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body the same attitude, something common will issue from them, and the general idea will have been felt
and passively experienced, before being represented.-Here then we escape at last from the circle in which
we at first appeared to be confined. In order to generalize, we said, we have to abstract similarity, but in
order to disengage similarity usefully we must already know how to generalize. There really is no circle,
because the similarity, from which the mind starts when it first begins the work of abstraction, is not the
similarity at which the mind arrives when it consciously generalizes. That from which it starts is a
similarity felt and lived; or, if you prefer
(209) the expression, a similarity which is automatically acted. That to which it returns is a similarity
intelligently perceived, or thought. And it is precisely in the course of this progress that are built up, by the
double effort of the understanding and of the memory, the perception of individuals and the conception of
genera,-memory grafting distinctions upon resemblances which have been spontaneously abstracted, the
understanding disengaging from the habit of resemblances the clear idea of generality. This idea of
generality was, in the beginning, only our consciousness of a likeness of attitude in a diversity of situations
; it was habit itself, mounting from the sphere of movement to that of thought. But from genera so sketched
out mechanically by habit we have passed, by an effort of reflexion upon this very process, to the general
idea o f genus ; and when that idea has been once constituted, we have constructed (this time voluntarily)
an unlimited number of general notions. It is not necessary here to follow the intellect into the detail of this
construction. It is enough to say that the understanding, imitating the effort of nature, has also set up motor
apparatuses, artificial in this case, to make a limited number of them answer to an unlimited number of
individual objects: the assemblage of these mechanisms is articulate speech.
Yet these two divergent operations of the mind, the one by which it discerns individuals, the other by
which it constructs genera, are far from demand-
(210) -ing the same effort or progressing with the same rapidity. The first, requiring only the intervention
of memory, takes place from the outset of our experience ; the second goes on indefinitely without ever
reaching its goal. The first issues in the formation of stable images, which in their turn are stored up in
memory; the second comes out in representations that are unstable and evanescent. We must dwell on this
last point, for we touch here an essential problem of mental life.
And the general idea is
The essence of the general idea, in fact, is to be
always in movement
unceasingly going backwards and forwards between
between the plane of
the plane of action and that of pure memory. Let us
action and that of pure
refer once more to the diagram we traced above. At S
memory
is the present perception which I have of my body,
that is to say, of a certain sensori-motor equilibrium.
Over the surface of the base AB are spread, we may
say, my recollections in their totality. Within the cone
so determined the general idea oscillates continually
between the summit S and the base AB. In S it would
take the clearly defined form of a bodily attitude or of
an uttered word ; at AB it would wear the aspect, no
less defined, of the thousand individual images into
which its fragile unity would break up. And that is
why a psychology which abides by the already done,
which considers only that which is made and ignores
that which is in the making, will never perceive in
this movement
(211) anything more than the two extremities between which it oscillates ; it makes the general idea
coincide sometimes with the action which manifests it or the word which expresses it, and at other times
with the multitudinous images, unlimited in number, which are its equivalent in memory. But the truth is
that the general idea escapes us as soon as we try to fix it at either of the two extremities. It consists in the
double current which goes from the one to the other,always ready either to crystallize into uttered words or
to evaporate into memories.
This amounts to saying that between the sensori-motor mechanisms figured by the point S and the totality
of the memories disposed in AB there is room, as we indicated in the preceding chapter, for a thousand
repetitions of our psychical life, figured by as many sections A'B', A"B", etc., of the same cone. We tend to
scatter ourselves over AB in the measure that we detach ourselves from our sensory and motor state to live
in the life of dreams ; we tend to concentrate ourselves in S in the measure that we attach ourselves more
firmly to the present reality,
(212) responding by motor reactions to sensory stimulation. In point of fact, the normal self never stays in
either of these extreme positions ; it moves between them, adopts in turn the positions corresponding to the
intermediate sections, or, in other words, gives to its representations just enough image and just enough
idea for them to be able to lend useful aid to the present action.
From this conception of the lower mental life the laws of the association of ideas can be deduced. But,
before we deal with this point, we must first show the insufficiency of the current theories of association.
But associationism errs
That every idea which arises in the mind has a relation of similarity or of contiguity with the previous
in missing the
mental state, we do not dispute; but a statement of the kind throws no light on the mechanism of
connexion between
association ; nor, indeed, does it really tell us anything at all. For we should seek in vain for two ideas
these ideas and our
which have not some point of resemblance, or which do not touch each other somewhere. To take
actual needs
similarity first : however profound are the differences which separate two images, we shall always find, if
we go back high enough, a common genus to which they belong, and consequently a resemblance which
may serve as a connecting link between them. And, in regard to contiguity, a perception A, as we said
before, will not evoke' by contiguity' a former image B, unless
(213) it recalls to us first an image A' which is like it, because it is the recollection A', and not the
perception A, which really touches B in memory. However distant, then, we suppose the terms A and B
from each other, a relation of contiguity can always be found between them, provided that the intercalated
term A' bears a sufficiently farfetched resemblance to A. This is as much as to say that between any two
ideas chosen at random there is always a resemblance, and always, even, contiguity ; so that, when we [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]