Part I, Chapter 1: Of Ideas in relation to their Nature and Origin (with the Preface to the Part)
SINCE we cannot have any knowledge of that which is without us, save through the medium of ideas which are within us, the reflections which may be made on our ideas form perhaps the most important part of logic, since it is that which is the foundation of all the rest.
These reflections may be reduced to FIVE HEADS, according to the five ways in which ideas may be considered.
First, IN RELATION TO THEIR NATURE AND ORIGIN.
Second,—IN RELATION TO THE PRINCIPAL DIFFERENCE
Third,—IN RELATION TO THEIR SIMPLICITY OR COMPOSITION, IN WHICH THE ABSTRACTION AND PRECISION OF THE MIND IS TO BE CONSIDERED.
Fourth,—IN RELATION TO THEIR EXTENSION OR RESTRICTION, THAT IS TO SAY, THEIR UNIVERSALITY, PARTICULARITY, AND INDIVIDUALITY.
Fifth, IN RELATION TO THEIR CLEARNESS AND OBSCURITY,
The term idea is amongst the number of those words which are so clear that they cannot be explained by others, since there are none more clear and simple than themselves. All, therefore, that can be done to avoid mistake, is to indicate the false interpretation of which this word is susceptible, in restricting it to signify exclusively that way of conceiving things, which is accomplished by the application of the mind to those images which are depicted in the brain, and which is called imagination.
For, as St Augustine often remarks, man, since the fall, has been so accustomed to consider exclusively things corporeal, whose images enter the brain through sense, that the majority of men believe that they can have no notion of a thing which they cannot imagine,—that is to say, which they cannot represent under a corporeal image, as though this were the only way of thinking and conceiving; whereas, on the contrary, we cannot reflect on what passes in our minds, without recognising that we conceive a very great number of things of which we have no image at all, and that it is thus alone that we perceive the difference between the imagination and pure intellect. Thus, for example, when I imagine a triangle, I not only conceive it as a figure bounded by three right lines; but, farther than this, I consider these three lines as present by the internal attention and activity of my mind, and in this I am properly said to imagine. But if I will to think a figure with a thousand angles, I can indeed consider that it is a figure composed of a thousand sides, as easily as I conceive that a triangle is a figure composed of three sides; but I cannot imagine the thousand sides of that figure, or regard them (so to speak) as present to the eyes of my mind.
It is nevertheless true, that the habit we have of aiding ourselves through imagination, when we think upon corporeal things, would generally lead us, in considering a figure of a thousand angles, to represent confusedly some figure in the mind; but it is evident that the figure thus represented in imagination is not a figure of a thousand angles, since it differs in nothing from that which I should represent to myself, if I thought of a figure with six thousand angles, and does not enable me on any side to discover the properties which constitute the difference between the figure of a thousand angles and any other polygon.
I am not therefore able, properly speaking, to imagine a figure of a thousand angles, since the image of it which I strive to paint, in imagination, represents equally well any other figure with a great number of angles. I am, nevertheless, able to conceive it very clearly and distinctly, since I can demonstrate all its properties; as, for instance, that all its angles are together equal to 1,996 right angles. Hence it follows, that it is one thing to imagine, and another to conceive.
This is still more clear from the consideration of many things which we conceive very clearly, though they are not in any sort among the number of those things which we are able to imagine. For do we conceive anything more clearly than our thought when we think? And yet it is impossible to imagine a thought, or to paint any image of it in the brain. We cannot have any image of affirmation and negation; he who judges that the earth is round, and he who judges that it is not round, have both the same thing painted on the brain, to wit, the earth and roundness; but one adds to these, affirmation, an operation of the mind which he conceives without any bodily image, and the other, a contrary operation, negation, of which it is still less possible to form any image.
When, therefore, we may speak of ideas, we do not call by that name the images which are depicted in imagination, but everything which is in our mind when we can say with truth that we conceive a thing, in whatever way it may be conceived.
Whence it follows, that we can express nothing by our words, when we understand what we say, without having an idea of the thing which we signify by our words, though sometimes that idea may be more clear and distinct, and sometimes more obscure and confused, as will be hereafter explained. For it would be a contradiction to maintain that I know what I say in pronouncing a word, and that, nevertheless, I conceive nothing in pronouncing it, but the sound of the word itself. Hence, too, may be seen, the falseness of two very dangerous opinions which have been advanced by some philosophers of our time.
