anticipatory experience is a fiction, the remembered experience is a re-percept. § 16. The thought must carefully be retained in view that a constructive fiction of the mind is not necessarily of objective untruth and invalidity. All that is meant by the term fiction is that in the mind of the individual a construction so denominated is made which has no correspondent (to that individual) in presentative cognition. Or, that a construction is made which in the minds of a definite or an indefinite number of individuals has no such correspondent. Accordingly it may and often does transpire (as has been before remarked) that what is properly at one time a fiction becomes afterward a scientific truth; or that which to one person or class of persons is imagination simply, to another class has a confirmation in presentative experience. There is no necessary antithesis between a scientific truth and a mental fiction; the antithesis lies between reality as apprehended in presentative experience and fictitious construction or fiction in representation. The term imagination may be properly applied to the process, but makes an awkward name for the product. The test of a fiction is its non-accordance with presentative experience. A concrete object which has no prototype in nature, an hypothesis as yet unverified, an event expected but not yet come into experience, ideal standards by which experience is measured-all are fictions and entitled to be regarded as products of the constructive powers. When they become realised in experience, though still as to their origin products of construction, they receive a new and different value from being expressions of facts in nature (nature as matter or nature as mind) and are entitled to be placed in other groups of mental products. § 17. The symbolical character of fictions is oftentimes obvious. A type of a species stands for many individuals embraced in that species; an ideal line or triangle symbolises all linear and triangular figures; ideal pictures of houses, streets, noise and bustle of busy life, symbolise to us the city we have never seen; an ideal of a beautiful landscape is a representative of a vast multitude of agreeable experiences that we have had; an ideal of moral excellence, a symbol of an indefinite number of sentiments and utilities that have come within the cognisance and experience of ourselves or our ancestors. So also the pictures of heaven upon which the mind fondly dwells; and so also the ideal we form of prominently too is this fact exemplified in the constructions made to indicate to the mind distances, as that between the planets or the suns; the ideal image of the distance between the earth and Venus, or the moon is a wholly symbolical cognition. Even terrestrial distances are represented in a symbolical construction. The idea we form of the space between one mile-post and another is a creation symbolising certain experiences we have had of passing between mile-posts, or going over equivalent lengths on the road. Finally, when we try to realise that which is a mere negation, we do so only by a positive symbolical idea. Infinity is made a subject of predication only by a finite positive symbolical image purely fictitious. § 18. There can be no doubt that the study of mental fictions is highly important, and even indispensable to the progress of psychological science. To determine the relations of these products to presentative knowledge, to ascertain how far they can be verified, and according to what laws they are formed; to discover to what extent they can be relied upon as giving information of what is beyond, or has hitherto been beyond, presentative experience are desiderata as great as anything which can be suggested in connection with the science of mind. Some of the most important interests of human kind are here involved, and the prediction may be ventured that perhaps the most valuable work of the future in psychology and metaphyics will be done by those who devote themselves to the investigation and elucidation of the constructive fictions of the intellect. § 19. To recapitulate: Fictions are intellectual constructions which are not as wholes in exact conformity with a prior presentative experience. They are of five degrees of complexity, and embrace specifically, ideals of beauty, truth, and goodness, much à priori cognition, hypotheses and anticipations of the future, all these making up and including the most prominent groups. CHAPTER LIII. DEFINITIONS AND DIVISIONS. DEFINITIONS. § 1. A DEFINITION is a proposition declaratory of the meaning of a word: this is the clearest statement of what a definition itself is, and yet the process of definition and its psychological import need some further explanation. With that process, as a process, we have no other concern here than to refer to it to the extent necessary to make apparent the exact position of definitions as products, inasmuch as the process is not different from the general processes of mental actions which have been expounded to the degree of which the ability of the writer and the necessities of the subject admitted. A word is simply a mark, and, as has been elsewhere seen, its meaning resides in its connotation. Connotative names, then, are those which allow of definition: non-connotatives are not subject to the process. But although definition is a matter of the declaration of the meaning of a word, since words