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body-the two being most intimately united so as to form a true unity-as reflection upon our own experience will suffice to show us.* He cannot, therefore, exercise his intellectual power without some mode of accompanying bodily activity. This may be a nervous activity, producing the utterance or imagination of words or other sounds, or the making of some gesture, or the imagination of such, or of some other visible or tactile sign. Such signs are necessary to serve as a material basis for every intellectual act-every conception, however abstract it may be. We shall, later on, give various examples of distinct intellectual abstractions and true general conceptions, existing fully developed in the entire absence not only of the power of speech, but of sight and hearing also. How widely divergent from the truth, how profoundly mistaken, must, then, be the views of the Nominalists! Such views, as expressed by M. Taine, are quoted by Mr. Romanes in the most uncompromising manner, as follows: "Names are our abstract ideas, and the formation of our abstract ideas is nothing more than the formation of names." Now, a name can only be a certain sound, or, if written, a certain sight, and therefore is and must be a definite individual entity. But the concept it serves is different indeed. The latter can neither be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, or felt, nor can it consist of any combination of our sensations. It can only be thought, and it can be thought and recognized to be absolutely one and of the some kind, by the aid See "On Truth," pp. 386–392. † Ibid., pp. 88, 224.

p. 32.

of very different "feelings." A triangle can be apprehended by means of sight, by feeling, or by hearing its description; and the general conception, " triangle," can be also understood to be one and the same by means of sight and feeling, or by means of feeling and hearing, or by hearing and sight. The more abstract idea, "extension," may exist apart from sensations of sight, for it exists for the blind. It can exist apart from sensations of touch or of muscular effort, for it may be revealed by sight alone.*

Mr. Romanes says that if the term "abstraction" be confined to what is marked by a name, "then undoubtedly animals differ from men in not presenting the faculty of abstraction; for this is no more than to say that animals have not the faculty of speech. But if the term be not thus limited . . . then, no less undoubtedly, animals resemble men in presenting the faculty of abstraction. . . . In accordance with the latter view, great as may be the importance of affixing a name to a compound of simple ideas for the purpose of giving that compound greater clearness and stability, the essence of abstraction consists in the act of compounding, or in the blending together of particular ideas into a general idea of the class to which the individual things belong."

But" abstraction" is not in any way a "blending" or "compounding," but is an ideal separation, or separate intellectual apprehension, of qualities and conditions which actually exist in concrete realities.‡

Mr. Romanes does not seem to regard it as possible

* 66
"On Truth," p. 106.
See "On Truth," pp. 211-216.

† pp. 32, 33.

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to deny that "abstraction consists in the compounding of simple ideas," with which inane notion he, mirabile dictu, credits both of the two psychological schools he is dealing with. The classification of psychical states he draws out for us is, therefore, as might be expected, confused, misleading, and with cross-divisions, as we will endeavour briefly to point out.

He submits his classification as follows:

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"The word 'idea' I will use as a generic term to signify indifferently any product of the imagination, from the mere memory of a sensuous impression up to the result of the most abstruse generalization." This is, indeed, for him a convenient confusion in one lump, of things essentially distinct. Were it once conceded that no difference of kind exists between the sensuous memory of an impression and a really intellectual generalization, it would be altogether idle to inquire whether any difference of kind exists between the psychical natures of man and brute. A concession of the sort would render it impossible for any one whose reasoning powers were not exceptionally defective, to maintain the existence of such a distinction of kind.

He next tells us, “By 'Simple Idea,' 'Particular Idea,' or Concrete Idea,' I understand the mere memory of a particular sensuous perception." But what sort of memory is here meant? There is true memory, in

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which we are conscious our recollection refers to the past, and there is the exercise of that retentive faculty which recalls past images without intellectual advertence to them. The latter is only improperly called

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memory, and is to be distinguished as "reminiscence" or sensuous memory." It is evident, however, from the connection in which it is used, that Mr. Romanes only refers to sensuous memory; but the sentence is exceedingly ambiguous.

"By 'Compound Idea,' 'Complex Idea,' or 'Mixed Idea,'" he tells us, "I understand the combination of simple, particular, or concrete ideas into that kind of composite idea which is possible without the aid of language." Now, both sensuous and intellectual cognitions are possible without the aid of language; but again the context shows us that Mr. Romanes here really intends to denote only what he, a little further on,† calls "Recepts," which are what we have distinguished as "sensuous cognitions," and which may and obviously do exist both in animals and in ourselves.

Lastly, he informs us, "By 'General Idea,' ' Abstract Idea,'' Concept,' or 'Notion,' I understand that kind of composite idea which is rendered possible only by the aid of language, or by the process of naming abstractions as abstractions." Against this we must once more, in passing, briefly protest, and affirm that general ideas or concepts are not composite, but simple, and that they do not depend for their existence on language.

The subject of memory is most important to any one who would investigate the psychology of man and animals. We must refer the reader to our work "On Truth," the second chapter of which is devoted to the faculty of memory generally, while sensuous and intellectual memory are described at pp. 186 and 220 respectively. That curious power of mere "organic reminiscence," which has most improperly been spoken of as memory, is treated of at p. 169.

† p. 36.

Discoursing on his own classification, Mr. Romanes tells us that his first division (simple, particular, or concrete ideas) "has to do only with what are called percepts." This term we cannot allow to pass uncommented on. The term "percept" should be used to denote a thing" perceived," and intellectually perceived; since intellectual perception is alone really perception in the proper sense of that word. It may be loosely used to denote a mere sensuous discrimination; but it should then be distinguished by some qualifying, limiting term. Thus, as we have said, this passage is an exceedingly ambiguous one. Mr. Romanes's term includes two classes which differ toto cælo-namely, (1) sensuous perceptions, and (2) intellectual perceptions of individual concrete objects or actions, or of affections of the individual who perceives.

His intermediate class of " recepts" he very strangely considers a terra incognita which he has discovered and named for the first time, forgetting that we have spoken of them as "sensuous universals," and not knowing that they were distinguished six hundred years ago, and have been so again and again since, under the title of Universalia Sensus." Indeed, he distinctly †

* p. 35.

† By St. Thomas Aquinas, and other Scholastics. We may refer Mr. Romanes to Quæstio LXXVIII. articulus iv., entitled, "Utrum interiores sensus convenienter distinguantur," of Aquinas's "Summa Theologica," for a treatment of this so-called terra incognita." Further, we may refer him to Quæstio 34 of the "Questiones Philosophica" of Father Maurus, S.J. (who died 1687), and to a recent work, Kleutgen's "Philosophie Scolastique" (Gaume Frères, Paris, 1868), vol. i. pp. 62-65. The problems of cerebration investigated by Prof. Ferrier, and the speculative theories of Prof.

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