and we have no satisfactory answer.He thus misses one of the most important capacities of our mental nature." An imagination is the name of a train but what combines so many scattered things into one image, often so grand? He has a long disquisition on classification.The word `man,' we shall say, is first applied to an individual it is first associated with the idea of that individual, and acquires the power of calling up the idea of him; it is next applied to another individual, and acquires the power of calling tip the idea of him, so of another and another, till it has become associated with an infinite number, and has acquired the power of calling up an indefinite number of these ideas indifferently." " It is association that forms the ideas of an indefinite number of individuals into one complex idea."Here again he has explained every thing by overlooking the <differentia> of the process, -- the resemblance between the individuals; the perception of the resemblances; the placing the resembling objects into a class of which so many predications may be made; and, as might be expected, he has no idea that there is such a thing as classes in nature.By taking a superficial view, he is able to throw ridicule on the theory of ideas by Plato, by Philo, by Cudworth, and Harris, in which there is no doubt much mysticism, but also much truth, which it should be the business of a correct analysis to bring out to view.The father thus set his son to what he is so fond of in his " Logic " and other works, -- the exposure of the error of looking on concepts as if they were individual existences.True, universals are not the same as singulars, yet they may have a reality which we should try to seize: some of them <ante rem>, in the Divine mind arranging classes in nature; in re, in the common attributes which join the objects in the class; and <post rem>, in the concepts formed by the mind, and performing most important functions in thought.Both Mr.Grote and Mr.
John Stuart Mill in their notes have tried to improve Mill's doctrine of generification, but have left it, and their own doctrine as well, in a most unsatisfactory state.Abstract terms " are simply the concrete terms with the connotation dropped," whereon his son annotates." This seems a very indirect and circuitous mode of making us understand what an abstract name signifies.Instead of aiming {383} directly at the mark, it goes round it.It tells us that one name signifies a part of what another name signifies, leaving us to infer that part." Neither father nor son has seen that abstraction in all cases implies a high exercise of judgment or comparison, in which we perceive the relation of a part to a whole, a process which is the basis of so many other intellectual exercises.
He turns (Chap.X.) to memory, which has so puzzled the son, who says: "Our belief in the veracity of memory is evidently ultimate: no reason can be given for it which does not presuppose the belief and assume it to be well grounded." The subject presents no difficulties to the father.He acknowledges that in memory there is not only the idea of the thing remembered; there is also the idea of my having seen it: and he shows that this implies "the idea of my present self, the remembering self; and the idea of my past self, the remembered or witnessing self? " But where has he got self? Where a past self? He brings in, without attempting to explain them, <self>, and <time present>, and <past>, which are' not sensations nor copies of sensations.
All that is done is " to run over a number of states of consciousness called up by the association." There is here, as in so many other cases, simply the shutting of the eye to the main element in memory, the recognition of an object as having been before the mind in time past: in which there is involved, first, belief, and, secondly, time in the concrete, from which the mind forms the idea of time in the abstract.
There follows (Chap.X -- I.) an elaborate discussion of belief, which both his son and Mr.Bain have been seeking to amend without success; because their own views, starting from those of the older Mill, are radically defective.In all belief, as it appears to me, there is a conviction of the reality of the object believed in.When the object is present, I would be disposed to call this knowledge; but, if any one calls it belief, the question between him and me would be simply a verbal one, provided he acknowledges the existence of a conviction.In other cases the conviction or belief is the result of judgment or reasoning.Let us now look at the account given by Mill." A sensation is a feeling, but a sensation and a belief of it is the same thing.The observation applies equally to ideas.When I say I have {384} the idea of the sun, I express the same thing exactly as when I say that I believe I have it.The feeling is one: the names only are different." Here again the resolution is accomplished so dexterously, because the main elements of the thing resolved are not noticed.In a sensation I have not only a feeling, but a belief in the existence of a sentient organ.To have a belief in the existence of the sun is something more than merely to have an idea of the sun.The belief, be it intuitive, or be it derivative, is a different thing from the sensation and the idea, and should have a separate place in every system of psychology.
It is at this place that he develops most fully the principle for which he has received such praise from his son, -- the principle of inseparable association." In every instance of belief, there is indissoluble association of the ideas," and he defies any one to show that there is any other ingredient.But, surely, there is often belief without any inseparable association: thus I may believe that a friend is dead, though in time past all my associations have been of him as alive.But, even in cases of indissoluble association, the belief is different from the association.
