Chapter I Introduction
Henrik Lagerlund
Every science and all areas of philosophy develop or change through the creation and change of their concepts and their terminology. A specific science does not get established until it has developed a proper terminology and conceptual framework for itself. These concepts are then gradually formed as the science develops and sometimes they are dropped and new are created. There are lots to be said in favor of the notion that the formation of conceptual frameworks is what science and philosophy are all about.
If we adopt such a view of the development of science and philosophy, interesting perspectives open up for the historian of science and philosophy. The task of the historian becomes to trace the creation and change of concepts that are the basis of the science and philosophy of a certain time. But it also, I think, presents the historian with an important task, which has implications for contemporary science and philosophy as well, namely it gives the historian an opportunity and a possibility to clarify concepts used in the science and philosophy of today, which might help considerably in enhancing our understanding of the things we are now doing.
Historical research of concept formation is probably more useful in philosophy than in science, since the concepts of philosophy are for the most part less exact and developed than the concepts of science. The formation of concepts seems also to be slightly different in science than in philosophy, but on the other hand philosophical conceptions of the world are often at a more fundamental level than those of the exact sciences. In philosophy, it seems to me, however, that a historical perspective of the basic concepts of some specific area of philosophy might help clarify a number of contemporary debates.
One such area is philosophical psychology or philosophy of mind. This is an area of philosophy that for a long time has been dominated and even at times paralyzed by its history. René Descartes is often claimed to have been the father of modern philosophy and particularly of the modern conception of the mind. Contemporary philosophy of mind has never been able to step out from under the shadow of Descartes. However, several recent studies of Descartes and of the later Middle Ages have first of all radically reread Descartes but also re-evaluated his originality in light of the medieval background. (See, for example, Alanen 2003.) It seems that the more in depth we get to know the philosophical psychology of the later Middle Ages the more complex the development of the modern conception of mind becomes. By
rethinking the background of our contemporary philosophy of mind, the history of philosophy might help rethink philosophy of mind.
If we take to heart the view of the development of philosophical conceptions expressed above, there are many things that speak for the importance of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the history of philosophy and science. During these centuries Aristotle, Avicenna and Averroes along with a number of other Greek and Arabic thinkers were translated into Latin and mixed with the already existing Western Latin tradition. The vast amount of new texts that pored over the Latin thinkers of the Middle Ages created conflicts, of course, but most of all it created new concepts and new ways of conceptualizing the world. What we know as modern thought developed out of this period.
This seems to be true of philosophical psychology in particular. Already in 1976 did the renaissance scholar F.E. Cranz argue for the importance of the medieval De anima commentaries for the understanding of the development of modern thinking (Cranz 1976). He argued that in Aristotle there is no distinction between sense experience and the thing that is sensed, or between thinking and what is thought of, that is, no clear distinction between subject and object. He argued further that the whole Ancient tradition followed Aristotle in this sense and that it is not until the later parts of the Middle Ages and in the De anima commentaries that a modern way of viewing the world appears. At the same time as these commentators on one level followed Aristotle they broke fundamentally with the Aristotelian worldview. In the De anima commentaries an old terminology was used, but it was developed to express the dualistic worldview. Some of these terms were ‘species’, ‘intentio’, ‘spirituale’, ‘similitudo’, ‘imago’ and ‘repraesentatio’.
Later research has shown that the Ancient tradition is more complex than what Cranz assumed, but I, however, think he was on to something when he claimed that the terminology and ultimately the conception of psychology got radically reworked in the later Middle Ages. The terms he mentioned are all part of the standard terminology of modern philosophical psychology. We should perhaps add ‘idea’ and ‘mens’ (‘mind’) to his list, but the main thing is that all these terms, the ones I added included, were introduced or redefined in the twelfth or the thirteenth centuries. Which means that by the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries the terminology and the concepts on which so-called modern philosophical psychology or philosophy of mind are based were already in place.
These concepts were then developed and remodelled to create different theories of thought and mind, but the foundation was already there. Some of these concepts were simply taken over from Ancient or Arabic philosophy by translation into Latin, but some were created by the translators in translating some Ancient or Arabic text, and yet others were taken from the existing tradition and applied in new ways.
One of these almost magical words in contemporary philosophy is ‘intentionality’. The Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano introduced it into the contemporary debate in the late nineteenth century. He used it to designate a property he thought would demarcate the ‘mental’ from the ‘non mental’. It was the property of ‘in-existence’, that is, the mental could, crudely put, have things existing in it that are otherwise
external to it. In more contemporary jargon it means that our thoughts have the property of being about things other than itself.
Brentano, however, states explicitly that he is only borrowing or re-actualizing a term used frequently by scholastic philosophers. The Latin term he was thinking of was ‘intentio’. It is in turn a translation of the Arabic terms ‘ma’na’ and ‘ma’qul’. These terms were used by, for example, Al-farabi and Avicenna. In scholastic philosophy, a distinction was usually made between a first intention, which is used to designate the intellects relation to an object immediately before it that is external to it, and a second intention, which is used in the same way but where the object is internal, that is, a first intention. In this respect late medieval philosophy simply adopted a terminology already existing in Arabic philosophy in much the same way contemporary philosophy has done. (See also the discussion of Augustine’s use of this notion in Caston 2001.)
Another term that is of vital importance for philosophical psychology as it has developed from Descartes onward is ‘representation’ or ‘mental representation’. It was also introduced into medieval philosophy in the twelfth century but not merely as a translation of an Arabic term. It was created or forged by a process of translation and philosophical discussion. The Latin term is, of course, the noun ‘repraesentatio’ or the verb ‘repraesentare’, and as is shown in Lagerlund’s chapter in this book the translators of Avicenna’s al-Shifâ’ took a whole group of related Arabic terms and translated them with either the Latin noun or verb for representation. Avicenna’s theory of the soul thus became in the Latin tradition a theory that relies heavily on representations in the soul and on a notion that external sensations are being represented to the intellect through the internal sense. This notion was then developed by scholastic thinkers influenced by Avicenna into a notion of mental representation, that is, a notion of concepts and meaning bearing signs in the intellect. The concept of internal representation and mental representation was thus created in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It also has a very interesting history in the Middle Ages as several papers in this book will show.
A third term that has been of enormous importance to modern philosophy is ‘idea’. What would the philosophy of John Locke be without it? Some attempts have been made to write the history of the term, but lots still remain to be done. (See, for example, Ariew 1999.) Obviously, the Latin term ‘idea’ was used in relation to the Platonic ideas and through Augustine this became associated with ideas or archetypes in the divine mind, but the same term was also used in theories about human cognition long before Descartes and Locke.
