48 PSYCHOLOOY. 



ture that the idea may take visible shape and become a sort of waking 

 dream. But the figure which thus presents itself is generic, not spe- 

 cific. It is no copy of any one specimen, but, more or less, a mean of 

 the series ; and there seems no reason to doubt that the minds of chil- 

 dren before they learn to speak, and of deaf-mutes, are peopled wi'h 

 similarly generated generic ideas of sensible objects." * 



Are Vague Images ' Abstract Ideas ' ? 

 The only jDoint wliicli I am tempted to criticise in this 

 account is Prof. Huxley's identification of these generic images 

 with ' abstract or general ideas ' in the sense of universal concep- 

 tions. Taine gives the truer view. He writes : 



"Some years ago I saw in England, in Kew Gardens, for the first 

 time, araucarias, and I walked along the beds looking at these strange 

 plants, with their rigid bark and compact, short, scaly leaves, of a 

 sombre green, whose abrupt, rough, bristling form cut in upon the fine 

 softly-lighted turf of the fresh grass-plat. If I now inquire what this 

 experience has left in me, I find, first, the sensible representation of an 

 araucaria ; in fact, I have been able to describe almost exactly tlie form 

 and color of the plant. But there is a difference between this represen- 

 tation and the former sensations, of which it is the present echo. The 

 internal semblance, from which I have just made my description, is 

 vague, and my past sensations were precise. For, assuredly, each of 

 the araucarias I saw then excited in me a distinct visual sensation ; 

 there are no two absolutely similar plants in nature ; I observed perhaps 

 twenty or thirty araucarias ; without a doubt each one of them differed 

 from the others in size, in girth, by the more or less obtuse angles of its 

 branches, by the more or less abrupt jutting out of its scales, by the style 

 of its texture ; consequently, my twenty or thirty visual sensations were 

 different. But no one of these sensations has completely survived in its 

 echo ; the twenty or thirty revivals have blunted one another ; thus 

 upset and agglutinated by their resemblance they are confounded 

 together, and my present representation is their residue only. This is 

 the product, or rather the fragment, which is deposited in us, when we 

 have gone through a series of similar facts or individuals. Of our 

 numerous experiences there remain on the following day four or five 

 more or less distinct recollections, which, obliterated themselves, leave 

 behind in us a simple colorless, vague representation, into which enter 

 as components various reviving sensations, in an utterly feeble, incom- 

 plete, and abortive state. — But this representatio7iis notthe general and 

 abstract idea. It is but its accompaniment ., and, if I may say so, the 

 ore from which it is extracted. For the representation, though badly 

 sketched, is a sketch, the sensible sketch of a distinct individual. . . . 

 But my abstract idea corresponds to the whole class ; it differs, then, 

 from the representation of an individual. — Moreover, my abstract idea 



* Huxley's Hume, pp. 92-94. 



