Truth and Error or the Science of Intellection/Chapter 18

CHAPTER XVIII IDEATION
We have seen that consciousness is one of the essentials of an animate particle; that sensation is the first mental property or faculty of an animate body; that perception is the second mental property or faculty of an animate body; that apprehension is the third mental property or faculty of an animate body; and that reflection is the fourth mental property or faculty of an animate body. Now, we have to consider the fifth mental property or faculty of an animate body. We form judgments about consciousness and choice, and about judgments and concepts; that is, we cognize mind. We need a term to express the forming of judgments about judgments, or of cognizing cognitions. For this purpose I shall use the term ideation. Ideation, therefore, as the term is here used, is the act of making judgments about judgments which, when verified, are cognitions.

We are conscious of our own judgments, but we infer the judgments of others. We may find the judgments of others to be like those we have already formed, or we may find that they are new to us. These new judgments we may accept or reject. When speech is developed and education is instituted, acception comes to play a very important role in mental acquisition.

Judgments of ideation are connate with all other judgments, but they are compounded of them and represent higher degrees of relativity; hence it is more difficult to trace them into their constituent judgments, yet trained introspection accomplishes this feat.

Before the laws of evolution were discovered and an absolute difference between man and the lower animal was supposed to exist, it was often affirmed that this distinction consists in the absence in the brute of knowledge about mind, that only man knows himself to be a thinking being, or, as we are here using the term, only man has the faculty of ideation. This is one of the affirmations which men are ready and prone to make before they learn that cognition is verified judgment, and that our judgments are guesses, while guesses are often more current than certitudes. With this idea was associated another, namely, that animals do not reason, but have instinct, there being no realization of the fact that certain practical judgments are repeated so often that they become intuitive as acts become habitual. Instinct or intuition and habit will require further consideration in a subsequent book.

We must now develop a little further the nature of the faculty of ideation, by considering the process of forming judgments of ideation. I hear a voice, and by experience know that its tone expresses surprise. Thus I form a judgment of an emotion in another. I am confronted with an antagonist on a field of battle, and see him point his howitzer at the column of troops in which I move, and infer that he has a deadly purpose. The lower animal makes judgments of ideation in this manner, and uses these judgments in guiding its own conduct. With mankind in higher culture this faculty is greatly developed. All words are signs of concepts, and all combined words that express thought are judgments, and the symbols of ideas, both spoken and written, constitute the pabulum of higher culture. Thus we not only cognize the intellections of others, but at the same time we accept their judgments as judgments of our own.

Ideation, as the term is here used, is a cognition of intellections in that manifestations of intellections are cognized by forming concepts of them. In sensation manifestations are conceived as expressions of kind. In perception they are conceived as expressions of form; in apprehension they are conceived as expressions of force; in reflection they are conceived as expressions of cause and effect; in ideation they are conceived as expressions of mind.

The constitution of the judgment which has already been exhibited four times must here be repeated. It appears as a consciousness of a sense impression, a choice, a reproduction of a consciousness of a concept of ideation, which, by comparison, make a judgment of ideation. The concept which is reproduced by the choice, is still more highly compound than in the lower grades of cognition, for the acts which animate bodies perform are first interpreted as kinds, then as forms, then as forces, then as causations, and finally as concepts. The series is complete when the judgment of ideation is made.

Like all other judgments, those of ideation are presentative and representative; representative judgments are discursive and volitional. There is no need to repeat the discussion setting forth the nature of judgments in these respects.

Vision is the primordial sense of ideation. We see the motions in others, which I have heretofore called self-activity, and interpret them as symbols of soul. By soul I mean all intellectual and emotional judgments made by the animate being. The individual is conscious of the judgments made by himself, but he infers the judgment made by others. The judgments that others make are inferred from the signs which others make. I see the leaves tremble, the clouds move, the rain fall, the river flow, and innumerable motions in the mineral world; but I do not consider them as signs of intellect and emotion. There are other signs, however, which I observe in animate beings, and especially in human activities, which I do interpret as marks of soul. These signs are those which are produced only by those bodies which, being animate, have motility. The nature of this motility we have elsewhere explained and we have called it self-activity, which must not be confounded with self-motion, for self-motion is inherent in every particle, while self-activity is self-directed motion in a body.

