the developing concept.
Definition of Concept.—A concept, then, is our general idea or notion of a
class of individual objects. Its function is to enable us to classify our knowledge,
and thus deal with classes or universals in our thinking. Often the basis of a
concept consists of an image, as when you get a hazy visual image of a mass of
people when I suggest mankind to you. Yet the core, or the vital, functioning
part of a concept is its meaning. Whether this meaning attaches to an image or a
word or stands relatively or completely independent of either, does not so much
matter; but our meanings must be right, else all our thinking is wrong.
Language and the Concept.—We think in words. None has failed to watch the
flow of his thought as it is carried along by words like so many little boats
moving along the mental stream, each with its freight of meaning. And no one
has escaped the temporary balking of his thought by failure to find a suitable
word to convey the intended meaning. What the grammarian calls the common
nouns of our language are the words by which we name our concepts and are
able to speak of them to others. We define a common noun as "the name of a
class," and we define a concept as the meaning or idea we have of a class. It is
easy to see that when we have named these class ideas we have our list of
common nouns. The study of the language of a people may therefore reveal
much of their type of thought.
The Necessity for Growing Concepts.—The development of our concepts
constitutes a large part of our education. For it is evident that, since thinking
rests so fundamentally on concepts, progress in our mental life must depend on a
constant growth in the number and character of our concepts. Not only must we
keep on adding new concepts, but the old must not remain static. When our
concepts stop growing, our minds have ceased to grow—we no longer learn.
This arrest of development is often seen in persons who have settled into a life of
narrow routine, where the demands are few and of a simple nature. Unless they
rise above their routine, they early become "old fogies." Their concepts petrify
from lack of use and the constant reconstruction which growth necessitates.
On the other hand, the person who has upon him the constant demand to meet
new situations or do better in old ones will keep on enriching his old concepts
and forming new ones, or else, unable to do this, he will fail in his position. And
the person who keeps on steadily enriching his concepts has discovered the
secret of perpetual youth so far as his mental life is concerned. For him there is
no old age; his thought will be always fresh, his experience always