Description and Definition of the Idea

Book First — The Idea

This Book first discusses the idea as it is in the mind, briefly describing its formation and constituents, and offering a definition and classification of ideas.

Next, the idea is considered as expressed by the Term.

Finally, the idea is studied as explained by Definition and Logical Division.

The Book is therefore divided into three Chapters, as follows :

• Chapter I. The Idea Itself
• Chapter II. The Idea Expressed
• Chapter III. The Idea Explained

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Chapter I — The Idea Itself

This Chapter describes the idea, studies its formation and constituents, and offers a definition of idea in the light of such study. A list or classification of ideas is then set forth. Finally, after the general classification, a special study is made of the most important class of ideas, viz., the universal idea.

The Chapter is accordingly divided into the following Articles:

• Article 1. Description and Definition of the Idea
• Article 2. Classification of the Idea
• Article 3. The Universal Idea

Article 1. Description and Definition of the Idea

a) Description    b) Formation    c) Constituents    d) Definition

a) Description of the Idea

Let ten circles of varying diameter be drawn on a blackboard with chalks of different colors. Here we have ten pictures that differ in size, in color, and in position or location on the blackboard. Yet, different as they are, the ten pictures represent an identical thing, and we say that each is “a circle.”

Now this is a remarkable thing — ten pictures that are different and yet represent the same thing. Studying the matter, we discern that the pictures are different only in points that do not necessarily belong to the identical thing that is expressed or represented in each of them. We find that the size of the pictured circle has nothing to do with its being a circle — it might be larger or smaller and still be a circle. Similarly, we understand that the color and location of the pictures might be changed without destroying them as representations of an identical thing. Now these points that may be altered without affecting the representative character of the pictures are non-essential points; they are accidental in the representations — that is to say, they happen to be this particular size, color, etc., but might just as well be another size, color, etc., as far as their effect upon the representative value of the pictures is concerned.

Yet these accidental points serve some purpose. They serve to distinguish each individual picture from the others. The accidental points of size, color, and location do not indeed affect the circle, for all the ten varying pictures represent the circle equally. But these points do serve to distinguish and identify each picture as this picture. These accidentals mark the individual picture, and they are called individuating marks. Inasmuch as the individuating marks are marks by which the individual picture is noted or known, they are called individuating notes. We say therefore: these ten pictures differ in individuating notes, but they represent an identical thing, viz., the circle.

The identical thing which the pictures represent is an essence; it is the essence circle. But we do not grasp or apprehend this essence by our senses. Sensation (that is, the action of the senses) does not perceive the essence which the pictures express or represent. The eye does not see the essence circle. What the eye sees is the individual pictures, the individuating notes. It is the mind in us, the intellect or understanding, that peers beneath the individuating notes and apprehends the single identical thing represented in the ten varying pictures. The mind grasps or apprehends the essence circle; separating it out, so to speak, from the individuating notes that represent it. Now the mind’s grasp of an essence is an idea.

The essence of a thing is that which makes the thing what it is in its basic reality. When the mind has a clear grasp of an essence, it can express that essence in a definition. Thus when one knows that the circle is “a closed curved line, alike in all particulars, every point of which is equidistant from a point within or centre,” one has the idea of circle clearly and distinctly formed in one’s mind. One knows an essence; one has grasped an essence; and the mind’s grasp of an essence is an idea.

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b) Formation of the Idea

Ideas are formed by the mental operation called Simple Apprehension, and this means separating out an essence from its individuating notes and grasping it. This operation involves two or more acts of the mind. The chief acts that can enter into the operation of Simple Apprehension are: attention, abstraction, reflection, comparison, analysis, and synthesis. Before defining these acts, we shall study two illustrations in which some of them are exemplified.

i. First Illustration

A boy who has never seen a representation of circle nor heard it described is shown such a representation drawn in white in the upper left corner of a blackboard.

First, sensation (that is, the action of the senses — here, of sight) beholds the picture as a sensible (here, visible) object.

Next, the mind attends to what the sense perceives; it focuses, with more or less intensity, upon the picture and knows it as this thing.

Then the mind discerns that, while the color, the location, and the size of the picture are essential to it as this picture, these points are not essential to it as a picture of that which it represents. The mind of the boy adverts to the fact that the picture might be larger or smaller, or drawn in another place, or with a different color of crayon, and still be a picture of the thing which is pictured here. In a word, the mind sees that the individuating notes do not count in the actual thing which is here represented. Therefore the mind leaves the individuating notes out of account, neglects to consider them, and lays hold of the thing which these notes happen to clothe and express in the present instance. Now the leaving of individuating notes out of account is called abstraction. We say that the mind, in forming ideas, abstracts from individuating notes.

