getter, sojuhil all our outward. instruments. Now this

are but

пра any circury Fanery our identifying suselors with our future, bins, of feeling for an imaginay self as if it come incorporated with our acte al substane, & weighed upon the pulses om blood, is itself the strongest proof that can be give of the coun

of our

very force with any it actis makes us forget that it acts at all, & this inverto our personal motions with a borrowed reality.

This inclusive is lowmen widetty. mere precipation of the judgement"." The

I have wither at the above, not for cuttin motate, babit may perhaps afford some hist. His the most popular sippage I could find,

FACSIMILE (REDUCED) OF HAZLITT'S HANDWRITING, from a Ms. in THE

POSSESSION OF MR. W. C. HAZLITT.

FUGITIVE WRITINGS

ON ABSTRACT IDEAS

I SHALL in this essay state Mr. Locke's account of generalization, abstraction, and reasoning, as contrasted with the modern one, and then endeavour to defend the existence of these faculties, or acts of the mind from the objections urged against them by Hume, Berkeley, Condillac, and others, which are in truth merely repetitions of what Hobbes has said on the subject. I must premise, however, that I do not think it possible ever to arrive at a demonstration of generals or abstractions by beginning in Mr. Locke's method with particular ones this faculty of abstraction is by most considered as a sort of artificial refinement upon our other ideas, as an excrescence, no ways contained in the common impressions of things, nor scarcely necessary to the common purposes of life, and it is by Mr. Locke altogether denied to be among the faculties of brutes. It is the ornament and top addition of the mind of man, which proceeding from simple sensations upwards, is gradually sublimed into the abstract notions of things; from the root springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves more airy, last the bright consummate flower.' On the other hand, I conceive that all our notions from first to last, are strictly speaking, general and abstract, not absolute and particular; and that to have a perfectly distinct idea of any one individual thing, or concrete existence, either as to the parts of which it is composed, or the differences belonging to it, or the circumstances connected with it, would imply an unlimited power of comprehension in the human mind, which is impossible. All particular things consist of, and lead to an infinite number of other things. Abstraction is a consequence of the limitation of the comprehensive faculty, and mixes itself more or less with every act of the mind of whatever kind, and in every moment of its existence. There is no idea of an individual object, which consists of a single impression, but of a number of impressions massed together there is no idea of a particular quality of an object, which is perfectly simple, or which is not the result of a number of impressions of the same sort classed together by the mind without

VOL. XI. : A

I

attending to their particular differences. Every idea of an object is, therefore, in a strict sense an imperfect and general notion of an aggregate: of a house, or tree, as well as of a city, or forest: of a grain of sand as well as of the universe. Every idea of a sensible quality, as of the whiteness of the sheet of paper before me, or the hardness of the table on which I lean, implies the same power of generalization, of connecting several impressions into one sort, as the most refined and abstract idea of virtue and justice, of motion, or extension, or space of time, or being itself. This view of the subject is not, I confess, very obvious at first sight, and it will be more easily understood after I have stated the arguments of others on this difficult question. The concise account of the nature of abstract ideas is that which Mr. Locke has given, as follows. All things that exist being particular, it may be perhaps thought reasonable that words which ought to be conformed to things should be so too, I mean in their signification : but yet we find quite the contrary. The far greatest part of words that make all languages are general terms, which has not been the effect of neglect or chance, but of reason and necessity.' First, it is impossible that every particular thing should have a distinct peculiar name. For the signification and use of words depending on that connection which the mind makes between its ideas and the sounds it uses as signs of them, it is necessary in the applications of names to things, that the mind should have distinct ideas of the things, and retain also the particular name that belongs to every one, with its peculiar appropriation to that idea. But it is beyond the power of human capacity to frame and retain distinct ideas of all the particular things we meet with; every bird and beast we see, every tree and plant that affect the senses, could not find a place in the most capacious understanding. If it be looked on as an instance of a prodigious memory, that some generals have been able to call every soldier in their army by his proper name, we may easily find a reason why men never attempted to give names to each sheep in their flock, or crow that flies over their heads, much less to call every leaf of plants or grain of sand that came in their way, by a peculiar name. Secondly, if it were possible, it would not serve to the chief end of language. Men would not in vain heap up names of particular things that would not serve them to communicate their thoughts. Men learn names, and use them in talk with others, only that they may be understood, which is then only done, when by use or consent, the sound I make by the organs of speech, excites in another man's mind who hears it, the idea I apply to it in mine when I speak it. This cannot be done by names applied to particular things, whereof I alone have the ideas in my mind, the names of them could not be significant, intelligible to

