§ 2. Conceptual Analysis and Synthesis. — All ideational activity as compared with perceptual activity involves some kind and degree of generalisation. We have seen that mental images are in general fainter and much less detailed than the corresponding percepts. They lack the determinate particularity of actual sense-experience. But indeterminateness in the image involves indeterminateness in the meaning of the image in so far as expression of the meaning depends merely on the presence of the image without being otherwise defined and developed. Hence any given mental image taken by itself may be equally capable of representing a great number of diverse objects. If I think of wealth, I may have in my mind a vague mental picture of a bale of goods: but the same mental image might equally have been present in my mind had I been thinking of a wharf, of commerce, or of a warehouse. Similarly, a bag of sovereigns might stand either for wealth, or a miser, or the Bank of England. The mental picture of a spade might stand either for the act of digging, for a garden, for a navvy, or for a gravedigger. But the mere indeterminateness of the mental image is very far from explaining the beginnings of general thinking. We give an essentially inadequate view of the generalising function of thought, when we dwell exclusively on what it omits. This negative side of the process has for its indispensable correlate a positive side. In any train of thought, we are under the guidance of a controlling interest constructing an ideal whole. Each of the several ideal representations which successively emerge contributes its part to this ideal structure. The details of actual perception which are omitted in the ideal representation are omitted, because they will not fit in to our ideal combinations. We can no more use the complete details of actual perception in building up our mental structure than we can use unhewn stones in building a house. But in this account of the matter it is indirectly implied that the indeterminateness of ideal representation is compensated for by another kind of determination. What is vague and indefinite in the several images and their meanings is made relatively definite and complete by the combination of ideas as the train of thought advances. The several ideas are defined by their relations to each other in the ideal whole. Thus we have side by side a process of analysis and one of synthesis. By the process of analysis, the concrete detail of actual senseperception is broken up, and certain aspects of it selected. In contrast with the concrete totality of perception, these partial aspects have a more or less general or conceptual character. The analysis may therefore be called conceptual analysis, and the corresponding synthesis, conceptual synthesis. By conceptual synthesis, the partial aspects are recombined into a new whole. Similarly, in building a house, we have first to go to the quarry and detach the single stones from it, afterwards hew them into shape, and then build with them a new structure. This may be illustrated by the simple recall of a series of events in the order in which they actually occur in sense-experience, or of a number of objects in the order in which they were actually presented in space. The word now and the word here have different meanings from the point of view of senseperception and of ideal combination. From the point of view of senseperception the word now means the actual moment of sensation, and here means the direct presence of an object to our percipient organism, as immediately revealed by the sensation which produces it. But in ideally recalling a series of events in time, or a grouping of objects in space, actual sensation is absent, and can no longer serve as a distinguishing mark of what is now present or what is here present. The individualising details of present perception are to a very large extent absent from the ideal reproduction. The now and the here must therefore be otherwise defined. In fact, they are defined by the combinations into which they enter. They become purely relative terms. To go back to the old example, suppose that I picture myself as eating my breakfast.* I pass in review successive events. I mentally enter the breakfastroom; then sit down at the table; then pour out the tea; then open a newspaper; then help myself to fish, and so on. If I want to represent vividly what took place, I may say now instead of then, and think in the historic present. Now I am entering the breakfastroom, now I am sitting down, now I am pouring out the tea, and so on. Whether I say now or then, obviously what I am doing is to define the temporal position of each event by its relation to others in a series. The word now becomes purely relative in its application. Any part of the series may be regarded as a now in relation to what comes before it and what comes after it. Similarly, by changing the point of view, any part of the series which was previously regarded as a now, may become a then. It all depends upon our point of departure. If we mentally pass from an earlier part of the train to a later, what was previously a now becomes a then, what was previously future becomes present or past, and so on.

*I have supposed this train of ideas to take place by means of a series of visual images. I have done so because the treatment of the function of language is reserved for the next chapter. But as a matter of fact most people would naturally recall a series of past events in the way of verbal description, either as a substitute for, or an accompaniment of, verbal imagery. It is the peculiarity of words that they are indeterminate in their meaning, not in their nature as mental images.

This example is typical. In all trains of ideational thinking, the several parts are made definite and determinate by their relations within the ideal whole which is being constructed. In this way the concrete determinateness of sense perception is replaced by a new kind of determinateness, that which is due to conceptual synthesis. In this sense we are to understand the dictum of Hegel, that thought passes always from the abstract to the concrete. One abstraction combines with and supplements another, so as to make the whole more and more concrete. The concreteness thus attained is of course different in kind from that of actual perception, and must always fall short of it. But it is at least equally true that the concreteness of actual perception falls short of that which is attained by ideal synthesis. In the process of ideal synthesis distinctions and relations are apprehended of which sense perception can never become aware. By ideal combination the world comes to be presented as a unified system of which only a very small part is ever actually present to the senses of an individual percipient. Thus sense perception is fragmentary as compared with ideal combination, and in this sense is less concrete.