The mind of the observant boy has thus formed an idea by acts of attention and abstraction following upon sensation.

ii. Second Illustration

A little boy goes walking in the wood with his father. He is told to notice various things: grass, moss, vines, bushes, trees, weeds, wild flowers. He is told that all these things are plants. Slowly, and at the first obscurely, he forms the idea plant.

First, sensation presents the various objects to his perception. He sees the various things called plants, and touches them with his hands.

Secondly, he elicits an act of mental attention, knowing the objects thereby as these objects.

Thirdly, attention continuing, there comes a mental comparison in which likenesses and differences in the objects are noticed.

Fourthly, there comes the act of abstraction by which all differences of size, shape, color, location, qualities of hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness, etc., are left out of account as non-significant (that is, as individuating notes) since all the objects under consideration differ in these points and yet are equally plants.

Thus through sensation and the mental acts of attention, comparison, and abstraction, the boy forms the idea plant. At first, of course, it is obscure in his mind; but if he could express in words what his intellect has really grasped, he would say something like this: “A plant is a bodily thing that lives and grows, but it cannot feel nor move about from place to place as an animal can.”

The boy has, therefore, the grasp of an essence; he knows what a plant is, what any plant is, no matter how different (in accidentals, in individuating marks) individual plants may be. And: the mind’s grasp of an essence is an idea.

In these illustrations we see exemplified the mental acts of attention, abstraction, comparison. There are yet others to be considered.

Suppose the lad mentioned in the Second Illustration were to turn over in mind the matter of plant. In the words attributed to him we discover the fact that he has already formed the idea animal and that he uses this as a point of comparison in forming the idea plant. This is comparison again; but notice that it is the comparison of ideas in the mind, not of external objects of attention. The comparison of the ideas plant and animal, indicated in the words of the boy, is achieved by “thinking them over,” and is therefore not only an act of comparison, but also an act of reflection. Now reflection, or reflex mental activity, is the turning of the mind upon itself, its acts, or its states.

Suppose again that the boy should investigate the make-up of his idea plant. He finds that it is made up of two notes, not individuating notes (for these are the known marks of external individual things) but essential notes (that is, ideas that come together to form a single idea). These essential notes are bodily thing and living thing. These are the notes that the boy discovers in his new idea, for he says: “A plant is a bodily thing that lives, etc.” Now the reflex advertence of the mind to the essential notes of an idea is called analysis.

The converse of analysis is synthesis. When the boy puts together again (by reflex action of the mind) the notes that make up his idea, he elicits a mental act of synthesis. Another example of synthesis is found in the putting together of the ideas of gold and mountain to form the idea golden mountain. Notice that this is a real idea; one who has formed it does not merely imagine (that is, form a phantasm of) what a certain golden mountain would look like, but one knows what a golden mountain, any golden mountain, would be if there were such a thing. One grasps an essence, one understands what such a mountain is or would be.

The Six Acts of Simple Apprehension

Now we list and define the various mental acts that may be involved in the process of Simple Apprehension or idea-forming. The first two mentioned must always be present in that process:

1. Attention is an act by which the mind fixes its consideration upon one object or group of objects to the complete or partial exclusion of all others.
2. Abstraction is an act by which the mind singles out for separate consideration a thing naturally bound up with other things and inseparable from them. Thus, for example, in any given representation of the circle, the size, color, and position of the picture are inseparable from that which they here and now represent. Yet the mind by abstraction can consider one accident apart from the others, and can consider the essence apart from all the accidents or individuating notes that clothe it.
3. Reflection (or reflex act) is an act by which the mind turns, so to speak, upon itself, becomes advertently aware of itself, of its act, or of its state, and considers or studies these things objectively.
4. Analysis is an act by which the mind resolves an idea into the essential notes, the other ideas, that make it up.
5. Synthesis is an act by which the mind compounds two or more ideas into one, making these the essential notes of a single idea.
6. Comparison is an act by which the mind directly notices likenesses and unlikenesses in the objects of attention, or reflexly notices such likenesses and unlikenesses in ideas. Thus comparison is distinguished as direct and reflex comparison.

Important Observations on the Formation of the Idea

Before taking up the next point of our study, viz., the Constituents of the Idea, we must notice a few important matters that belong to the subject of the Formation of the Idea.

