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, intellectual activity may always be reduced to one of the two following types: associating, combining, unifying, or dissociating, isolating, and separating. These cardinal 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 spontaneous, 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 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 accompanied by a weakening of that which is abstracted from. The true characteristic of abstraction is this partial increment of intensity. While involving elimination, 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 suppression. We leave them out of account simply because they do not suit our ends for the moment, and are complementary.[2]
Abstraction being, then, in spite of negative appearances, a positive operation, how are we to conceive 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 a, would ostensibly give a = d - (b + c). 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 impossible 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 representations are the same as those of concrete representations; only some are strengthened, others weakened: 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.[3]
We see from the above that abstraction depends genetically upon the causes which awaken and sustain attention. I have described these causes elsewhere,[4] and cannot here return to their consideration.
It is sufficient to remark that abstraction, like attention, may be instinctive, spontaneous, and natural; or reflective, voluntary, and artificial. In the first category the abstraction of a quality or mode of existence originates in some attraction, or from utility; 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 maintaining the abstract element clearly in consciousness. In fine, it is always a special application of the attention which, adapted as circumstances require to observation, synthesis, action, etc., here functions as an instrument of analysis.
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. The faculty of abstracting, from the lowest to the highest degrees, is constantly the same: its development is dependent on that of (general) intelligence and 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.[5]
Perception is par excellence the faculty of cognising the concrete. It strives to embrace all the qualities 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 qualities, 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 characteristics which, grouped together, become a substitute for totality. It must not be forgotten that perception is pre-eminently a practical operation, that its mainspring is interest or utility, and that in consequence we neglect—i. e., leave in the field of obscure consciousness—whatever at the moment concerns neither our desires nor our purposes. It would be superfluous to review all the forms of perception (visual, auditory, tactile, etc.), and to show that they are governed 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 becomes 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 represented 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 excludes 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 individual, concrete representation which prevails over the others is no more than a sketch, a reduction of reality with many details omitted. Apart from the exceptionally gifted men in whom mental vision and mental 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 perception 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 reality invariably suffers a conspicuous impoverishment, which is enormous in the less lavishly endowed; it is here reduced to a mere schema, limited to the inferior concepts.
Doubtless it may be objected that the work of dissociation in perception and representation is incomplete 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 abstraction appears in its true form, as the consciousness of one unique quality isolated from the rest, it is no new manifestation but a fruition, it is a simplification 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 general, but abstract,—and this is the material of generalisation.
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.[6] 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 several 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 which separates the new from the repeated. In fact, the material given us by external and internal experience consists of resemblances alloyed by differences which vary widely in degree,—in other words, analogies. 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 varieties. “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 substrate of generalization—primitive, in the absolute signification of the word? Does it mark the first awakening of the mind, in point of cognition? For several contemporary writers (Spencer, Bain, Schneider, and others) the consciousness of difference is the primordial factor; the consciousness of resemblance comes later. Others uphold the opposite contention.[7] As a matter of fact this quest for the primum cognitum is beyond our grasp; like all genetical questions, it eludes our observation and experience.
No conclusion can be formed save on purely logical 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 distinction between discrimination and assimilation. The question must remain open, incapable of positive solution by our psychology. The incontestable truth with regard to the mind, as we know it in its developed and organised state, is that the two processes advance pari 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:
1. 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 might call this the law of dissociation by varying concomitants.”[8]
2. The latter, generalisation, originates in association 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 dimensions, 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 generalisation, 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 mental 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 determined. And for this we require an objective notation which shall give them some external, though not arbitrary, mark.
The first distinguishing mark is given by the absence or presence of words. Abstraction and generalisation, with no possible aid from language, constitute the inferior group which some recent writers have designated by the appropriate name of generic images[9]—a term which clearly shows their intermediate nature between the pure image, and the general notion, properly so-called.
The second class, which we have termed intermediate 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 superfluous 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.
