CHAPTER XVII.

GENERAL SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS.

In the present treatise I take as granted the general theory of

evolution, so far as it is now accepted by the vast majority of

naturalists. That is to say, I assume the doctrine of descent as

regards the whole of organic nature, morphological and psychological,

with the one exception of man. Moreover, I assume this doctrine even

in the case of man, so far as his bodily organization is concerned; it

being thus only with reference to the human mind that the exception to

which I have alluded is made. And I make this exception in deference to

the opinion of that small minority of evolutionists who still maintain

that, notwithstanding their acceptance of the theory of descent as

regards the corporeal constitution of man, they are able to adduce

cogent evidence to prove that the theory fails to account for his

mental constitution.

Such being my basis of assumption, we began by considering the state

of the question _a priori_. If, in accordance with our assumption,

the process of organic and of mental evolution has been continuous

throughout the whole region of life and of mind, with the one exception

of the mind of man, on grounds of an immensely large analogy we

must deem it antecedently improbable that the process of evolution,

elsewhere so uniform and ubiquitous, should have been interrupted at

its terminal phase. And this antecedent presumption is still further

strengthened by the undeniable fact that, in the case of every

individual human being, the human mind presents to actual observation

a process of gradual development, extending from infancy to manhood.

For it is thus shown to be a matter of observable fact that, whatever

may have been the origin or the history of human intelligence in the

past, as it now exists—or, rather, as in every individual case it

now comes into existence—it proves itself to be no exception to the

general law of evolution: it unquestionably does admit of gradual

growth from a zero level, and without such a gradual growth we have no

evidence of its becoming. Furthermore, so long as it is passing through

the lower stages of this growth, the human mind ascends through a

scale of faculties which are parallel with those that are permanently

presented by what I have termed the psychological species of the animal

kingdom—a general fact which tends most strongly to prove that, at

all events up to the time when the distinctively human qualities of

ideation are attained, no difference of kind is apparent between human

and brute psychology. Lastly, not only in the individual, but also in

the race, the phenomena of mental evolution are conspicuous—so far,

at least, as the records of the human race extend. Whether we have

regard to actual history, to tradition, to antiquarian remains, or

flint implements, we obtain uniform evidence of a continuous process of

upward development, which is thus seen to be as characteristic of those

additional attributes wherein the human mind now surpasses that of any

other species as it is of those attributes which it shares with other

species. Therefore, if the process of mental evolution was interrupted

between the anthropoid apes and primitive man during the pre-historic

period of which we have no record, it must again have been resumed with

primitive man, after which it must have continued as uninterruptedly in

the human species as it previously did in the animal species. This, to

say the least, is a most improbable supposition. The law of continuity

is proved to apply on both sides of a psychological interval, where

there happens to be a necessary absence of historical information.

Yet we are asked to believe that, in curious coincidence with this

interval, the law of continuity was violated—notwithstanding that in

the case of every individual human mind such is known never to be the

case.

In order to overturn so immense a presumption as is thus raised against

the contention of my opponents on merely _a priori_ grounds, it appears

to me that they must be fairly called upon to supply some very powerful

considerations of an _a posteriori_ kind, tending to show that there

is something in the constitution of the human mind which renders it

virtually impossible to suppose that such an order of mental existence

can have proceeded by way of genetic descent from mind of lower orders.

I therefore next proceeded to consider the arguments which have been

adduced in support of this thesis.

In order that the points of difference on which these arguments are

founded might be brought out into clear relief, I began by briefly

considering the points of resemblance between the human mind and

mind of lower orders. Here we saw that so far as the Emotions are

concerned no difference of kind has been, or can be, alleged. The

whole series of human emotions have been proved to obtain among the

lower animals, except those which depend on the higher intellectual

powers of man—_i.e._ those appertaining to religion and perception

of the sublime. But all the others—which in my list amount to over

twenty—occur in the brute creation; and although many of them do

not occur in so highly developed a degree, this is immaterial where

the question is one of kind. Indeed, so remarkable is the general

similarity of emotional life in both cases—especially when we have

regard to the young child and savage man—that it ought fairly to be

taken as direct evidence of a genetic continuity between them.

And so, likewise, it is with Instinct. For although this occurs in a

greater proportion among the lower animals than it does in ourselves,

no one can venture to question the identity of all the instincts which

are common to both. And this is the only point that here requires to be

established.

Again, with respect to the Will, no argument can arise touching the

identity of animal and human volition up to the point where the latter

is alleged to take on the attribute of freedom—which, as we saw, under

any view depends on the intellectual powers of introspective thought.

There remain, then, only these intellectual powers of introspective

Thought, _plus_ the faculties of Morality and Religion. Now, it is

evident that, whatever we may severally conclude as touching the

distinctive value of the two latter, we must all agree that a prime

condition to the possibility of either resides in the former: without

the powers of intellect which are competent to frame the abstract

ideation that is concerned both in morals and religion, it is manifest

that neither could exist. Therefore, in logical order, it is these

powers of intellect that first fall to be considered. In subsequent

parts of this work I shall fully deal both with morals and religion: in

the present part I am concerned only with the intellect.

And here it is, as I have acknowledged, that the great psychological

distinction is to be found. Nevertheless, even here it must be conceded

that up to a certain point, as between the brute and the man, there is

not merely a similarity of kind, but an identity of correspondence. The

distinction only arises with reference to those superadded faculties of

ideation which occur above the level marked 28 in my diagram—_i.e._

where the upward growth of animal intelligence ends, and the

development of distinctively human faculty begins. So that in the case

of intellect, no less than in that of emotion, instinct, and volition,

there can be no doubt that the human mind runs exactly parallel with

the animal, up to the place where these superadded powers of intellect

begin to supervene. Therefore, upon the face of them, the facts of

comparative psychology thus far, to say the least, are strongly

suggestive of these superadded powers having been due to a process of

continued evolution.

So much, then, for the points of agreement between animal and human

psychology. Turning next to the points of difference, we had first to

dispose of certain allegations which were either erroneous in fact or

plainly unsound in theory. This involved a rejection _in toto_ of the

following distinctions—namely, that brutes are non-sentient machines;

that they present no rudiments of reason in the sense of perceiving

analogies and drawing inferences therefrom; that they are destitute

of any immortal principle; that they show no signs of progress from

generation to generation; that they never employ barter, make fire,

wear clothes, use tools, and so forth. Among these sundry alleged

distinctions, those which are not demonstrably false in fact are

demonstrably false in logic. Whether or not brutes are destitute of

any immortal principle, and whether or not human beings present such

a principle, the science of comparative psychology has no means of

ascertaining; and, therefore, any arguments touching these questions

are irrelevant to the subject-matter on which we are engaged. Again,

the fact that brutes do not resemble ourselves in wearing clothes,

making fire, &c., clearly depends on an absence in them of those powers

of higher ideation which alone are adequate to yield such products

in the way of intelligent action. All such differences in matters of

detail, therefore, really belong to, or are absorbed by, the more

general question as to the nature of the distinction between the two

orders of _ideation_. To this, therefore, as to the real question

before us, we next addressed ourselves. And here it was pointed out,

_in limine_, that the three living naturalists of highest authority

who still argue for a difference of kind between the brute and the

man, although they agree in holding that only on grounds of psychology

can any such difference be maintained, nevertheless upon these grounds

all mutually contradict one another. For while Mr. Mivart argues that

there must be a distinction of kind, because the psychological interval

between the highest ape and the lowest man is so great; Mr. Wallace

argues for the same conclusion on the ground that this interval is

not so great as the theory of a natural evolution would lead us to

expect: the brain of a savage, he says, is so much more efficient an

instrument than the mind to which it ministers, that its presence can

only be explained as a preparation for the higher efficiency of mental

life as afterwards exhibited by civilized man. Lastly, Professor De

Quatrefages contradicts both the English naturalists by vehemently

insisting that, so far as the powers of intellect are concerned, there

is a demonstrable identity of kind between animal intelligence and

human, whether in the savage or civilized condition: he argues that the

distinction only arises in the domain of morals and religion. So that,

if our opinion on the issue before us were to be in any way influenced

by the voice of authority, I might represent the judgments of these my

most representative opponents as mutually cancelling one another—thus

yielding a zero quantity as against the enormous and self-consistent

weight of authority on the other side.

But, quitting all considerations of authority, I proceeded to

investigate the question _de novo_, or exclusively on its own merits.

To do this it was necessary to begin with a somewhat tedious analysis

of ideation. The general result was to yield the following as my

classification of ideas.

1. Mere memories of perceptions, or the abiding mental images of past

sensuous impressions. These are the ideas which, in the terminology of

Locke, we may designate Simple, Particular, or Concrete. Nowadays no

one questions that such ideas are common to animals and men.