1. All ideas have their beginnings, immediately or remotely, in sense perception, that is to say, in sensation. No ideas are inborn (innate) in the mind. The senses present their findings to the mind through the imagination or fancy (which is itself a sense-faculty), and these are elaborated by attention, abstraction, etc., into ideas. This elaboration of sense-findings into ideas is not a groundless or gratuitous or arbitrary function of the mind: the mind does not “make up” its ideas without reference to reality. The process is a real working out of the essence of the realities perceived by the senses. The phrase “forming ideas” does not, therefore, indicate a turning out of a mental product by the grinding of mental machinery; it indicates the function of getting at and knowing the objective essences of things.

2. Ideas of sensible things (that is, of things perceivable by the senses) are formed by the immediate activity of the mind upon sense-findings. Ideas of supersensible things (that is, of things above the reach of sense) are formed by justified derivation from directly formed ideas. Thus the ideas of man, hill, tree, fire, are formed directly; while the ideas of spirit, angel, soul, God, honesty, malice, are formed derivatively — that is to say, by derivation from other ideas which were formed directly upon sensation. Hence it is clear that all ideas have their first beginnings in sensation.

3. There are three grades of ideas:

Grade	Ideas	Abstraction	Prescinds from
Physical	Ideas of sensible things; also soul, angel, God (derived, but still physical)	Physical abstraction	Individuating notes of sensible objects
Mathematical	Weights, numbers, measures, geometrical figures — e.g., line, two	Mathematical abstraction	Individuating notes and everything except understandable quantity
Metaphysical	Being, unity, goodness, truth, substance, accident	Metaphysical abstraction	Individuating notes and quantity; the most general representation of reality, material and immaterial

i. Ideas of sensible things are called physical ideas, and the abstraction by which such ideas are formed is called physical abstraction. Physical abstraction prescinds from the individuating notes of sensible objects. Ideas derived from physical ideas are still called physical if they represent concrete realities that are beyond the reach of the senses, such as, for example, the ideas of soul, angel, God. For the rest, derived ideas are mathematical or metaphysical ideas.

ii. Ideas of merely understandable quantity are called mathematical ideas, and the abstraction by which such ideas are formed is called mathematical abstraction. Ideas of weights, numbers, measures, geometrical figures, etc., are mathematical ideas. The idea line, for example, is a mathematical idea, an idea of understandable quantity, not of sensible quantity. For the thing which we understand as the line cannot be perceived by any of the senses. A line cannot really be drawn; it can only be understood. To “draw a line” means to make a mark which, however fine and tenuous, has always two dimensions, viz., length and width; whereas a line has only one dimension, viz., length. Again, the idea two represents an understandable quantity, not a sensible one. We understand what “two” means quite apart from any numbered reality. We understand that “two and two make four” without having to inquire, “Two what?” It makes no difference whether the two be applied to men or angels, to thoughts or bricks; it is a quantity understandable in itself; it is a mathematical idea.

iii. Ideas applicable to material and immaterial things alike are called metaphysical ideas, and the abstraction by which such ideas are formed is called metaphysical abstraction. The idea of being is such an idea. A body is being, a spirit is being, the distinction between body and spirit is being, a creature is being, the Creator is being — everything and anything that can be thought of as existing must be conceived as some thing, that is to say, as being. Other metaphysical ideas are those of unity, goodness, truth, substance, accident, etc.

These classes of ideas and the corresponding classes of abstraction (viz., physical, mathematical, metaphysical) are called grades because there is an ascending scale in their process; each presupposes the foregoing, like steps in a stairway. Thus mathematical abstraction is physical abstraction plus a further abstraction; and metaphysical abstraction is the other two plus a still further abstraction. Physical abstraction prescinds from individuating notes. Mathematical abstraction prescinds from individuating notes and from everything except understandable quantity. Metaphysical abstraction prescinds from individuating notes, from quantity, and refines the idea into the most general representation of reality, material and immaterial.

4. When we form an idea of a thing we apprehend it, we get it into the mind’s grasp. Now we cannot get things literally into the mind; we can only get representations of likenesses of things into the mind. Such likenesses must conform to the nature of the mind (which is immaterial) to be intelligible. When abstraction has set aside individuating notes, there remains the understandable essence of a thing; this essence is suited for the grasp of the mind for it is not a material or bodily thing in itself; it is called the intelligible species. We may describe abstraction by calling it the act by which the mind discerns the intelligible species (the understandable essence) of a thing. This species the mind actively impresses upon itself (this is the species impressa), and, in reacting to the impression, the mind, so to speak, images and expresses the species or essence (this is the species expressa). The species expressa is the idea.