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 objective and practical value, of this schematic distribution, nothing less than a detailed exploration from one end to the other of our subject, can confirm or overthrow it.
We shall begin, then, with the lower forms, dwelling upon these at some length, because they are usually neglected, or altogether omitted. This is the pre-linguistic period of abstraction and generalisation: words are totally wanting; they are an unknown factor. How far is it possible without the aid of language to transcend the level of perception, and of consecutive images, and to attain a more elevated intellectual standpoint? In replying empirically, we have three fairly copious sources of information: animals, children who have not yet acquired speech, and uneducated deaf-mutes.
ANIMALS.
It is a commonplace to say that animal psychology is full of obscurities and difficulties. These arise mainly with regard to the question now occupying us; for we are concerned with ascertaining, not 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 achievements. 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., (1) equivalents of concepts, (2) processes comparable with reasoning.
In the immense realm of the invertebrates, the highest psychical development is, by general acknowledgment, met with among the social Hymenoptera; and the capital representatives of this group are the ants. To these we may confine ourselves. Despite 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 combats, cause disorders quite analogous to those observed 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, and (in certain species) their agricultural labors, harvesting, construction of granaries,[10] 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 unaccustomed 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 number 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 underneath them.”
Another observer, Dr. Ellendorf, who has carefully studied the ants of Central America, recounts a similar 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 returning 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 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, moisten them with their saliva, restore them when destroyed, and to construct a highway made of grains of sand, etc. (Réaumur.) 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.”[11]
I shall cite no observations on the intelligence of wasps and bees, but I wish to note one rudimentary 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 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 association 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 observations relating to “performing” animals, all acquirements 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 psychology is fairly well known. We may cite a few characteristic 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 elephant 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 laying hold of its lower end he will break it off, thus obtaining a fan or switch about five feet long, handle included. With this he keeps the flies at bay. Say what we may, these are both really bona fide implements, each intelligently made for a definite purpose.”
“What I particularly wish to observe,” says an experienced naturalist, “is that there are good reasons for supposing that elephants possess abstract ideas; for instance, I think it is impossible to doubt that they acquire through their own experience notions of hardness and weight, and the grounds on which I am led to think this are as follows. A captured 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 considerable 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 convince me that they recognised such qualities as hardness, 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, comments upon the above observation as follows:[12]
“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 abstract ideas are isolates; that is, qualities considered quite apart from the objects of which they are characteristic, I think not. But if it be meant that elephants, in a practical way, ‘recognise such qualities as hardness, sharpness, and weight,’ as predominant elements in the constructs they form, I am quite ready to assent 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 difference 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 hollows 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 by 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 image” would in my opinion be preferable for describing 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 watering places at times when the latter are perfectly dry.”[13] Undoubtedly it may be objected that association 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 almost 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 animals, the higher orders of monkeys, have not been much studied in their wild state, but such observations as have been made, some of which have been contributed by celebrated naturalists, fix with sufficient 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[14] 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 ever been known to attain.” Another monkey observed 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 observation.” They are also skilful in combining their stratagems, as in the case of one who, being held captive by a chain, and thus unable to reach a brood of ducklings, 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.[15]
One mental operation remains which must be examined 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, completely 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 transcribing, 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 countries 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 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 circumstances 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 distance. The next day three went, and again she perceived 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 extraordinary instances of the sagacity of animals.” Since then the question has been repeatedly taken up. Lubbock 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 characteristic number?[16]
An experiment, methodically conducted by Romanes, proved that a chimpanzee can count correctly as far as five, distinguishing the words which stand for one, two, three, four, five, and at command deliver the number of straws requested of her.[17]
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 attribute 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 numeration which we shall meet again in children, and in the lowest representatives of humanity.
3. All the other cases resemble the alleged “arithmetic” of G. Leroy’s magpie and similar observations. 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 between 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 children furnish proofs in favor of this assertion, or at least show that it is not an unfounded presumption, but the most probable hypothesis.
We may now without further delay (while reserving 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.