2. A higher class of ideas, which by universal consent are also

common to animals and men; namely, those which Locke called Complex,

Compound, or Mixed. These are something more than the simple memories

of particular perceptions; they are generated by the mixture of such

memories, and therefore represent a compound, of which “particular

ideas” are the elements or ingredients. By the laws of association,

particular ideas which either resemble one another in themselves, or

frequently occur together in experience, tend to coalesce and blend

into one: as in a “composite photograph” the sensitive plate is able

to unite many more or less similar images into a single picture, so

the sensitive tablet of the mind is able to make of many simple or

particular ideas, a complex, a compound, or, as I have called it, a

_generic_ idea. Now, a generic idea of this kind differs from what

is ordinarily called a general idea (which we will consider in the

next paragraph), in that, although both are generated out of simpler

elementary constituents, the former are thus generated as it were

spontaneously or anatomically by the principles of merely perceptual

association, while the latter can only be produced by a consciously

intentional operation of the mind upon the materials of its own

ideation, known as such. This operation is what psychologists term

conception, and the product of it they term a concept. Hence we see

that between the region of percepts and those of concepts there lies a

large intermediate territory, which is occupied by what I have called

generic ideas, or _recepts_. A recept, then, differs from a percept in

that it is a compound of mental representations, involving an orderly

grouping of simpler images in accordance with past experience; while

it differs from a concept in that this orderly grouping is due to an

unintentional or automatic activity on the part of the percipient mind.

A recept, or generic idea, is _imparted to_ the mind by the external

“logic of events;” while a general idea, or concept, is _framed by_ the

mind consciously working to a higher elaboration of its own ideas. In

short, a recept is _received_, while a concept is _conceived_.

3. The highest class of ideas, which psychologists are unanimous in

denying to brutes, and which, therefore, we are justified in regarding

as the unique prerogative of man. These are the General, Abstract,

and Notional ideas of Locke, or the Concepts just mentioned in the

last paragraph. As we have there seen, they differ from recepts—and,

_a fortiori_, from percepts, in that they are themselves the objects

of thought. In other words, it is a peculiarity of the human mind

that it is able to think about its own ideas as such, consciously

to combine and elaborate them, intentionally to develop higher

products out of less highly developed constituents. This remarkable

power we found—also by common consent—to depend on the faculty of

self-consciousness, whereby the mind is able, as it were, to stand

apart from itself, to render one of its states objective to others, and

thus to contemplate its own ideas as such. Now, we are not concerned

with the philosophy of this fact, but only with its history. How it

is that such a faculty as self-consciousness is possible; what it

is that can thus be simultaneously the subject and the object of

thought; whether or not it is conceivable that the great abyss of

personality can ever be fathomed; these and all such questions are

quite alien to the scope of the present work. All that we have here

to do is to analyze the psychological conditions out of which, as a

matter of observable fact, this unique peculiarity emerges—to trace

the history of the process, and tabulate the results. Well, we have

seen that here, again, every one agrees in regarding the possibility

of self-consciousness to be given in the faculty of language. Whether

or not we suppose that these two faculties are one—that neither

could exist without the other, and, therefore, that we may follow the

Greeks in assigning to them the single name of Logos,—at least it is

as certain as the science of psychology can make it, that within the

four corners of human experience a self-conscious personality cannot

be led up to in any other way than through the medium of language. For

it is by language alone that, so far as we have any means of knowing,

a mind is rendered capable of so far fixing—or rendering definite to

itself—its own ideas, as to admit of any subsequent contemplation

of them as ideas. It is only by means of marking ideas by names that

the faculty of conceptual thought is rendered possible, as we saw at

considerable length in Chapter IV.

Such, then, was my classification of ideas. And it is a classification

over which no dispute is likely to arise, seeing that it merely sets in

some kind of systematic order a body of observable facts with regard to

which writers of every school are nowadays in substantial agreement.

Now, if this classification be accepted, it follows that the question

before us is thrown back upon the faculty of language. This faculty,

therefore, I considered in a series of chapters. First it was pointed

out that, in its widest signification, “language” means the faculty of

making signs. Next, I adopted Mr. Mivart’s “Categories of Language,”

which, when slightly added to, serve to give at once an accurate and

exhaustive classification of every bodily or mental act with reference

to which the term can possibly be applied. In all there were found to

be seven of these categories, of which the first six are admittedly

common to animals and mankind. The seventh, however, is alleged by my

opponents to be wholly peculiar to the human species. In other words,

it is conceded that animals do present what may be termed the germ of

the sign-making faculty; but it is denied that they be able, even in

the lowest degree, to make signs of an intellectual kind—_i.e._ of a

kind which consists in the bestowing of names as marks of ideas. Brutes

are admittedly able to make signs to one another—and also to man—with

the intentional purpose of conveying such ideas as they possess;

but, it is alleged, no brute is able to name these ideas, either by

gestures, tones, or words. Now, in order to test this allegation, I

began by giving a number of illustrations which were intended to show

the level that is reached by the sign-making faculty in brutes; next

I considered the language of tone and gesture as this is exhibited by

man; then I proceeded to investigate the phenomena of articulation, the

relation of tone and gesture to words; and, lastly, the psychology of

speech. Not to overburden the present summary, I will neglect all the

subordinate results of this analysis. The main results, however, were

that the natural language of tone and gesture is identical wherever it

occurs; but that even when it becomes conventional (as it may up to a

certain point in brutes), it is much less efficient than articulate

language as an agency in the construction of ideas; and, therefore,

that the psychological line between brute and man must be drawn, not

at language, or sign-making in general, but at that particular kind of

sign-making which we understand by “speech.” Nevertheless, the real

distinction 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. In other words, although I endeavoured to

prove that articulation must have been of unique service in developing

these intellectual powers, I was emphatic in representing that, when

once these powers are present, it is psychologically immaterial

whether they find expression in gesture or in speech. In any case the

psychological distinction between a brute and a man consists in the

latter being able to _mean a proposition_; and the kind of mental act

which this involves is technically termed a “judgment.” Predication,

or the making of a proposition—whether by gesture, tone, speech, or

writing,—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.

Now, this is admitted by all my opponents who understand the psychology

of the subject. Moreover, they allow that if once this chasm of

predication were bridged, there would be no further chasm to cross. For

it is universally acknowledged that, from the simplest judgment which

it is possible to make—and, therefore, from the simplest proposition

which it is possible to construct—human intelligence displays an

otherwise uninterrupted ascent through all the grades of excellence

which it afterwards presents. Here, therefore, we had carefully to

consider the psychology of predication. And the result of our analysis

was to show that the distinctively human faculty in question really

occurs further back than at the place where a mind is first able to

construct the formal proposition “A is B.” It occurs at the place

where a mind is first able to bestow a name, known as such,—to call

A _A_, and B _B_, with a cognizance that in so doing it is performing

an act of conceptual classification. Therefore, unless we extend the

term “judgment” so as to embrace such an act of conceptual naming (as

well as the act of expressing a relation between things conceptually

named), we must conclude that “the simplest element of thought” is not

a judgment, but a concept. It is needless again to go over the ground

of this proof; for, although in the course of it I had to point out

certain inexcusable errors in psychological analysis on the part of

some of my opponents, the proof itself is too complete to admit of any

question.

Thus, then, we were brought back to our original distinction between

a concept and a recept. But now we were in a position to show that,

just as in the matter of conducting “inferences,” so in the matter

of making signs, there is an order of ideation that is receptual as

well as one that is conceptual. And, more particularly, even in that

kind of sign-making which consists in the bestowing of names, ideation

of the receptual order may be concerned without any assistance at

all from ideation of the conceptual order. In other words, there are

names and names. Not every name that is bestowed need necessarily

be expressive of a concept, any more than every “inference” that is

conducted need necessarily be the result of self-conscious thought. Not

only young children before they attain to self-conscious thought, but

even talking birds habitually name objects, qualities, actions, and

states. Nevertheless, while giving abundant evidence of this fact, I

was careful to point out that thus far no argumentative implications

of any importance were involved. That a young child and a talking

bird should be able thus to learn the names of objects, qualities,

&c., by imitation—or even to invent arbitrary names of their own—is

psychologically of no more significance than the fact that both the

child and the bird will similarly employ gesture-signs or vocal tones

whereby to express the simple logic of their recepts. Nevertheless,

it is needful in some way to distinguish this non-conceptual kind of

naming from that kind which is peculiar to man after he has attained

self-consciousness, and thus is able, not only to name, but to _know

that he names_—not only to call A _A_, but to _think A as his symbol

of_ A. Now, in order to mark this distinction, I have assigned the term

_denotation_ to naming of the receptual kind, and applied the term

_denomination_ to naming of the conceptual kind. When a parrot calls a

dog “Bow-wow” (as a parrot, like a child, can easily be taught to do),

it may be said in a sense to be naming the dog; but obviously it is not

_predicating_ any characters as belonging to a dog, or performing any

act of _judgment_ with regard to a dog—as is the case, for example,

with a naturalist who, by means of his name _Canis_, conceptually

assigns that animal to a particular zoological genus. Although the

parrot may never utter the name “Bow-wow” 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 ever thinks about the dog as a dog, or sets the concept

Dog before its mind as a separate object of thought. Therefore, none

of my opponents can afford to deny 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. Now, it is in order not to prejudice

the case of my opponents, and thus clearly to mark out the field of

discussion, that I have instituted the distinction between names as

receptual and conceptual, or denotative and denominative.

