SPEECH.
We are now coming to close quarters with our subject. All the
foregoing chapters have been arranged with a view to preparing the
way for what is hereafter to follow; and, therefore, as already
remarked, I have thus far presented material over which I do not
think it is possible that any dispute can arise. But now we come to
that particular exhibition of the sign-making faculty which not only
appears to be peculiar to man, but which obviously presents so great
an advance upon all the lower phases hitherto considered, that it is
the place where my opponents have chosen to take their stand. When a
man maintains that there is a difference of kind between animal and
human intelligence, he naturally feels himself under some obligation
to indicate the point where this difference obtains. To say that it
obtains with the appearance of language, in the sense of sign-making,
is obviously too wide a statement; for, as we have now so fully seen,
language, in this widest sense, demonstrably obtains among the lower
animals. Consequently, the line must be drawn, not at language or
sign-making, but at that particular kind of sign-making which we
understand by Speech. Now the distinctive peculiarity of this kind of
sign-making—and one, therefore, which does not occur in any other
kind—consists in predication, or the using of signs as movable
types for the purpose of making propositions. It does not signify
whether or not the signs thus used are words. The gestures of Indians
and deaf-mutes admit, as we have seen, of being wrought up into a
machinery of predication which, for all purposes of practical life,
is almost as efficient as speech. The distinction, therefore, resides
in the intellectual powers; not in the symbols thereof. So that a
man _means_, it matters not by what system of signs he expresses his
meaning: the distinction between him and the brute consists in his
being able to _mean a proposition_. Now, the kind of mental act whereby
a man is thus enabled to mean a proposition is called by psychologists
an act of Judgment. Predication, or the making of a proposition, is
nothing more nor less than the expression of a judgment; and a judgment
is nothing more nor less than the apprehension of whatever meaning it
may be that a proposition serves to set forth. Therefore, it belongs to
the very essence of predication that it should involve a judgment; and
it belongs to the very essence of a judgment that it should admit of
being stated in the form of a proposition.[93]
Lastly, just as this is the place where my opponents take a stand,
so, as they freely allow, it is the only place where they _can_ take
a stand. If once this chasm of speech were bridged, there would be
no further chasm to cross. From the simplest judgment which it is
possible to make, and therefore from the simplest proposition which
it is possible to construct, it is on all hands admitted that human
intelligence displays an otherwise uniform or uninterrupted ascent
through all the grades of excellence which it afterwards presents.
Here, then, and here alone, we have what Professor Max Müller calls
the Rubicon of Mind, which separates the brute from the man, and over
which, it is alleged, the army of Science can never hope to pass.
In order to present the full difficulty which is here encountered, I
will allow it to be stated by the ablest of my opponents. As President
of the Biological Section of the British Association in 1879, Mr.
Mivart expressed his matured thought upon the subject thus:—
“The simplest element of thought seems to me to be a ‘judgment,’
with intuition of reality concerning some ‘fact,’ regarded as a fact
real or ideal. Moreover, this judgment is not itself a modified
imagination, because the imaginations which may give occasion to it
persist unmodified in the mind side by side with the judgment they
have called up. Let us take, as examples, the judgments, ‘That thing
is good to eat,’ and ‘Nothing can be and not be at the same time and
in the same sense.’ As to the former, we vaguely imagine ‘things good
to eat;’ but they must exist _beside_ the judgment, not _in_ it. They
can be recalled, compared, and seen to co-exist. So with the other
judgment, the mind is occupied with certain abstract ideas, though the
imagination has certain vague ‘images’ answering respectively to ‘a
thing being,’ and ‘a thing not being,’ and to ‘at the same time’ and
‘in the same sense;’ but the images do not _constitute_ the judgment
itself, any more than human ‘swimming’ is made up of limbs and fluid,
though without such necessary elements no such swimming could take
place.[94]
“This distinction is also shown by the fact that one and the same idea
may be suggested to, and maintained in, the mind by the help of the
most incongruous images, and very different ideas by the very same
image; this we may see to be the case with such ideas as ‘number,’
‘purpose,’ ‘motion,’ ‘identity,’ &c.
“But the distinctness of ‘thought’ from ‘imagination’ may perhaps
be made clearer by the drawing out fully what we really do when we
make some simple judgment, as, _e.g._, ‘A negro is black.’ Here, in
the first place, we directly and explicitly affirm that there is a
conformity between the external thing, ‘a negro,’ and the external
quality ‘blackness’—the negro possessing that quality. We affirm,
secondarily and implicitly, a conformity between two external entities
and two corresponding internal concepts. And thirdly, and lastly,
we also implicitly affirm the existence of a conformity between the
subjective judgment and the objective existence.”[95]
I will next allow this matter to be presented in the words of another
adversary, and one whom Mr. Mivart approvingly quotes.
“The question is, Can the sense say anything—make a judgment at all?
Can it furnish the blank formula of a judgment—the ‘is’ in ‘A is B’?
The grass of the battlefield was green, and the sense gave both the
grass and the greenness; but did it affirm that ‘the grass is green’?