Only animate bodies have this self-activity. But according to our hypothesis the ultimate particles of inanimate bodies have self-activity in so far as they manifest choice or affinity, while plant bodies seem to have self-activity in their cells. Neglecting this hypothesis, animate bodies certainly have consciousness and choice in their cells. Now, as one inanimate body has inherent motion in its several particles, which are organized in a hierarchy of bodies, the inanimate body cannot be deflected except by collision with another body, but the animate body can deflect its own motion as a body by metabolism, and by deflecting its own motion as a body it can deflect the motion of others. It is this power in the animate body of deflecting its own motion at will and of deflecting the motions of others by colliding against them at will, which is the sign or mark of mind in those bodies to which we attribute mind, and which exhibit more and more the purpose and ability to convey concepts to others, until among the higher animals a conventional sign language is produced, which becomes oral in the higher animals, but oral and written speech in man. Without words only emotions can be conveyed, whereas with words intellection can be exchanged. Gesture language may become gesture speech, oral language oral speech, and picture writing written speech. It is with this higher condition of language as speech that we are chiefly interested in ideation. Everything in nature has manifestations which may be interpreted, but only animate beings purposely convey concepts to one another.

Ideation is reënforced by other demotic agencies than those of speech. The pleasures, the industries, the institutions, and the opinions of mankind, are all expressed as human activities, and manifest the concepts by which they are produced; but we need not dwell on the subject here.

Through the agency of language we discover the fifth property of bodies. When we are interested in them and interest grows apace we may wish to know what those bodies say instead of what they are; it is then that language becomes speech, but culture continues to advance and speech becomes designed or purposeful instruction. Then all the appliances of instruction are developed until one of the principal occupations of mankind is the giving and receiving of instruction and the acquiring of concepts from one another, in which process the instructor is more instructed than the pupil, for the speaker in the organization of that which is spoken learns more than the hearer.

Now the eye, by its peculiar construction with apparatus for accommodation to distance and direction, is especially adapted to the reception of sense impressions that imply self-activity, hence it is the primary sense organ for the faculty of ideation. While its fundamental function is ideation, by reason of the concomitance of properties it becomes a vicarious organ for others.

Every one of the sense organs becomes an organ for and of the faculties. In the first stage of mind, while the organs of taste and smell are primarily the organs of sensation, the other organs interpret the sense impressions coming to them as symbols of flavor. In the second stage, while touch is the primary organ of form, the sense impressions coming to the other organs are interpreted as symbols of form. In the third stage the muscular sense is the primary organ of understanding, but all the other organs interpret the sense impression coming to them as symbols of forces. In the fourth stage, while the organ of audition is the primary organ of reflection, all the other organs interpret the sense impressions coming to them as symbols of causation. In the fifth stage, while the eye is the primary organ of ideation, all the other organs may interpret the sense impressions coming to them as if they were symbols of concepts.

We have seen how the judgments of the lower faculties are verified by the higher, but now ideation is the court of last resort. In the structure of the mind incongruous judgments throw the machinery of reason out of gear. So many judgments have been found fallacious by every individual in the race of men, and fallacious judgments have led to such dire disasters, and have been repeated so often in matters of profound moment, as well as in matters of superficial consequence, that there has grown up a habit of mind by which incongruity of judgments is taken as a signal that danger lurks in the way. The mind cannot rest content with an incongruity. It is the ultimate spur to all intellectual activity, for we may forego the pleasures of the mind when we know that others may be enjoyed, but oftentimes we cannot neglect the dangers of false judgments. We must make a practical solution of every incongruous judgment at the time, but every intelligent man yearns for an ultimate solution, thus the world is on the qui vive for knowledge as for the breath of life. Those who teach the doctrine of the unknowable offer stones for bread and vipers for fish.

All our concepts must be congruous; the demand for congruity is inexorable. A man may accept a verbal explanation of the facts of science and believe that he has a world of congruous concepts, but experience will find incongruity, which he may conceal for himself in a jugglery of words, but others will detect it when they are announced.