This distinction having been clearly understood, the next point was

that both kinds of names admit of connotative extension—denotative

names within the receptual sphere, and denominative within the

conceptual. That is to say, when a name has been applied to one thing,

its use may be extended to another thing, which is seen to belong to

the same class or kind. The degree to which such connotative extension

of a name may take place depends, of course, on the degree in which the

mind is able to take cognizance of resemblances or analogies. Hence

the process can go much further in the conceptual sphere than it does

in the receptual. But the important point is that it unquestionably

takes place in the latter within certain limits. Nor is this anything

more than we should antecedently expect. For in the lengthy account

and from the numerous facts which I gave of the receptual intelligence

of brutes, it was abundantly proved that long before the differential

engine of conception has come to the assistance of mind, mind is

able to reach a high level in the distinguishing of resemblances or

analogies by means of receptual discrimination alone. Consequently, it

is inevitable that non-conceptual or denotative names should undergo a

connotative extension, within whatever limits these powers of merely

receptual discrimination impose. And, as a matter of fact, we found

that such is the case. A talking bird will extend its denotative name

from one dog in particular to any other dog which it may happen to see;

and a young child, after having done this, will extend the denotative

name still further, so as to include images, and eventually pictures,

of dogs. Hence, if the receptual intelligence of a parrot were somewhat

more advanced than it happens to be, we can have no doubt that it would

do the same: the only reason why in this matter it parts company with

a child so soon as it does, is because its receptual intelligence is

not sufficiently developed to perceive the resemblance of images and

pictures to the objects which they are intended to represent. But the

receptual intelligence of a dog is higher than that of a parrot, and

some dogs are able to perceive resemblances of this kind. Therefore

if dogs, like parrots, had happened to be able to articulate, and so

to learn the use of denotative names, there can be no doubt that they

would have accompanied the growing child through a somewhat further

reach of connotative utterance than is the case with the only animals

which present the anatomical conditions required for the imitation of

articulate sounds. Both dogs and monkeys are able, in an extraordinary

degree, to _understand_ these sounds: that is to say, they can learn

the meanings of an astonishing number of denotative names, and also

be taught to apprehend a surprisingly large extension of connotative

significance. Consequently, if they could but _imitate_ these sounds,

after the manner of a parrot, it is certain that they would greatly

distance the parrot in this matter of receptual connotation.

But, lastly, we are not shut up to any such hypothetical case. For

the growing child itself furnishes us with evidence upon the point,

which is no less cogent than would be the case if dogs and monkeys were

able to talk. For, without argumentative suicide, none of my opponents

can afford to suggest that, up to the age when self-consciousness

dawns, the young child is capable of conceptual connotation; yet it is

unquestionable that up to that age a continuous growth of connotation

has been taking place, which, beginning with the level that it shares

with a parrot, is eventually able to construct what I have called

“receptual propositions,” the precise nature of which I will summarise

in a subsequent paragraph. The evidence which I have given of this

connotative extension of denotative names by children before the age

at which self-consciousness supervenes—and, therefore, _prior to

the very condition which is required for conceptual ideation_—is, I

think, overwhelming. And I do not see how its place in my argument

can be gainsaid by any opponent, except at the cost of ignoring my

distinction between connotation as receptual and conceptual. Yet

to do this would be to surrender his whole case. Either there is a

distinction, or else there is not a distinction, between connotation

that is receptual, and connotation that is conceptual. If there is no

distinction, all argument is at an end: the brute and the man are one

in kind. But I allow that there is a distinction, and I acknowledge

that the distinction resides where it is alleged to reside by my

opponents—namely, in the presence or absence of self-consciousness

on the part of a mind which bestows a name. Or, to revert to my own

terminology, it is the distinction between denotation and denomination.

Now, in order to analyze this distinction, it became needful further

to distinguish between the highest level of receptual ideation that

is attained by any existing brute, and those further developments of

receptual ideation which are presented by the growing child, after it

parts company with all existing brutes, but before it assumes even

the lowest stage of conceptual ideation—_i.e._ prior to the dawn of

self-consciousness. This subordinate distinction I characterized by the

terms “lower recepts” and “higher recepts.” Already I had instituted

a distinction between “lower concepts” and “higher concepts,” meaning

by the former the conceptual naming of recepts, and by the latter a

similar naming of other concepts. So that altogether four large and

consecutive territories were thus marked out: (1) Lower Recepts, which

are co-extensive with the psychology of existing animals, including

a very young child; (2) Higher Recepts, which occupy a psychological

area between the recepts of animals and the first appearance of

self-consciousness in man; (3) Lower Concepts, which are concerned only

with the self-conscious naming of recepts; (4) Higher Concepts, which

have to do with the self-conscious classification of other concepts

known as such, and the self-conscious naming of such ideal integrations

as may result therefrom.

Now, if all this is true of naming, clearly it must also be true of

judging. If there is a stage of pre-conceptual naming (denotation),

there must also be a stage of pre-conceptual judgment, of which such

naming is the expression. No doubt, in strictness, the term judgment

should be reserved for conceptual thought (denomination); but, in order

to avoid an undue multiplication of terms, I prefer thus to qualify the

existing word “judgment.” Such, indeed, has already been the practice

among psychologists, who speak of “intuitive judgments” as occurring

even in acts of perception. All, therefore, that I propose to do is to

institute two additional classes of non-conceptual judgment—namely,

lower receptual and higher receptual, or, more briefly, receptual and

pre-conceptual. If one may speak of an “intuitive,” “unconscious,” or

“perceptual” judgment (as when we mistake a hollow bowl for a sphere),

much more may we speak of a receptual judgment (as when a sea-bird

dives from a height into water, but will not do so upon land), or a

pre-conceptual judgment (as when a young child will extend the use of

a denotative name without any denominative conception). In all, then,

we have four phases of ideation to which the term judgment may be thus

either literally or metaphorically applied—namely, the perceptual,

receptual, pre-conceptual, and conceptual. Of these the last only

is judgment, properly so called. Therefore I do not say that a brute

really 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 result of its ideation by the

performance of what Mr. Mivart calls “practical inferences.” Neither

do I say that a brute really judges when, still without self-conscious

thought, it learns correctly to employ denotative names. Nay, I should

deny that a brute really judges even if, after it is able to denotate

separately two different recepts (as is done by a talking bird), it

were to name these 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_.

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 is able to state a truth as true, it is

thereby proved that in the psychological history of every human being

there is first the kind of predication which is required for dealing

with receptual knowledge, or for the stating of truths perceived;

and next the completed judgment which is required for dealing with

conceptual knowledge, or of stating truths perceived as true. Of course

the condition required for the raising of this lower kind of judgment

and this lower kind of predication (if, for the sake of convenience, we

agree to use these terms) into the higher or only true kind of judgment

and predication, is the advent of self-consciousness. Or, in other

words, the place where a mere statement of truth first passes into a

real predication of truth, is determined by the place at which there

first supervenes the faculty of introspective reflection. The whole

issue is thus reduced to an analysis of self-consciousness. To this

analysis, therefore, we next addressed ourselves.

Seeing that the faculty in question only occurs in man, obviously

it is only in the case of man that any material is supplied for the

analysis of it. Moreover, as previously remarked, so far as this our

analysis is concerned, we have only to deal with the psychology of

self-consciousness: we are not concerned with its philosophy. Now,

as a matter of psychology, no one can possibly dispute that the

faculty in question is one of gradual development; that during the

first two or three years of the growing intelligence of man there is

no vestige of any such faculty at all; that when it does begin to

dawn, the human mind is already much in advance of the mind of any

brute; but that, even so, it is much less highly developed than it

is afterwards destined to become; and that the same remark applies

to the faculty of self-consciousness itself. Furthermore, it will be

granted that self-consciousness consists in paying the same kind of

attention to internal, or psychical processes, as is habitually paid

to external, or physical processes—although, of course, the degrees

in which such attention may be yielded are as various in the one case

as in the other. Lastly, it will be further granted that in the minds

of brutes, as in the minds of men, there is a world of images, or

recepts; and that the only reason why in the former case these images

are not attended to unless called up by the sensuous association of

their corresponding objects, is because the mind of a brute is not

able to leave the ground of such merely sensuous association, so as

to move through the higher and more tenuous region of introspective

thought. Nevertheless, I have proved that this image-world, even in

brutes, displays a certain amount of internal activity, which is not

wholly dependent on sensuous associations supplied from without.