It may be assumed that ‘grass’ and ‘green’ together form one complex
object, which is an object under space and time, and therefore of
sense. But against this the rejoinder at once is, that the sense may
indeed take in and report (so to speak) a complex object, but that in
this case the question is, not about the complex object, but about the
_complexity_ of the object. It is one thing to see green grass, and
evidently quite another to affirm the _greenness_ of the grass. The
difference is all the difference between seeing two things united,
and seeing them _as united_.... If a brute could think ‘is,’ brute
and man would be brothers. ‘Is,’ as the copula of a judgment, implies
the mental separation, and recombination of two terms that only exist
united in nature, and can therefore never have impressed the sense
except as one thing.[96] And ‘is,’ considered as a substantive verb, as
in the example ‘This man is,’ contains in itself the application of the
copula of judgment to the most elementary of all abstractions—‘thing’
or ‘something.’ Yet if a being has the power of thinking—‘thing,’ it
has the power of transcending space and time by dividing or decomposing
the phenomenally one. Here is the point where instinct ends and reason
begins.”[97]
It would be easy to add quotations from other writers to the same
effect as the above;[98] but these may be held sufficient to give
material for the first stage of my criticism, which is of a purely
technical character. I affirm that all writers who thus take their
stand upon the distinctively human faculty of predication are
taking their stand at the wrong place. In other words, without at
present disputing whether we have to do with a distinction of kind
or of degree, I say, and say confidently, that the distinction in
question—_i.e._ between animal and human intelligence—may be easily
proved to occur further back than at the faculty of predication, or
the forming of a proposition. The distinction occurs at the faculty of
denomination, or the bestowing of a name, known as such. “The simplest
element of thought” is _not_ a “_judgment_:” the simplest element of
thought is a _concept_. That this is the case admits of being easily
demonstrated in several different ways.
In the first place, it is evident that there could be no judgments
without concepts, just as there could be no propositions without terms.
A judgment is the result of a comparison of concepts, and this is the
reason why it can only find expression in a proposition, which sets
forth the relation between the concepts by bringing into apposition
their corresponding terms. Judgments, therefore, are _compounds_ of
thought: the _elements_ are concepts.
In the second place, given the power of conceiving, and the germ of
judgment is implied, though not expanded into the blossom of formal
predication. For whenever we bestow a name we are implicitly judging
that the thing to which we apply the name presents the attributes
connoted by that name, and thus we are virtually predicating the fact.
For example, when I call a man a “Negro,” the very term itself affirms
blackness as the distinctive quality of that individual—just as does
the equivalent nursery term, “Black-man.” To utter the name Negro,
therefore, or the name Black-man, is to form and pronounce at least
two judgments touching an individual object of sensuous perception—to
wit, that it is a man, and that he is black. The judgments so formed
and pronounced are doubtless not so explicit as is the case when both
subject and predicate are associated in the full proposition—“A negro
is black;” but in the single term Negro, or Black-man, both these
elements were already present, and _must_ have been so if the name were
in any degree at all conceptual—_i.e._ _denominative_ as distinguished
from _denotative_. In the illustration “Negro,” or “Black-man,” it so
happens that the connotation of the name is directly given by the
etymology of the name; but this circumstance is immaterial. Whether or
not the etymology of a connotative name happens to fit the particular
subject to which it is applied, the same kind of classificatory
judgment is required for any appropriate application of the same. If,
with Blumenbach, I am accustomed to call a negro an Ethiopian, when I
apply this name to any representative of that race, I am performing
the same mental act as my neighbour who calls him a Negro, or my child
who calls him a Black-man. If it should be said that in all such
cases the act of naming is so immediately due to association that no
demand is made upon the powers of judgment, the admission would be a
dangerous one for my opponents to make, since the same remark would
apply to the full proposition, “That man is black.” Moreover, the
objection admits of being easily disposed of by choosing instances of
naming where associations have not yet been definitively fixed. If I am
travelling in a strange continent, and amid all the unfamiliar flora
there encountered I suddenly perceive a plant which I think I know,
before I name it to my friend as that plant, I would submit it to close
scrutiny—_i.e._ carefully _judge_ its resemblances to the known or
familiar species. In short, all connotative names, when denominatively
applied, betoken acts of judgment, which differ from those concerned in
full predication only as regards the form of their expression. Or, as
Mill very tersely remarks, “whenever the names given to objects convey
any information, that is, whenever they have properly any meaning, the
meaning resides not in what they denote, but in what they connote.”
And although in his elaborate treatment of Names and Propositions
he omits expressly to notice the point now before us, it is clearly
implied in the above quotation. The point is that connotative names
(or denominative terms)[99] are often in themselves of predicative
value; and this point is clearly implied in the above quotation,
because, whenever “names given to objects convey any information,”
the information thus conveyed is virtually predicated: the “meaning”
connoted by the name is affirmed in the mere act of bestowing the
name, which thus in itself becomes a condensed proposition. “It is a
truism of psychology that the terms of a proposition, when closely
interrogated, turn out to be nothing but abbreviated judgments.”[100]
This view of the matter, then, is the only one that can be countenanced
by psychology. It is likewise the only one that can be countenanced
by philology, or the study of language in the making. Of this fact I
will adduce abundant evidence in a subsequent chapter, where it will be
shown, as Professor Max Müller says, that “every name was originally a
proposition.” But at present I am only concerned with one of the most
elementary points of purely psychological analysis, and will therefore
postpone the independent illumination of the whole philosophy of
predication which of late years has been so splendidly furnished by the
comparative study of languages.
From whatever point of view, therefore, we look at the matter, we
are bound to conclude, either that the term “judgment” must be
applied indifferently to the act of denominating and to the act of
predicating, or else, if it be restricted to the latter, that it must
not be regarded as “the simplest element of thought.” And thus we
are led back to the position previously gained while treating of the
Logic of Concepts. For we then found that names are the steps of the
intellectual ladder whereby we climb into higher and higher regions of
ideation; and although our progress is assisted by formal predication,
or discursive thought, this is but the muscular energy, so to speak,
which would in itself be useless but for the rungs already supplied,
and on which alone that energy can be expended. Or, to vary the
metaphor, conceptual names are the ingredients out of which is formed
the structure of propositions; and, in order that this formation should
take place, there must already be in the ingredients that element of
vitality which constitutes the _vis formativa_. Now, this element of
vitality is the element of conceptual ideation, already exhibited in
every denominative term.
