ave not the FACULTY OF ABSTRACTING, or
making general ideas, since they have no use of words or any other
general signs." And a little after: "Therefore, I think, we may suppose
that it is in this that the species of brutes are discriminated from men,
and it is that proper difference wherein they are wholly separated, and
which at last widens to so wide a distance. For, if they have any ideas
at all, and are not bare machines (as some would have them), we cannot
deny them to have some reason. It seems as evident to me that they do,
some of them, in certain instances reason as that they have sense; but it
is only in particular ideas, just as they receive them from their senses.
They are the best of them tied up within those narrow bounds, and have
not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of
ABSTRACTION." Essay on Human Understanding, II. xi. 10 and 11. I readily
agree with this learned author, that the faculties of brutes can by no
means attain to ABSTRACTION. But then if this be made the distinguishing
property of that sort of animals, I fear a great many of those that pass
for men must be reckoned into their number. The reason that is here
assigned why we have no grounds to think brutes have abstract general
ideas is, that we observe in them no use of words or any other general
signs; which is built on this supposition--that the making use of words
implies the having general ideas. From which it follows that men who use
language are able to ABSTRACT or GENERALIZE their ideas. That this is the
sense and arguing of the author will further appear by his answering the
question he in another place puts: "Since all things that exist are only
particulars, how come we by general terms?" His answer is: "Words become
general by being made the signs of general ideas."--Essay on Human
Understanding, IV. iii. 6. But [Note. 1] it seems that a word becomes
general by being made the sign, not of an ABSTRACT general idea, but of
several particular ideas [Note. 2], any one of which it indifferently
suggests to the mind. For example, when it is said "the change of motion
is proportional to the impressed force," or that "whatever has extension
is divisible," these propositions are to be understood of motion
and extension in general; and nevertheless it will not follow that
they suggest to my thoughts an idea of motion without a body moved,
or any determinate direction and velocity, or that I must conceive
an abstract general