For the phenomena of “home-sickness,” pining for absent friends,

dreaming, hallucination, &c., amply demonstrate the fact that in our

more intelligent domesticated animals there may be an internal (though

unintentional) play of ideation, wherein one image suggests another,

this another, and so on, without the need of any immediate associations

supplied from present objects of sense. Furthermore, I have pointed

out that receptual ideation of this kind is not restricted to the

images of sense-perception; but is largely concerned with the mental

states of other animals. That is to say, the logic of recepts, even in

brutes, is sufficient to enable the mind to establish true analogies

between subjective states and the corresponding states of other

intelligences: animals habitually and accurately interpret the mental

states of other animals, while also well knowing that other animals

are able similarly to interpret theirs. Hence, it must be further

conceded that intelligent animals recognize a world of ejects, as well

as a world of objects: mental existence is known to them ejectively,

though, as I allow, never thought upon subjectively. At this stage of

mental evolution the individual—whether an animal or an infant—so

far realizes its own individuality as to be informed by the logic

of recepts that it is one of a kind, although of course it does not

recognize either its own or any other individuality as such.

Nevertheless, there is thus given a rudimentary or nascent form

of self-consciousness, which up to the stage of development

that it attains in a brute or an infant may be termed receptual

self-consciousness; while in the more advanced stages which it presents

in young children it may be termed pre-conceptual self-consciousness.

Pre-conceptual self-consciousness is exhibited by all children after

they have begun to talk, but before they begin to speak of themselves

in the first person, or otherwise to give any evidence of realizing

their own existence as such. Later on, when true self-consciousness

does arise, the child, of course, is able to do this; and then only

is supplied the condition _sine quâ non_ to a reflection upon its own

ideas—hence to a knowledge of names as names, and so to a statement

of truths as true. But long before this stage of true or conceptual

self-consciousness is reached—whereby alone is rendered possible true

or conceptual predication—the child, in virtue of its pre-conceptual

self-consciousness, is able to make known its wants, and otherwise to

communicate its ideas, by way of pre-conceptual predication. I gave

many instances of this pre-conceptual predication, which abundantly

proved that the pre-conceptual self-consciousness of which it is the

expression amounts to nothing more than a practical recognition of self

as an active and feeling agent, without any introspective recognition

of that self as an object of knowledge.

Given, then, this stage of mental evolution, and what follows? The

child, like the animal, is supplied by its logic of recepts with a

world of images, standing as signs of outward objects; with an ejective

knowledge of other minds, and with that kind of recognition of self

as an active, suffering, and accountable agent to which allusion

has just been made. But, over and above the animal, the child has

now at its command a much more improved machinery of sign-making,

which, as we have before seen, is due to the higher evolution of its

receptual ideation. Now among the contents of this ideation is a better

apprehension of the mental states of other human beings, together with

a greatly increased power of denotative utterance, whereby the child is

able to name receptually such ejective states as it thus receptually

apprehends. These, therefore, severally receive their appropriate

denotations, and so gain clearness and precision as ejective images

of the corresponding states experienced by the child itself. “Mamma

pleased to Dodo” would have no meaning as spoken by a child, unless

the child knew from his own feelings what is the state of mind which

he thus ejectively attributes to his mother. Hence, we find that at

the same age the child will also say “Dodo pleased to mamma.” Now it

is evident that we are here approaching the very borders of true or

conceptual self-consciousness. The child, no doubt, is still speaking

of himself in objective phraseology; but he has advanced so far in the

interpretation of his own states of mind as clearly to name them, in

the same way as he would name any external objects of sense-perception.

Thus is he enabled to fix these states before his mental vision as

things which admit of being denoted by verbal signs, although as yet

he has never thought about either the states of mind or his names for

them _as such_, and, therefore, has not yet attained to the faculty

of denomination. But the interval between denotation and denomination

has now become so narrow that the step from recognizing “Dodo” as not

only the object, but also the subject of mental changes, is rendered at

once easy and inevitable. The mere fact of attaching verbal signs to

mental states has the effect of focussing attention upon those states;

and when attention is thus focussed habitually, there is supplied the

only further condition which is required to enable a mind, through its

memory of previous states, to compare its past with its present, and so

to reach that apprehension of continuity among its own states wherein

the full introspective, or conceptual consciousness of self consists.

Several subordinate features in the evolution of this conceptual from

pre-conceptual self-consciousness were described; but it is needless

again to mention them. Enough has been here said to show ample grounds

for the conclusions which my chapter on “Self-consciousness” was

mainly concerned in establishing—namely, that language is quite as

much the antecedent as it is the consequent of self-consciousness;

that pre-conceptual predication is indicative of a pre-conceptual

self-consciousness; and that from these there naturally and inevitably

arise those higher powers of conceptual predication and conceptual

self-consciousness on which my opponents (disregarding the phases that

lead up to them) have sought to rear their alleged distinction of kind

between the brute and the man.

Thus, as a general result of the whole inquiry so far, we may say

that throughout the entire range of mental phenomena we have found

one and the same distinction to obtain between the faculties of

mind as perceptual, receptual, and conceptual. Percept, Recept, and

Concept; Perceptual Judgment, Receptual Judgment, and Conceptual

Judgment; Indication, Denotation, and Denomination;—these are all

manifestations, in different regions of psychological inquiry, of the

same psychological distinctions. And we have seen that the distinction

between a Recept and a Concept, which is thus carried through all

the fabric of mind, is really the only distinction about which there

can be any dispute. Moreover, we have seen that the distinction

is on all hands allowed to depend on the presence or absence of

self-consciousness. Lastly, we have seen that even in the province of

self-consciousness itself the same distinction admits of being traced:

there is a form of self-consciousness which may be termed receptual, as

well as that which may be termed conceptual. The whole question before

us thus resolves itself into an inquiry touching the relation between

these two forms of self-consciousness: is it or is it not observable

that the one is developmentally continuous with the other? Can we or

can we not perceive that in the growing child the powers of receptual

self-consciousness, which it shares with a brute, pass by slow and

natural stages into those powers of conceptual self-consciousness which

are distinctive of a man?

This question was fully considered in Chapter XI. I had previously

shown that so far as the earliest, or indicative phase of language is

concerned, no difference even of degree can be alleged between the

infant and the animal. I had also shown that neither could any such

difference be alleged with regard to the earlier stages of the next

two phases—namely, the denotative and the receptually connotative.

Moreover, I had shown that no difference of kind could be alleged

between this lower receptual utterance which a child shares with a

brute, and that higher receptual utterance which it proceeds to develop

prior to the advent of self-consciousness. Lastly, I had shown that

this higher receptual utterance gives to the child a psychological

instrument whereby to work its way from a merely receptual to an

incipiently conceptual consciousness of self. Such being the state

of the facts as established by my previous analysis, I put to my

opponents the following dilemma. Taking the case of a child about two

years old, who is able to frame such a rudimentary, communicative, or

pre-conceptual proposition as “Dit ki” (Sister is crying), I proceeded

thus.

“Dit” is the denotative name of one recept, “ki” the denotative name of

another: the object and the action which these two recepts severally

represent happen to occur together before the child’s observation:

the child, therefore, denotes them simultaneously—_i.e._ brings

them into _apposition_. The apposition in consciousness of these two

recepts, with their corresponding denotations, is thus effected _for_

the child by the logic of events: it is not effected _by_ the child in

the way of any intentional or self-conscious grouping of its ideas,

such as we have seen to be the distinguishing feature of the logic of

concepts. Here, then, comes the dilemma. For I say, either you here

have conceptual judgment, or else you have not. If you say that this

is conceptual judgment, you destroy the basis of your own distinction

between man and brute, because then you must also say that brutes

conceptually judge—the child as yet not having attained to conceptual

self-consciousness. If, on the other hand, you say that here you have

not conceptual judgment, inasmuch as you have not self-consciousness,

I ask at what stage in the subsequent development of the child’s

intelligence you would consider conceptual judgment to arise. Should

you answer that it first arises when conceptual self-consciousness

first supplies the condition to its arising, I must refer you to the

proof already given that the advent of self-consciousness is itself a

gradual process, the precedent conditions of which are supplied far

down in the animal series. But if this is so, where the faculty of

stating a truth perceived passes into the higher faculty of perceiving

the truth as true, there is a continuous series of gradations

connecting the one faculty with the other. Up to the point where this

continuous series of gradations begins, the mind of the child is, as I

have already proved, indistinguishable from the mind of an animal by

any one principle of psychology. Will you, then, maintain that up to

this time the two orders of psychical existence are identical in kind,

but that during its ascent through this final series of gradations the

human intelligence becomes distinct in kind from that of animals, and

_therefore also from its own previous self_? If so, your argument here

ends in a contradiction.