Therefore, for the sake at once of clearness and of brevity, I will
hereafter speak of predication as _material_ and _formal_. By material
predication I will mean conceptual denomination, whereby, in the mere
act of bestowing a connotative term, we are virtually predicating
of the thing thus designated some fact, quality, or relation, which
the name bestowed is intended to indicate. By formal predication I
will mean the apposition of denominative terms, with the intention
of setting forth some relation which is thus expressed as subsisting
between them. But, as already observed, I regard this distinction as
artificial. Psychologically speaking, there is no line of demarcation
between these two kinds of predication. Whether I say “Fool,” or
“Thou art a fool,” I am similarly assigning the subject of my remark
to a certain category of men: I am similarly giving expression to my
judgment with regard to the qualities presented by one particular
man. The distinction, then, between what I call material and formal
predication is merely a distinction in rhetoric: as a matter of
psychology there is no distinction at all.
If to all this it should be objected, in accordance with the
psychological doctrines set forth by Mr. Mivart, above quoted, that
a judgment as embodied in a proposition differs from a concept
as embodied in a name in respect of the copula, and therefore in
presenting the idea of existence as existence; I answer, in the first
place, that every concept must necessarily present this idea however
_implicitly_; and, in the next place, that however _explicitly_ it
may be stated as a judgment, it is not of more conceptual value than
that of any other quality belonging to a subject. As regards the first
point, when an object, a quality, an action, &c., is named, it is
thereby abstracted as a distinct creation of thought, separated out
from other things, and made to stand before the mind as a distinct
entity (see Chapter IV.). Therefore, in the very act of naming we are
virtually predicating existence of the thing named: the power to
“think is” is the power concerned in the _formation_ of a _concept_,
not in the _apposing_ of concepts _when formed_. All that is done
in an act of such apposition is to bring together two ideas of two
things already conceived as existing: were it not so there could be
_no-things_ to compare.[101]
And now, as regards the second point, so far is it from being true
that the predication of existence is the essential or most important
feature even of a full or formal proposition, that it is really the
least essential or least important. For existence is the category to
which everything must belong if it is to be judged about at all, and
therefore merely to judge that _A is_ and _B is_, is to form the most
barren (or least significant) judgment that can be formed with regard
to A or B; and when we bring these two judgments (concepts) together in
the proposition _A is B_, the new judgment which we make has nothing to
do with the existence either of A or of B, nor has it really anything
to do with existence as such. The existence both of A and of B has been
already pre-supposed in the two concepts, and when these two existing
things are brought into apposition, no third existence is thereby
supposed to have been created. The copula therefore really stands, not
as a symbol of _existence_, but as the symbol of _relation_, and might
just as well be replaced by any other sign (such as =), or, indeed,
be dispensed with altogether. “As we use the verb _is_, so the Latins
use their verb _est_ and the Greeks their [Greek: esti] through all
its declensions. Whether all other nations of the world have in their
several languages a word that answereth to it, or not, I cannot tell;
but I am sure they have no need of it. For the placing of two names in
order [_i.e._ in _apposition_] may serve to signify their consequence,
if it were the custom, as well as the words _is_, _to be_, and the
like. And if it were so, that there were a language without any verb
answering to _est_, or _is_, or _be_, yet the men that used it would be
not a jot the less capable of inferring, concluding, and of all kind
of reasoning than were the Greeks and Latins.” This shrewd analysis by
Hobbes is justly said by Mill to be “the only analysis of a proposition
which is rigorously true of all propositions without exception;” and
Professor Max Müller says of it, “Hobbes, though utterly ignorant of
the historical antecedents of language, agrees with us in the most
remarkable manner.”[102]
Thus, then, upon the whole, and without further treatment, it may be
concluded that whether we look to its simplest manifestations or to
its most complex, we must alike conclude that it is the faculty of
conception, not that of judgment—the faculty of denomination, not that
of predication—which we have to regard as “the simplest element of
thought.” Of course, if it were said that these two faculties are one
in kind—that in order to conceive we must judge, and in order to name
we must predicate—I should have no objection to offer. All I am at
present engaged upon is to make it clear that the distinction between
man and brute in respect of the Logos must be drawn at the place where
this distinction first obtains; and this place is where judgment is
concerned with conception, or with the bestowing of names in the sense
previously explained as _denominative_. The subsequent working up of
names into propositions is merely a further exhibition of the self-same
faculty. It is as true of judgment when displayed in denomination
as it is of judgment when displayed in predication, that “it is not
itself a modified imagination, because the imaginations which may
give rise to it persist unmodified in the mind side by side with
it.” For, as we have seen, the act of denominating (as distinguished
from denotating) is in and of itself an act of predicating. When a
naturalist bestows a name upon a new species of plant or animal, he
has _judged_ a resemblance and _predicates_ a fact—_i.e._ that the
hitherto unnamed form belongs to certain _genus_ or _kind_. And so it
is with all other names when conceptually bestowed, because everywhere
such names are expressions of conceptual _classification_—the bringing
together of like things, or the separation of unlike. In short, all
names which present any conceptual meaning are in themselves condensed
propositions, or “material predications;” and only as such can they
afterwards become _terms_, _i.e._ constitute the essential elements of
any more extended proposition, or “formal predication.” Therefore it
is the faculty of naming wherein is first displayed—and, according to
the doctrine of Nominalism, _whereby is first attained_—that great and
distinctive characteristic of the human mind which Mr. Mivart and those
who think with him have in view; and, unless we espouse the doctrine of
Realism—which neither these nor any other psychologists with whom I
have to do are likely nowadays to countenance,—it is plain that “the
simplest element of thought” is a concept.
