30 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



liimsclf with such powers of " comparing and compounding of 

 ideas" as he allows that animals present, unless it can be 

 shown that animals are able to " cast about and consider in 

 what circumstances they are capable to be compared." And 

 tlien he adds, " Therefore, I think, beasts compare not their 

 idQdiS further than sonic sensible circiiuistaiices annexed to the 

 objects themselves. The other power of comparing, which may 

 be observed in men, belonging to general ideas, and usefnl only 

 to abstract reasonings, we may probably conjecture beasts hav^e 

 not." So far, then, it seems perfectly obvious that Locke 

 believed animals to present the power of "comparing and 

 compounding " " simple ideas," up to the point where such 

 comparison and composition begins to be assisted by the 

 power of reflective thought. Therefore, when he immediately 

 afterwards proceeds to explain abstraction thus : " The same 

 colour being observed to-day in chalk or snow, which the 

 mind yesterday received from milk, it considers that appear- 

 ance alone, makes it a representative of all of that kind ; and 

 having given it the name whiteness, it by that sound signifies 

 the same quality, wheresoever it be imagined or met with ; 

 and thus universals, whether ideas or terms, are made " — when 

 he thus proceeds to explain abstraction, we can have no 

 doubt that what he means by abstraction is the power of 

 ideally contemplating qualities as separated from objects, or, 

 as he expresses it, " considermg appearances alone." Therefore 

 I conclude, without further discussion, that in the terminology 

 of Locke the word abstraction is applied only to those higher 

 developments of the faculty which arc rendered possible by 

 reflection. 



Now, on what does this power of reflection depend ? As 

 we shall see more fully later on, it depends on Language, or 

 on the power of affixing names to abstract and general ideas. 

 So far as I am aware, psychologists of all existing schools 

 are in agreement upon this point, or in holding that the 

 power of affixing names to abstractions is at once the condition 

 to reflective thought, and the explanation of the difference 

 between man and brute in respect of ideation. 