In the early thirteenth century, Richard Rufus of Cornwall claimed that the Platonic ideas are the objects of human cognition. Rufus is a very unorthodox Platonist and explains that the ideas or exemplars in Plato are like Aristotelian universals inhering in external object. All ideas are innate and there is no other connection between the ideas inhering in the external objects and the ones in our intellect except through God. Even though he talks about the process of abstraction in intellectual cognition, abstraction is just a triggering mechanism that actualizes our innate ideas. (See Wood 1997 and Normore in this book for a more careful discussion about Rufus use
of ideas.) The important thing for my argument here is, of course, that in Rufus we, perhaps for the first time, finds a thinker using the terminology of ‘idea’ to talk about objects in the human intellect.
Even though medieval thinkers tended to reserve the term ‘idea’ for the exemplars in the mind of God there are others that like Rufus used the term in relation to their discussion of human cognition. Durandus of St Pourcain and Peter of Ailly in the fourteenth century are such thinkers, and it seems to be through them that the usage spread into the sixteenth century (see Lagerlund 2003 and Normore’s chapter in this book). The history of the term ‘idea’ in the Middle Ages has not been properly studied yet, and medieval philosophical psychology has only begun to be studied, but already now we see that the relation of the so-called medieval and early modern periods are much more complex than previously thought.
This book is primarily about one of the notions mentioned above, namely ‘representation’ or even more narrow ‘mental representation’. It tries to bring out the complexity and sophistication of the medieval and early modern discussions of this notion by discussing both the metaphysical and the epistemological problems related to the notion of representation in the soul or mind. There are, however, a number of confusions about the term ‘representation’ as it is used by historians and philosophers. Let me therefore try to sort out some of this confusion and also to bring the topic of this book more into context.
It is often assumed at least by many historians of philosophy that as soon as one starts talking about representational ideas or representation in the soul then one has committed oneself to some position in epistemology. This assumption is foremost made in relation to Descartes – although less nowadays than before. Anthony Kenny, Richard Rorty and Barry Stroud are good examples. They all interpret Descartes as unable to draw a distinction between epistemology and philosophy of mind. In his book on Aquinas’s philosophy of mind, Anthony Kenny argues that between Descartes and Wittgenstein a proper analytic philosophy of mind did not really exist. His claim is that Descartes muddled the analytic discussion of the operations of the human mind with a discussion of epistemology. It took Wittgenstein and to some extent Gilbert Ryle to free philosophy of mind from epistemology. He writes in Aquinas on Mind:
Among philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition there has grown up, in the years since the Second World War, a branch of philosophy, a philosophical discipline, which is sometimes called philosophical psychology and sometimes philosophy of mind. The existence of the subject as a separate discipline in recent times was due primarily to the influence of Wittgenstein and secondarily to that of Ryle. In other philosophical traditions since the Renaissance it is not so easy to identify, as a specific area of philosophical study, the field which bears the name ‘philosophy of mind’. This is because since the time of Descartes the philosophical study of the operations of the human mind has taken place in the context of epistemology. Epistemology, as I have said, is the discipline which is concerned above all with the justification of our cognition, the vindication of claims to knowledge, the quest for reliable methods of achieving truth. Epistemology, as contrasted
with philosophy of mind, is a normative rather than descriptive or analytic branch of philosophy (18–19).
According to Kenny, medieval philosophy included what he calls an analytic or descriptive philosophical psychology. He is primarily thinking about the tradition of commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima. I am not going to take a stand on Kenny’s historical claims, but I would like to stress the distinction he puts forward to clarify some often repeated misconceptions about representation. I, however, would like to rephrase what he calls the normative in terms of the epistemological problem of representation and the descriptive in terms of the metaphysical (or ontological) problem of representation.
The epistemological problems of representation are well known and it has motivated whole philosophical traditions in modern philosophy. Over the years philosophers have taken different stands on these problems, for example, if one is a realist one can be a direct realist or a representational realist and then there are also a variety of idealist positions. The literature on Descartes is a good example of how difficult and problematic the discussions of the epistemological problem can become. Barry Stroud has in The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism expressed in a very clear manner the traditional reading of Descartes. He writes:
We are confined at best to what Descartes calls ‘ideas’ of things around us, representations of things or states of affairs which, for all we know, might or might not have something corresponding to them in reality. We are in a sense imprisoned within those representations, at least with respect to our knowledge. Any attempt to go beyond them to try to tell whether the world really is as they represent it to be can yield only more representations, … […] This can seem to leave us in the position of finding a barrier between ourselves and the world around us. There would then be a veil of sensory experience or sensory objects which we could not penetrate but which would be no reliable guide to the world beyond the veil. If we were in such a position, I think it is quite clear that we could not know what is going on beyond the veil. […] I have described Descartes’s sceptical conclusion as implying that we are permanently sealed off from a world we can never reach (32–3).
On his reading Descartes is a representational realist while others have argued for other readings (see Brown’s chapter in this book). It does not even occur to Stroud that the distinction I drew above might also apply to Descartes. Another philosopher that is even more reluctant to think that such a distinction might apply to Descartes is Rorty. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, he writes:
In Descartes’s conception – the one which became the basis for ‘modern’ epistemology – it is representations which are in the ‘mind’. The inner Eye surveys these representations hoping to find some mark which will testify to their fidelity (45).
Rorty has his own agenda and reading Descartes as he does fits this agenda perfectly. I, however, think that the picture is not as simple as the one Rorty presents and the starting point of modern philosophy (if one can locate at all a starting point) is not as confused as he wants us to believe. By ignoring the distinction between the
epistemological and the metaphysical (ontological) problems of representations he largely misunderstands early modern philosophy. An aim of the present book is to considerably complicate the origins of modern philosophy.
In late medieval philosophical psychology, the distinction between the epistemological and metaphysical side of internal representation is explicitly stated and all of the major thinkers seem to have been aware of it. In Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas for example writes:
The intelligible species is to the intellect what the sensible species is to the senses. But the sensible species is not what is perceived, but rather that by which the sense perceives. Therefore the intelligible species is not what is actually understood, but that by which the intellect understands (I, q. 85, art. 2, resp.).