* * * * *
If I do not apologize for having occupied so much space over so obvious
a point, it is only because I believe that any one who reads these
pages will sympathize with my desire to avoid ambiguity, and thus to
reduce the question before us to its naked reality. So far, it will
be observed, this question has not been touched. I am not disputing
that an immense and an extraordinary distinction obtains, and I do not
anticipate that either Mr. Mivart or any one else will take exception
to this preliminary clearing of the ground, which has been necessitated
only on account of my opponents having been careless enough to
represent the Proposition as the simplest exhibition of the Logos. But
now the time has arrived when we must tackle the distinction in serious
earnest.
Wherein does this distinction truly consist? It consists, as I believe
all my opponents will allow, in the power which the human being
displays of _objectifying ideas_, or of setting one state of mind
before another state, and contemplating the relation between them.
The power to “think is”—or, as I should prefer to state it, the
power to think at all—_is the power which is given by introspective
reflection in the light of self-consciousness_. It is because the
human mind is able, so to speak, to stand outside of itself, and thus
to constitute its own ideas the subject-matter of its own thought,
that it is capable of judgment in the technical sense above explained,
whether in the act of conception or in that of predication. For thus
it is that these ideas are enabled “to exist _beside_ the judgment,
not _in_ it;” thus it is that they may themselves become objects of
thought. We have no evidence to show that any animal is capable of
thus objectifying its own ideas; and, therefore, we have no evidence
that any animal is capable of judgment. Indeed I will go further, and
affirm that we have the best evidence which is derivable from what are
necessarily ejective sources, to prove that no animal _can possibly_
attain to these excellencies of subjective life. This evidence will
gradually unfold itself as we proceed, so at present it is enough to
say, in general terms, that it consists in a most cogent proof of the
absence in brutes of the needful _conditions_ to the occurrence of
these excellencies as they obtain in themselves. From which it follows
that the great distinction between the brute and the man really lies
behind the faculties both of conception and predication: it resides
in the conditions to the occurrence of either. What these conditions
are I will consider later on. Meanwhile, and in order that we may be
perfectly clear about the all-important distinction which is before us,
I will re-state it in other terms.
What is the difference between a recept and a concept? I cannot
answer this question more clearly or concisely than in the words of
the writer in the _Dublin Review_ before quoted. “The difference
is all the difference between seeing two things united, and seeing
them _as united_.” The difference is all the difference between
perceiving relations, and perceiving the relations _as related_, or
between cognizing a truth, and recognizing that truth _as true_. The
diving bird, which avoids a rock and fearlessly plunges into the sea,
unquestionably displays a receptual knowledge of certain “things,”
“relations,” and “truths;” but it does not know any of them _as such_:
although it knows them, it does not _know that it knows them_: however
well it knows them, it does not _think_ them, or regard the things,
the relations, and the truths which it perceives as _themselves the
objects of perception_. Now, over and above this merely receptual
knowledge, man displays conceptual, which means that he _is_ able to do
all these things that the bird cannot do: in other words, he is able
to set before his mind all the recepts which he has in common with the
bird, to think about them _as_ recepts, and by the mere fact, or in the
very act of so doing, to convert them into concepts. Concepts, then,
differ from recepts in that they are recepts which have themselves
become objects of knowledge, and the condition to their taking on
this important character is the presence of self-consciousness in the
percipient mind.[103]
I have twice stated the distinction as clearly as I am able; but, in
order to do it the fullest justice, I will now render it a third time
in the words of Mr. Mivart—some of whose terms I have borrowed in
the above paragraph, and therefore need not now repeat. He begins by
conveying the distinction as it was stated by Buffon, thus:—
“Far from denying feelings to animals, I concede to them everything
except thought and reflection.... They have sensations, but no
faculty of comparing them with one another, that is to say they have
not the power which produces ideas”—_i.e._ products of reflection.
Then, after alluding to Buffon’s views on the distinction between
“automatic memory” and “intellectual memory” (_i.e._ the distinction
which I have recognized in the Diagram attached to my previous work by
calling the former “memory” and the latter “recollection”), Mr. Mivart
adds:—“The distinction is one quite easy to perceive. That we have
automatic memory, such as animals have, is obvious: but the presence
of intellectual memory may be made evident by searching our minds (so
to speak) for something which we have fully remembered before, and
thus intellectually remember to have known, though we cannot now bring
it before the imagination. And as with memory, so with other of our
mental powers, we may, I think, distinguish between a higher and a
lower faculty of each; between our higher, self-conscious, reflective
mental acts—the acts of our intellectual faculty—and those of our
merely sensitive power. This distinction I believe to be one of the
most fundamental of all the distinctions of biology, and to be one
the apprehension of which is a necessary preliminary to a successful
investigation of animal psychology.”[104]
Were it necessary, I could quote from his work, entitled _Lessons from
Nature_, sundry further passages expressing the same distinction in
other words; but I have already been careful, even to redundancy, in
presenting this distinction, not only because it is the distinction
on which Mr. Mivart rests his whole argument for the separation of
man from the rest of the animal kingdom as a being unique in kind;
but still more because it is, as he is careful to point out, the one
real distinction which has hitherto always been drawn by philosophers
since the time of Aristotle. And, as I have already observed, it is
a distinction which I myself fully recognize, and believe to be the
most important of all distinctions in psychology. The only point of
difference, therefore, between my opinions and those—I will not say of
Mr. Mivart, but—of any other or possible opponent who understands the
psychology of this subject, is on the question whether, in view of the
light which has now been shed on psychology by the theory of evolution,
this important distinction is to be regarded as one of degree or as
one of kind. I shall now proceed to unfold the reasons which lead me
to differ on this point from Mr. Mivart, and so from all the still
extensive school of which he is, in my opinion, much the ablest
spokesman.
