of the perfection and development of speech, but these were
not at first abstract, although they made use of the abstract idea.
Unconscious abstraction is certainly one of the primary acts of the
intelligence, since abstraction follows from the consideration of a part
or of some parts of a whole, which are themselves presented as a whole
to the perception. But this primitive abstraction was so far a concrete
fact for the perception, in that each act of the apprehension
constituted a phenomenon of which the apparent character was abstracted
from the other parts which formed a whole, and was transformed into a
living subject, as we have already shown at length. The really explicit
abstraction, to which man only attained after many ages, consisting in
the simple representation of a quality or part of a thing, could not at
that time be effected, although special and specific ideas gradually
found their way into thought and speech. All the terms for form and
relation in primitive speech, and also among modern savages, confirm
this assertion, as linguists are aware; the form and relation now
expressing an abstract reference to actions and passions in the verbs,
nouns, and adverbs, originally referred to a concrete object.

Three modes or degrees of abstract representations occur in the
progressive exercise of the intellectual faculty; these, combined with
the special apprehensions of the individual memory, and with imaginative
types, constitute the life of human thought, and are the conditions by
which we attain to rational knowledge. While the specific mythical type
may take the place of the general type in the logical exercise of
thought, and may suffice for an imaginative comprehension of the system
of the world, the abstract conception intervenes in the daily necessity
for communication between these general mythical types, and serves to
cement them together, thus rendering the commerce of ideas among men and
in the human mind more easy.

The abstract conceptions which are formed in this way may be divided
into three classes--physical, moral, and intellectual. To begin with the
first; it is impossible for human speech to point out and define a
subject or phenomenon in the series to which it belongs by resemblance,
identity, or analogy, unless there is already in the mind a conception
which includes the general qualities, or quality proper to the series of
similar phenomena; this is essentially an abstract type, but it
p