"Treatise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Berkeley George)

13. To give the reader a yet clearer view of the nature of
abstract ideas, and the uses they are thought necessary to, I shall
add one more passage out of the Essay on Human Understanding, (IV.
vii. 9) which is as follows: "Abstract ideas are not so obvious or
easy to children or the yet unexercised mind as particular ones. If
they seem so to grown men it is only because by constant and
familiar use they are made so. For, when we nicely reflect upon
them, we shall find that general ideas are fictions and contrivances
of the mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do not so easily
offer themselves as we are apt to imagine. For example, does it not
require some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle
(which is yet none of the most abstract, comprehensive, and
difficult); for it must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither
equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at
once? In effect, it is something imperfect that cannot exist, an
idea wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent ideas
are put together. It is true the mind in this imperfect state has need
of such ideas, and makes all the haste to them it can, for the
conveniency of communication and enlargement of knowledge, to both
which it is naturally very much inclined. But yet one has reason to
suspect such ideas are marks of our imperfection. At least this is
enough to show that the most abstract and general ideas are not
those that the mind is first and most easily acquainted with, nor such
as its earliest knowledge is conversant about."- If any man has the
faculty of framing in his mind such an idea of a triangle as is here
described, it is in vain to pretend to dispute him out of it, nor
would I go about it. All I desire is that the reader would fully and
certainly inform himself whether he has such an idea or no. And
this, methinks, can be no hard task for anyone to perform. What more
easy than for anyone to look a little into his own thoughts, and there
try whether he has, or can attain to have, an idea that shall
correspond with the description that is here given of the general idea
of a triangle, which is "neither oblique nor rectangle, equilateral,
equicrural nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once?"

14. Much is here said of the difficulty that abstract ideas carry
with them, and the pains and skill requisite to the forming them.
And it is on all hands agreed that there is need of great toil and
labour of the mind, to emancipate our thoughts from particular
objects, and raise them to those sublime speculations that are
conversant about abstract ideas. From all which the natural
consequence should seem to be, that so difficult a thing as the
forming abstract ideas was not necessary for communication, which is
so easy and familiar to all sorts of men. But, we are told, if they
seem obvious and easy to grown men, it is only because by constant and
familiar use they are made so. Now, I would fain know at what time
it is men are employed in surmounting that difficulty, and
furnishing themselves with those necessary helps for discourse. It
cannot be when they are grown up, for then it seems they are not
conscious of any such painstaking; it remains therefore to be the