characteristics which are uniformly found in all objects
so named. This, however, is not the case.[1]
We speak of many things which we cannot represent:
names do not always stand for ideas. The definition
of the word triangle as a three-sided figure bounded
by straight lines, makes demands upon us which our
faculties of imagination are never fully able to meet;
for the triangle that we represent to ourselves is
always either right-angled or oblique-angled, and
not—as we must demand from the abstract
conception of the figure—both and neither
at once. The name “man” includes men
and women, children and the aged, but we are never
able to represent a man except as an individual of
a definite age and sex. Nevertheless we are in
a position to make a safe use of these non-presentative
but useful abbreviations, and by means of a particular
idea to develop truths of wider application. This
takes place when, in the demonstration, those qualities
are not considered which distinguish the idea from
others with a like name. In this case the given
idea stands for all others which are known by the same
name; the representative idea is not universal, but
serves as such. Thus when I have demonstrated
the proposition, the sum of all the angles of a triangle
is equal to two right angles, for a given triangle,
I do not need to prove it for every triangle thereafter.
For not only the color and size of the triangle are
indifferent, but its other peculiarities as well; the
question whether it is right-angled or obtuse-angled,
whether it has equal sides, whether it has equal or
unequal angles, is not mentioned in the demonstration,
and has no influence upon it. Abstracta exist
only in this sense. In considering the individual
Paul I can attend exclusively to those characteristics
which he has in common with all men or with all living
beings, but it is impossible for me to represent this
complex of common qualities apart from his individual
peculiarities. Self-observation shows that we
have no general concepts; reason, that we can have
none, for the combination of opposite elements in
one idea would be a contradiction in terms. Motion
in general, neither swift nor slow, extension in general,
at once great and small, abstract matter without sensuous
determinations—these can neither exist nor
be perceived.
[Footnote 1: Against the Berkeleyan denial of abstract notions the popular philosopher, Joh. Jak. Engel, directed an essay, Ueber die Realitaet allgemeiner Begriffe (Engel’s Schriften, vol. x.), to which attention has been called by O. Liebmann, Analysis tier Wirklichkeit, 2d ed., p. 473.]