Following Aquinas one must uphold a distinction between (i) the representation being what is understood and (ii) the representation being that by which something is understood. Taking a representation in the soul in the sense of (i) entails a commitment to representational realism (if one is a realist that is) on the epistemological problem while (ii) does not. (ii) might instead be read as a commitment to direct realism (if one is a realist that is), but it does not have to – it could be taken as a purely descriptive statement about representations. It is important to keep these distinctions in mind when approaching the history of this particular notion, and as will be clear from this book medieval and early modern philosophical psychology has been sensitive to them all along.
The first chapter in this volume by Henrik Lagerlund tries to trace the history of the term ‘representation’ in Latin philosophy from Ancient to late Scholastic philosophy. He argues that it is not until the Latin translation of Avicenna in the twelfth century that this term was associated with the internal senses or the human soul. He goes through a number of uses of the term by late Ancient and early medieval thinkers from Quintilian to Anselm and Abelard, but argues that none of them are systematically applied to the soul and they seem to have had no influence on the development of a notion of internal representation or representation in the soul.
In the Latin translation of the part of Avicenna’s Shifâ that came to be known as his De anima, the terminology of ‘representation’ is, however, used quite frequently. The translators translate a number of different terms in the Arabic with the Latin term for representation. Lagerlund argues on the basis of this that they are in this way forming the notion of internal representation. After Avicenna is translated the whole Scholastic tradition takes on this use of representation.
Lagerlund also argues that there is no attempt in the Latin text of Avicenna’s De anima to use this terminology in relation to the intellect or the mind. This kind of extension of Avicenna’s terminology can, however, be found in the thirteenth century; for example in the works of Thomas Aquinas. Our contemporary notion of mental representation meaning a mental sign or idea standing in for its object in our mind without relying on a notion of resemblance is first developed in the early fourteenth century, according to Lagerlund.
In his chapter ‘Abstract Truth in Thomas Aquinas’, Robert Pasnau asks what the abstracted objects of the intellect are, according to Aquinas, and, given that all things sensed are particular, how can these abstracted universal objects yield true beliefs about reality. The proper objects of the intellect are the natures or quiddities of things, argues Aquinas, but these natures only exist in particular things in reality external to the mind and never by themselves. In a sense, the objects of the intellect hence do not exist, Pasnau explains. They need to be abstracted or derived by the intellect, but the method of abstraction developed by Aquinas is not, according to Pasnau, suited to give an account of how these natures are structured.
On Pasnau’s reading of Aquinas, he is a nominalist in the contemporary sense that everything existing is particular. He then needs to give an account of how there can be abstract truths in such a reality, that is, he needs to give an account of how reality and concepts are related. He gives this account in terms of formal agreement between the object in reality and the object in the intellect. In his chapter, Pasnau elaborates this theory in detail.
In his contribution to this book ‘Representation in Scholastic Epistemology’, Martin Tweedale studies Ancient and the Scholastic approaches to intentional existence. He traces the discussion of this issue in Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Avicenna and Averroes, and explains how their discussions were taken up in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by Albert the Great and Aquinas. The species theory of cognition defended foremost by Aquinas was heavily debated in the late thirteenth century and the peculiarities of that theory eventually lead John Duns Scotus to introduce the distinction between subjective and objective being or existence.
The latter parts of Tweedale’s chapter are devoted to a treatment of William of Alnwick’s attempts to get around some of the problems introduced by Scotus’s theory. The objects of thought or knowledge that Scotus had called ens objectivum are themselves things with some kind of separate existence. Such entities lead immediately in the early fourteenth century to skeptical problems about what it is that we know. Alnwick tries very hard to explain what these objects of thought are and whether they have a separate existence or not.
Peter King presents an overview of medieval discussions of mental representation in his chapter ‘Rethinking Representation in the Middle Ages: A Vade-Mecum to Medieval Theories of Mental Representation’. He lists four ways to account for mental representation that he has found in the Middle Ages. These are:
(R1) The mental representation and the represented item have the same form.
(R2) The mental representation resembles, or is a likeness, of the represented item.
(R3) The mental representation is caused by the represented item.
(R4) The mental representation signifies the represented item.
He traces these four to different medieval thinkers and ends up in Ockham’s critical stance towards representation in general.
Mikko Yrjönsuuri argues in his chapter ‘William Ockham and Mental Language’ that Ockham, despite what some has recently argued, puts forward a theory of mental language according to which it is an ideal language. Yrjönsuuri argues for his view by comparing Ockham’s project with Chomsky’s Cartesian linguistics. His conclusion is that although Ockham never quite finished his project, it is very different from the seventeenth century linguistic theories, particularly since Ockham’s mental language is supposed to mirror the metaphysical structure of the world while the later linguistic theories thinks that it is the mind’s structure that it mirrored by the grammar.
In his contribution ‘The Matter of Thought’, Calvin Normore wants to relate the medieval and early modern discussions of the immateriality of the intellect with discussions about the ontological status of objects of thought. He starts by outlining two contemporary and medieval theories of what it means to think about something, namely the relational and the adverbial theories. Having done this he goes on to relate the medieval discussions about these theories to Aristotle’s argument that the mind cannot be of a certain sort, since it would then not be able to think about all possible things. This assertion was one of the main arguments for the immateriality of the intellect, and it is this argument, according to Normore, that shaped much of the discussion about theories of mental content.
On the traditional reading of Descartes, he is presented as a representational realist, which means rather paradoxically that he introduced just after he had secured a firm foundation for knowledge a ‘veil of ideas’ to hide it behind. In her chapter ‘Objective Being in Descartes: That Which We Know or That By Which We Know?’, Deborah Brown is firmly rejecting this traditional reading of Descartes. The main question she asks is whether Descartes’s use of objective being or existence entails a representational realism. She starts by examining the medieval discussions of objective being before entering into a treatment of Descartes’s own usage of this notion. Her conclusion is simply that there is nothing in this notion or in Descartes’s use of it that entails a realism which is representational. Descartes develops a representational theory of mind, but not a representational realism, according to Brown.
Bibliography
Alanen, L. (2003), Descartes’s Concept of Mind, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, ed. P. Caramello, Rome: Maretti, 1950–53. Ariew, R. (1999), Descartes and the Last Scholastics, Itaca: Cornell University Press.
Caston, V. (2001), ‘Connecting Traditions: Augustine and the Greeks on Intentionality’, in D. Perler (ed.), Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality, Leiden: Brill, 23–48.
Cranz, F.E. (1976), ‘The Renaissance Reading of the De anima’, in XVIe Colloque International de Tours: Platon et Aristote a la Renaissance, Paris: Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin.