In confirmation of this my general argument, two subsidiary

considerations were then added. The first was that although the

advance to true self-consciousness from lower grades of mental

development is no doubt a very great and important matter, still

it is not so great and important in comparison with what this

development is afterwards destined to become, as to make us feel that

it constitutes any distinction _sui generis_—or even, perhaps, the

principal distinction—between the man and the brute. For even when

self-consciousness does arise, and has become fairly well developed,

the powers of the human mind are still in an almost infantile

condition. In other words, the first genesis of true self-consciousness

marks a comparatively low level in the evolution of the human mind—as

we might expect that it should, if its genesis depends upon, and

therefore lies so near to, those precedent conditions in merely animal

psychology to which I have assigned it. But, if so, does it not

follow that, great as the importance of self-consciousness afterwards

proves to be in the development of distinctively human ideation,

in itself, or in its first beginning, it does not betoken any very

perceptible advance upon those powers of pre-conceptual ideation which

it immediately follows? There is thus shown to be even less reason

for regarding the first advent of conceptual self-consciousness as

marking a psychological difference of kind, than there would be so

to regard the advent of those higher powers of conceptual ideation

which subsequently—though as gradually—supervene between early

childhood and youth. Yet no one has hitherto ventured to suggest that

the intelligence of a child and the intelligence of a youth display a

difference of kind.

The second subsidiary consideration which I adduced was, that even

in the case of a fully developed self-conscious intelligence, both

receptual and pre-conceptual ideation continue to play an important

part. The vast majority of our verbal propositions are made for the

practical purposes of communication, or without the mind pausing to

contemplate the propositions in the light of self-consciousness. No

doubt in many cases, or in those where highly abstract ideation is

concerned, this independence of the two faculties is more apparent

than real: it arises from each having undergone so much elaboration

by the assistance which it has derived from the other, that both are

now in possession of a large body of organized material on which to

operate, without requiring, whenever they are exercised, to build up

the structure of this material _ab initio_. When I say “Heat is a mode

of motion,” I am using what is now to me a mere verbal sign, which

expresses an external fact: I do not require to examine my own ideas

upon the abstract relation which the proposition sets forth, although

for the original attainment of these ideas I had to exercise many and

complex efforts of conceptual thought. But although I hold this to be

the true explanation of the apparent independence of predication and

introspection in all cases of highly abstract thought, I am convinced,

on the ground of adequate reasons given, that in all cases where

those lower orders of ideation are concerned to which I have so often

referred as receptual and pre-conceptual, the independence is not only

apparent, but real. Now, if the reasons which I have assigned for this

conclusion are adequate—and they are reasons sanctioned by Mill,—it

follows that the ideation concerned in ordinary predication becomes so

closely affiliated with that which is expressed in the lower levels

of sign-making, that even if the connecting links were not supplied

by the growing child, no one would be justified, on psychological

grounds alone, in alleging any difference of kind between one level and

another. The object of all sign-making is communication, and from our

study of the lower animals we know that communication first has to do

exclusively with recepts, while from our study of the growing child we

know that it is the signs used in the communication of recepts which

first lead to the formation of concepts. For concepts are first of all

named recepts, known as such; and we have seen in previous chapters

that this kind of knowledge (_i.e._ of names as names) is rendered

possible by introspection, which, in turn, is reached by the naming of

self as an agent. But even after the power of conceptual introspection

has been fully reached, demand is not always made upon it for the

communication of merely receptual knowledge; and therefore it is that

not every proposition requires to be introspectively contemplated as

such before it can be made. Given the power of denotative nomination on

the one hand, and the power of even the lowest degree of connotative

nomination on the other, and all the conditions are furnished to

the formation of non-conceptual statements, which differ from true

propositions only in that they do not themselves become objects of

thought. And the only difference between such a statement when made by

a young child, and the same statement when similarly made by a grown

man, is that in the former case it is not even _potentially_ capable of

itself becoming an object of thought.

* * * * *

The investigation having been thus concluded so far as comparative

psychology was concerned, I next turned upon the subject the

independent light of comparative philology. Whereas we had hitherto

been dealing with what on grounds of psychological analysis alone

we might fairly infer were the leading phases in the development of

distinctively human ideation, we now turned to that large mass of

direct evidence which is furnished by the record of Language, and is

on all hands conceded to render a kind of unintentional record of the

pre-historic progress of this ideation.

The first great achievement of comparative philology has been that of

demonstrating, beyond all possibility of question, that language as

it now exists did not appear ready-made, or by way of any specially

created intuition. Comparative philology has furnished a completed

proof of the fact that language, as we now know it, has been the result

of a gradual evolution. In the chapter on “Comparative Philology,”

therefore, I briefly traced the principles of language growth, so far

as these are now well recognized by all philologists. It was shown,

as a matter of classification, that the thousand or more existing

languages fall into about one hundred families, all the members of each

family being more or less closely allied, while members of different

families do not present evidence of genetic affinity. Nevertheless,

these families admit of being comprised under larger groups or

“orders,” in accordance with certain characteristics of structure, or

type, which they present. Of these types all philologists are agreed

in distinguishing between the Isolating, the Agglutinating, and the

Inflectional. Some philologists make a similar distinction between

these and the Polysynthetic, while all are agreed that from the

agglutinative the Incorporating type has been derived, and from the

inflectional the Analytic.

Passing on from classification to phylogeny, we had to consider the

question of genetic relationship between the three main orders, _inter

se_, and also between the Polysynthetic type and the Agglutinating.

The conflict of authoritative opinion upon this question was shown to

have no bearing upon the subject-matter of this treatise, further than

to emphasize the doctrine of the polyphylectic origin of language—the

probability appearing to be that, regarded as types, both the isolating

and the polysynthetic are equally archaic, or, at all events, that they

have been of equally independent growth. In this connection I adduced

the hypothesis of Dr. Hale, to the effect that the many apparently

independent tongues which are spoken by different native tribes of

the New World, may have been in large part due to the inventions

of accidentally isolated children. The curious correlation between

multiplicity of independent tongues and districts favourable to the

life of unprotected children—in Africa as well as in America—seemed

to support this hypothesis; while good evidence was given to show that

children, if left much alone, do invent for themselves languages which

have little or no resemblance to that of their parents.

Without recapitulating all that was said upon the phases and causes of

linguistic evolution in its various lines of descent, it will be enough

to remind the reader that in every case the result of philological

inquiry is here the same—namely, to find that languages become simpler

in their structure the further they are traced backwards, until we

arrive at their so-called “roots.” These are sometimes represented as

the mysterious first principles of language, or even as the aboriginal

_data_ whose origin is inexplicable. As a matter of fact, however,

these roots are nothing more than the ultimate results of philological

analysis: in no other sense than this can they be supposed “primary.”

Seeing, then, that these roots represent the materials of language

up to the place where the evolution of language no longer admits of

being clearly traced, it is evident that their antecedents, whatever

they may have been, necessarily lie beyond the reach of philological

demonstration, as distinguished from philological inference. This,

of course, is what an evolutionist knows antecedently _must be the

case somewhere_ in the course of any inquiry touching the process of

evolution, wherever he may have occasion to trace it. For the further

he is able to trace it, the nearer must he be coming to the place where

the very material which he is investigating has taken its origin;

and as it is this material itself which furnishes the evidences of

evolution, when it has been traced back to its own origin, the inquiry

reaches a vanishing point. Adopting the customary illustration of a

tree, we might say that when a philologist has traced the development

of the leaves from the twigs, the twigs from the branches, the branches

from the stems, and the stems from the roots, he has given to the

evolutionist all the evidence of evolution which in this particular

line of inquiry is antecedently possible. The germ of ideation out of

which the roots developed must obviously lie beyond the reach of the

philologist as such; and if any light is to be thrown upon the nature

of this germ, or if any evidence is to be yielded of the phases whereby

the germ gave origin to the roots, this must be done by some other

lines of inquiry finding similar germs giving rise to similar products

elsewhere. In the present instance, the only place where we can look

for such parallel processes of evolution is in the case of the growing

child, which I have already considered.