* * * * *
We have seen that the distinction in question consists in the presence
or absence of the faculty now fully explained, of reflective thought,
and that of this faculty the simplest manifestation is, as alleged
by my opponents, that which is afforded by “judgment.” But we have
also seen that this faculty of judgment does not first appear in
predication, unless we extend the term so as to embrace all acts
of denomination. In other words, we have seen that judgment first
arises with conception—and necessarily so, seeing that neither of
these things can occur without the other, but both arise as direct
exhibitions of that faculty of self-conscious or reflective thought of
which they are everywhere the immediate expression. I will, therefore,
begin with a careful analysis of conceptual judgment.
We must first recur to the distinctions set forth at the close of the
last chapter, where it was shown that, without any prejudice to the
question touching the distinction between man and brute, there are five
different stages of intentional sign-making to be recognized—namely,
the indicative, the denotative, the connotative, the denominative, and
the predicative. From what has now been said regarding the essentially
predicative nature of all conceptual names, we may disregard the last
of these distinctions, and consider the denominative phase of language
as psychologically identical with the predicative. Similarly, we may
now neglect the indicative phase, as one which bears no relation to the
matters at present before us. Thus we have to fasten attention only
upon the differences between the denotative, the connotative, and the
denominative phases of language. This has already been done in general
terms; but must now be done in more detail. And for the sake of being
clear, even at the risk of being tedious, I will begin by repeating the
important distinctions already explained.
When a parrot calls a dog _Bow-wow_ (as a parrot, like a child, may
easily be taught to do), the parrot may be said, in one sense of
the word, to be _naming_ the dog; but it is not _predicating_ any
characters as belonging to a dog, or performing any act of _judgment_
with regard to a dog. Although the bird may never (or but rarely) utter
the name save when it sees a dog, this fact is attributable to the
laws of association acting only in the receptual sphere: it furnishes
no shadow of a reason for supposing that the bird _thinks_ about a
dog _as_ a dog, or sets the concept Dog before its mind as a separate
object of thought. Therefore, all my opponents must allow that in one
sense of the word there may be names without concepts: whether as
gestures or as words (vocal gestures), there may be signs of things
without these signs presenting any vestige of predicative value. Names
of this kind I have called _denotative_: they are marks affixed to
objects, qualities, actions, &c., by receptual association alone.
Next, when a denotative name has been formed and applied as the mark of
one thing, its use may be extended to denote also another thing, which
is seen to belong to the same class or kind. When denotative names
are thus extended, they become what I have called _connotative_. The
degree to which such classificatory extension of a denotative name may
take place depends, of course, on the degree in which the mind is able
to take cognizance of resemblances or analogies. Now, these degrees
are as various as are the degrees of intelligence itself. Long before
the differential engine of Conception has come to the assistance of
Mind, both animals and human beings (as previously shown) are able to
go a long way in the distinguishing of resemblances, or analogies, by
means of receptual ideation alone. When such receptual discrimination
is expressed by the corresponding extension of denotative names, the
degree of connotation which such names may thus acquire depends upon
the degree of this receptual discrimination. Even my parrot was able to
extend its denotative name for a particular dog to any other dog which
it happened to see—thus precisely resembling my child, who extended
its first denotative word _Star_ to a candle. Connotation, then, begins
in the purely receptual sphere of ideation; and although in man it is
afterwards carried up into the conceptual sphere, it is obviously most
imperative for the purposes of this analysis to draw a distinction
between connotation as receptual and as conceptual.
This distinction I have drawn by assigning the word _denomination_
to all connotation which is of a truly conceptual nature—or to the
bestowing of names _consciously recognized as such_. And I have just
shown that when connotation is thus denominative or conceptual, it is
psychologically the same as predication. Therefore it is only in this
denominative sense of the word, or in cases where conceptual ideation
is concerned, that an act of naming involves an act of judgment,
strictly so called.
Such being the psychological standing of the matter, it is evident
that the whole question before us is narrowed down to a clearing up
of the relations that obtain between connotation as receptual and
conceptual—or between connotation, that is, and connotation that is
not, denominative. To do this I will begin by quoting an instance of
un-denominative or receptual connotation in the case of a young child.
“There is this peculiar to man—the sound which has been associated in
his case with the perception of some particular individual is called up
again, not only at the sight of absolutely similar individuals, but
also by the presence of individuals strikingly different, though in
some respects comprised in the same class. In other words, analogies
which do not strike animals strike men. The child says _Bow-wow_,
first to the house-dog, then, after a little, he says _Bow-wow_ to
the terriers, mastiffs, and Newfoundlands he sees in the street. A
little later he does what an animal never does, he says _Bow-wow_ to a
paste-board dog which barks when squeezed, then to a paste-board dog
which does not bark, but runs on wheels, then to the silent motionless
bronze dog which ornaments the drawing-room, then to his little cousin
who runs about the room on all fours, then, at last, to a picture
representing a dog.”[105]
Now, in this small but typical history we have a clear exhibition, in a
simple form, of the development of a connotative name within the purely
receptual sphere. At first the word _Bow-wow_ was merely a denotative
name—or a mark affixed to a particular object of perception. But
when the child’s mind took cognizance of the resemblances between
the house-dog, terriers, mastiffs, and Newfoundlands, it expressed
the fact by extending the name _Bow-wow_ to all these dogs. The
name, from being particular, thus became generic, or indicative of
_resemblances_; and, therefore, from being merely denotative, became
truly connotative: it now served to express _common attributes_. Next,
this receptual connotation of the name was still further widened, so
as to include—or to signify—the resemblances between dogs and their
images, pictures, &c. Now, in these several and successive acts of
connotative naming, the child was obviously advancing to higher and
higher levels of receptual classification; but, no less obviously, it
would be absurd to suppose that the child was thus raising the name
_Bow-wow_ to any _conceptual_ value. All that any child in such a case
is doing is to extend its receptual appreciation of resemblance through
widening circles of generic grouping, and correspondingly to extend
the receptual connotation of a denotative name. In order to do this
(within the limits that we are now considering), there is no need for
any introspective regarding of the name as a name: there is no need to
contemplate the widening connotation of the name: there is no need to
_judge_, to _define_, to _denominate_. Such classification as is here
effected can be effected within the region of receptual consciousness
alone (as we well know from the analogous case of the parrot, and the
“practical inferences” of the lower animals generally); therefore, if
the denotative name originally assigned to a particular dog admitted
of being so assigned as merely the mark of that particular recept,
there is no reason to suppose that its subsequent extension to the
more generic recepts afterwards experienced involves any demand upon
the conceptual faculty, or implies that the child could only extend
this name from a house-dog to a terrier by first performing an act of
introspective thought—which, indeed, as we shall see later on, it is
demonstrably impossible that a child of this age can be able to do.
