Type

“ Human life, as represented in literature, consists of two main branches, character and action. Of these, character, which is the realm of personality, is generalized by means of type, which is ideal character; action, which is the realm of experience, by plot, which is ideal action. It is convenient to examine the nature of these separately. A type, the example of a class, contains the characteristic qualities which make an individual one of that class ”

“ Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created—nothing. That is because we are all queer fish, queerer behind our faces and voices than we want any one to know or than we know ourselves. ”

“ In the first place, it is evident that a type is material and external, and the fulfilment of the type is spiritual and internal; what the type reveals to the bodily eye, its fulfilment must reveal to the eye of faith alone, or it is not really a fulfilment. ”

“ Each type-life is perfect, but those who are born through the type-life begin at the bottom; the “fall” is great from the type-life to the beginning of growth in the next higher kingdom. But from that onward the battle of evolution is to secure likeness to the type. ”

“ A figure or representation of something to come; a token; a sign; a symbol; — correlative to antitype.
A type is no longer a type when the thing typified comes to be actually exhibited.
South.
4. That which possesses or exemplifies characteristic qualities; the representative. Specifically: (a) (Biol.) A general form or structure common to a number of individuals; hence, the ideal representation of a species, genus, or other group, combining the essential characteristics; an animal or plant possessing or exemplifying the essential characteristics of a species, genus, or other group. ”

“ What we have said before in regard to the overlapping of variations among different races and types, and the great range of variability in each type, may also be expressed by saying that the differences between different types of man are, on the whole, small as compared to the range of variation in each type. ”

“ This type; which we have thus reached by our imitativeness, we now have fixed upon us, for better or worse. Now no type can be wholly disadvantageous; but, so far as our type follows the bottled-lightning fashion, it cannot be wholly good. ”

“ Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one's own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. ”

“ After we have thus considered the influences of heredity and environment, so far as they determine the characteristics of distinct types of man, it remains to add a few words on the individuals constituting each type, and on the different distribution of individuals in distinct types. ”

“ They are real generalisations, because they include the whole of the material under consideration. The blur of their outlines, which is never great in truly generic composites, except in unimportant details, measures the tendency of individuals to deviate from the central type. ”

“ The type has been made according to the truth, and the truth has been recognised according to the type. ”

“ The greater the number of types of character exhibited to the public, and the greater the facility of comparison between them, the more sharply defined, and the more clearly recognized, will the best one be. ”

“ From particular types we rise to the notion of general types, which are likewise only probabilities, going up gradually to historical, prehistorical, and Quaternary types, and, by inductive constitution, to primitive types. Hence the necessity of a classification of types; or, to use the current erroneous language, of races. Every anthropologist has his classification. ”

“ what is the scientific man? Firstly, a commonplace type of man, with commonplace virtues: that is to say, a non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient type of man; ”

“ The description of the principal types is thus merely a methodical process, fit to facilitate, by the formation of a certain number of groups, the comparison of human races, and to simplify the partial description of each. ”

“ Of the latter and more normal types it may be said that they exist, and have always existed, in considerable abundance, and from that circumstance alone there is a strong probability that they have their place and purpose. ”

“ Perhaps one of the most interesting and valuable forms of exercise in the practical application of this science is the study of types and their variations. Anyone who has observed humanity knows that, while no two persons are exactly alike, practically all human beings can be classified satisfactorily into comparatively a few general types. ”

“ As we have just seen, style is affected in a measure by the species of discourse. It is determined, further, by the mental constitution of the writer, and varies according to the dominance of particular faculties. We may distinguish four generic types of mind, which are reflected in four fundamental differences of style. ”

“ Thus we keep the characters as simple as possible, trying for individual examples of conventional types, for definite persons that develop sharply, in small groups, with strong contrasts. The presentation we elaborate as much as possible—how the characters affect one another and display themselves in deeds and words. ”

“ In their extreme forms, of pure naturalism and pure salvationism, the two types are violently contrasted; though here as in most other current classifications, the radical extremes are somewhat ideal abstractions, and the concrete human beings whom we oftenest meet are intermediate varieties and mixtures. ”

“ so true it is that a limited number of types, good and bad, serve for all ages. ”

“ But the greatest difficulty is that when the systematic method of setting out the complex material has been proceeded with and seems about to lead to good results, then at once objections of the most serious kind arise and almost forbid the attempt to make types. ”

“ In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the "Origin of Species" introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics and religion. ”

“ But if I say "Man is mortal," I am thinking, not of any particular man, but of the class of men in general. Such an idea is called a general idea, or a concept. All class-names, such as man, tree, house, river, animal, horse, being, which stand, not for one thing, but for a multitude of things, represent concepts. We form these general ideas by including in them all the qualities which the whole class of objects has in common, and excluding from them all the qualities in which they differ, that is to say, the qualities which some of the objects possess, but others do not. ”

“ And here we lose even that vestige of a meaning grounded in the nature of the things themselves, which may be supposed to be attached to the word essence when it is said that genus and species must be of the essence of the thing. There can be no doubt that when the schoolmen talked of the essences of things as opposed to their accidents, they had confusedly in view the distinction between differences of kind, and the differences which are not of kind; they meant to intimate that genera and species must be Kinds. ”