The first is,—that we have no idea of God. For if we had no idea connected with it in uttering the name of God (Dieu), we could conceive only these four letters D i e u, and a Frenchman, in hearing the name of God, would have nothing more in his mind than if, entering a synagogue, and being altogether ignorant of the Hebrew language, he heard pronounced in that tongue Adonai or Elohim. And when men have taken the name of God, as Caligula and Domitian, they would not have been guilty of any impiety, since if no idea be attached to them, there is nothing in these letters or syllables which may not be attributed to a man. Whence also was not the Hollander accused of impiety who called himself Ludovicvs Dieu? In what then consisted the impiety of those princes but in this,—that, connecting with the word God a part, at least, of its idea, as that of an exalted and adorable nature, they appropriated to themselves the name with this idea?
But if we have no idea of God, what possible foundation is there for all that we say respecting Him,—as that he is one alone, that he is eternal, all-powerful, all-good, all-wise,—since there is nothing of all this contained in this sound, Dieu; but in the idea alone which we have of God, which we have connected with that sound. And it is only on this account that we refuse the name of God to all false divinities; not because the word may not be attributed to them if it be taken materially, since it has been attributed to them by the heathens; but because the idea which we have of a Sovereign Being, and which custom has connected with the word God, belongs to the true God alone.
The second of these false opinions is that of an Englishman, who says,—that reasoning is nothing but an assemblage of names connected together by the word est. Whence it follows, that by reason we conclude nothing at all concerning the nature of things, but only concerning their appellations; that is to say, we consider simply whether we have connected together these names of things well or ill. in relation to the agreements we have established in our imagination touching their signification.
To which he adds;—if this be so, as it very possibly is, reasoning will depend on words, words on imagination, and imagination will depend, perhaps, as I believe it does, on the movements of the bodily organs: and thus our mind will be nothing more than a movement among certain parts of an organised body.
We are willing to believe that these words contain an objection far removed from the mind of their author; but since, taken dogmatically, they tend to the destruction of the immortality of the soul, it is important to show their falsehood, which it will not be difficult to do. For the convention of which that philosopher speaks, could never have been anything more than the determination to which men have come to take certain sounds as the signs of ideas which we have in our minds. So that, if, besides the names, we have not within the ideas of the things, that convention would have been impossible, as it is impossible by any convention to make a blind man understand what is meant by the words, red, green, or blue; because, not having these ideas, he is unable to connect them with any sound. Further, different nations having given different names to things, and even to those which are most clear and simple—as, for instance, to those which are the objects of geometry—they could not have the same reasonings touching the same truths, if reasoning were only an assemblage of names connected together by the word est. And thus, too, it appears, in consequence of these different words, that the Arabians, for example, who do not agree with the French in giving the same significations to sounds, would not be able at all to agree in their judgments and reasonings, if their reasonings depended on that convention.
In fine, when we speak of the signification of words as arbitrary, there is much that is equivocal in the term arbitrary. It is indeed a thing quite arbitrary that we join a given idea to a certain sound, rather than to another; but the ideas are not arbitrary things, and do not depend upon our fancy; at all events those which are clear and distinct. And this may be clearly shown, since it would be ridiculous to suppose that effects which are very real could depend on things purely arbitrary. When, for instance, a man has by reasoning come to the conclusion that an iron axle which passes through the two stones of a mill, might be turned without turning the one below, if being round it pass through a round hole; but that it could not be turned without turning the one above, if being square it were fixed in a square hole in this upper stone; the effect which he has supposed follows infallibly. And therefore, his reasoning in this case was not an assemblage of names according to a convention which depends entirely on the fancy of men; but a solid and effective judgment on the nature of things through the consideration of certain ideas which he had in his mind, and which it has pleased men to represent by certain names.
We see therefore sufficiently what is understood by the term idea, it remains to say a word or two of their origin.
