Psychology, the study of behaviour / by William McDougall.

  • McDougall, William, 1871-1938.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychology, the study of behaviour / by William McDougall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    103/270 (page 97)
    times said that it is impossible to think of a general or abstract object, or, as is more commonly said, to form general and abstract ideas, without the aid of language. Now this can hardly be true; for in the mind of him who first discovers the similarity between classes of objects previously thought of separately, and who thus first thinks of the more general object, the apperceptive synthesis of systems must take place without the aid of a name for the more general object. By afterwards giving the object a name, he fixes it for his mind, and achieves a much greater power of thinking of it at will; and, farther, he becomes able to communicate his new way of thinking to others, and to enable them also to think of the more general object. Names, then, are not essential to the think- ing of general objects, but they greatly facilitate such thinking; they serve as ready means of bringing into play the mental systems corresponding to objects. In the case of general objects, they are much more service- able for this purpose than the sense-impres- sion made by any individual object of the class; for by such sense-impression one is led to think of the individual object with its specific peculiarities rather than of the general object: and when our aim is to discover truths D