“ As individuals by their resemblances form Kinds, so kinds of things, though different, may resemble each other so as to be again associated in a higher Class; and there may be several successive steps of such classification. Man, horse, tree, stone, are each a name of a Kind; but animal includes the two first and excludes the others; living thing is a term which includes animal and tree but not stone; body includes all the four. And such a subordination of kinds may be traced very widely in the arrangements of language. ”

“ Now, however, when it is known that a class, a universal, a genus or species, is not an entity _per se_, but neither more nor less than the individual substances themselves which are placed in the class, and that there is nothing real in the matter except those objects, a common name given to them, and common attributes indicated by the name; what, I should be glad to know, do we learn by being told, that whatever can be affirmed of a class, may be affirmed of every object contained in the class? ”

“ In the state of differentiation to which superior and cultivated human species have attained, each individual forms surely a separate variety determined by what is called, abstractly, "the character." ”

“ Note here, that it is by no means intended to imply that there may not be different Kinds, or logical species, of man. The various races and temperaments, the two sexes, and even the various ages, may be differences of kind, within our meaning of the term. ”

“ And as there is one general form, which, as I have said, belongs to the human kind at large, so in each of these classes there is one common idea which is the abstract of the various individual forms belonging to that class. ”

“ At the root of every good definition is still the accurate statement of genus and differentia. It is chiefly of the second kind that we shall treat here. If you can write a definition that is pleasing and stimulating and also accurate, you can always boil it down into the more bald formal statement such as the dictionary offers. Whatever powers of grace or neatness in expression you possess, whatever powers of saying things in a pleasing manner, it is your privilege to employ in the writing of definitions. ”

“ It will be convenient at this point to digress somewhat for a moment to consider a question of some psychological interest. When we say that two “contents” are similar, and when too they admit of analysis, we can, if need be, enumerate certain elements as the ground of their partial likeness, and certain others as the ground of their partial diversity. We may further say that, abstracting from these last, we can regard the points of resemblance as constituting a general class to which the two contents belong as specific instances. ”

“ But several kinds, and several sorts in these kinds of Creatures, being composed after different manners, and ways, must needs have different Lives, Knowledges, and Perceptions: and not only every several kind, and sort, have such differences; but, every particular Creature, through the variations of their Self-moving Parts, have varieties of Lives, Knowledges, Perceptions, Conceptions, and the like; and not only so, but every particular part of one and the same Creature, have varieties of Knowledges, and Perceptions, because they have varieties of Actions. ”

“ Neither is it enough to consult concerning persons secundum genera [according to classes] , as in an idea, or mathematical description, what the kind and character of the person should be; for the greatest errors are committed, and the most judgment is shown, in the choice of individuals. ”

“ If being is realized in a true and proper sense, and intrinsically, as it undoubtedly is, in whatever is distinguishable from nothingness, why not say that we should affirm being or reality of all things “either as a genus in the strict sense, or else in some sense not analogical but proper, after the manner in which we predicate a genus of its species and individuals?... ”

“ Whatever proposition we like to take may be read either in extension or in intension, according as we fix our minds on the fact of inclusion in a class or the fact of the possession of attributes.
§ 333. It will be seen that the term 'species,' as it appears in the scheme, has a wholly different meaning from the current acceptation in which it was defined above. Species, in its now accepted meaning, signifies the relation of a smaller class to a larger one: as it was originally intended in the heads of predicables it signifies a class in reference to individuals. ”

“ All the secondary qualities, colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat, hardness, everything, in short, which is an affection of sense, may be generalised at one sweep into our mere knowledge of things. But the primary qualities, which are usually restricted to extension and figure, and which constitute, it is said, the objective or real essence of things, and which are entirely independent of us, into what shall they be generalised? ”

“ If we could list all the traits, each representing some one characteristic of human nature, and measure the amount of each of them possessed by a man, we could represent his nature—read his character—in a great equation. ”

“ It becomes apparent also why the analysis of the categories starts from the singular thing, for it is the primary form under which all that is becomes object of knowledge, and the other categories modify or qualify this real individual. ”

“ The features of any object that we contemplate may with intelligent judgment be divided into two classes, according as they are inherently essential, or else merely contributory, to the existence of that object as an individual entity. ”

“ Characteristics of every extreme of diversity meet together here, and the task of adequate classification is beset with difficulty. We will restrict ourselves to pointing out a few of the most general character. ”

“ That when a word admits of a variety of significations, these different significations must all be species of the same genus, and must consequently include some essential idea common to every individual to which the generic term can be applied. ”

“ We have seen that the distinction of primary from secondary qualities has not taken us far. Let us, without regard to it, and once more directly turning to what meets us, examine another way of making that intelligible. We find the world’s contents grouped into things and their qualities. ”

“ Whether the varieties which are apparent in the human character are to be traced up to the different methods employed in its formation, or to some inherent peculiarity in the constitution of the mind, is a much vexed question amongst philosophers. Education and example no doubt exercise a most material influence, but they do not operate in a uniform manner, as we have known the most opposite characters rise out of the same family. ”