1. The generic image results from a spontaneous fusion 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 resemblances; 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 differences fall into oblivion. Huxley’s comparison of the composite photographs (above cited) renders it needless 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. The infant of four or five months very probably possesses a generic image of the human form and of some similar objects. It may be remarked, 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 whose flora is totally unknown to us, the repetition of experiences suggests an unconscious condensation of similar plants; we classify them without knowing their names, without needing to do so, and without clearly apprehending their distinguishing 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 rôle of dissociation is here extremely feeble. Everything takes place, as it were, in an automatic, mechanical fashion, in consequence of the unequal struggle set up in consciousness between the resemblances which are strengthened, and the differences, each of which remains isolated.
2. It has been said that the principal utility of abstraction 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 discussion. Some writers resent the mere suggestion that ants, elephants, dogs, and monkeys, should be able to reason. Yet this resentment is based on nothing 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 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 development, distinguish the following phases in the ascending order: perceptions and images (memories) as point of departure; association by contiguity, association by similarity; then the advance from known to unknown, by reasoning from particular to particular, 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 according 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 processes 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 hypothesis only simple reminders, brief formulæ 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 degree. Association by similarity is not, as we have seen, identical with formation of generic images; this last implies fusion, mental synthesis. So, too, reasoning from particular to particular implies something more than simple association; it is a state of expectation 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 suggestion, by the fact that the mind is less occupied with the memory of past burns than with the expectation of a repetition of the same fact in the present instance; 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.”[18]
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 important.
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 language, of vulgar and empirical classifications, of myths, of the earliest, quasi-scientific knowledge.[19] 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 expression, logic of recepts), which is to logic, properly so called, what generic images are to abstraction and to generalisation proper. This denomination is necessary; 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 animals, and in persons deprived of speech, to know exactly what meaning is intended.
It follows that there are two principal degrees in the logic of images.
1. Inference from particular to particular. The bird which finds bread upon the window, one morning, comes back next day at the same hour, finds it again, and continues to come. It is moved by an association of images, plus the state of awaiting, of anticipation, as described above.
2. Procedure by analogy. This (at least in its higher forms in animal intelligence) presupposes mental construction: the aim is definite, and means to attain 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 pertain to it exclusively, and which may be summarised as follows:
1. As material it employs concrete representations or generic images alone, and cannot escape from this 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 ratiocination, become an auxiliary in certain cases; I am even tempted to regard it as the main auxiliary of constructive imagination. It would be worth while to ascertain, from authentic observations, what part it plays in the inventions of novelists, poets, and artists. In a polemic against Max Müller, who persists in affirming that it is radically impossible to think and reason without words, a correspondent remarks:
“Having been all my life since school-days engaged in the practice of architecture and civil engineering, I can assure Prof. Max Müller that designing and invention are done entirely by mental pictures. 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 knowledge. In mechanics the graphic method, for instance.”[20]
2. Its aim is always practical. It should never be forgotten that at the outset, the faculty of cognition is essentially utilitarian, and cannot be otherwise, because it is employed solely for the preservation of the individual (in finding food, distinguishing enemies from prey, and so on). Animals exhibit only applied reasoning, tested by experience; they feel about and choose between several means,—their selection 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 æsthetic 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 restriction that the higher animals can be denied all functions beyond that of association, all capacity for inference by similarity. W. James (after stating that, as a rule, the best examples of animal sagacity “may be perfectly accounted for by mere contiguous association, 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 distribute 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 inference 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 different appearance, he understood that for the purpose in view, all these objects were identical. “This substitution, though impossible for the dog, any man but the stupidest could not fail to do.” I am not sure of this, despite the categorical assertion of the author; yet, discussion apart, it must be admitted that this would be asking the dog to exhibit a man’s reason.[21] As a matter of fact, notwithstanding contrary appearances, James arrives at a conclusion not very different from our own. “The characters extracted by animals are very few, and always related to their immediate interests and emotions.” This is what we termed above, empirical reasoning.[22]
G. Leroy said: “Animals reason, but differently from ourselves.” This is a negative position. We advance a step farther in saying: their reasoning consists in a heritage of concrete or generic images, adapted to a determined end,—intermediary between the percepts and the act. It is impossible to reduce everything to association by similarity, much less by contiguity, alone; since such procedure results necessarily in the formation of unchangeable habits, in limitation to a narrow routine, whereas we have seen that certain animals are capable of breaking through such restrictions.