5. Notice the following names, synonyms for idea:

• Concept — Inasmuch as the mind is, so to say, impregnated by the species impressa and conceives the species expressa, the idea is called the concept. This name is accurately used in contradistinction to the percept or sense-image.
• Apprehension / Simple Apprehension — Inasmuch as the mind is said to grasp or apprehend the species or understandable essence, the idea is called apprehension. And since the mind in apprehending does not affirm or deny anything of the essence apprehended, but simply grasps it, the idea is called simple apprehension. The same name is used for the process of forming the idea; here we use the name to designate, not the process, but its fruit, the idea.
• Notion — Inasmuch as the idea is that in which and by which an essence is noted or known, the idea is called the notion.
• Mental image — Inasmuch as the idea is an essential representation or likeness of an essence, the idea is called the mental image. (The name idea itself is a form of the Greek word eidos, which means image.)
• Species expressa — Inasmuch as the mind, reacting to the species impressa, expresses the essential likeness or representation of an essence, the idea is called species expressa.
• Mental term / verbum mentis — Inasmuch as the mind in eliciting the species expressa expresses or names the essence, the idea is called the mental term or verbum mentis.
• Intention — Inasmuch as the mind in apprehending tends to its object to grasp it, the idea is called the intention — a term which must not be confused with the inclination or determination of the will which we call by the same name. As the mind in-tends (tends to) its object in apprehending, and may afterwards view it or study it reflexly, we distinguish first intentions and second intentions, or direct and reflex intentions. A first intention is the apprehension of an understandable essence, the forming of an idea. A second intention is the act of advertence of the mind to its idea.

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c) Constituents of the Idea

Most ideas are the product of synthesis, although the mind does not become aware of this until it reflects, and analyzes its ideas. Such analysis will show that most ideas are made up of other ideas compounded together. The component ideas are called the essential notes of the idea because they are that by which an essence is noted or known.

We shall analyze the idea man (that is, human being) in order to find what essential notes make it up:

1. The idea man first of all represents a thing, a being. The idea being is the first essential note in all ideas made up or compounded of other ideas. The idea being is simple; it cannot be analyzed. The first essential note, then, in the idea man is “being.”
2. We do not conceive man as a being such as wisdom or whiteness, but as a substance, as a subsistent being. Therefore, the second essential note in the idea man is “subsistent.”
3. We do not conceive man as a spiritual substance but as a bodily one. The third essential note in the idea man is “bodily.”
4. We do not conceive man as an inert body like a stone, but as a living being. The fourth essential note in the idea man is “living.”
5. We do not conceive man as having mere plant-life like a flower or tree, but as endowed with sense and sensation. The fifth essential note in the idea man is “sentient.”
6. We do not conceive man as merely sentient like a brute animal, but as thinking and willing, that is to say, as rational. The sixth and final essential note in the idea man is “rational.”

Summing up these essential notes which are compounded together in the single idea man, we find that this idea is the representation of an essence that is a “subsistent, bodily, living, sentient, rational being.”

Now the sum-total of essential notes that make up an idea is called the Comprehension of that idea. Comprehension is sometimes called Connotation.

Notice an important matter here: the notes that compose the Comprehension of an idea are distinguishable in the mind, but they do not signify separate parts in the extramental object of the idea, that is, in the object outside the mind which the idea represents. The parts which make up an objective nature or physis are called physical parts; such, for example, are body and soul in physical man. The essential notes comprised in the Comprehension of an idea are called metaphysical parts because they represent a distinction which lies beyond (meta-) mere physical partition. Thus body and soul, although united substantially in physical man, are really separable parts of man; they are essential physical parts, not essential notes. So also hands, feet, arms, trunk, are physical parts of man. But the idea man comprises notes which the mind can distinguish but which do not imply a corresponding distinction of parts in physical man. Thus sentiency and rationality are not separable in physical man, as soul and body are separable.

Notice further: the essential notes that make up the Comprehension of an idea are called metaphysical grades, because one presupposes the foregoing. Thus in the idea man “bodily” presupposes “subsistent”; “living” (in this instance) presupposes “bodily substance”; “sentient” presupposes “living bodily substance,” etc. Hence the metaphysical parts or essential notes of an idea are also called metaphysical grades.

After studying the idea in its Comprehension or intrinsic constitution, we turn to the consideration of the idea in extrinsic application. We ask, “What objects can the idea represent essentially in the mind?” The sum-total of the objects that the idea can represent in the mind is called the Extension of the idea. Extension is sometimes called Denotation.