Here, then, we are in the presence of exactly the same distinction with

regard to the origin of Language, as we were at the beginning of this

treatise with regard to the origin of Man. For we there saw that, while

we have the most cogent historical proof of the principles of evolution

having governed the progress of civilization, we have no such direct

proof of the descent of man from a brutal ancestry. And here likewise

we find that, so long as the light of philology is able to guide us,

there can be no doubt that the principles of evolution have determined

the gradual development of languages, in a manner strictly analogous

to that in which they have determined the ever-increasing refinement

and complexity of social organizations. Now, in the latter case we saw

that such direct evidence of evolution from lower to higher levels of

culture renders it well-nigh certain that the method must have extended

backwards beyond the historical period; and hence that such direct

evidence of evolution uniformly pervading the historical period in

itself furnishes a strong _primâ facie_ presumption that this period

was itself reached by means of a similarly gradual development of human

faculty. And thus, also, it is in the case of language. If philology

is able to prove the fact of evolution in all known languages as far

back as the primitive roots out of which they have severally grown, the

presumption becomes exceedingly strong that these earliest and simplest

elements, like their later and more complex products, were the result

of a natural growth. Or, in the words already quoted from Geiger,

we cannot forbear concluding that language must once have had no

existence at all. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between

demonstrated fact and speculative inference, however strong; and,

therefore, I began by stating the stages of evolution through which

languages are now known to have passed from the root-stage upwards.

Having done this, I proceeded to consider the question touching the

origin of these roots themselves.

First, as to their number, we found that the outside estimate, in the

younger days of philological research, gave one thousand as a fair

average of the roots which go to feed any living language; but that

this estimate might now be safely reduced by three-fourths. Indeed,

in his latest work, Professor Max Müller professes to have reduced

the roots of Sanskrit to as low a number as 121, and thinks that even

this is excessive. Regarding the character of roots, we saw that some

philologists look upon them as the actual words which were used by

the pre-historic speakers, who, therefore, “talked with one another

in single syllables, indicative of ideas of prime importance, but

wanting all designation of their relations.”[335] On the other hand,

it is now the generally accepted belief, that “roots are the phonetic

and significant types discovered by the analysis of the comparative

philologist as common to a group of allied words,”[336]—or, as it

were, composite phonograms of families of words long since extinct as

individuals. We saw, however, that this difference of opinion among

philologists does not affect the present inquiry, seeing that even

the phonetic-type theory does not question that the unknown words out

of the composition of which a root is now extracted must have been

genetically allied with one another, and exhibited the closeness of

their kinship by a close similarity of their sounds.

A much more important question for us is the character of these roots

with respect to their significance. In this connection we found that

they indicate what Professor Max Müller calls “general ideas,” or

“concepts;” bear testimony to an already and, comparatively speaking,

advanced stage of social culture; are all expressive either of actions

or states; and betray no signs of imitative origin. Taking each of

these characters separately, we found that although all the 121 roots

of Sanskrit are expressive of general ideas, the order of generality

is so low as for the most part to belong to that which I had previously

called “lower concepts,” or “named recepts.” Next, that they all bear

intrinsic testimony to their own comparatively recent origin, and,

therefore, are “primitive” only in the sense of representing the last

result of philological analysis: they certainly are very far from

primitive in the sense of being aboriginal. Again, that they are all

of the nature of verbs was shown to be easily explicable; and, lastly,

the fact that none of them betray any imitative source is not to be

wondered at, even on the supposition that onomatopœia entered largely

into the composition of aboriginal speech. For, on the one hand, we

saw that in the struggle for existence among aboriginal and early

words, those only could have stood any chance of survival—_i.e._ of

leaving progeny—which had attained to some degree of connotative

extension, or “generality;” and, on the other hand, that in order to

do this an onomatopoetic word must first have lost its onomatopoetic

significance. A large body of evidence was adduced in support of the

onomatopoetic theory, and certain objections which have been advanced

against it were, I think, thoroughly controverted. Later on, however,

we saw that the question as to the degree in which onomatopœia entered

in to the construction of aboriginal speech is really a question of

secondary interest to the evolutionist. Whether in the first instance

words were all purely arbitrary, all imitative, or some arbitrary and

some imitative,—in any case the course of their subsequent evolution

would have been the same. By connotative extension in divergent lines,

meanings would have been progressively multiplied in those lines

through all the progeny of ever-multiplying terms—just in the same

way as we find to be the case in “baby-talk,” and as philologists have

amply proved to be the case with the growth of languages in general.

That speech from the first should have been concerned with the naming

of generic ideas, or higher recepts, as well as with particular objects

of sense, is what the evolutionist would antecedently expect. It must

be remembered that the kind of classification with which recepts are

concerned is that which lies nearest to the automatic groupings of

sensuous perception: it depends on an absence of any power analytically

to distinguish less perceptible points of difference among more

conspicuous points of resemblance—or non-essential analogies among

essential analogies with which they happen to be frequently associated

in experience. On the other hand, the kind of classification with

which concepts are concerned is that which lies furthest from the

automatic groupings of sensuous perception: it depends on the power

of analytically distinguishing between essentials and non-essentials

among resemblances which occur associated together in experience.

Classification there doubtless is in both cases; but in the one it is

due to the obviousness of analogies, while in the other it is due to

the mental dissociation of analogies as apparent and real. Or else, in

the one case it is due to constancy of association in experience of the

objects, attributes, actions, &c., classified; while in the other case

it is due to a conscious disregard of such association.

Now, if we remember these things, we can no longer wonder that the

palæontology of speech should prove early roots to have been expressive

of “generic,” as distinguished from “general” ideas. The naming of

actions and processes so habitual, or so immediately apparent to

perception, as those to which the “121 concepts” tabulated by Professor

Max Müller refer, does not betoken an order of ideation very much

higher than the pre-conceptual, in virtue of which a young child is

able to give expression to its higher receptual life, prior to the

advent of self-consciousness. In view of these considerations, my only

wonder is that the 121 root-words do not present _better_ evidence of

conceptual thought. This, however, only shows how comparatively small a

part self-conscious reflection need play in the practical life of early

man, even when so far removed from the really “primitive” condition of

hitherto wordless man as was that of the pastoral people who have left

this record of ideation in the roots of Aryan speech.

After having thus explained the absence of words significant of

“particular ideas” among the roots of existing language, as well

as the generic character of those which the struggle for existence

has permitted to come down to us, we went on to consider sundry

other corroborations of our previous analysis which are yielded

by the science of philology. First we saw that this science has

definitely proved two general facts with regard to the growth of

predication—namely, that in all the still existing radical languages

there is no distinction between noun, adjective, verb, or particle;

and that the structure of all other languages shows this to have been

the primitive condition of language-structure in general: “every

noun and every verb was originally by itself a complete sentence,”

consisting of a subject and predicate fused into one—or rather, let

us say, not yet differentiated into the _two_, much less into the

_three_ parts which now go to constitute the fully evolved structure

of a proposition. Now, this form of predication is “condensed” only

because it is undeveloped; it is the undifferentiated protoplasm of

predication, wherein the “parts of speech” as yet have no existence.

And just as this, the earliest stage of predication, is distinctive

of the pre-conceptual stage of ideation in a child, so it is of the

pre-conceptual ideation of the race. Abundant evidence was therefore

given of the gradual evolution of predicative utterance, _pari

passu_ with conceptual thought—evidence which is woven through the

whole warp and woof of every language which is now spoken by man. In

particular, we saw that pronouns were originally words indicative

of space relations, and strongly suggestive of accompanying acts of

pointing—“I” being equivalent to “this one,” “He” to “that one,” &c.

Moreover, just as the young child begins by speaking of itself in the

third person, so “Man regarded himself as an object before he learnt

to regard himself as a subject,”[337] as is proved by the fact that

“the objective cases of the personal as well as of the other pronouns,

are always older than the subjective.”[338] Pronominal elements

afterwards became affixed to nouns and verbs, when these began to be

differentiated from one another; and thus various applications of a

primitive and highly generalized noun or verb were rendered by means

of these elements, which, as even Professor Max Müller allows, “must

be considered as remnants of the earliest and almost pantomimic phase

of language, in which language was hardly as yet what we mean by

language, namely _logos_, a gathering, but only a pointing.” Similarly,

Professor Sayce remarks of this stage in the evolution of predicative

utterance—which, be it observed, is precisely analogous to that

occupied by a young child whose highly generalized words require to

be assisted by gestures—“It is certain that there was a time in the

history of speech when articulate or semi-articulate sounds uttered

by primitive man were made the significant representations of thought

by the gestures with which they were accompanied: and this complex of

sound and gesture—a complex in which, be it remembered, the sound had

no meaning apart from the gesture—was the earliest sentence.” Thus it

was that “grammar has grown out of gesture”—different parts of speech,

with the subsequent commencements of declension, conjugation, &c.,

being all so many children of gesticulation: but when in subsequent

ages the parent was devoured by this youthful progeny, they continued

to pursue an independent growth in more or less divergent lines of

linguistic development.

For instance, we have abundant evidence to prove that, even after

articulate language had gained a firm footing, there was no distinction

between the nominative and genitive cases of substantives, nor between

these and adjectives, nor even between any words as subject-words

and predicate-words. All these three grammatical relations required

to be expressed in the same way, namely, by a mere apposition of the

generalized terms themselves. In course of time, however, these three

grammatical differentiations were effected by conventional changes

of position between the words apposed, in some cases the form of

predication being A B, and that of attribution or possession B A, while

in other branches of language-growth the reverse order has obtained.

