Sir W. Hamilton (Lectures, Vol. III, pp. 31-2) brings a charge of self-contradiction against Archbishop Whately, because, having in the commencement and throughout his treatise on Logic, represented Reasoning as the object-matter of that science, he, in certain passages, says that Logic is entirely conversant with the use of language. [Cf. Richard Whately, Elements of Logic (London: Mawman, 1828), pp. 1 and 56n.] This is a contradiction only from Sir W. Hamilton’s point of view. If Archbishop Whately’s had been the same—if he had thought as Sir W. Hamilton did respecting Concepts, considered as the object-matter of Reasoning—he would have been justly liable to the imputation cast upon him. But the Archbishop’s two statements are perfectly consistent, if we suppose his opinion to have been, that the formation of Concepts, and the subsequent process of combining them in arguments, are themselves processes of language. This doctrine (which is in fact Mr. Mansel’s [see Prolegomena Logica, pp. 15-32, 56-69]) Sir W. Hamilton deems too absurd to be imputed to the Archbishop (Discussions, p. 138). Yet he fancies himself a Nominalist, and does understand and assent to all the arguments of Nominalism. Unfortunately an intelligent assent to one of two conflicting doctrines is in his case no guarantee against holding, for all practical purposes eof thoughte , the other.

[* ][67] Dr. M‘Cosh says, “I think it desirable to have a phrase to denote, not the ‘signification of a class name,’ but the thing signified by the class name; and the fittest I can think of is Concept.” But the “thing signified” by the class name is the class; the various objects called by the name: and class is a sufficient name for these, nor has the word Concept, to my knowledge, ever been predicated of them, but only of Sir W. Hamilton’s “bundles of attributes.” ([Examination,] pp. 276-7.) gDr. M‘Cosh’s use of the word Concept, for the thing conceived, not the conception, is, I believe, peculiar to himself.g

I must add, that the chapter of Dr. M‘Cosh from which I am now quoting, that headed “The Logical Notion,” contains much sound philosophy, and little with which I disagree except the persistent impression which the author keeps up throughout the chapter that I do disagree with him. [Ibid., Chap. xix, pp. 267-84.]

[eof thoughte]+67, 72

[gDr. M‘Cosh’s use of the word Concept, for the thing conceived, not the conception, is, I believe, peculiar to himself.g]+72