The “constituents” of the idea are Comprehension and Extension. Every idea has its intrinsic make-up, and this is its Comprehension. Every idea represents a thing or things, and this is its Extension.

The reason for the names Comprehension (Connotation) and Extension (Denotation) is seen in the following two statements:

1. Comprehension or Connotation is the sum-total of the essential notes which the idea comprehends or co-notes in itself, in its own intrinsic make-up.
2. Extension or Denotation is the sum-total of objects, extrinsic to the idea itself, which the idea represents or denotes, or to which its application extends.

Example: The Comprehension of the idea man is a sum-total of six essential notes, viz., being, subsistent, bodily, living, sentient, rational. The Extension of the idea man is the sum-total of all human beings.

There is an important axiom to be learned here, viz.: “As Comprehension increases (in number of essential notes), Extension decreases (in objects denoted), and vice versa.”

The reason for this axiom is obvious. The more essential notes there are in the Comprehension of an idea, the more definite it is, and the more limited the field in which it is applicable. Conversely, the more objects and classes of objects there are in the Extension of an idea, the less definite and precise that idea must be. Similarly, the more lines an artist puts into a portrait, the more definite and limited the portrait becomes. In the mere outline of a few strokes, the portrait might represent man, woman, or child; but as the lines are filled in the portrait becomes less and less general; it becomes particular, and finally individual.

The so-called “inverse ratio” of Comprehension and Extension is graphically represented in Bishop Turner’s Lessons in Logic as follows:

Comprehension	Extension
Body	minerals, plants, animals, men
Body with life	plants, animals, men
Body with life and sentiency	animals, men
Body with life, sentiency, and reason	men

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d) Definition of the Idea

An idea is the representation of the essence of a thing in the mind.

1. It is a representation. It is not a picture. A picture is a material likeness of an individual bodily reality. Thus a portrait of a man is a material representation of the external appearance of one man, at one moment of time, in a certain place, attired in a certain manner, etc. The idea man is the living grasp of what a man is. It is a living apprehension in a living mind; it is therefore a vital representation. It is sometimes called an intentional image or intentional representation to indicate that it is the vital grasp (apprehension or “intention”) of an essence by the mind. Notice that the idea is not limited like the portrait. The idea represents what a man is, what any man (male, female, infant, adult) is, at any time, in any place, irrespective of dress, nationality, manner, posture, etc. Nor is the idea like a picture in imagination. Such a picture we call a fancy or a phantasm. A phantasm has all the limitations of a portrait or a moving picture: it represents an individual in a material way; but the idea represents the essence of a thing in an immaterial way.

2. The idea is the representation of an essence. The essence of a thing is that which makes the thing what it is. The essence is sometimes called the quiddity or whatness because it is the answer to the penetrating question, “What is the thing?” And the answer to that question must be no mere description, no accidental or individual characterization, but it must be the actual definition of what the thing is in its basic reality. If one should ask, “What is the circle?” the answer would not be, “It is on the blackboard,” or “The circle is drawn in white,” or “The circle is ten inches in diameter.” The answer is that a circle is a closed curved line, alike in all particulars, every point of which is equidistant from a point within or centre. This is the definition of circle, and it expresses what the mind knows the circle is and must be if it is to be a circle at all. This expresses that which makes a circle what it is, viz., the essence of circle.

3. The idea is a representation of an essence in the mind. The representation is not in the senses nor in the imagination; it is in the mind, the understanding, the intellect. The senses can perceive only individual bodily things; but the idea is the grasp of an essence abstracted from any and all individual and bodily limitations. The imagination forms phantasms which also represent individual bodily reality and are in themselves as limited as a portrait or moving picture; but the idea has not these limitations. The idea is a representation beyond the capacity of the senses and the imagination; it is necessarily in the mind.

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Summary of the Article

We have covered four important points in this Article:

1. We have studied the description of the idea, learning to understand it as the mind’s grasp of an essence. We learned to distinguish individuating notes from the essence accidentally clothed in such notes.
2. We have investigated the formation of the idea, learning to define sensation, and the intellectual acts of attention, abstraction, comparison, reflection, analysis, synthesis. We have learned the three grades of abstraction and the corresponding grades of ideas. We have studied synonyms for idea.
3. We have studied the constituents of the idea, learning to define Comprehension and Extension, to notice their inverse ratio, and to understand what is meant by “essential notes” or “metaphysical grades” of the idea.
4. We have studied the definition of the idea, and have subjected each phrase of the definition to detailed examination.