Abstract

“ The points of resemblance thus selected or abstracted from a number of particulars compose what we call an abstract or general idea, and from a comparison of such abstract or general ideas with each other we arrive at general conclusions, which define the relations of the ideas to each other. ”

“ Conception of the Abstract.—The Discursive or Reflective Power.—In the cases thus far described we have conceived of some sensible object, considered in and by itself, capable of being represented to thought. We may, however, conceive not of an object in itself considered, but of the properties and relations of objects in the abstract. ”

“ These abstract and inert realities are more concretely viewed when seen in their dependence upon the dynamic or energetic core of the interest which determines them and of which they are but aspects. They are more concretely viewed when they are seen themselves as entering into the determining process, although it is advantageous for some purposes to regard these abstract elements as themselves the truly concrete, the understood, the obvious, the unquestioned, the inert or established reality from which one starts his investigation of the world. ”

“ All other men have it in common with me to be 'I': just as it is common to all my sensations and conceptions to be mine. But 'I,' in the abstract, as such, is the mere act of self-concentration or self-relation, in which we make abstraction from all conception and feeling, from every state of mind and every peculiarity of nature, talent, and experience. ”

“ We rightly seek the meaning of the abstract in the concrete, because we cannot act in relation to the abstract, which is only a representative sign; we must give it a concrete form in order to make it a clear and distinct idea; until we have done so we do not know that we really believe—only believe that we believe it. ”

“ And he who experiences these impressions strongly, and drives directly at the discrimination and analysis of them, has no need to trouble himself with the abstract question what beauty is in itself, or what its exact relation to truth or experience—metaphysical questions, as unprofitable as metaphysical questions elsewhere. ”

“ Abstract from all the content that directly or indirectly you first learned from others, and were thus first taught to apply to yourself, and you will abstract from all the ideas concerning yourself that you can now express in language, from all ideas of dignity, of worth, of truth, of duty, as applied to your person, yes, from all ideas of any explicit personal characteristic or possession of your own. ”

“ Every general name, if used as a concrete term, has, or may have, a corresponding abstract term. Sometimes the concrete term is modified to form the abstract, as 'greedy—greediness'; sometimes a word is adapted from another language, as 'man—humanity'; sometimes a composite term is used, as 'mercury—the nature of mercury,' etc. The same concrete may have several abstract correlatives, as 'man—manhood, humanity, human nature' ”

“ Both theoretically and practically this power of framing abstract concepts is one of the sublimest of our human prerogatives. We come back into the concrete from our journey into these abstractions, with an increase both of vision and of power. It is no wonder that earlier thinkers, forgetting that concepts are only man-made extracts from the temporal flux, should have ended by treating them as a superior type of being, bright, changeless, true, divine, and utterly opposed in nature to the turbid, restless lower world. ”

“ In this way the abstract demonstrations should form but a small part of the instruction, and should be given when, by familiarity with concrete illustrations, they have come to be felt as the natural embodiment of visible fact. ”

“ The entire falsity of this whole philosophy of the abstract, and the nullity of all abstractions considered as self-subsisting objects of thought, will be more directly shown hereafter. For the present we say no more on this head, but proceed to consider another form in which the argument from abstract, à priori principles is presented.
We have an idea of the good, the beautiful, the true, as being necessary, universal, and eternal. ”

“ Abstract terms result from the analysis of concrete things into their qualities; and conversely a concrete term may be viewed as denoting the synthesis of qualities into an individual thing. When several things agree in more than one quality, there may be an abstract term denoting the union of qualities in which they agree, and omitting their peculiarities; as 'human nature' denotes the common qualities of men, 'civilisation' the common conditions of civilised peoples. ”

“ And this is the only true and legitimate abstraction which holds good both for science and for life. But thus to abstract our own Me and subjective peculiarities is a duty which is far from being commonly observed, and is, in truth, extremely difficult, even with the greatest honesty of purpose, perfectly to accomplish. ”

“ No abstract definitions exist at the outset; abstraction is ulterior and derivative; foremost in each science must be placed examples, experiences, evident facts; from these we derive our general idea. ”

“ In modern times, however, an individual finds the abstract form ready made. ”

“ So the demands made upon the reader are infinitely greater. It assumes that the concrete examples and specific instances necessary to interpret the abstract are already in mind and that the barest allusion to them will be sufficient. ”

“ For this is one of the most extraordinary circumstances in the present affair, that after the mind has produc’d an individual idea, upon which we reason, the attendant custom, reviv’d by the general or abstract term, readily suggests any other individual, if by chance we form any reasoning, that agrees not with it. ”

“ If we wish to study, examine or consider certain qualities in a thing we abstract that particular quality from the other qualities of the thing; or we abstract the other qualities until nothing is left but the particular quality under consideration. In examining or considering a class or number of things, we first abstract the qualities possessed in common by the class or number of things ”

“ Our complex or abstract ideas are symbols which only take a meaning so far as we resolve them into the detached impressions which in the sum they represent, or recall the objects, each with its own before and after, from which they were originally taken. ”

“ In regard to knowledge, very abstract thoughts are to be found—though of a truth they are quite as good as ours, and more ingenious—which according to their content ought to be concrete, and also were so. ”

“ For, when the highest product of abstract thought is analysed, the ultimate elements must always be found to consist in material given directly by the senses; and every stage in the symbolic construction of ideas, in which the process of abstraction consists, depends on acts of perception taking place in the lower stages’. ”