Kenny, A. (1993), Aquinas on Mind, London: Routledge.
Lagerlund, H. (2003), ‘Representations, Concepts and Words: Peter of Ailly on Semantics and Psychology’, in Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics ,Vol. 3, 15–36
Rorty, R. (1979), Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Stroud, B. (1984), The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Wood, R. (1997), ‘Richard Rufus and the Classical Tradition: A Medieval Defence of Plato’, in L.G. Benakis (ed.), Néoplatonisme et Philosophie Médiévale, Louvain: Brepols, 229–51.
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The Terminological and Conceptual Roots of Representation in the Soul in Late Ancient and Medieval Philosophy*
Henrik Lagerlund
1 Introduction
The concept of mental representation lies at the heart of contemporary philosophy of mind. It is often claimed that the problem of intentionality is a problem of mental representation, since mental states have content due to their representational nature.1 Ever since Franz Brentano introduced the concept of intentionality as the mark of the mental it has been known that it was a scholastic concept that he revived. Later research has shown that the scholastic concept ‘intentio’ derives from Arabic philosophy and is a translation of the Arabic words ‘ma’na’ and ‘ma’qul’ as used by Al-farabi and Avicenna. They in turn claim to have translated Aristotle’s Greek word ‘noêma’ as he uses it in the beginning of the De interpretatione. For Al-farabi ‘intentio’ is that which is immediately before the mind, whether the object of the intention is outside the mind (in which case it is a first intention) or itself an intention (in which case it is a second intention). This distinction became absolutely central to scholastic philosophy. Note that for them and later scholastic philosophy it is primarily concepts that have ‘intentio’.2
Medieval discussions of intentionality have lately been given extensive treatments by philosophers,3 but have drawn attention from scholars for quite some time.4 The related concept of representation has not received the same attention and
* Originally, I read an early version of this chapter as a paper presented at the SIEPM world congress in Porto 2002, but I have also presented drafts at ‘La Sapienza’ in Rome, in Melbourne and Brisbane, and of course at the research seminar in Uppsala. I am greatful to all the participants at these presentations, but foremost I would like to thank Alfonso Maierù for his helpful suggestions.
1 See Stalnaker (1984), 6.
2 See Gyekye (1971). See also Caston (2001) for a discussion of the notion of intentionality in Augustine.
3 See for example Perler (2001) and Perler (2002).
4 See for example Knudsen (1982).
virtually nothing is known about its origin. Scholastic philosophers, of course, also held that concepts have a representational nature,5 but not only concepts represent and exhibit intentionality for them. Many claimed that the senses, memory, imagination all represent things to the mind or the soul. It was usually claimed that they do so by being images of the things they represent, and they are thus like or similar to the things they are images of.6 They thus use representation in a much broader sense than we are nowadays used to in philosophy of mind. I will therefore often talk in this chapter about internal representation as representation in the soul, as opposed to external representation, like for example a blueprint, picture or map. The distinction between concepts as representations and images as representations, that is, so-called iconic representations, is also going to be important for what is to follow.
When Descartes in the Third Meditation explains that ideas represent reality in different ways, that is, that some ideas have more objective reality that others,7 the
5 See for example the following passage from John Buridan, Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima (Second lecture), I, q. 5: ‘Termini autem vocales et scripti debent ordinari secundum exigentiam mentalium, quia non formantur nisi ad repraesentandum mentales.’ See also the following passage from John Major’s Sentence commentary: ‘Ad secundo concedo quod du<o>s conceptus absoluti sufficienter absolute representat utrumquae extremorum. Hoc quodlibet extremorum in ordine ad se capio absolutum impresentiarum ut distinguitur contra relativum et non contra conotativum, sed illi duo conceptus nullo modo relative et comparative representant, cum unus illorum conceptum, puta a, representet sortem, et non representat eum in habitudine ad plato, et eodemmodo b respectu platonis. Necesse est dare unum alium conceptuum ab utrumquae istorum distinctum qui sortem in habitudine ad platonem representat, propter varios modos habendi rerum necesse est dare varios conceptus.’ (John Major, In secundum librum Sententiarum, dist. 38, q. 2, fol. cxlviiira.)
6 See for example John Buridan’s De anima commentary: ‘Quantum ad primum sciendum est quod idem est species, idolum, imago, similitudo; et ergo imaginandum est quod species intelligibilis est quaedam qualitas naturaliter repraesentativa ipsius obiecti, recte sicut imago, quae vulgariter dicitur esse in speculo, est repraesentativa rei obiectae speculo; sed sic directe in proposito: species intelligibilis est quaedam imago repraesentativa rei quae obiicitur intellectui.’ (John Buridan, Le Traité de l’Âme de Jean Buridan (De prima lectura), 457.) See also Tweedale (1989) and King in the present volume.
7 ‘Sed alia quædam adhuc via mihi occurrit ad inquirendum an res aliquæ, ex iis quarum ideæ in me sunt, extre me existant. Nempe, quatenus ideæ istæ cogitandi quidam modi tantum sunt, non agnosco ullam inter ipsas inæquilitatem, et omnes a me eodem modo procedere videntur; sed, quatenus una unam rem, alia aliam repræsentat, patet easdem esse ab invicem valde diversas. Nam proculdubio illæ quæ substantias mihi exhibent, majus aliquid sunt, atque, ut ita loquar, plus realitatis objectivæ in se continent, quam illæ quæ tantum modos, sive accidentia, repræsentant; et rursus illa per quam summum aliquem Deum, æternum, infinitum, omniscium, omnipotentem, rerumque omnium, quæ præter ipsum sunt, creatorem intelligo, plus profecto realitatis objectivæ in se habet, quam illæ per quas finitæ substantiæ exhibentur.’ (René Descartes, Oeuvres complètes de Descartes, VII, 40.)
usage of representations in the mind or soul is already a part of a well-established terminology and an important part of his theory of mind.8 The specific questions that this paper sets out to find an answer to are therefore: when does the term get the meaning here discussed and when does it become a central part of philosophy of mind or philosophical psychology?