Nevertheless, it is evident that already the child has done more
than the parrot. For a parrot will never extend its denotative name
of a particular dog to the picture, or even to the image of a dog.
The utmost that a parrot will do is to extend the denotative name
from one particular dog to another particular dog, which, however,
may differ considerably from the former as to size, colour, and
general appearance. Still, I presume, no one will maintain that thus
far there is the faintest evidence of a difference of kind between
the connotative faculty of the bird and that of the child. All that
these facts can be held to show is that—in the words already quoted
from M. Taine while narrating these facts—“analogies which do not
strike animals strike men.” Or, in my own phraseology, the receptual
faculties of a parrot do not go further than the receptual faculties
of a very young child: consequently, the denotative name in the
case of the parrot only undergoes the first step in the process of
receptual extension—namely, from a house-dog to a terrier, a setter,
a mastiff, a Newfoundland, &c. But in the case of the child, _after
having reached this stage_, the process of extension continues, so as
to embrace images, and eventually pictures of dogs. This difference,
however, only shows an advance in the merely receptual faculties:
does not suggest that in order to carry the extension of the name
through these second and third stages, demand has yet been made on the
distinctively human powers of conceptual thought—any more than such
powers were required to carry it through the first stage in the case of
the parrot.
Hence we see again that the distinction already drawn between
denotative and connotative names is not co-extensive with the
distinction between ideas as receptual and conceptual. Or, in other
words, names may be in some measure connotative even in the absence
of self-consciousness. For if we say that a child is connoting
resemblances when it extends the name _Bow-wow_ from a particular
dog to dogs in general, clearly we must say the same thing of a
parrot when we find that thus far it goes with the child. Therefore
it is that I have distinguished between connotation as receptual and
conceptual—_i.e._ by calling the latter _denomination_. Receptual
connotation represents a higher level of ideational faculty than
mere denotation; but a lower level than conceptual connotation, or
denomination. Moreover, receptual connotation admits of many degrees
before we can discern the smallest reason for supposing that it is
even in the lowest degree conceptual. Connotation of all degrees
depending on perceptions of resemblances or analogies, the higher the
receptual life, and therefore the greater the aptitude of receptual
classification, the more will such classification become reflected in
connotative expression. Therefore it is that the child will not only
surpass the parrot in its receptual connotation from dogs to pictures
of dogs; but, as we shall afterwards see, will go much further even
than this before it gives any signs at all of conceptual connotation,
or true denomination. Thus we see that between the most rudimentary
receptual connotation which a very young child shares with a parrot,
and the fully conceptual connotation which it subsequently attains,
there is a large intervening province due to the acquisition of a
higher receptual life. Or, to put the same thing in other words, there
is a large tract of ideation lying between the highest receptual
life of a brute and the lowest conceptual life of a man: this tract
is occupied by the growing child from the time at which its ideation
surpasses that of the brute, until it begins to attain the faculty
of self-conscious reflection. This intervening tract of ideation,
therefore, may be termed “higher receptual,” in contradistinction to
the lower receptual ideation which a younger child shares with the
lower animals.
At this point I must ask the reader carefully to fasten in his mind
these various distinctions. Nor will it be difficult to do so after a
small amount of attention. It will be remembered that in Chapter IV. I
instituted a distinction between concepts as higher and lower, which
was methodically similar to that which I have now to institute between
recepts. A “lower concept” was defined to be nothing more than a “named
recept,”[106] while a “higher concept” was understood to be one that is
“compounded of other concepts”—_i.e._ the named result of a grouping
of concepts, as when we speak of the “mechanical equivalent of heat.”
So that altogether we have four stages of ideation to recognize, each
of which occupies an immensely large territory of mind. These four
stages I will present in serial order.
(1) _Lower Recepts_, comprising the mental life of all the lower
animals, and so including such powers of receptual connotation as a
child when first emerging from infancy shares with a parrot.
(2) _Higher Recepts_, comprising all the extensive tract of ideation
that belongs to a child between the time when its powers of receptual
connotation first surpass those of a parrot, up to the age at which
connotation as merely denotative begins to become also denominative.
(3) _Lower Concepts_, comprising the province of conceptual ideation
where this first emerges from the higher receptual, up to the point
where denominative connotation has to do, not merely with the naming of
recepts, but also with that of associated concepts.
(4) _Higher Concepts_, comprising all the further excellencies of human
thought.
