As a result of its more strict application of the elementary relating and comparing functions, the activity of understanding follows definite rules even in its external form, especially when it is highly developed. The principle that holds in general for imagination and even for mere remembering, that the relations of different psychical contents which are apperceived are presented, not simultaneously, but successively, so that in every case we pass on from one relation to a succeeding -- this principle becomes for the activity of understanding, a rule of discursive division of aggregate ideas. It is expressed in the law of the duality of the logical forms of thought, according to which analysis resulting from relating comparison divides the content of the aggregate idea into two parts, subject and predicate, and may then separate each of these parts again once or several times. These second divisions give rise to grammatical forms that stand in a logical relation analogous to that of subject and predicate, such as noun and attributive, verb and object, verb and adverb. In this way the process of apperceptive analysis results in judgment.
For the psychological explanation of judgment it is of fundamental importance that it be regarded, not as a synthetic, but as an analytic function. The original aggregate ideas that are divided by judgment into their reciprocally related components, are exactly like ideas of imagination. The products of analysis that result are, on the other hand, not at in the case of imagination, images of more limited extent greater clearness, but conceptual ideas, that is ideas which stand, with regard to other partial ideas of the same whole, in some one of those relations which are discovered through the general relating and comparing functions. If we call the [p. 265] aggregate idea which is subjected to such a relating analysis a thought, then a judgment is a division of this thought into its components, and a concept is the product of such a division.
17. Concepts found in this way are arranged in certain general classes according to the character of the analyses that took place. These classes are the concepts of objects, attributes, and states. Judgment, as a division of the aggregate idea, sets an object in relation to its attributes or states, or various objects in relation to one another. Since a single concept can never, strictly speaking, be thought of by itself, but is always connected in the whole idea with one or more other concepts, the conceptual ideas are strikingly different from the ideas of imagination because of the indefiniteness and variableness of the former. This indefiniteness is essentially increased by the fact that a single concept may exist in an unlimited variety of modifications, since concepts which result from different cases of like judgment, may form components of many ideas that differ in their concrete characters. Such general concepts constitute, on account of the wide application of relating analysis to different contents of judgment, the great majority of all concepts; and they have a great number of corresponding single ideational contents.
It becomes necessary, accordingly, to choose a single idea as a representative of the concept. This gives the conceptual idea a greater definiteness.
At the same time there is always connected with this idea the consciousness that it is merely a representative. This consciousness generally takes the form of a characteristic feeling. This conceptual feeling may be traced to the fact that obscure ideas, which have the attributes that make them suitable to serve as representations of the concept, tend to force themselves into consciousness in the form of variable memory images.
As evidence of this we have the fact that the feeling is very intense so [p. 266] long as any concrete image of the concept is chosen as its representative, as, for example, when a particular individual stands for the concept man, while it disappears almost entirely so soon as the representative idea differs entirely in content from the objects included under the concept. Word-ideas fulfil this condition and that is what gives them their importance as universal aids to thought. These aids are furnished to the individual consciousness in a finished so that we must leave to social psychology the question of the psychological development of the processes of thought active in the formation of language (comp. § 21, A).
18. From all that has been said it appears that the activities of imagination and understanding are not specifically different, but interrelated. inseparable in their rise and manifestations, and based at bottom on the same fundamental functions of apperceptive synthesis and analysis. What was true of the concept "memory" holds also of the concepts "understanding" and "imagination": they are names, not of unitary forces or faculties, but of complex phenomena made up of elementary psychical processes of the usual, not of a specific, distinct kind. Just as memory is a general concept for certain associative processes, imagination and understanding are general concepts for particular forms of apperceptive activity. They have a certain practical value as ready means for the classification of an endless variety of differences in the capacity of various persons for intellectual activity. Each class thus found may in turn contain an endless variety of gradations and shades.
Thus, neglecting the general differences in grade, we have as the chief forms of individual imagination the perceptive and the combining forms; as the chief form of understanding, the inductive and deductive forms, the first being mainly concerned with the single logical relations and their combinations, the second more with general con- [p. 267] cepts and their analysis. A person's talent is his total capacity relating from the special tendencies of both his imagination and understanding.
[ 1] "Dichtung und Wahrheit"