An important aspect of the history I am trying to sketch here is terminology, but it seems to me that the concept of representation as it is introduced into the history of philosophy is intrinsically tied to the term ‘representation’, and a necessary part of the history of the concept is therefore the history of the term. Part of my task of answering the above questions will hence be tackled by tracing the usage of the Latin terms ‘repraesentare’ and ‘repraesentatio’ in late ancient and medieval philosophy. It will then become evident that the usage of representations in the soul become a part of philosophical psychology at about the same time as the concept of ‘intentio’ is introduced, namely the answer to the two questions just posed is the Latin translation of the works of Avicenna. By using these Latin terms to translate several Arabic terms used by Avicenna the translators are forming or creating the concept of internal and mental representation. Interestingly, however, it is primarily imagination that Avicenna talks about as being representational in nature and not concepts. Thinking about concepts as representations comes into philosophy in a slightly different way and much later.
2 The Ancient Background
The English words ‘representation’ and ‘to represent’ derive via Old French from the Latin words ‘repraesentatio’ and ‘repraesentare’, but these are by no means commonly used words in classical Latin.9 The Oxford Latin Dictionary gives primarily three meanings to these words. They can mean either (i) a payment in ready money, or (ii) an act of bringing something before the mind, or (iii) an image or a representation in art. For obvious reasons I am most interested in (ii) and (iii), and they involve the idea of re-presenting something previously absent as present, that is, making something present again.10
Quintilian is one of the few that uses the word in an interesting way. In his Institutio oratoria, he writes:
8 For a discussion of the background to Descartes usage of representational ideas see Nuchelmans (1983) and Ariew (1999).
9 A search in the CD-Rom BTL reviles that ‘repraesentatio’ is used nine times and ‘repraesentare’ 32 times.
10 This paper will not deal with the political connotations of the term representation, that is, talk about politicians as representatives and representative governments and so on. It has been dealt with in other studies and the terms seem not to have had this meaning in ancient times. It has been claimed that these concepts were not introduced until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when one started to talk about persons participating in church councils as representatives. See Pitkin (1967), 2–3, and Quillet (1971).
onsequently we must place among ornaments that enargeia which I mentioned in the rules which I laid down for the statement of facts, because vivid illustration, or, as some prefer to call it, representation, is something more than mere clearness, since the latter merely lets itself be seen, whereas the former thrusts itself upon our notice.11
Quintilian uses the noun ‘repraesentatio’ in the sense of (ii) as something that clearly represents itself to the mind. Vivid illustrations or representations are important tools in good rhetoric, according to Quintilian. A person blessed with the ability to present a situation or action as if it were real – to create a representation so powerful and persuasive that the audience cannot but be convinced by it – is a powerful orator. The representation is then ‘self-evident’ or enargeia. It is literally like painting an unusually clear and convincing picture.
This seems to be the closest to something like an internal representation an ancient author got, and Quintilian’s vivid illustrations are in a sense extremely rich and complicated representations. The orator describes a situation with words and tries to effect other person’s imagination with these words in order to create an inner picture, that is, the orator is re-presenting the situation for us or for our mind. This is the meaning of (ii) and hence we see that (ii) means the same as (iii) with the only difference that (iii) is an external representation and (ii) an internal one.
One could, of course, think that the use of representations in the soul in the technical sense sought after here is a translation of some Greek word used in such a way. It is highly unclear, however, what Greek word that would be, and no ancient Latin author seems to have associated a Greek term with representations in the sense discussed here. One suggestion has been that Plato’s and Aristotle’s word ‘phantasia’ should be translated as a faculty of representation and ‘phantasmata’ as ‘representations’.12 Phantasia is for Aristotle what comes between aistesis and nous, that is, the end product of sensation and the start of intellectual activity. It seems like a natural interpretation of, for example, Aristotle to see the ‘phantasmata’ as sensory representations of external objects, but this remains an interpretation, which, given the story I am telling, is hardly uncontroversial. Furthermore, there seem to be no Latin Ancient commentator or other Latin writer that presents such an interpretation of Aristotle until the twelfth century. As an example it should be mentioned that Cicero translates ‘phantasia’ with ‘visum’.13
11 ‘Itaque enárgeia, cuius in praeceptis narrationis feci mentionem, quia plus est evidentia vel, ut alii dicunt, repraesentatio quam perspicuitas, et illud patet, hoc se quodammodo ostendit, inter ornamenta ponamus.’ (Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 8.3.61.)
12 See for example Wedin (1988) and Caston (1998) for such readings of Aristotle’s philosophical psychology.
13 ‘Plurima autem in illa tertia philosophiae parte mutauit. In qua primum de sensibus ipsis quaedam dixit noua, quos iunctos esse censuit e quadam quasi impulsione oblata extrinsecus, quam ille phantasia, nos uisum appelemus licet, et teneamus hoc quidem uerbum, erit enim utendum in reliquo sermone saepius; sed ad haec, quae uisa sunt et quasi accepta sensibus, adsensionem adiungit animorum, quam esse uolt in nobis positam et uoluntariam.’ (Cicero, Academics, I, 11, 40.)
The Latin verb ‘repraesentare’ is, however, used in relation to the notion of phantasia, and again it is Quintilian that makes the connection. By the time he writes the term phantasia has, however, become more detached from the technical philosophical vocabulary of Plato and Aristotle and come to mean something like fantasy or imagination in a non-technical sense.14
The orator who will be the most effective in moving the feelings of the audience is, according to Quintilian, the one that has acquired a proper stock of phantasiai. In Book IV of the Institutio oratoria, he writes:
That which the Greeks call phantasiai and we may call clear visions are those things through which the image of things not present are so represented to the soul that we seem to see them with our very eyes and have them before us.15
Quintilian here uses the term ‘repraesentare’ in virtually the same sense as before. It thus seems that the classical usage of this term, which has bearing on the history of the notion of internal representation, is strictly limited to rhetoric.
3 Early Medieval Usage of Representation
In the early Middle Ages, the classical usage of the terms ‘repraesentare’ and ‘repraesentatio’, of course, remained, although they seem to have been used rather infrequently in the sense of (ii). There seems, however, to be a whole tradition of theological writers using the notion of representation as image or example, that is, in the sense of (iii) above. One example can be found in Abelard’s Epitome Theologiae Christianae where he writes:
In such a way are we obliged to have in the sacrament Christ before our eyes, in the way he was led to the passion, suffered and crucified for us. This representation of his love, which he himself has shown to us, makes us remember.16
Here Abelard stresses that we must in the Holy Communion have Christ’s suffering before our eyes as an example or as an image of his love in order for us to remember
14 See Watson (1988). It has also been claimed that the Stoics use of ‘phantasiai’ should be translated as ‘mental representations’, but also this is an interpretation and no Latin Stoic author used the word representation is this way. The Latin word for ‘representation’, as seen, seems to have had a different meaning in ancient times than what it has later in the history of philosophy, at least in relation to philosophy of mind and psychology. Maybe the Greek word ‘phantasia’ comes closer to our notion of ‘mental representation’, but this will always be a matter of interpretation. See the discussion in Long (1991).
