REALIZING THE CONCRETE FROM THE ABSTRACT. 589 scribed by such abstractions as crystalline form, hardness, nature of surface, colour, lustre, &c. Now by a vigorous effort of constructive conception one might realize an actual specimen from the assemblage of abstract qualities. So with a plant or animal. The condition of success in this event is exactly the same as in the preceding examples. The mind must be well versed in actual specimens so as to be able to lay hold of some concrete recollection, by operating upon which a new specimen will emerge possessing all the properties of the description. A botanist can readily form to himself the picture of a new plant from the botanical description; a person less familiar with plants would find the construction very laborious, perhaps impossible. 13. The more we analyze or decompose concrete objects into the abstract qualities that make them up, the more difficult is it to remount to the concrete. Hence the most arduous attempt of all is to make actual nature rise up out of scientific and technical language,-to conceive minerals from a book of mineralogy, and the parts of the human body from anatomical description. This is the repulsive or unfavourable side of science and of abstract reasoning. On the other hand, it is by this process of resolving natural aggregates into their ultimate abstractions that we obtain the means of making new constructions widely differing from, and superior to anything that exists in our experience, by which many important ends in human life are furthered. New creations of science, and new devices of industry, result from this power of reconstituting the ultimate abstract elements of existing things. Even the artist will find his account in it, although it is not usual with him to carry abstraction so far as the man of science, or the man of practice. Many great poetic conceptions are the embodiment of an abstract idea, as in Milton's personification of the spirit of evil, and in many other attempts to construct characters so as to set forth some grand leading attribute in a manner different from anything in our experience of life. REALIZING OF REPRESENTATION OR DESCRIPTION. 14. What we have to state on this head is little else than an application of the remarks already made. When we are desired to conceive an object differing from any that we have ever known, we can only do so by constructing it out of qualities and particulars indicated in a representation or description. The machinery of representation for such an end is known to be very various; including pictures, sculptures, models, diagrams, and greatest of all, language. If we wish to conceive a living human face by means of a coloured portrait, we require an act of constructiveness to make up the difference between the painting and the reality; and for this purpose we must fuse or combine a living face with the features of the portrait till the one is completely adapted to the other. The difficulty lies in separating the suggestive part of the picture from the gross total of canvas and colour, and the labour is greater according as the painter has attempted to produce a work of art, that is, a pleasing combination of colour and forms. There is here that effort of analysis that I have already alluded to as the preliminary of many constructions, rendering them often very hard to accomplish. The same remarks apply to busts and sculpture in general. An unartistic model is the best medium for enabling the mind to rise to the living and actual reality of the thing aimed at. 15. Verbal description is the most universal mode of imparting to the mind new ideas and combinations; and the hearer or reader is called upon to put forth an effort of constructiveness to realize the intended image. There is only one method of procedure open to the party giving the description -to compose the unknown out of the known,-and the hearer must implement the process by the force of his own mind bringing together the suggested particulars into a combined total, with the requisite inclusions and exclusions. Language is made the medium for indicating the things that are to be brought together in the formation of the new compound; the MAXIM OF THE DESCRIBING ART. 591 constituent elements being concrete or abstract as the case may be. 16. With regard to the describing art in general, as applicable to all cases where a complex object or scene has to be represented to the view, the leading maxim is to combine a concrete or a type of the whole with an enumeration of the parts. This is in accordance with what has just been laid down respecting the best method of rising from abstract elements to a concrete embodiment. Some comprehensive designation that may spread out the main features of the object is indispensable to the description; and within this the details. may be arranged in proper form and order. The following is a very simple instance from Milton, which seems as if it could not have been stated otherwise than he has done; but art shows itself in carrying into complicated cases the method that appears self-evident in easy cases. The words in italics mark the comprehensive designation or type, the rest of the description giving the details: They plucked the seated hills, with all their load- Carlyle's description of the town and neighbourhood of Dunbar, the scene of Cromwell's decisive victory over the Scotch, is rendered vivid and conceivable, in consequence of his always prefacing particulars and details by terms and epithets that are at once comprehensive and picturesque :The small town of Dunbar stands high and windy, looking down over its herring boats, over its grim old castle, now much