ON CHILDREN.
We are here concerned with children who have not yet learned to speak, and with such alone. In contradistinction to animals, and to deaf-mutes when left to themselves, infancy represents a transitory state of which no upper limit can be fixed, seeing that speech appears progressively. The child forms his baby-vocabulary little by little, and at first imposes it upon others, until such time as he is made to learn the language of his country. We may provisionally neglect this period of transition, studying only the dumb, or monosyllabic and gesture phase.
The problem proposed at the end of the seventeenth century (perhaps before), which divided philosophers into two camps, was whether the human individual starts with general terms, or with particulars. At a later time, the question was proposed for the human race as a whole, in reference to the origin of language.
Locke maintained the thesis of the particular: “The ideas that children form of the persons with whom they converse resemble the persons themselves, and can only be particular.”
So, too, Condillac, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart, and the majority of those who represent the so-called sensationalist school.
The thesis of the general was upheld by authors of no less authority, commencing with Leibnitz:
“Children, and those who are ill-acquainted with the language they desire to speak, or the matter whereof they discourse, make use of general terms, such as thing, animal, plant, in lieu of the proper terms which are wanting to them; and it is certain that all proper or individual names were originally appellative or general.”[23]
The problem cannot be accepted under this form by contemporary psychology. It is equivocal. Its capital error is in applying to the embryonic state of intelligence and of language, formulæ that are appropriate to adult life only—to the growing mind, categories valid for the formed intellect alone. A reference to the physiology of the human embryo will render this more intelligible. Has this embryo, up to three months, a nose or mouth? Is it male or female? etc. Students of the development of intra-uterine life in its first phases are very cautious in propounding these and similar questions in such a manner; they do not admit of definite answers. That which is in the state of envelopment and of incessant becoming, can only be compared remotely with that which is fixed and developed.
The sole permissible formula is this: Intelligence progresses from the indefinite to the definite. If “indefinite” is taken as synonymous with general, it may be said that the particular does not appear at the outset; but neither does the general in any exact sense: the vague would be more appropriate. In other words, no sooner has the intellect progressed beyond the moment of perception and of its immediate reproduction in memory, than the generic image makes its appearance, i. e., a state intermediate between the particular and the general, participating in the nature of the one and of the other—a confused simplification.
Recent works on the psychology of infancy abound in examples of these abstractions and inferior generalisations, which appear very early.[24] A few examples will suffice.
Preyer’s child (aged thirty-one weeks) interested itself exclusively in bottles, water-jugs, and other transparent vases with white contents; it had thus seized upon a characteristic mark of one thing that was important to it, to wit—milk. At a later period it designated these by the syllable môm. Taine records an analogous case of a child to whom mm and um, and then nim at first signified the pleasure of seeing its pap, and subsequently everything eatable. We are assisting at the genesis of the sign; the crude sound attached to a group of objects becomes at a later period the sign of those objects, and later still an instrument of substitution. Sigismund showed his son, aged less than one year, and incapable of pronouncing a single word, a stuffed grouse, saying “bird.” The child immediately looked across to the other side of the room where there was a stuffed owl. Another child having listened first with its right ear, then with its left, to the ticking of a watch, stretched out its arms gleefully towards the clock on the chimney-piece (auditory, not vocal, generic image).