15 ‘Quas phantasiai Graeci vocant, non sane visiones appellemus, per quas imagines rerum absentium ita repraesentantur animo, ut eas cernere oculis ac praesentes habere videamur.’ (Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 4.2.29–30.)
16 ‘Sic enim in sacramento Christum prae oculis habere debemus, tanquam ad passionem ductum, passum et crucifixum pro nobis, quae repraesentatio dilectionis illius nos memores facit, quam ipse nobis exhibuit.’ (Cap. XXIX; PL, Col. 1740D.)
that love. This representation seem to be an external representation in the form of Christ on the Holy cross, although we should retain it in our souls and it can, therefore, be seen as a representation in the sense of (ii).17 Abelard’s usage reminds us very much of Quintilian’s usage of the term, but with the specific Christian element added.
The usage of the word representation in this sense and with this strong theological emphasis seems to stem from Tertullian. The word occurs quite frequently in his texts, which it does not in other texts from his time.18 Tertullian usage of this term has been studied before by Adhémar d’Alès in the book La théologie de Tertullien from 1905. He claims that there are three main uses of the verb ‘repraesentare’ in Tertullian, namely one physical, which has to do with something being really present; one mental, which has to do with representations in the imagination or the intellect; and finally one moral, which has to do with images of examples – preferably Christian.19 The first usage is in line with (iii) above and the third is basically the same as the one we have seen in Abelard, but the second usage mentioned by d’Alès is interesting. He, however, hardly presents any examples of this usage in Tertullian. His best example is from the book De spectaculis in which Tertullian writes:
… we have already this [the coming of Christ] represented before us by the power of the Holy Ghost.20
This usage is the same as the one we have seen in Abelard. We have by the power of the Holy Ghost already before Christ’s return a representation or some mental image of this arrival. By his relatively frequent use of these terms Tertullian is laying the foundation for the different usage we can find in the early Middle Ages. He and everybody else in the early Middle Ages seems to use the notion of representation with Christian or theological connotations.
Augustine, for example, very rarely uses these words,21 but none of his uses are interesting or relevant for the story told here. He, for example, uses the verb in the same sense as Abelard seen above. In the Trinity, he writes that the trinity is
17 Another similar usage can be found in Tertullian’s De anima. He writes: ‘Atquin in resurrectionis exemplis, com dei virtus sive per prophetas sive per Christum sive per apostolos in corpora animas repraesentat, solida et contrectabili et satiata veritate praeiudicatum est hanc esse formam veritatis, ut omnem mortuorum exhibitionem incorporalem praestigias iudices.’ (Tertullian, De anima, 57, 12.)
18 A search in Patriologia Latina reveals all in all 114 hits – although some are by the editors of PL.
19 See d’Alès (1905), 356–60
20 ‘Ut talia spectes, ut talibus exsultes, quis tibi praetor aut consul, aut quaestor, aut sacerdos de sua liberalitate praestabit? et tamen haec jam quodammodo habemus per fidem spiritu imaginante repraesentata. Caeterum qualia illa sunt quae nec oculus vidit, nec auris audivit, nec in cor hominis ascenderunt? Credo, circo et utraque cavea et omni stadio gratiora.’ (Tertullian, De spectaculis, cap. 30, PL, col. 0662A–0662B.)
21 A search in Patriologia Latina reveals 35 hits in his entire corpus and most are by the editors.
17 represented in reality.22 He also uses the noun once in City of God in the context of whether this is the time when God will re-present (restore or make present again) the sovereignty to Israel.23 None of these are of particular interest to us here.
The Latin words ‘repraesentare’ and ‘representatio’ are not used in any of Boethius’s or the later medieval translations of Aristotle’s works into Latin.24 The only exception is again found in the Rethoric. It is William of Moerbeke’s thirteenth century translation in which he translates ‘mimesis’ with ‘repraesentatio’. See for example the following passage (I, 11 (1371b4–8)):
And since learning and admiring are pleasant, all things connected with them must also be pleasant; for instance, a work of imitation, such as painting, sculpture, poetry, and all that is well represented, even if the object of representation is not pleasant; …25
In the early translation by James of Venice, the Latin term ‘imitatio’ was used to render ‘mimesis’.26
An early medieval author that many associate with the notion of having a representation in the mind is Anselm. The passage people then are thinking about is in the second chapter of Proslogion where he introduces the concept ‘somethingother-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought’. This concept is in the mind of the person thinking the concept and it is of something, namely God, and one could say
22 ‘Attributa per Hilarium singulis personis. Trinitas in rebus factis repraesentatur. Quidam cum vellet brevissime singularum in Trinitate personarum insinuare propria, Aeternitas, inquit, in Patre, species in Imagine, usus in Munere.’ (Augustine, De trinitate, VI, 12. PL, col. 0931.)
23 ‘Illam sane novissimam persecutionem, quae ab Antichristo futura est, praesentia sua ipse exstinguet Jesus. Sic enim scriptum est, quod eum interficiet spiritu oris sui, et evacuabit illuminatione praesentiae suae. Hic quaeri solet, Quando istud erit? Importune omnino. Si enim hoc nobis nosse prodesset, a quo melius quam ab ipso Deo magistro interrogantibus discipulis diceretur? Non enim siluerunt inde apud eum; sed a praesente quaesierunt, dicentes: Domine, si hoc tempore praesentaberis, et quando regnum Israel [in a footnote as an alternate reading of the manuscript: si hoc in tempore repraesentabis regnum Israel]? At ille: Non est, inquit, vestrum scire tempora, quae Pater in sua posuit potestate.’ (Augustine, City of God, XVIII, cap. 53, PL, col. 0616.)
24 Representation in any form is not used in James of Venice’s translation (vetus translatio) of Aristotle’s De anima. See Anonymi, Magistri Artium (c. 1246–47), Sententia super II et III De anima
25 Moerbecke’s Latin translation is the following: ‘Quoniam autem addiscere delectabile et mirari, et talia necesse delectabilia esse, scilicet imitativum, ut protractiva et statuificatio et poetica, et omne quodcumque fuerit representatum, et si non sit delectabile id cuius est representatio; …’ (Aristoteles Latinus, XXXI, 1–2, Rhetorica.)