This final faculty in verification resorts to the multitudinous concepts of which the mind is possessed and when one is incongruous with others it demands a reinvestigation of that one. Sometimes the one is right and the many are wrong, and the multitude must be made to establish congruity with one, but meanwhile the one multiplies until it becomes the many and the fallacious judgments the few.

All scientific research is a process of reinvestigating our concepts and of adjusting them to the light which has been shed upon them by some broader generalization than we have been wont to make. We gain a concept by induction and immediately we apply it in a multitude of ways by deduction, and in making these applications we discover our fallacious judgments and go on forever to readjust our concepts. Thus there is trial and failure, trial and failure, until at last there is trial and success; then a new vista is opened into the universe.

The sensations, perceptions, apprehensions, reflections, and ideations of the individual are not exhausted by an enumeration of these derived by the individual in his converse with nature. From his ancestors he inherits the powers of thought, with his organism, which is expectant and apt in judgment and conception. It is ready for this work, as it has been developed through untold generations of ancestral life, and apt, as it has been trained by the experience of untold ages. With the power and skill thus developed it is able to deal with and rationally idealize an immeasurable body of facts which it cannot discover for itself—facts gathered in other lands by other minds and conveyed to it by the agency of language.

The landsman may learn from the mariner, the dweller in the valley from the mountaineer, the denizen of the forest from the denizen of the prairie, and he who dwells where tropical hurricanes wash the coral reefs with the waves of the sea, may learn from him who dwells among the cliffs of ice and sees the bergs of crystal plunged from their glacial homes into the depths of the sea. This process of forming judgments we call acception.

In converse with nature, man transforms or interprets symbols of sense impressions into concepts of sensation, perception, apprehension, reflection, and ideation. In contact with these natural symbols he devises a new world of symbols with which he interprets concepts of others. Still they are judgments founded upon the five factors or constituents of bodies, and nothing more enters into them. So we still find mind dealing with number, space, motion, time, and judgment, or their reciprocals kind, form, force, causation, and concept.

Words themselves are of great assistance to ideation in that they symbolize with one word great groups of judgments which we call concepts. Thus it is that the ego is diverted from the material world to the ideal world, and caused to dwell abstractly upon judgments and their compounds. Perhaps abstraction is more nearly complete in the consideration of judgments and their compounds than in the consideration of times and their compounds, motions and their compounds, spaces and their compounds, and numbers and their compounds. In fact, this abstraction is so thorough that conception is often supposed to have perfect independence of matter, although no conception or judgment is known which is not a concomitant of matter.

A crude speech is developed by all animal life—a general sign language by which every animal holds converse with the members of its own species. This general sign language is inherited by man and gradually developed by him; but oral speech soon leads the way in the development of a still higher language. This oral language is invented by minute increments born of experience; finally, written language is developed from lowly beginnings in picture writings—first, words are developed, and these words are grouped in sentences, and this grouping reacts upon the words themselves until parts of speech are developed, for, in primeval languages, there are no parts of speech as organs of the sentence, as we now understand this term.

Words are signs of concepts, not of judgments, for every word stands for an assemblage of judgments, and to express a judgment it is necessary to formulate a proposition. Yet we cannot get away from sensation, perception, apprehension, reflection, and ideation. The words themselves are spoken or written, and sense impressions are necessary to produce the changes in self upon which consciousness is founded, for consciousness, as we use the term, is awareness of change in self. Thus the spoken word is a sound impression upon the organ of hearing; the written word a light impression upon the organ of vision, and the impression becomes a symbol for sensation, or a symbol for perception, or a symbol for apprehension, or a symbol for reflection, or a symbol for ideation. So all words are symbols for ideation, but the symbols are conventional—invented by mankind for the purpose as an addition to the natural symbols. Not that languages are invented as fully developed, but the elements of every language and the combinations of these elements are invented by minute increments. To understand the word itself it is necessary that there shall be a consciousness and an inference leading to a judgment that the word is such or such, as a sound or a written symbol, and the whole process by sensation and perception must be repeated with every word in order to distinguish it as a word. Then perception, apprehension, and reflection are all employed in confirming a judgment about the meaning of the word, and no word has any meaning until it is interpreted into concepts of number, space, motion, time, or judgment, one or all.

