38 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



One further remark remains to be added before our 

 nomenclature of ideas can be regarded as complete. It will 

 have been noticed that the term "general idea" is equally- 

 appropriate to ideas of class or kind, whether or not such 

 ideas are named. The ideas Good-for-eating and Not-good- 

 for-eating are as general to an animal as they are to a man, 

 and have in each case been formed in the same way— namely, 

 by an accumulation of particular experiences spontaneously 

 assorted in consciousness. General ideas of this kind, 

 however, have not been contemplated by previous writers 

 while dealing with the psychology of generalization : hence 

 the term "general," like the term "abstract," has by usage 

 become restricted to those higher products of ideation which 

 depend on the faculty of language. And the only words that 

 I can find to have been used by any previous writers to 

 designate the ideas concerned in that lower kind of generali- 

 zation which does not depend on language, are the words 

 above given — namely, Complex, Compound, and Mixed. 

 Now, none of these words are so good as the word General, 

 because none of them express the notion of genus or class; 

 and the great distinction between the idea which an animal 

 or an infant has, say of an individual man and of men in 

 general, is not that the one idea is simple, and the other 

 complex, compound, or mixed ; but that the one idea is 

 particular and the other general. Therefore consistency 

 would dictate that the term "general" should be applied to 

 all ideas of class or kind, as distinguished from ideas of 

 particulars or individuals — irrespective of the degree of 

 generality, and irrespective, therefore, of the accident whether 

 or not, qua general, such ideas are dependent on language. 

 Nevertheless, as the term has been through previous usage 

 restricted to ideas of the higher order of generality, I will not 

 introduce confusion by extending its use to the lower order, 

 or by speaking of an animal as capable of generalizing. A 

 parallel term, however, is needed ; and, therefore, I will speak 

 of the general or class ideas which are formed without the aid 

 of language 2iS generic. This word has the double advantage of 