Higher Recepts, then, are what may be conveniently termed
Pre-concepts:[107] they occupy the interval between the receptual
life of brute and the earliest dawn of the conceptual life of man. A
pre-concept, therefore, is that kind of higher recept which is not to
be met with in any brute; but which occurs in the human being after
surpassing the brute and before attaining self-consciousness. Be it
observed that in thus coining the words higher recepts or pre-concepts,
I am not in any way prejudicing the case of my opponents; I am merely
marking off a certain territory of ideation which has now for the
first time been indicated. Of course my object eventually is to show
that in the history of a growing child, just as sensations give rise
to percepts, and percepts to recepts (as they do among animals), so do
recepts give rise to pre-concepts, pre-concepts to concepts, concepts
to propositions, and propositions to syllogisms. But in now supplying
this intermediate link of pre-concepts I am not in any way pre-judging
the issue: I am merely marking out the ground for discussion. No one of
my opponents can dispute my facts, which are too obvious to admit of
question. Therefore, if they object to my classification of them so far
as the novel division of pre-concepts is concerned, it must be because
they think that by instituting this division I am surreptitiously
bringing the mind of a child nearer to that of an animal than they deem
altogether safe. What, then, I ask, would they have me do? If I fail
to institute this division, I should have to prejudice the question
indeed. Either there is some distinction between the naming powers of
a parrot and those of a young child, or else there is not. If there is
no distinction, so much the better for the purposes of my argument.
But I allow that there is a distinction, and I draw it at the first
place where it can possibly be said that the intelligence of a child
differs in any way at all from that of a parrot—_i.e._ where the
naming powers of a child demonstrably excel those of a parrot, or any
other brute. If this place happens to be before the rise of conceptual
powers, I am not responsible for the fact; nor in stating it am I at
all disparaging the position of any opponent who takes his stand upon
these powers as distinctive of man. If his position were worth anything
before, it cannot be affected by my drawing attention to the fact that,
while a parrot will extend its denotative name of a dog from a terrier
to a setter, it will not follow a child any further in the process of
receptual connotation.
Or, to put it in another way, when the child says _Bow-wow_ to a
setter, after having learnt this name for a terrier, it is either
judging a resemblance and predicating a fact, or else it is doing
neither of these things. If my opponents elect to say that the child is
doing both these things, there is an end of the only issue between us;
for in that case a parrot also is able both to judge and to predicate.
On the other hand, if my opponents adopt the wiser course, and accept
my distinction between names as receptual and conceptual, they must
also follow me in recognizing the border-land of pre-concepts as lying
between the recepts of a bird and the concepts of a man—_i.e._ the
territory which is first occupied by the higher receptual life of a
child before this passes into the conceptual life of a man,—for that
such a border-land does exist I will prove still more incontestably
later on. There is, then, as a matter of observable fact, a territory
of ideation which separates the highest recepts of a brute from the
lowest concepts of a human being; and all that my term pre-conception
is designed to do is to name this intervening territory.
Now, if this is the case with regard to naming, clearly it must also be
the case with regard to judging: if there is a stage of pre-conception,
there must also be a stage of pre-judgment. For we have seen that it is
of the essence of a judgment that it should be concerned with concepts:
if the mind be concerned merely with recepts, no act of true judgment
can be said to have been performed. When a child says _Bow-wow_ to
the picture of a dog, no one can maintain that he is actually judging
the resemblance of the picture to a dog, unless it be supposed that
for this act of receptual classification distinctively human powers
of conceptual thought are required. But, as just shown, no opponent
of mine can afford to adopt this supposition, because behind the case
of the child there stands that of the parrot. True, the parrot does
not proceed in its receptual classification further than to extend its
name for a particular dog to other living dogs; but if any one were
foolish enough to stake his whole argument on so slender a distinction
as this—to maintain that at the place where the connotation of a child
first surpasses that of a parrot we have evidence of a psychological
distinction of kind, _on the sole ground that the child has begun to
surpass the parrot_—it would be enough for me to remark that not
_every_ parrot will thus extend its denotative sign from one dog
to another of greatly unlike appearance. Different birds display
different degrees of intelligence in this respect. Most of them will
say _Bow-wow_, will bark, or utter any other denotative sign which they
may have learnt or invented, when they see dogs more or less resembling
the one to which the denotative sign was originally applied; but it
is not every parrot which will thus extend the sign from a terrier to
a mastiff or a Newfoundland. Therefore, if any one were to maintain
that the difference between the intelligence which can discern, and
one which cannot discern, the likeness of a dog in the image or the
picture of a dog, is a difference of kind, consistency should lead
him to draw a similar distinction between the intelligence which can
discern, and one which cannot discern, the likeness of a terrier to a
mastiff. But, if so, the intelligence of one parrot would be different
in kind from that of another parrot; and the child’s intelligence
at one age would differ in kind from the intelligence of that same
child when a week or two older—both of which statements would be
manifestly absurd. The truth can only be that up to the point where
the intelligence of the child surpasses that of the bird they are both
in the receptual stage of sign-making; and that the only reason why
the child does surpass the bird is not, in the first instance, because
the child there suddenly attains the power of conceptual ideation, but
because it gradually attains a higher level of receptual ideation. This
admits of direct proof from the fact that animals more intelligent
than parrots are unquestionably able to recognize sculptured and even
pictorial representations: hence there can be no doubt that if talking
birds had attained a similar level of intelligence—or if the other and
more intelligent animals had been able, like the talking birds, to use
denotative signs,—the child would not have parted company with the
brute at quite so early a stage of receptual nomenclature.[108]
What, then, are we to say about the faculty of judgment in relation to
these three stages of ideation—namely, the receptual, pre-conceptual,
and conceptual? We can only institute the parallel and consequent
distinction between judgment as receptual, pre-conceptual, and
conceptual.[109] As now so often stated, the distinguishing features of
a judgment as fully displayed in any act of formal predication, are the
bringing together in self-conscious thought of two concepts, and the
distinguishing of some relation between them as such. Therefore we do
not say that a brute judges when, without any self-conscious thought,
it brings together certain reminiscences of its past experience in the
form of recepts, and translates for us the results of its ideation
by the performance of what Mr. Mivart calls “practical inferences.”