26 As a note it might be interesting to mention that phantasia and mimesis are connected in late Classical thought. It is Philostratus that makes the connection in his Life of Apollonius from 217. Philostratus reports Apollonius to have said that phantasia is a much more skilful craftsman than mimesis. He says: ‘For mimesis will produce only what she has seen, but phantasia even what she has not seen as well; and she will produce it by referring to the standard of perfect reality.’
it represents God, but this is not what Anselm says. He does not use this particular word in this connection.27 He, however, uses the Latin words for representation, but not in any of his major works, only in his orations and letters,28 and none of them are of interest to us here.
4 The Introduction of Representation in the Soul in the Twelfth Century
The twelfth century was an extremely dynamic time in medieval intellectual history and in a sense it is no wonder that it is in this century that we find the concept and terminology of representations in the soul being exploited seriously for the first time. This century saw the reappearing of Aristotle’s works in the West and numerous other works were also well being translated for the first time into Latin. It is also as part of this translation project that much of the foundation of the vocabulary of Latin Western philosophy was laid down. In fact, it is in this environment that the notion of representation in the soul is introduced.
The terminology of representation in relation to the operations of the soul can be divided into three main groups and the introduction of the terminology seems also to fall into these groups, namely sense (visual) representation, internal (sense) representation and mental (conceptual) representation. This section of the paper is therefore divided into three separate subsections. In the first subsection, I will outline how the usage of representation was introduced in relation to sensation. In the second subsection, I will explain how representation becomes associated with the internal sense in the Latin translation of Avicenna. Finally, I will trace the history of conceptual or mental representation.
27 ‘Ergo, domine, qui das fidei intellectum, da mihi, ut quantum scis expedire intelligam, quia es sicut credimus, et hoc es quod credimus. Et quidem credimus te esse aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit. An ergo non est aliqua talis natura, quia “dixit insipiens in corde suo: non est deus”? Sed certe ipse idem insipiens, cum audit hoc ipsum quod dico: “aliquid quo maius nihil cogitari potest”, intelligit quod audit; et quod intelligit in intellectu eius est, etiam si non intelligat illud esse. Aliud enim est rem esse in intellectu, aliud intelligere rem esse. Nam cum pictor præcogitat quæ facturus est, habet quidem in intellectu, sed nondum intelligit esse quod nondum fecit. Cum vero iam pinxit, et habet in intellectu et intelligit esse quod iam fecit. Convincitur ergo etiam insipiens esse vel in intellectu aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari potest, quia hoc cum audit intelligit, et quidquid intelligitur in intellectu est. Et certe id quo maius cogitari nequit, non potest esse in solo intellectu. Si enim vel in solo intellectu est, potest cogitari esse et in re, quod maius est. Si ergo id quo maius cogitari non potest, est in solo intellectu: id ipsum quo maius cogitari non potest, est quo maius cogitari potest. Sed certe hoc esse non potest. Existit ergo procul dubio aliquid quo maius cogitari non valet, et in intellectu et in re.’ (Anselm, Opera omnia, I, 101–2.)
28 He uses the words 8 times in his entire corpus and only in orations and letters.
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getting too old to deal with children. Let us hope that your stepmother may have better success than I have had.”
“I’m very sorry, Grandma,” murmured conscientious Daisy, the tears of mortification starting to her eyes. “We really did want to be good, and we hated being burdens.”
“Well, we won’t say any more about it,” interrupted Grandma, rather hurriedly. “I dare say you have been no worse than the majority of children, except for your absurd behavior of this morning, which is really beyond the comprehension of any sane person. Now go to your room and change your dresses. You none of you look fit to be seen, and I wish you to be on the piazza to greet your father and his wife. I have received another telegram saying they will arrive by the five-ten.”
None of the four had dreamed of getting off so easily, and yet as they climbed the stairs to their own room, they were all very silent.
“It’s rather nice to get back, isn’t it?” remarked Molly, a little unsteadily, glancing about the familiar bedroom, as Dulcie set down the valise and began removing the various articles she had packed so proudly only that morning.
“It seems as if we’d been away for a long time,” said Maud. “I didn’t know one day could be so long. Perhaps it’s because we got up so early. I think I’m getting a little sleepy.”
“Lie down and rest,” Daisy suggested. “It isn’t time to dress yet, and perhaps you can get a little nap.”
Maud promptly curled herself up on the bed she and Molly shared, and in five minutes had fallen fast asleep. But none of the others felt at all inclined to follow her example. They were all far too much excited to sleep. They sat close together, and talked in low, subdued voices, so as not to disturb Maud.
“There’s one thing we can be thankful for,” said Daisy. “We’ve found out that stepmothers aren’t all bad, and that’s a great relief. I don’t believe Mrs. Thorne ever thought Barbara a burden.”
“No, I don’t believe she did,” Dulcie agreed, “but then Barbara was only three when Mrs. Thorne married her father, and you can’t help loving a cunning little girl of three, but it will be quite different with us. Grandma will be sure to tell her how horrid we are, and then she’ll begin to hate us.”
“She won’t hate us if she’s anything like Mrs. Thorne,” said Daisy, with conviction. “Anyhow, Papa loves us, and he won’t say we’re horrid. Why shouldn’t she believe him just as well as Grandma?”
“Perhaps he’ll think we’ve grown worse since he went away,” said Dulcie, mournfully, but Daisy refused to listen to any such gloomy possibilities.
“D ‘H , ?’”—
Page 275.
“Mrs. Thorne said she was sure Papa wouldn’t marry anybody who wasn’t going to love us,” she maintained, “and I’m not going to worry any more than I can help. Now let’s think about dressing up. I’m going to curl Maud’s hair the way Lizzie used to do it, and Molly must wear her white muslin with pink ribbons.”
As the clock on the stairs struck five, the four little girls, all dressed in their best, stepped out on the piazza, and seated themselves in a solemn row to await the arrival of the station hack. They were all feeling very nervous, even Daisy, and nobody felt much like talking. Grandma was still in her room, and they had the piazza to themselves.
“Shall we have to kiss the stepmother?” Maud inquired, anxiously.
“It will depend on whether she wants to kiss us or not,” answered Dulcie. “We shall kiss Papa first, of course, and then we’ll see what she wants to do.”
“Do we say ‘How do you do, stepmother?’” Maud wanted to know. Dulcie shook her head.
“I don’t think that would do,” she said, doubtfully. “It doesn’t sound exactly polite.”
