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CHAPTER III.
WHY THE AMERICANS DISPLAY MORE READINESS AND MORE TASTE
FOR GENERAL IDEAS THAN THEIR FOREFATHERS THE ENGLISH.
The Deity does not regard the human race collectively. He
surveys at one glance and severally all the beings of whom
mankind is composed, and he discerns in each man the resemblances
which assimilate him to all his fellows, and the differences which
distinguish him from them. God therefore, stands in no need of
general ideas;[1] that is to say, he is never sensible of the necessity
of collecting a considerable number of analogous objects under the
same form for greater convenience in thinking.
Such is, however, not the case with man. If the human mind were to attempt to examine and pass a judgement on all the individual cases before it, the immensity of detail would soon lead it astray and bewilder its discernment: in this strait, man has re-
- ↑ [I have followed the author in what I conceive to be the misuse of the term “general ideas,” which, in the restricted sense here given it, will be more familiar to the reader of Condillac, than to the student of metaphysical writers of a more accurate style and of more enlarged conceptions. What is meant by the term here, is simply the result of that inductive process by which the human or finite understanding collects and classifies its impressions for greater convenience in thinking. It may safely be asserted that the Divine Mind does not require inductions to arrive at general ideas; but some inconvenience may arise from the apparent confusion under one term of the mere nominal species or collective notions derived by man from experience, with the general or universal ideas of real essences existing as principles in the Divine intelligence. It is therefore necessary to add that the term is not used in the latter sense in this place; but in a subsequent chapter it is applied, with a more correct and extensive signification, to the fundamental conceptions of religion and morality.—Translator's Note.]