Therefore, also, if a brute which is able to name each of two recepts
separately (as is done by a talking bird), were to name the two recepts
simultaneously when thus combined in an act of “practical inference,”
although there would then be the outward semblance of a proposition,
we should not be strictly right in calling it a proposition. It would,
indeed, be the statement of a truth _perceived_; but not the statement
of a truth perceived _as true_.[110]
Now, if all this be admitted in the case of a brute—as it must be
by any one who takes his stand on the faculty of true or conceptual
judgment,—obviously it must also be admitted in the case of the
growing child. In other words, if it can be proved that a child is able
to state a truth before it can state a truth as true, it is thereby
proved that in the psychological history of every human being there
is first the incompleted kind of judgment required for dealing with
receptual knowledge, and so for stating truths perceived, and next
the completed judgment, which deals with conceptual knowledge, and so
is enabled to state truths perceived as true. Of course the condition
to the raising of this lower kind of judgment (if for convenience
we agree so to term it) into the higher, is given by the advent of
self-consciousness; and therefore the place where _statement_ of truth
passes into _predication_ of truth must be determined by the place
at which this kind of consciousness first supervenes. Where it does
first supervene we shall presently have to consider. Meanwhile I am
but endeavouring to make clear the fact that, unless my opponents
abandon their position altogether, they must allow that there is
_some_ difference to be recognized between the connotative powers of a
parrot and the connotative powers of a man. But if they do allow this,
they must further allow that between the place where the connotative
powers of a child first surpass those of a parrot, and the place where
those powers first become truly conceptual, there is a large tract of
ideation which it is impossible to ignore. In order, therefore, not
to prejudice the question before us, I have thus far confined myself
to a mere designation of these great and obvious distinctions. But
seeing that even this preliminary step has necessitated a great deal of
explanation, I feel it may conduce to clearness if I end the present
chapter with a tabular statement of the sundry distinctions in question.
By _receptual judgments_ I will understand the same order of ideation
as Mr. Mivart expresses by his term “practical inferences of brutes,”
instances of which have already been given in Chapter III.
By _pre-conceptual judgments_ I will understand those acts of virtual
or rudimentary judgment which are performed by children subsequent to
the “practical inferences” which they share with brutes, but prior to
the advent of self-conscious reflection. These pre-conceptual judgments
may be expressed either by gestures, connotative classifications, or
by both combined. Some instances of them have already been given in
the present chapter: further and better instances will be given in the
chapters which are to follow.
By _conceptual judgments_ I will understand full and complete judgments
in the ordinary acceptation of this term.
Receptual judgment, then, has to do with recepts; pre-conceptual
judgment with pre-concepts; and true judgments with true concepts. Or,
conversely stated, receptual knowledge leads to receptual judgment
(_e.g._ when a sea-bird dives into water but alights upon land):
pre-conceptual knowledge leads to pre-conceptual judgment in the
statement of such knowledge (_e.g._ when a child, by extending the name
of a dog to the picture of a dog, virtually affirms, though it does not
conceive, the resemblance which it perceives): and, lastly, conceptual
knowledge leads to conceptual or veritable judgment, in the statement
of such knowledge known as knowledge (_e.g._ when, in virtue of his
powers of reflective thought, a man not only states a truth, but states
that truth as true).
* * * * *
Thus far I doubt whether my opponents will find it easy to meet me.
They may, of course, cavil at some or all of the above distinctions;
but, if so, it is for them to show cause for complaint. They have
raised objections to the theory of evolution on purely psychological
grounds. I meet their objections upon these their own grounds, and
therefore the only way in which they can answer me is by showing
that there is something wrong in my psychological analysis. This I
fearlessly invite them to do. For all the distinctions which I have
made I have made out of consideration to the exigencies of their
argument. Although these distinctions may appear somewhat bewilderingly
numerous, I do not anticipate that any competent psychologist will
complain of them on account of their having been over-finely drawn.
For each of them marks off an important territory of ideation, and
all the territories so marked off must be separately noted, if the
alleged distinction of kind between one and another is to be seriously
investigated. In his essays upon the theory of evolution, Mr. Mivart
not unfrequently complains of the disregard of psychological analysis
which is betokened by any expression of opinion to the effect, that
as between one great territory of ideation and another there is only
a difference of degree. But surely this complaint comes with an ill
grace from a writer who bases an opposite opinion upon a precisely
similar neglect—or upon a bare statement of the greatest and most
obvious of all the distinctions in psychology, without so much as any
attempt to analyze it. Therefore, if my own attempt to do this has
erred on the side of overelaboration, it has done so only on account
of my desire to do full justice to the opposite side. In the result,
I claim to have shown that if it is possible to suggest a difference
of kind between any of the levels of ideation which have now been
defined, this can only be done at the last of them—or where the advent
of self-consciousness enables a mind, not only to _know_, but to _know
that it knows_; not only to _receive_ knowledge, but also to _conceive_
it; not only to _connotate_, but also to _denominate_; not only to
_state a truth_, but also to state that truth _as true_. The question,
therefore, which now lies before us is that as to the nature of this
self-consciousness—or, more accurately, whether the great and peculiar
distinction which this attribute confers upon the human intellect is
to be regarded as a distinction of degree only, or as a distinction of
kind. To answer this question we must first investigate the rise of
self-consciousness in the only place where its rise can be observed,
namely, in the psychogenesis of a child.[111]