“ In all my critical and theoretical writing I wish to be as little abstract as possible, and to study first principles, not so much as they exist in the brain of the theorist, but as they may be discovered, alive and in [ix] effective action, in every achieved form of art. ”

“ Of course if you switch methods intelligently and of purpose, that is quite another matter. An abstract discussion may be enlivened by a concrete illustration. A concrete narrative or portrayal may be given weight and rationalized by generalization. ”

“ The essences of things in the abstract mean nothing, nor can they become the object of affirmation or negation, unless we suppose a necessary being in which is the reason of the relations of things, and of the possibility of their existence. ”

“ The knowledge upon which our ideas rest is general, and the only difference between abstract and particular, is that of being more or less general, of leaving out more or fewer circumstances, and more or fewer objects, perceived either at once or in succession, and forming either a particular whole, aggregate, or a class of things. ”

“ In addressing abstract reasoning, therefore, to those who are unfamiliar with scientific methods, pains should be taken to make it clear what the abstractions are, what are the consequent limitations upon the argument and its conclusions, and what corrections and allowances are necessary in order to turn the conclusions into an adequate account of the concrete facts. ”

“ And holding still to the concrete, the particular, to the visible or sensuous, if you will, last as first, thinking of that as essentially the one vital and lively thing, really worth our while in a short life, we may recognise sincerely what generalisation and abstraction have done or may do, are defensible as doing, just for that—for the particular gem or flower—what its proper service is to a mind in search, precisely, of a concrete and intuitive knowledge such as that. ”

“ A Concrete Term is the name of a substance, e.g. a man, this chair, the soul, God.
§ 97. Abstract terms are so called as being arrived at by a process of Abstraction. What is meant by Abstraction will be clear from a single instance. The mind, in contemplating a number of substances, may draw off, or abstract, its attention from all their other characteristics, and fix it only on some point, or points, which they have in common. ”

“ Something that will be of some real practical use is, in my opinion, what we want; but to talk about abstract theories, idealities, and things that have not much substance or reality in them, I do not think is of much use to anybody. ”

“ Thus scientific objects are the concrete causal characters, though we arrive ‘at them by a route of apprehension which is a process of abstraction. In the same way, what, in the form of a sense-object, is concrete for our awareness, is abstract in its character of a complex of relations between scientific objects. ”

“ As there is, according to the common opinion, no object outside the magnitudes of sense, it follows that the ideas of reason are contained in the forms of sense, both the so-called abstract conceptions and the various qualities and attributes that determine sensible phenomena. ”

“ The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it. ”

“ Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it. ”

“ Obedient to the primary impulse of ADEQUATE expression, the style of a complex subject should be complex; of a technical subject, technical; of an abstract subject, abstract; of a familiar subject, familiar; of a pictorial subject, picturesque. ”

“ It is evident, that none of the rules of composition are fixed by reasonings a priori, or can be esteemed abstract conclusions of the understanding, from comparing those habitudes and relations of ideas, which are eternal and immutable. ”

“ Our general ideas, from those immediately bordering on the concrete to those which attain pure symbolism, constitute a hierarchy of ever-increasing simplicity. What value must be assigned to this thinking by concepts, in proportion as it ascends higher in the scale? We are all familiar with the debates upon this question, bearing, as it does, fundamentally upon the objective value of abstraction and generalisation. ”

“ Instead of thoughts of concrete things patiently following one another in a beaten track of habitual suggestion, we have the most abrupt cross-cuts and transitions from one idea to another, the most rarefied abstractions and discriminations, the most unheard-of combinations of elements, the subtlest associations of analogy ”

“ A universal or general conception is of an entire class, or of something belonging to an entire class, of things. The conception of an abstract quality is, taken by itself, neither universal nor particular. [396] If I abstract white from the rest of the wintry landscape this morning, it is a perfectly definite conception, a self-identical quality which I may mean again ”

“ To give the reader a clearer view of the nature of abstract ideas, and the uses they are thought necessary to, I shall add one more passage out of the Essay on Human Understanding, which is as follows:—"Abstract ideas are not so obvious or easy to children, or the yet unexercised mind as particular ones. ”

“ When we predicate of any thing an abstract name, we affirm of the thing that it is one or other of these five things; that it is a case of Existence, or of Co-existence, or of Causation, or of Sequence, or of Resemblance. ”

“ A delicate balance must be kept between that presentation of the concrete which makes it significant by making it representative and typical, and that other presentation which dissolves the individual into the general, by making it a mere abstraction. ”

“ Taken as a problem in logic, the answer is, of course, that absolutely nothing in the way of abstract mental content is inferable from the mere fact that we can use intelligently words of which the meaning is abstract. ”

“ The abstract form of the advance is, in Being, an other and transition into an other; in Essence showing or reflection in the opposite; in Notion, the distinction of individual from universality, which continues itself as such into, and is as an identity with, what is distinguished from it. ”

“ Furthermore, the grades of reality which we discover in things by the activity of abstract thought, and whereby we compare, classify and define those things, we apprehend as explanatory principles of the latter ”

“ To satisfy the imagination, a discourse must have a material part, a body; and these are formed by the perceptions, from which the understanding separates distinct features or conceptions. For though we may attempt to obtain the highest pitch of abstraction, something sensuous always lies at the ground of the thought. ”

“ But there should be great distinction and great accuracy. We should distinguish between what is good in the abstract and what is good for ourselves, and always follow in reason the natural inclination which carries us towards matters that please us. ”

“ Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply engrained attitudes of aversion and preference. ”