Here we have especially to note that acception becomes not the sole but the chief agency for the development of the concepts of mind.

And now on symbol wings as magical words, the soul flies to all the realms of the universe, learning not only of the worlds of space and time, but penetrating into the arcana of other souls.

By the invention of speech man has acquired an inexhaustible resource from which to draw ideas, but by this artificial method dangers are involved. Imagination often outruns the ideas expressed in words, producing illusions, but usually harmless illusions. My friend tells me of a cove carpeted with rare flowers. I listen and in my mind a brook tumbles in a cascade from a cliff above and the cove seems a deep narrow gorge with fringing rocks and trees standing at the foot of the cliffs. I even perceive in my fancy the pathway by which it is reached, and measure off its distance in my mind’s eye. Unexpectedly we come upon the brook. I had imagined it to be much farther off. Thus I had misinterpreted the statement of my friend. We turn up by its bank into the glen. As we enter the cove, instead of finding a narrow glen, with towering walls and overhanging rocks, I see a stretch of pasturage land inclosed by rocks that are broken back in hills, and up the valley beyond the pasturage lands there is a deserted cabin. Near the cabin a great spring gushes from the foot of the rock, and about it trees grow. While my companion gathers flowers I muse. How strange that his words created so vivid a picture in my mind, and that this picture should be wholly the creation of my own imagination, having no counterpart in the reality! I fancied a narrow cove with towering cliffs, tall trees, and a cataract. It is a semicircular glen with broken walls of rock, grass-land and a great spring.

Words are signs of ideas to be interpreted by the imagination of the hearer, and a true or a false interpretation may be given them, depending upon the knowledge already existing in the mind of the hearer.

There is a constant tendency to learn words without meanings, or words with vague meanings, and to use them with a semblance of expressing ideas. No word is properly understood when it does not stand for an idea about one or more of the concomitants of body or about the relations of these concomitants. Here we have a crucial test for the legitimate use of a word; if it does not express a number, a space, a motion, a time, or a judgment, or their reciprocals as kind, form, force, causation, or concept of a body or a relation of one body to another, it expresses a pseudo-idea. A word used to express an idea of an unknown thing may become legitimate by the unknown becoming known, but a word used to express an unknowable thing is blank voice. The habit of learning words without learning the ideas for which they stand is worse than an inanity—it is a vice, for the mind is irresistibly led into the practice of informing such words with vague and misleading meanings. Select any word in common usage to express the leading ideas in the metaphysical discussion of the nature of the universe, and follow it where it occurs many times, and you can invariably discover that it is used with many meanings wholly incompatible with one another, and the foundation of these meanings will be discovered to be something unknowable—a nothing, an abstract attribute reified as having concrete existence. Teach the word cat to a child who has never seen a cat and it will imagine a hobgoblin.

Words often have many meanings; learn these many meanings of many concepts, put them together as one compound idea and you have an absurdity; but such is often the method of metaphysical reasoning. Akin to this is to use the word as a metaphor and then to forget the metaphor. See how Hegel uses the word mediation. A mediator is one who comes between others; the ether mediates the light between the sun and the earth; the air mediates the sound between the voice and the ear; so the messenger mediates the message, and the term properly means to bear from one to another. A man may bear his own letter to his friend and by a figure of speech may be said to be his own mediator. But when you forget the figure of speech and call the man a mediator who acts upon another you have used the word illegitimately, and when you go still further to speak of the action of a person upon himself as mediation, you have reduced the term to an absurdity. Such are the methods of ontologic reasoning as distinguished from scientific reasoning, which holds words to single and invariable meanings. “If thine eye be single the whole body is full of light.” It is not strange that Hegel rendered the world into terms of multitudinous contradictions. It was the trick of tricks, the juggle of juggles, to play such pranks with the terms of philosophy.