Description and Definition of the Idea

a) Description of the Idea

Let ten circles of varying diameter be drawn on a blackboard with chalks of different colours. Here we have ten pictures that differ in size, in colour, and in position or location on the blackboard. Yet, different as they are, the ten pictures represent an identical thing, and we say that each is “a circle.”

Now this is a remarkable thing — ten pictures that are different and yet represent the same thing. Studying the matter, we discern that the pictures are different only in points that do not necessarily belong to the identical thing expressed or represented in each of them. The size of the pictured circle has nothing to do with its being a circle — it might be larger or smaller and still be a circle. Similarly, the colour and location might be changed without destroying them as representations of an identical thing. These points that may be altered without affecting the representative character of the pictures are non-essential points; they are accidental in the representations. They happen to be this particular size, colour, etc., but might just as well be otherwise as far as their representative value is concerned.

Yet these accidental points serve a purpose: they distinguish each individual picture from the others. These accidentals mark the individual picture, and they are called individuating marks or individuating notes.

The identical thing which the pictures represent is an essence — it is the essence circle. But we do not grasp or apprehend this essence by our senses. The eye does not see the essence circle. What the eye sees is the individual pictures, the individuating notes. It is the mind — the intellect or understanding — that peers beneath the individuating notes and apprehends the single identical thing represented in the ten varying pictures. The mind grasps the essence circle, separating it out from the individuating notes that represent it.

The mind’s grasp of an essence is an idea.

The essence of a thing is that which makes the thing what it is in its basic reality. When the mind has a clear grasp of an essence, it can express that essence in a definition. Thus when one knows that the circle is “a closed curved line, alike in all particulars, every point of which is equidistant from a point within or centre,” one has the idea of circle clearly and distinctly formed in one’s mind.

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b) Formation of the Idea

Ideas are formed by the mental operation called Simple Apprehension — that is, separating out an essence from its individuating notes and grasping it. This operation involves two or more acts of the mind. The chief acts that can enter into Simple Apprehension are: attention, abstraction, reflection, comparison, analysis, and synthesis.

First Illustration

A boy who has never seen a representation of a circle is shown one drawn in white in the upper left corner of a blackboard.

1. Sensation beholds the picture as a sensible object.
2. The mind attends to what the sense perceives — it focuses upon the picture and knows it as this thing.
3. The mind discerns that the colour, location, and size are not essential to the thing represented. The picture might be larger, or drawn elsewhere, or in another colour, and still represent the same thing.
4. Therefore the mind abstracts: it leaves the individuating notes out of account and lays hold of the thing which those notes happen to clothe in this instance.

The mind has thus formed an idea by acts of attention and abstraction following upon sensation.

Second Illustration

A little boy goes walking in the wood and is told to notice grass, moss, vines, bushes, trees, weeds, wild flowers — all plants. Slowly he forms the idea plant.

Through sensation and the mental acts of attention, comparison, and abstraction, he comes to know what any plant is, no matter how different individual plants may be in their accidental notes. He has the grasp of an essence: the mind’s grasp of an essence is an idea.

The Six Acts of Simple Apprehension

The first two must always be present in the process:

1. Attention is an act by which the mind fixes its consideration upon one object or group of objects to the complete or partial exclusion of all others.
2. Abstraction is an act by which the mind singles out for separate consideration a thing naturally bound up with other things and inseparable from them. In any given representation of a circle, the size, colour, and position are inseparable from that which they here and now represent. Yet the mind by abstraction can consider the essence apart from all the individuating notes that clothe it.
3. Reflection (or reflex act) is an act by which the mind turns, so to speak, upon itself, becomes advertently aware of itself, of its act, or of its state, and considers these things objectively.
4. Analysis is an act by which the mind resolves an idea into the essential notes — the other ideas — that make it up.
5. Synthesis is an act by which the mind compounds two or more ideas into one, making these the essential notes of a single idea.
6. Comparison is an act by which the mind directly notices likenesses and unlikenesses in the objects of attention, or reflexly notices such likenesses and unlikenesses in ideas.

Important Observations on Formation

1. All ideas have their beginnings, immediately or remotely, in sense perception. No ideas are innate in the mind. The process is a real working out of the essence of the realities perceived by the senses — not an arbitrary mental fabrication.

2. Ideas of sensible things are formed by the immediate activity of the mind upon sense-findings. Ideas of supersensible things (spirit, angel, soul, God) are formed by justified derivation from directly formed ideas. All ideas, therefore, have their first beginnings in sensation.