honeycombed, on one of those projecting rock-promontories with which that shore of the Firth of Forth is niched and Vandyked as far as the eye can reach. A beautiful sea; good land too, now that the plougher understands his trade; a grim niched barrier of whinstone sheltering it from the chafings and tumblings of the big blue German Ocean. Seaward, St. Abb's Head, of whinstone, bounds your horizon to the east, not very far off; west, close by, is the deep bay, and fishy little village of Belhaven the gloomy Bass and other rockislets, and farther, the hills of Fife, and foreshadows of the Highlands, are visible as you look seaward. From the bottom of Belhaven Bay to that of the next sea-bight St. Abb's-ward, the town and its environs form a peninsula. Along the base of which peninsula, not much above a mile and a half from sea to sea,' Oliver Cromwell's army, on Monday, 2d of September, 1650, stands ranked, with its tents and town behind it, in very forlorn circumstances. : Landward, as you look from the town of Dunbar, there rises, some short mile off, a dusky continent of barren heath hills; the Lammermoor, CONSTRUCTIVENESS IN SCIENCE. 17. The Abstractions, Inductions, Deductions, and Experimental processes of science, which we have already seen to be mainly dependent upon the workings of the law of similarity, afford likewise examples of Construction. The first in order of the scientific processes is Abstraction, or the generalizing of some property, so as to present it to the mind apart from the other properties that usually go along with it in nature. Thus a square in Euclid is an abstraction: in the world squareness is always accompanied with other properties, making the concrete, or actual, square,-a square pane of glass, a square of houses, &c. We have already seen that the forming of these abstract ideas is generally a result of the identifying action expressed by the law of Similarity. (See Similarity, § 34) We have now to point out a class of cases, where a considerable constructive effort is required in addition to the force of identification. There are abstractions of a peculiar order of subtlety, which cannot be arrived at, or embraced by the mind, except through a constructive operation, adapted to the case by much study of the particular instances. To take as example, the abstract idea of a gas. Here the material eludes the senses, and cannot be represented by an example, or an outline; like a mountain, or a circle, or a genus of plants. And if the individual gases are so difficult to represent, there must be a similar difficulty in attaining an idea of the property common to them all as a class. A case of this nature must be circumvented. When we have ascertained by experiment the properties of one gas, where only mountain sheep can be at home. The crossing of which by any of its boggy passes and brawling stream-courses no army, hardly a solitary Scotch packman, could attempt in such weather. To the edge of these Lammermoor heights David Leslie has betaken himself; lies now along the utmost spur of them, a long hill of considerable height. There lies he since Sunday night, in the top and slope of this Doon Hill, with the impassable heath continents behind him; embraces, as with outspread tiger-claws, the base-line of Oliver's Dunbar peninsula.' See on this subject a short treatise, by the Author, on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres,' in Chambers's Information for the People. CONSTRUCTION OF ABSTRACTIONS. 593 such as the air, we record them in the best language we can obtain, by comparison with the more palpable phenomena of solids and fluids. We find that the air is inert, and has weight; that it is elastic, like a spring; but that it is extremely light. Trying other gases we find similar properties to hold good. When, however, we experiment on the visible vapour of water, we find an absence of the elastic property belonging to air and invisible steam; in fact, this substance has nothing in common with aëriform bodies, but lightness or tenuity: and, in the exercise of our best discretion, we think it right to exclude it from the group, and embrace together only those that have the property of elasticity, or spontaneous expansion, constituting this the defining mark, or the abstract idea of the class. By a similar process of groping experiment, and the exercise of judgment, the scientific world has arrived at abstract conceptions of the subtle properties expressed by Heat, Electricity, Chemical affinity, Cell-reproduction, &c. The definitions of these attributes are constructions laboriously worked out. Nevertheless, the means of effecting them, so far as intellect is concerned, is still by the ordinary laws of association, which bring up to the view various facts, expressions and comparisons, in order to make tentative combinations; and these are gradually improved upon, as their unsuitability to the particular phenomena is discovered on examination. An intellect well versed in the kind of conceptions necessary, and acting vigorously in the reviving of these by association, is naturally qualified for the work. Next to this, there is required a clear perception of the subject to be seized, for unless we are able to judge accurately of the fitness of the constructions proposed we shall rest satisfied with something far short of the truth. In every kind of endeavour this power of judging clearly is indispensable; without it the most copious intellectual resources are wasted to no purpose. Possessing thus the material of the construction and a clear sense of the fitness or unfitness of each new tentative, there is needed nothing but patience, or as Newton termed Q Q |