Eventually, however, “these primitive contrivances for distinguishing

between the predicate, the attribute, and the genitive, when the three

ideas had in course of ages been evolved by the mind of the speaker,

gradually gave way to the later and more refined machinery of suffixes,

auxiliaries, and the like.”[339]

And so it is with all the other so-called “parts of speech,” in

those languages which, in having passed beyond the primitive stage,

have developed parts of speech at all. “These are the very broadest

outlines of the process by which conceptual roots were predicated, by

which they came under the sway of the categories—became substantives,

adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, or by whatever other names the results

thus obtained may be described. The minute details of this process, and

the marvellous results obtained by it, can be studied in the grammar of

every language or family of languages.”[340] Thus, philology is able to

trace back, stage by stage, the form of predication as it occurs in the

most highly developed, or inflective language, to that earliest stage

of language in general, which I have called the indicative.

Many other authorities having been quoted in support of these general

statements, and also for the purpose of tracing the evolution of

predicative utterance in more detail, I proceeded to give illustrations

of different phases of its development in the still existing languages

of savages; and thus proved that they, no less than primitive man, are

unable to “supply the blank form of a judgment,” or to furnish what

my opponents regard as the criterion of human faculty. Therefore, the

only policy which can possibly remain for these opponents to take up,

is that of abandoning their Aristotelian position: no longer to take

their stand upon the grounds of purely _formal_ predication as this

happens to have been developed in the Indo-European branch of language;

but altogether upon those of _material_ predication, or, as I may say,

upon the meaning or substance of a judgment, as distinguished from its

grammar or accidents.

In other words, it may possibly still be argued that, although the

issue is now thrown back from the “blank form” of predication on which

my opponents have hitherto relied, to the hard fact of predication

itself, this hard fact still remains. Even though I have shown that in

the absence of any parts of speech predication requires to be conducted

in a most inefficient manner; still, it may be said, predication _is_

conducted, and _must be_ conducted—for assuredly it is only in order

to conduct it that speech can ever have existed at all.

Now, I showed that if my opponents do not adopt this change of

position, their argument is at an end. For I proved that, after

all the foregoing evidence, there is no longer any possibility of

question touching the continuity of growth between the predicative

germ in a sentence-word, and the fully evolved structure of a formal

proposition. But, on the other hand, I next showed that this change

of position, even if it were made, could be of no avail. For, if the

term “predication” be thus extended to a “sentence-word,” it thereby

becomes deprived of that distinctive meaning upon which alone the

whole argument of my adversaries is reared: it is conceded that no

distinction obtains between speaking and pointing: the predicative

phase of language has been identified with the indicative: man and

brute are acknowledged to be “brothers.” That is to say, if it be

maintained that the indicative signs of the infant child or the

primitive man are predicative, no shadow of a reason can be assigned

for withholding this designation from the indicative signs of the

lower animals. On the other hand, if this term be denied to both, its

application to the case of spoken language in its fully evolved form

must be understood to signify but a difference of phase or degree,

seeing that the one order of sign-making has been now so completely

proved to be but the genetic and improved descendant of the other.

In short, the truth obviously is that we have _a proved continuity

of development between all stages of the sign-making faculty_; and,

therefore, that any attempt to draw between one and another of them a

distinction of kind has been shown to be impossible.

The conclusions thus reached at the close of Chapter XIV. with regard

to the philology of predication were greatly strengthened by additional

facts which were immediately adduced in the next Chapter with regard

to the philology of conception. Here the object was to throw the

independent light of philology upon a point which had already been

considered as a matter of psychology, namely, the passage of receptual

denotation into conceptual denomination. This is a point which had

previously been considered only with reference to the individual: it

had now to be considered with reference to the race.

First it was shown that, owing to the young child being surrounded by

an already constructed grammar of predicative forms, the earlier phases

in the evolution of speech are greatly foreshortened in the ontogeny

of mankind, as compared with what the study of language shows them to

have been in the phylogeny. Gesture-signs are rapidly starved out when

a child of to-day first begins to speak, and so to learn the use of

grammatical forms. But early man was under the necessity of elaborating

his grammar out of his gesture-signs—and this at the same time as he

was also coining his sentence-words. Therefore, while the acquisition

of names and forms of speech by infantile man must have depended in

chief part upon gestures and grimace, this acquisition by the infantile

child is actively inimical to both.

Next we saw that the philological doctrine of “sentence-words” threw

considerable additional light on my psychological distinction between

ideas as general and generic. For a sentence-word is the expression

of an idea hitherto _generalized_, that is to say _undifferentiated_.

Such an idea, as we now know, stands at the antipodes of thought from

one which is due to what is called a _generalization_—that is to say,

a conceptual synthesis of the results of a previous analysis. And the

doctrine of sentence-words recognizes an immense historical interval

(corresponding with the immense psychological interval) between the

generic and the general orders of ideation.

Again, we saw that in all essential particulars the semiotic

construction of this the most primitive mode of articulate

communication which has been preserved in the archæology of spoken

language, bears a precise resemblance to that which occurs in the

natural language of gesture. As we saw, “gesture-language has no

grammar properly so called;” and we traced in considerable detail the

analogies—so singularly numerous and exact—between the forms of

sentences as now revealed in gesture and as they first emerged in the

early days of speech. In other words, the earliest record that speech

is able to yield as to the nature of its own origin, clearly reveals to

us this origin as emerging from the yet more primitive language of tone

and gesture. For this is the only available explanation of their close

family resemblance in the matter of syntax.

Furthermore, we have seen that in gesture language, as in the forms of

primitive speech now preserved in roots, the purposes of predication

are largely furthered by the mere apposition of denotative terms. A

generalized term of this kind (which as yet is neither noun, adjective,

nor verb), when brought into apposition with another of the same kind,

serves to convey an idea of relationship between them, or to state

something of the one by means of the other. Yet apposition of this kind

need betoken no truly conceptual thought. As we have already seen, the

laws of merely sensuous association are sufficient to insure that when

the objects, qualities, or events, which the terms severally denote,

happen to occur together in Nature, they _must_ be thus brought into

corresponding apposition by the mind: it is the logic of events which

inevitably guides such pre-conceptual utterance into a statement of

the truth that is perceived: the truth is _received into_ the mind,

not _conceived by_ it. And it is obvious how repeated statements of

truth thus delivered in receptual ideation, lead onwards to conceptual

ideation, or to statements of truth as true.

Now, if all this has been the case, it is obvious that aboriginal

words can have referred only to matters of purely receptual

significance—_i.e._ “to those physical acts and qualities which are

directly apprehensible by the senses.” Accordingly, we find in all the

earliest root-words, which the science of philology has unearthed,

unquestionable and unquestioned evidence of “fundamental metaphor,” or

of a conceptual extension of terms which were previously of no more

than receptual significance. Indeed, as Professor Whitney says, “so

pervading is it, that we never regard ourselves as having read the

history of any intellectual or moral term till we have traced it back

to its physical origin.” Without repeating all that I have so recently

said upon this matter, it will be enough once more to insist on the

general conclusions to which it led—namely, psychological analysis

has already shown us the psychological priority of the recept; and now

philological research most strikingly corroborates this analysis by

actually finding the recept in the body of every concept.

Lastly, I took a brief survey of the languages now spoken by many

widely separated races of savages, in order to show the extreme

deficiency of conceptual ideation that is thus represented. In the

result, we saw that what Archdeacon Farrar calls “the hopeless

poverty of the power of abstraction” is so surprising, that the most

ardent evolutionist could not well have desired a more significant

intermediary between the pre-conceptual intelligence of _Homo alalus_,

and the conceptual thought of _Homo sapiens_.

* * * * *

Having thus concluded the Philology of our subject, I proceeded, in the

last chapter, to consider the probable steps of the transition from

receptual to conceptual ideation in the race.

First I dealt with a view which has been put forward on this matter

by certain German philologists, to the effect that speech originated

in wholly meaningless sounds, which in the first instance were due to

merely physiological conditions. By repeated association with the

circumstances under which they were uttered, these articulate sounds

are supposed to have acquired, as it were automatically, a semiotic

value. The answer to this hypothesis, however, evidently is, that

it ignores the whole problem which stands to be solved—namely, the

genesis of those powers of ideation which first put a soul of meaning

into the previously insignificant sounds. That is to say, it begs the

whole question which stands for solution, and, therefore, furnishes

no explanation whatsoever of the difference which has arisen between

man and brute. Nevertheless, the principles set forth in this the

largest possible extension of the so-called interjectional theory, are,

I believe, sound enough in themselves: it is only the premiss from

which in this instance they start that is untrue. This premiss is that

aboriginal man presented no rudiments of the sign-making faculty, and,

therefore, that this faculty itself required to be created _de novo_ by

accidental associations of sounds with things. But we have seen, as a

matter of fact, that this must have been very far from having been the

case; and, therefore, while recognizing such elements of truth as the

“purely physiological” hypothesis in question presents, I rejected it

as in itself not even approaching a full explanation of the origin of

speech.