Without multiplying examples known to every one, which give peremptory proof of the existence of abstraction (partial dissociation), and of generalisation, prior to speech, let us rather consider the heterogeneous nature of these generic images, the result of their mode of formation. They are in fact constructed arbitrarily,—as it were by accident, depending partly on the apprehension of gross resemblances, partly, and chiefly, on subjective causes, emotional dispositions, practical interests. More rarely they are based upon essential qualities.
John Stuart Mill affirms that the majority of animals divide everything into two categories: that which is, and that which is not edible. Whatever we may think of this assertion, we should probably feel much astonishment if we could penetrate and comprehend certain animal generalisations. In the case of children we can do more than assume. Preyer’s son employed the interjection ass (which he had forged or imitated) first for his wooden horse, mounted on wheels, and covered with hair; next for everything that could be displaced or that moved (carts, animals, his sister, etc.), and that had hair. Taine’s little girl (twelve months), who had frequently been shown a copy of an infant Jesus, from Luini, and had been told at the same time, “That is the baby,” would in another room, on hearing anyone ask her, “Where is the baby?” turn to any of the pictures or engravings, no matter what they were. Baby signified to her some general thing: something which she found in common in all these pictures, engravings of landscapes, and figures, i. e., if I do not mistake, some variegated object in a shining frame. Darwin communicated the following observation on one of his grandsons to Romanes:
“The child, who was just beginning to speak, called a duck ‘quack,’ and, by special association, it also called water ‘quack.’ By an appreciation of the resemblance of qualities, it next extended the term ‘quack’ to denote all birds and insects on the one hand, and all fluid substances on the other. Lastly, by a still more delicate appreciation of resemblance, the child eventually called all coins ‘quack,’ because on the back of a French sou it had once seen the representation of an eagle.”[25]
In this case, to which we shall return later, there was a singular mixture of intellectual operations: creation of a word by onomatopœia (resemblance) and finally an unbridled extension of analogy.
Such observations might be multiplied. They would only confirm this remark: the generic image varies in one case and another, because the condensation of resemblances of which it is constituted depends often upon a momentary impression, upon most unexpected conditions.
The development of numeration in the child takes us to some extent out of the pre-linguistic period; but it is advisable to consider it at this point. In the first place we have to distinguish between what is learnt and what is comprehended. The child may recite a series of numerical words that have been taught to him: but so long as he fails to apply each term of the series correctly to a number of corresponding objects, he does not understand it. For the rest, this comprehension is only acquired slowly and at a somewhat late period.
“The only distinction which the child makes at first is between the simple object and plurality. At eighteen months, he distinguishes between one, two, and several. At the age of three, or a little earlier, he knows one, two, and four (2 × 2). It is not until later that he counts a regular series; one, two, three, four. At this point he is arrested for some time. Hence the Brahmans teach their pupils of the first class to count up to four only; they leave it to the second class to count up to twenty. In European children of average intelligence, the age of six to seven years is required before they can count to ten, and about ten years to count to one hundred. The child can doubtless repeat before this age a numeration which it has been taught, but this is not what constitutes knowledge of numbers; we are speaking of determining number by objects.”[26] B. Pérez states that his personal observations have not furnished any indication contradictory to the assertions of Houzeau. An intelligent child of two and a half was able to count up to nineteen, but had no clear idea of the duration of time represented by three days; it had to be translated as follows: “not to-day but to-morrow, and another to-morrow.”[27]
This brings us back to the question, discussed above, of the numeration claimed for animals. Preyer tells us of one of his children that “it was impossible to take away one of his ninepins without its being discovered by the child, while at eighteen months he knew quite well whether one of his ten animals was missing or not.” Yet this fact is no proof that he was able to count up to nine or ten. To represent to oneself several objects, and to be aware that one of them is absent, and not perceived—is a different thing from the capacity of counting them numerically. If the shelves of a library contain several works that are well known to me, I can see that one is missing without knowing anything about the total number of books upon the shelves. I have a juxtaposition of images (visual or tactile), in which a gap is produced.