another who was not acquainted with all those very particular things which had fallen under my notice. Thirdly, granting this feasible, which I think it is not, yet a distinct name of every particular thing would not be of any great use for the improvement of knowledge; which though founded in particular things, enlarges itself by general views, to which things reduced into sorts under general names are properly subservient. These with the names belonging to them come within some compass, and do not multiply every moment beyond what either the mind can contain, or use requires, and therefore in these men have for the most part stopped. But yet not so, as to hinder themselves from distinguishing particular things by appropriated names, where convenience demands it. And therefore in their own species, which they have to do with, and wherein they have often occasion to mention particular persons, they make use of proper names; and these distinct individuals have distinct denominations. Besides persons, countries, cities, rivers, mountains, and other like distinctions of place have usually found particular names, and that for the same reason; and I doubt not but if we had reason to mention particular horses, as often as we have to mention particular men, we should have proper names for the one as familiarly as for the other, and Bucephalus would be a word as much in use as Alexander. And therefore we see amongst jockies, horses have their proper names to be known and distinguished by, as commonly as their servants, because amongst them there is often occasion to mention this or that particular horse, when he is out of sight. The next thing to be considered is how general words came to be made. For since all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by general terms, or where find we those general natures they are supposed to stand for? Words become general by being made the signs of general ideas, and ideas become general by separating from them the circumstances of time and place, and any other ideas that may determine them to this or that particular existence. By this way of abstraction they are made capable of representing more individuals than one, each of which having in it a conformity to that abstract idea is (as we call it) of that sort.

But to deduce this a little more distinctly, it will not, perhaps, be amiss to trace our notions and names from their beginning, and observe by what degrees we proceed, and by what steps we enlarge our ideas from their first infancy. There is nothing more evident than that the ideas of the persons children converse with, are like the persons themselves, only particulars. The ideas of the nurse and the mother are well framed in the mind and like pictures of them there, represent only those individuals. The names they first give rise to are confined to these individuals, and the names of nurse and mamma

which the child uses, determine themselves to those persons. Afterwards when time and a larger acquaintance has made them observe that there are a great many other things in the world, that in some common agreements of shape, and several other properties resemble their father and mother, and those persons they have been used to, they frame an idea which they find those many particulars do partake in, and to that they give with others the name Man, for example. And thus they come to have a general name, and a general idea. Wherein they make nothing new, but only leave out of the complex idea they had of Peter and James, Mary and Jane, that which is peculiar to each, and retain what is common to them all. By the same way that they come by the general name and idea of man, they easily advance to more general names and notions. For observing that several things that differ from their idea of man, and therefore cannot be comprehended under that name, have yet certain qualities wherein they agree with man, by retaining only those qualities and uniting them into one idea, they have again another and more general idea; to which having given a name, they make a term of a more comprehensive extension; which new idea is made, not by any new addition, but only as before, by leaving out the shape, and some other properties signified by the name man, and retaining only a body with life, sense, and spontaneous motion, comprehended under the name animal. That this is the way that men first formed general ideas and general names to them, I think is so evident that there needs no other proof of it, but the considering of a man's self or others, and the ordinary proceedings of their mind in knowledge: and he that thinks general natures or notions are anything else but such abstracts and partial ideas of more complex ones taken at first from particular existencies, will I fear be at a loss where to find them. For let any one reflect and then tell me, wherein does his idea of man differ from that of Paul and Peter, or his idea of horse from that of Bucephalus, but in the leaving out something that is peculiar to each individual; and retaining so much of those particular complex ideas of several particular existencies, as they are found to agree in? Of the complex ideas signified by the names man and horse, leaving out those particulars wherein they differ, and retaining only those wherein they agree, and of those making a new distinct complex idea and giving the name animal to it, one has a more general term that comprehends with man several other creatures.

Leave out of the idea of animal sense and spontaneous motion, and the remaining complex idea, made up of the remaining simple ones of body, life, and nourishment, becomes a more general one under the more comprehensive word vivens. And not to dwell upon these particular, so evident in itself, by the same way the mind proceeds to