3. There are three grades of ideas, corresponding to three grades of abstraction:

Grade	Ideas	Abstraction	Prescinds from
Physical	Sensible things; also soul, angel, God (derived)	Physical abstraction	Individuating notes
Mathematical	Weights, numbers, measures, geometrical figures	Mathematical abstraction	Individuating notes + everything except understandable quantity
Metaphysical	Being, unity, goodness, truth, substance, accident	Metaphysical abstraction	Individuating notes + quantity; most general representation of reality

These are called grades because each presupposes the foregoing, like steps in a stairway.

4. When abstraction has set aside individuating notes, there remains the understandable essence — the intelligible species. The mind actively impresses this upon itself (species impressa), and in reacting to the impression, expresses the species or essence (species expressa). The species expressa is the idea.

5. Synonyms for idea:

• Concept — inasmuch as the mind conceives the species expressa (distinguished from the percept or sense-image)
• Simple apprehension — inasmuch as the mind grasps the essence without affirming or denying anything of it
• Notion — inasmuch as the idea is that in which an essence is noted or known
• Mental image — inasmuch as the idea is an essential representation of an essence (idea itself derives from the Greek eidos, image)
• Species expressa — inasmuch as the mind expresses the essential likeness of an essence
• Mental term or verbum mentis — inasmuch as the mind expresses or names the essence
• Intention — inasmuch as the mind in apprehending tends to its object to grasp it; distinguished as first intentions (the apprehension itself) and second intentions (the mind’s advertence to its own ideas)

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c) Constituents of the Idea

Most ideas are the product of synthesis, though the mind does not become aware of this until it reflects and analyses its ideas. Such analysis shows that most ideas are made up of other ideas compounded together. The component ideas are called the essential notes of the idea.

Analysis of the Idea Man

1. Man first of all represents a being. The idea of being is the first essential note in all compound ideas. It is simple and cannot be further analysed.
2. We conceive man not as being such as wisdom or whiteness, but as a subsistent being.
3. We conceive man not as a spiritual substance but as a bodily one.
4. We conceive man not as an inert body but as a living being.
5. We conceive man not as having mere plant-life but as endowed with sense and sensation — as sentient.
6. We conceive man not as merely sentient like a brute animal but as thinking and willing — as rational.

The sum-total of essential notes that make up an idea is called its Comprehension (sometimes: Connotation).

The sum-total of objects that the idea can represent in the mind is called its Extension (sometimes: Denotation).

The Comprehension of the idea man is: being, subsistent, bodily, living, sentient, rational. The Extension of the idea man is: the sum-total of all human beings.

The important axiom: As Comprehension increases (in number of essential notes), Extension decreases (in objects denoted), and vice versa.

The reason is plain: the more essential notes in the Comprehension of an idea, the more definite and limited the field in which it is applicable. Conversely, the more objects in the Extension, the less definite the idea must be.

Comprehension	Extension
Body	minerals, plants, animals, men
Body with life	plants, animals, men
Body with life and sentiency	animals, men
Body with life, sentiency, and reason	men

Note also the distinction between physical parts and metaphysical parts. Body and soul are physical parts of man — really separable in the thing itself. The essential notes of the idea (sentiency, rationality, etc.) are metaphysical parts or metaphysical grades — distinguishable in the mind, but not implying a corresponding physical partition in the object.

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d) Definition of the Idea

An idea is the representation of the essence of a thing in the mind.

Three elements of this definition deserve examination:

1. It is a representation. Not a picture. A picture is a material likeness of an individual bodily reality, limited to one man, one moment, one place. The idea man is the living grasp of what any man is — at any time, in any place, irrespective of dress, nationality, age. Nor is the idea a phantasm or fancy of the imagination, which has all the limitations of a portrait. The idea represents the essence in an immaterial way; the phantasm represents an individual in a material way.

2. It is the representation of an essence. The essence — sometimes called the quiddity or whatness — is that which makes the thing what it is. The answer to the question “What is it?” must not be a mere description or accidental characterisation, but the actual definition of what the thing is in its basic reality.

3. It is a representation of an essence in the mind. Not in the senses, not in the imagination. The senses can perceive only individual bodily things. The imagination forms phantasms representing individual bodily reality. The idea is a representation beyond the capacity of the senses and the imagination; it is necessarily in the mind.

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Summary of the Article

Four important points have been covered:

1. Description of the idea — the mind’s grasp of an essence, distinguished from individuating notes which accidentally clothe that essence.
2. Formation of the idea — by Simple Apprehension, involving the six mental acts (attention, abstraction, comparison, reflection, analysis, synthesis); the three grades of abstraction; synonyms for idea.
3. Constituents of the idea — Comprehension (the sum-total of essential notes) and Extension (the sum-total of objects denoted); their inverse ratio; the distinction between physical and metaphysical parts.
4. Definition of the idea — a representation of the essence of a thing in the mind — examined phrase by phrase.