For the rest, much light is thrown on this question by Binet’s ingenious experiments. Their principal result may be summarised as follows.[28] A little girl of four does not know how to read or count; she has simply learnt a few figures and applies them exactly to one, two, or three objects; above this she gives chance names, say six or twelve, indifferently to four objects. If a group of fifteen counters, and another group of eighteen, of the same size, are thrown down on the table, without arranging them in heaps, she is quick to recognise the most numerous group. The two groups are then modified, adding now to the right, now to the left, but so that the ratio fourteen to eighteen is constant. In six attempts the reply is invariably exact. With the ratio seventeen-eighteen, the reply is correct eight times, wrong once. If, however, the groups are found with counters of unequal diameter, everything is altered. Some (green) measure two and one-half centimetres, others (white) measure four centimetres. Eighteen green counters are put on one side, fourteen white counters on the other. The child then makes a constant error, and takes the latter group to be the more numerous, and the group of fourteen may even be reduced to ten without altering her judgment. It is not until nine that the group of eighteen counters appear the more numerous.
This fact can only be explained by supposing that the child appreciates by space, and not by number, by a perception of continuous and not by discontinuous size—a supposition which agrees with other experiments by the same author to the effect that, in the comparison of lines, children can appreciate differences of length. At this intellectual stage, numeration is accordingly very weak, and restricted to the narrowest limits. As soon as these are exceeded, the distribution between minus and plus rests, not upon any real numeration, but upon a difference of mass, felt in consciousness.
In children, reasoning prior to speech is, as with animals, practical, but well adapted to its ends. No child, if carefully watched, will fail to give proof of it. At seventeen months, Preyer’s child, which could not speak a word, finding that it was unable to reach a plaything placed above its reach in a cupboard, looked about to the right and left, found a small travelling trunk, took it, climbed up, and possessed itself of the desired object. If this act be attributed to imitation (although Preyer does not say this), it must be granted that it is imitation of a particular kind,—in no way comparable with a servile copy, with repetition pure and simple,—and that it contains an element of invention.
In analysing this fact and its numerous analogues, we became aware of the fundamental identity of these simple inferences with those which constitute speculative reasoning: they are of the same character. Take, for instance, a scientific definition, such as that of Boole, which seems at first sight little adapted to this connexion. “Reasoning is the elimination of the middle term in a system that has two terms.” Notwithstanding its theoretical aspect, this is rigorously applicable to the cases with which we are occupied. Thus, in the mind of Preyer’s child, there is a first term (desire for the plaything), a last term (possession); the remainder is the method, scaffolding, a mean term to be eliminated. The intellectual process in both instances, practical and speculative, is identical; it is a mediate operation, which develops by a series of acts in animals and children, by a series of concepts and words in the adult.
DEAF-MUTES.
In studying intellectual development prior to speech, the group of deaf-mutes is sufficiently distinct from those which we have been considering. Animals do not communicate all their secrets, and leave much to be conjectured. Children reveal only a transitory state, a moment in the total evolution. Deaf-mutes (those at least with whom we are dealing) are adults, comparable as such to other men, like them, save in the absence of speech and of what results from it. They have reached a stable mental state. Moreover, those who are instructed at a late period, who learn a language of analytical signs, i. e., who speak with their fingers, or emit the sounds which they read upon the lips of others, are able to disclose their anterior mental state. It is possible to compare the same man with himself, before and after the acquisition of an instrument of analysis. Subjective and objective psychology combine to enlighten us.
The intellectual level of such persons is very low (we shall return to this): still their inferiority has been exaggerated, especially in the last century, by virtue of the axiom, it is impossible to think without words. Discussion of this antique aphorism is unnecessary; in its rigorous form it finds hardly any advocates of note.[29] Since thought is synonymous with comparing, abstracting, generalising, judging, reasoning, i. e., with transcending in any way the purely sensorial and affective life, the true question is not, Do we think without words? but, To what extent can we think without words? Otherwise expressed, we have to fix the upper limit of the logic of images, which evidently reaches its apogee in adult deaf-mutes. Further, even in this last case, thought without language does not attain its full development. The deaf-mute who is left without special education, and who lives with men who have the use of speech, is in a less favorable situation than if he forms a society with his equals. Gérando, and others after him, remarked that deaf-mutes in their native state communicate easily with one another. He enumerates a long series of ideas, which they express in their mimicry, and gestures, and many of these expressions are identical in all countries.