are representatives of ideas, explaining a word's signification involves some sort of psychological process. Since those names which admit of connotation are general names standing for concepts, it is apparent that whatever mental process takes place is in and upon concepts. Furthermore, since definition is not an enumeration of individuals, it must have relation to the intension rather than the extension of a general notion. general notion. So that psychologically considered the process is one of unfolding in propositions the intension of a concept. This requires a decomposition of the general notion into lesser generalities, a breaking up of the same into groups of homogeneous particulars until the whole notion is laid out in order. And as each lesser generalisation is made it is marked off or separated from something and the whole is contrasted with something, so that additional definiteness may often be obtained by noting the generalised properties of those things with which contrasts are taken in the process of generalising the partieulars of the concept whose definition is sought. Where a notion is composed of several notions which are distinct and well generalised, the work of definition is much simplified, for it is only necessary prominently too is this fact exemplified in the constructions made to indicate to the mind distances, as that between the planets or the suns; the ideal image of the distance between the earth and Venus, or the moon is a wholly symbolical cognition. Even terrestrial distances are represented in a symbolical construction. The idea we form of the space between one mile-post and another is a creation symbolising certain experiences we have had of passing between mile-posts, or going over equivalent lengths on the road. Finally, when we try to realise that which is a mere negation, we do so only by a positive symbolical idea. Infinity is made a subject of predication only by a finite positive symbolical image purely fictitious. § 18. There can be no doubt that the study of mental fictions is highly important, and even indispensable to the progress of psychological science. To determine the relations of these products to presentative knowledge, to ascertain how far they can be verified, and according to what laws they are formed; to discover to what extent they can be relied upon as giving information of what is beyond, or has hitherto been beyond, presentative experience are desiderata as great as anything which can be suggested in connection with the science of mind. Some of the most important interests of human kind are here involved, and the prediction may be ventured that perhaps the most valuable work of the future in psychology and metaphyics will be done by those who devote themselves to the investigation and elucidation of the constructive fictions of the intellect. § 19. To recapitulate: Fictions are intellectual constructions which are not as wholes in exact conformity with a prior presentative experience. They are of five degrees of complexity, and embrace specifically, ideals of beauty, truth, and goodness, much à priori cognition, hypotheses and anticipations of the future, all these making up and including the most prominent groups. CHAPTER LIII. DEFINITIONS AND DIVISIONS. DEFINITIONS. § 1. A DEFINITION is a proposition declaratory of the meaning of a word: this is the clearest statement of what a definition itself is, and yet the process of definition and its psychological import need some further explanation. With that process, as a process, we have no other concern here than to refer to it to the extent necessary to make apparent the exact position of definitions as products, inasmuch as the process is not different from the general processes of mental actions which have been expounded to the degree of which the ability of the writer and the necessities of the subject admitted. A word is simply a mark, and, as has been elsewhere seen, its meaning resides in its connotation. Connotative names, then, are those which allow of definition: non-connotatives are not subject to the process. But although definition is a matter of the declaration of the meaning of a word, since words are representatives of ideas, explaining a word's signification involves some sort of psychological process. Since those names which admit of connotation are general names standing for concepts, it is apparent that whatever mental process takes place is in and upon concepts. Furthermore, since definition is not an enumeration of individuals, it must have relation to the intension rather than the extension of a general notion. So that psychologically considered the process is one of unfolding in propositions the intension of a concept. This requires a decomposition of the general notion into lesser generalities, a breaking up of the same into groups of homogeneous particulars until the whole notion is laid out in order. And as each lesser generalisation is made it is marked off or separated from something and the whole is contrasted with something, so that additional definiteness may often be obtained by noting the generalised properties of those things with which contrasts are taken in the process of generalising the particulars of the concept whose definition is sought. Where a notion is composed of several notions which are distinct and well generalised, the work of definition is much simplified, for it is only necessary |