“Barbara calls Mrs. Thorne ‘Mamma,’” said Molly. “Do you think she will want us to call her Mamma?”
“I hope not,” said Dulcie, reddening. “I don’t want to call anybody Mamma except our own dear mamma in Heaven.”
“Barbara talked about her first mamma,” Daisy reminded them. “I think we’d better let Papa decide what we are to call her. He’s sure to know what is right,” she finished, with the comforting conviction that Papa always knew best about everything.
Just then the whistle of an approaching train fell upon their ears, and Grandma, in her best black silk, came out onto the piazza.
It was only a quarter of a mile to the station, and in the silence that followed they could hear the stopping of the train, and then the puffing of the engine as it moved on again. Grandma sat in a rocking-chair and folded her hands in her lap. She didn’t look in the least excited, not even ruffled. As for the four little girls, their hearts were beating so fast they could scarcely breathe. Half-unconsciously Dulcie slipped her hand into Daisy’s, and held it tight. There followed five minutes of breathless suspense, and then came the sound of
approaching wheels. In another moment the station hack had turned in at the gate, and drawn up before the front steps.
“Papa, dear, dear Papa!” In the first joyful moment everything else in the world was forgotten, and four pairs of arms were held out, as four little figures rushed forward to meet the tall, smiling gentleman, who had sprung from the carriage, and was bounding up the steps.
“Well, chicks, here I am!” cried Mr. Winslow, kissing them all round, “glad to see me, eh? Not half as glad as I am to see you all, I’ll be bound. How you have grown, Dulcie. How well you are looking, Daisy Can these two big girls really be my babies, Molly and Maud? And here’s Grandma, too.” And he released himself from the children’s clinging arms, and went forward to greet his stepmother.
And now there was another joyful cry, but this time it was mingled with astonishment.
“Miss Leslie, oh, Miss Leslie, we’re so glad to see you! We never knew you were coming, too.” And the pretty young lady, who had followed Mr. Winslow up the steps, suddenly found herself being violently hugged by four very excited little girls.
“Where’s Uncle Stephen?” inquired Daisy, who was the first to recover from the surprise. “Didn’t Uncle Stephen come, too?”
Miss Leslie laughed and blushed.
“No, dear,” she said, “he didn’t come this time, but he sent a great deal of love to you all, and hopes to see you when he comes East next winter.”
“But—but, isn’t he going to—aren’t you——” Daisy paused in utter bewilderment. If Miss Leslie were not going to marry Uncle Stephen, then why had she come? And, more astonishing still, where, oh, where was the dreaded stepmother? She glanced in the direction of the hack, in quest of a third occupant, but the only other person to be seen was the driver, who had sprung down from his seat and was lifting out the bags.
In the meantime Maud was giving Miss Leslie an important bit of news.
“We’re making you some wedding presents,” she announced, giving the visitor’s hand an affectionate squeeze. “I won’t tell you what they are, because they’re going to be a surprise.”
Mr. Winslow caught the words, and turned anxiously to his mother.
“What does she mean?” he inquired, sharply. “They haven’t been told, have they?”
“I am sorry to say they have,” Mrs. Winslow answered. “It was not my fault. I have said nothing, in accordance with your request, and neither has Kate. All the trouble has come through that meddlesome gossip, Lizzie. I always told you she was not the proper person to have the care of children, but you would never listen.”
Mr. Winslow looked annoyed, but before he could speak, Molly put into words the question that had been filling all their minds.
“Where is she?” she demanded, looking in astonishment from one face to another.
“Where is who, dear?” Miss Leslie asked, gently.
“Why, the stepmother,” said Molly. “Lizzie said Papa was bringing her home.”
Miss Leslie laughed.
“I am the stepmother,” she said, and stooped to kiss the astonished Molly as she spoke.
It was long past the children’s bedtime, as Grandma had several times reminded them, but somehow nobody had seemed to hear, and at last Grandma had gone indoors, in disgust, leaving the rest of the Winslow family on the piazza. They were a very happy party. Dulcie and Daisy each occupied an arm of their father’s chair, Molly sat on his knee, and Maud was comfortably ensconced in the lap of the “stepmother”!
“It’s been the most wonderful day we ever had in our lives,” said Daisy, with a little sigh of utter content. “It began pretty badly, but the end was beautiful.”
“I shall never, never again try to imitate book people,” declared Dulcie. “Things never happen the way you expect them to. I ought to have found it out the day we tried to find ‘the stolen child,’ but I went right on, and did another silly thing, that was a great deal worse. Oh, Papa dear, are you quite sure you don’t think I ought to be punished? It really was all my fault, you know.”
Mr. Winslow smiled and patted her cheek.
“I think we will let the punishment go this once,” he said, glancing at his wife. “Don’t you agree with me, Florence?”
“I certainly do,” the stepmother answered, heartily. “All is well that ends well, you know, and I don’t believe they will try looking for situations again.”
“No, indeed, we won’t,” promised Dulcie. “Oh, Mamma, if we had only known it was going to be you, we should have been so happy!”
“You don’t think I am going to be a cruel stepmother, then?” Mrs. Winslow said, smiling.
“I don’t believe you could be cruel, even if you tried,” Dulcie declared, and Daisy added, softly:
“We loved you the first time we saw you, and we’ve been loving you ever since. We were so glad when we thought you were going to marry Uncle Stephen, but to have you for our own mamma is the most beautiful thing that could possibly happen.”
There were tears in Mrs. Winslow’s eyes, and she drew Daisy to her side and kissed her.
“You haven’t loved me one bit more than I have loved you,” she said, a little unsteadily. “I have been longing for you all ever since that afternoon last January, and, oh, I do hope God will help me to be a real mother to you.”
They were all silent for a moment after that. It was very beautiful out there in the moonlight, and nobody felt like speaking. At last Molly broke the silence.
“Do you really mean it?” she questioned, anxiously. “You’re not just saying it to be polite, are you?”
“Mean what, dear?” Mrs. Winslow asked.
“That about wanting us ever since last winter?”
“Indeed I do mean it,” her stepmother answered, and there was a ring of sincerity in her voice that banished the children’s last lingering doubt. “I have never wanted anything quite so much in my life. Why, Molly darling, I wanted you even before I ever saw you.”
“Why, then,” cried Dulcie, with sparkling eyes, “it’s all right, children. We know Papa wants us, and if Mamma does, too, why—why, don’t you see—oh, it’s so beautiful! We won’t be burdens or incumbrances any more!”
T E
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