“Children of about seven years old who have not yet been educated, make use of an astonishing number of gestures and very rapid signs in communicating with each other. They understand each other naturally with great facility.... No one teaches them the initial signs, which are, in great part, unaltered imitative movements.”
The study of this spontaneous, natural language is the sole process by which we can penetrate to their psychology, and determine their mode of thought. Like all other languages, it comprises a vocabulary and a syntax. The vocabulary consists in gestures which designate objects, qualities, acts; these correspond to our substantives and verbs. The syntax consists in the successive order of these gestures and their regular arrangement; it translates the movement of thought and the effort towards analysis.
I. Vocabulary—Gérando collected about a hundred and fifty signs, created by deaf-mutes living in isolation or with their fellows.[30] A few of these may be cited as examples:
Child—Infantile gesture, of taking the breast, or being carried, or rocking in the cradle.
Ox—Imitation of the horns, or the heavy tread, or the jaws chewing the cud.
Dog—Movement of the head in barking.
Horse—Movements of the ears, or two figures riding horseback on another, etc.
Bird—Imitation of the beak with two fingers of the left hand, while the other feeds it; or simulation of flight.
Bread—Signs of being hungry, of cutting, and of carrying to the mouth.
Water—Exhibition of saliva, imitation of a rower, or of a man pumping; accompanied always by the sign of drinking.
Letter (missive)—Gestures of writing and of sealing, or of unsealing and reading.
Monkeys, cocks, various trades (carpenter, shoemaker, etc.) all designated by imitative gestures. For sleep, sickness, health, etc., they employ an appropriate gesture.
For interrogation: expression of two contradictory propositions, and undecided glance towards the person addressed. This is rather a case of syntax than of vocabulary; but a few signs may be further indicated for some notions more abstract than the preceding.
Large—Raise the hand and look up.
Small—Contrary gestures.
Bad—Simulate tasting, and make grimace.
Number—Indicate with the help of the fingers; high numbers, rapid opening of the hand several times in succession.
Buy—gesture of counting money, of giving with one hand, and taking with the other.
Lose—Pretend to drop an object, and hunt for it in vain.
Forget—Pass the hand quickly across the forehead with a shrug of the shoulders.
Love—Hold the hand on the heart (universal gesture).
Hate—Same gesture with sign of negation.
Past—Throw the hand over the shoulder several times in succession.
Future—Indicate a distant object with the hand, repeated imitation of lying down in bed and getting up again.
It does not need much reflexion to see that all these signs are abstractions as well as imitations. Among the different characters of an object, the deaf-mute chooses one that he imitates by a gesture, and which represents the total object. Herein he proceeds exactly like the man who speaks. The difference is that he fixes the abstract by an attitude of the body instead of by a word. The primitive Aryan who denominated the horse, the sun, the moon, etc., the rapid one, the shining one, the measurer (of months), did not act otherwise; for him also, a chosen characteristic represents the total object. There is a fundamental identity in the two cases; thus justifying what was said above: abstraction is a necessary operation of the mind, at least in man; he must abstract, because he must simplify.
The inferiority of these imitative signs consists in their being often vague, with a tendency to the opposite sense; moreover, since they are never detached completely from the object or the act which they figure, and cannot attain to the independence of the word, they are but very imperfect instruments of substitution.
II. Syntax—The mere fact of the existence of a syntax in the language of the deaf-mutes proves that they possess a commencement of analysis, i. e., that thought does not remain in the rudimentary state. This point has been carefully studied by different authors: Scott, Tylor, Romanes,[31] who assign to it the following characteristics: