SECTION TWO

Single Chapter

41. The fact I propose to explain is the existence of ideas or of human cognitions.(43)
Human beings possess cognitions, think about various things, in short, have ideas. What these ideas are is not my present concern; I am quite happy to accept the everyday view shared by all. My question is: where do they come from, or why are they found in the human spirit? Anyone can ask himself this question but not everyone is equally capable of answering it. This is the well-known problem of the origin of ideas that has divided schools and philosophers down the ages.

42. To outline as briefly as possible where the difficulty lies, I argue as follows.
When we form a judgment, we already need universal notions in our mind.
For example, to say: 'This sheet of paper is white' or 'This man is wise,' we need to possess the prior universal idea of whiteness and of wisdom; otherwise we could not apply such predicates to one subject rather than another.
Demonstrating this by induction for all the different species of judgments would be a long task, yet it can be done accurately. As a result, we can demonstrate that a judgment is merely the operation whereby we unite a given predicate to a given subject. In doing so, we
1. distinguish between subject and predicate, viewing them as two mentally distinct things in such a way that we can concentrate exclusively on one and distinguish it from the other;
2. recognise that in nature these two entities are united, that is, we do not concentrate on each of the two terms separately but on their relationship of union in the subject.

This analysis of judgment enables us to see that in such an operation we first conceive a predicate as distinct from its subject. Without this we would be unable to make a judgment. Moreover, a predicate distinct from its subject always contains a universal notion since, until it is joined to a subject, it can be joined to a number of subjects, even to an infinite number of possible subjects. This is precisely what the word 'universal' means when applied to ideas.
However, if the human mind cannot carry out the operation called judgment without possession of some prior universal notion or idea, how does the human mind manage to form universal ideas?

43. It is easy to see that the human mind can form a universal idea in only one of the following two ways 1. by abstraction or 2. by judgment.
Abstraction enables us to derive a universal idea from a particular idea(44) on which our spirit carries out the following operations:
1. it breaks down the particular idea into its two elements, that is, a) what is common and b) what is proper;
2. it discards what is proper;
3. it focuses its attention exclusively on the common aspects which are, in fact, the universal ideas for which we are looking.

It should be noted that 1. these three operations of our spirit which we exercise on a particular idea are focused upon an idea already existing in us, whatever its source; and 2. these operations are therefore aimed solely at observing the common feature on its own and in isolation, not to produce or generate it in our minds.
However, in order to observe what is common and universal in our particular ideas, we must assume that it is already present in them. Otherwise, we could neither observe it nor focus our attention upon it. And this common element is the pure idea.
Abstraction, therefore, is not adequate to explain how we form those ideas which are per se common and general, although certain philosophical schools maintain that it is. Abstraction merely enables us to observe such ideas where they already exist. It enables us to disentangle them, to distinguish them from every extraneous element, to bring them before our attention in perfect isolation.

44. It remains, therefore, that we form common or universal ideas by means of a judgment only.
But we have already seen that every judgment presupposes that we have within us some prior universal idea (cf. 42). A judgment is merely a mental operation which uses a universal idea, that is, applies it to a subject and, as it were, places the subject in a certain class of things which is determined by the universal idea. For example: when I judge that a person is good, I place him in the class of things formed by the universal idea of goodness. The same must be true of any other judgment.
Consequently, if we cannot begin to judge except by means of a universal idea, it is patently impossible to explain the formation of all universal ideas by means of judgments. We have to suppose that we are endowed with some pre-existing universal idea prior to all our judgments. With this idea, right from the start, we are able to make judgments and thus gradually form all the other universal ideas.

45. This is a brief outline of the difficulty faced by anyone who attempts to explain, uninfluenced by scholarly prejudice or common, arbitrary opinions, the origin of ideas. As we go forward, this difficulty will become increasingly obvious and seem too difficult to philosophers who consider they can deduce from the senses alone all the ideas which observation and consciousness tell us that we possess.

(43) Every idea imparts some knowledge, some cognition. It could be argued that pure ideas, which in themselves do not give information about real things, do not constitute any knowledge as such; something similar is found in Aristotle. Nevertheless, in the broad sense, 'knowledge' can be ascribed to all types of ideas. Moreover, ideas constitute the formal element of all types of knowledge, as we shall see.

(44) Here I need to say a word about the expression 'particular idea'. An idea is particular only in so far as it is associated in my mind with a real individual. As soon as the idea is detached from the individual, it acquires or rather exhibits universality. When it is free, I can apply it at will to an infinite number of equal individuals. Accordingly, the only absolutely individual or particular element in the idea is the real individual with which it is associated. This is not part of the idea itself, but something foreign to the idea to which it is linked not by nature but by the action of the intelligent spirit. 'Pure idea', therefore, I take as 'universal idea'. All this will be fully clarified as the work progresses.