Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

120 ABSTRACTION.
and the Realists about the existence of universals, I have taken
no notice of the intermediate sect called Conceptualists; whose
significant name stands for an idea. This being so, and it being withal
certain that names, which yet are not thought altogether insignificant, do
not always mark out particular conceivable ideas, it is straightway concluded that they stand for abstract notions. That there are many names
in use amongst speculative men, which do not always suggest to others
determinate particular ideas, is what nobody will deny. And a little attention will discover, that it is not necessary (even in the strictest reasonings)
significant names which stand for ideas should, every time they are used,
excite in the understanding the ideas they are made to stand for; in reading and discoursing, names being, for the most part, used as letters are in
algebra, in which, though a particular quantity be marked by each letter,
yet, to proceed right, it is not requisite that in every step each letter suggest
to your thoughts that particular quantity it was appointed to stand for.
" Besides, the communicating of ideas marked by words is not the chief
and only end of language, as is commonly supposed. There are other
ends, as the raising of some passion, the exciting to or deterring from an
action, the putting the mind in some particular disposition, to which the
fbrmer is in many cases barely subservient, and sometimes entirely omitted, when these can be obtained without it, as I think doth not unfrequently happen in the familiar use of language. I entreat the reader to
reflect with himself, and see if it doth not often happen, either in hearing
or reading a discourse, that the passions of fear, love, hatred, admiration,
disdain, and the like, arise immediately in his mind upon the perception of
certain words, without any ideas coming between. At first, indeed, the
words might have occasioned ideas that were fit to produce those emotions; but if I mistake not, it will be found that when language has once
grown familiar, the hearing of the sounds or sight of the characters is oft
immediately attended with those passions, which at first were wont to be
produced by the intervention of ideas that are now quite omitted. May
we not, for example, be affected with the promise of a good thing, though
we have not an idea of what it is? Or is not the being threatened with
danger sufficient to excite a dread, though we think not of any particular
evil likely to befall us, nor yet frame to ourselves an abstract? If any one
shall join ever so little reflection of his own to what has been said, I believe it will evidently appear to him, that general names are often used in
the propriety of language without the speaker's designing them for marks
of ideas of his own, which he would have them raise in the mind of the
hearer. Even proper names themselves do not seem always spoken with
a design to bring into our view the ideas of those individuals that are supposed to be marked by them. For example, when a schoolman tells me