The whole question resolves itself into this,—whether all our ideas come to us through sense, and whether we may accept, as true, that common maxim—nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu. This is the opinion of a philosopher of repute, who commences his logic with this proposition,—Omnis idea orsum ducit a sensibus. Every idea takes its origin from sense. He confesses, however, that all our ideas have not been in our sense in the same form which they are in our mind; but he maintains that they have at least been formed from those which had come through our sense, either by composition, as when, for instance, from the separate images of gold, and a mountain, we form a mountain of gold; or, by amplification and diminution, as when, from the image of a man of ordinary stature, we form a giant or a pigmy; or, by accommodation and analogy, as when, from the idea of a house which we have seen, we form the image of a house which we have not seen. " And thus,” says he, " we conceive God, who is not an object of sense, under the image of a venerable old man.” According to that opinion, though some of our ideas might not resemble any particular body which we had seen, or which had struck our sense, they would, nevertheless, be all corporeal, and we could represent nothing which had not entered through sense, at least in part. And thus we could conceive nothing but by means of sensible images of those, to wit, which are formed in our brain, when we see or imagine to ourselves some corporeal object.
But, although this opinion is common to him with many philosophers of the schools, I do not hesitate to say that it is very absurd, and as contrary to religion as it is to true philosophy; for, to say nothing of its clearness, is there anything which we perceive more distinctly than our thought itself; or can any proposition be more clear than this,—I think, therefore, I am? Now we cannot have any certainty of this proposition, unless we conceive distinctly what it is to be and what it is to think; and it cannot be demanded that we explain these terms, because they are among the number of those which are so well understood by all the world, that they would only be obscured by any attempt at explanation. If, therefore, it cannot be denied that we have within, ideas of being and of thought, I ask, through what sense have they entered? are they luminous, or coloured, that they have entered through sight? of a grave, or acute sound, that they have entered through hearing? of a good, or bad odour, that they have entered through smell? a good, or bad flavour, that they have entered through taste? cold or hot, hard or soft, that they have entered by touch? and if it be said that they have been formed from other sensible images, it may be asked, what are those other sensible images, from which it is pretended that these ideas of being, and of thought, have been formed, and how have they been formed,—by composition, or by amplification, or by diminution, or by analogy? And if no reply can be given to these inquiries, which are so reasonable, it must be confessed that the ideas of being and thought do not, in the least, derive their origin from sense, but that the mind has the faculty of forming for itself these ideas, though it often happens that it is aroused to do this by something which strikes the sense, as a painter may be induced to make a picture, in consequence of the sum which has been promised him, without being able, on that account, to say that the painting had its origin in money.
But that which these same authors add, that the idea which we have of God takes its rise from sense, because we conceive him under the idea of a venerable old man, is a notion worthy only of the anthropomorphites, or which confounds the true ideas which we have of spiritual things with the false imaginations which we form through the bad habit of striving to imagine everything, whilst it is as absurd to try to imagine that which is not corporeal as it is to endeavour to hear colour, or to see sounds.
To refute this opinion, it is only necessary to consider that, if we had no other idea of God than that of a venerable old man, all the judgments which we form of God would be false, since they would be contrary to that idea; for we are naturally led to believe that our judgments are false, when we see clearly that they are contrary to the ideas which we have of things. And thus we could not judge, with truth, that God has no parts, that he is not corporeal, that he is everywhere, that he is invisible, since none of all this is in harmony with the idea of a venerable old man. And if God is sometimes represented under this form, it does not follow that we must have this idea of him, since in this case we could have no idea of the Holy Spirit but that of a dove, since he is represented to us in the form of a dove; or, we must conceive of God as a sound, since the sound of the name helps to awaken within us the idea of God.
It is false, therefore, that all our ideas come through sense. On the contrary, it may be affirmed, that no idea which we have in our minds has taken its rise from sense, except on occasion of those movements which are made in the brain through sense, the impulse from sense giving occasion to the mind to form different ideas which it would not have formed without it, though these ideas have very rarely any resemblance to what takes place in the sense and in the brain; and there are at least a very great number of ideas which, having no connection with any bodily image, cannot, without manifest absurdity, be referred to sense.
And if any one objects, that at the same moment in which we have an idea in the mind, of things spiritual, as of thought, for instance, we form some bodily image at least of the sound which expresses it, this will not be at all opposed to what we have already proved; for that image of the sound of the thought which we imagine is not the representation of the thought itself, but only of the sound; and it helps us to conceive of it only inasmuch as the mind being accustomed, when it conceives the sound, to conceive also the thought, forms at once an idea of the thought altogether spiritual, which has no natural relation to the sound, and is connected with it by custom only. This is seen in the case of the deaf, who, having no images of sounds, have, nevertheless, ideas of their thoughts, at least when they reflect on what they think about.