Next I dealt with the hypothesis that was briefly sketched by Mr.

Darwin. Premising, as Geiger points out, that the presumably superior

sense of sight, by fastening attention upon the movements of the mouth

in vocal sign-making, must have given our simian ancestry an advantage

over other species of quadrumana in the matter of associating sounds

with receptual ideas; we next endeavoured to imagine an anthropoid ape,

social in habits, sagacious in mind, and accustomed to use its voice

extensively as an organ of sign-making, after the manner of social

quadrumana in general. Such an animal might well have distanced all

others in the matter of making signs, and even proceeded far enough to

use sounds in association with gestures, as “sentence-words”—_i.e._

as indicative of such highly generalized recepts as the presence of

danger, &c.,—even if it did not go the length of making denotative

sounds, after the manner of talking-birds. Moreover, as Mr. Darwin has

pointed out, there is a strong probability that this simian ancestor

of mankind was accustomed to use its voice in musical cadences, “as do

some of the gibbon-apes at the present day;” and this habit might have

laid the basis for that semiotic interruption of vocal sounds in which

consists the essence of articulation.

My own theory of the matter, however, is slightly different to this.

For, while accepting all that goes to constitute the substance of Mr.

Darwin’s suggestion, I think it is almost certain that the faculty of

articulate sign-making was a product of much later evolution, so that

the creature who first presented this faculty must have already been

more human than “ape-like.” This _Homo alalus_ stands before the mind’s

eye as an almost brutal object, indeed; yet still, erect in attitude,

shaping flints to serve as tools and weapons, living in tribes or

societies, and able in no small degree to communicate the logic of his

recepts by means of gesture-signs, facial expressions, and vocal tones.

From such an origin, the subsequent evolution of sign-making faculty in

the direction of articulate sounds would be an even more easy matter to

imagine than it was under the previous hypothesis. Having traced the

probable course of this evolution, as inferred by the aid of sundry

analogies; and having dwelt upon the remarkable significance in this

connection of the inarticulate sounds which still survive as so-called

“clicks” in the lowly-formed languages of Africa; I went on to detail

sundry considerations which seemed to render probable the prolonged

existence of the imaginary being in question—traced the presumable

phases of his subsequent evolution, and met the objection which might

be raised on the score of _Homo alalus_ being _Homo postulatus_.

In conclusion, however, I pointed out that whatever might be the truth

as touching the time when the faculty of articulation arose, the

course of mental evolution, after it did arise, must have been the

same. Without again repeating the sketch which I gave of what this

course must have been, it will be enough to say, in the most general

terms, that I believe it began with sentence-words in association with

gesture-signs; that these acted and reacted on one another to the

higher elaboration of both; that denotative names, for the most part

of onomatopoetic origin, rapidly underwent connotative extensions;

that from being often and necessarily used in apposition, nascent

predications arose; that these gave origin, in later times, to the

grammatical distinctions between adjectives and genitive cases on

the one hand, and predicative words on the other; that likewise

gesture-signs were largely concerned in the origin of other grammatical

forms, especially of pronominal elements, many of which afterwards went

to constitute the material out of which the forms of declension and

conjugation were developed; but that although pronouns were thus among

the earliest words which were differentiated by mankind as separate

parts of speech, it was not until late in the day that any pronouns

were used especially indicative of the first person. The significance

of this latter fact was shown to be highly important. We have already

seen that the whole distinction between man and brute resides in

the presence or absence of conceptual thought, which, in turn, is

but an expression of the presence or absence of self-consciousness.

Consequently, the whole of this treatise has been concerned with the

question whether we have here to do with a distinction of kind or of

degree—of origin or of development. In the case of the individual,

there can be no doubt that it is a distinction of degree, or

development; and I had previously shown that in this case the phase

of development in question is marked by a change of phraseology—a

discarding of objective terms for the adoption of subjective when the

speaker has occasion to speak of self. And now I showed that in the

fact here before us we have a precisely analogous proof: in exactly the

same way as psychology marks for us “the transition in the individual,”

philology marks for us “the transition in the race.”

In the foregoing _résumé_ of the present instalment of my work I have

aimed only at giving an outline sketch of the main features. And

even these main features have been so much abbreviated that it is

questionable whether more harm than good will not have been done to my

argument by so imperfect a summary of it. Nevertheless, as a general

result, I think that two things must now have been rendered apparent

to every impartial mind. First, that the opponents of evolution have

conspicuously failed to discharge their _onus probandi_, or to justify

the allegation that the human mind constitutes a great and unique

exception to the otherwise uniform law of evolution. Second, that not

only is this allegation highly improbable _a priori_, and incapable

of proof _a posteriori_, but that all the evidence that can possibly

be held to bear upon the subject makes directly on the side of its

disproof. The only semblance of an argument to be adduced in its

favour rests upon the distinction between ideation as conceptual and

non-conceptual. That such a distinction exists I freely admit; but

that it is a distinction of kind I emphatically deny. For I have shown

that the comparatively few writers who still continue to regard it as

such, found their arguments on a psychological analysis which is of a

demonstrably imperfect character; that no one of them has ever paid

any attention at all to the actual process of psychogenesis as this

occurs in a growing child; and that, with the exception of Professor

Max Müller, the same has to be said with regard to their attitude

towards the “witness of philology.” Touching the psychogenesis of a

child, I have shown that there is unquestionable demonstration of a

gradual and uninterrupted passage from the one order of ideation to the

other; that so long as the child’s intelligence is moving only in the

non-conceptual sphere, it is not distinguishable in any one feature

of psychological import from the intelligence of the higher mammalia;

that when it begins to assume the attributes of conceptual ideation,

the process depends on the development of true self-consciousness out

of the materials supplied by that form of pre-existing or receptual

self-consciousness which the infant shares with the lower animals;

that the condition to this advance in mental evolution is given by a

perceptibly progressive development of those powers of denotative and

connotative utterance which are found as far down in the psychological

scale as the talking birds; that in the growing intelligence of a child

we have thus as complete a history of “ontogeny,” in its relation to

“phylogeny,” as that upon which the embryologist is accustomed to rely

when he reads the morphological history of a species in the epitome

which is furnished by the development of an individual; and, therefore,

that those are without excuse who, elsewhere adopting the principles

of evolution, have gratuitously ignored the direct evidence of

psychological transmutation which is thus furnished by the life-history

of every individual human being.

Again, as regards the independent witness of philology, if we were

to rely on authority alone, the halting and often contradictory

opinions which from time to time have been expressed by Professor Max

Müller with reference to our subject, are greatly outweighed by those

of all his brother philologists. But, without in any way appealing

to authority further than to accept matters of fact on which all

philologists are agreed, I have purposely given Professor Max Müller an

even more representative place than any of the others, fully stated the

nature of his objections, and supplied what appears to me abundantly

sufficient answers. So far as I can understand the reasons of his

dissent from conclusions which his own admirable work has materially

helped to support, they appear to arise from the following grounds.

First, a want of clearness with regard to the principles of evolution

in general:[341] second, a failure clearly or constantly to recognize

that the roots of Aryan speech are demonstrably very far from primitive

in the sense of being aboriginal: third, a want of discrimination

between ideas as general and generic, or synthetic and unanalytical:

fourth, the gratuitous and demonstrably false assumption that in order

to name a mind must first conceive. Of these several grounds from

which his dissent appears to spring, the last is perhaps the most

important, seeing that it is the one upon which he most expressly

rears his objections. But if I have proved anything, I have proved

that there is a power of affixing verbal or other signs as marks of

merely receptual associations, and that this power is _invariably_

antecedent to the origin of conceptual utterance in the only case

where this origin admits of being directly observed—_i.e._, in the

psychogenesis of a child. Again, in the case of pre-historic man, so

far as the palæontology of speech furnishes evidence upon the subject,

this makes altogether in favour of the view that in the race, as in

the individual, denotation preceded denomination, as antecedent and

consequent. Nay, I doubt whether Max Müller himself would disagree with

Geiger where the latter tersely says, in a passage hitherto unquoted,

“Why is it that the further we trace words backwards the less meaning

do they present? I know not of any other answer to be given than that

the further they go back the less conceptuality do they betoken.”[342]

Nor can he refuse to admit, with the same authority, that “conceptual

thought (_Begriff_) allows itself to be traced backwards into an ever

narrowing circle, and inevitably tends to a point where there is no

longer either thought or speech.”[343] But if these things cannot be

denied by Max Müller himself, I am at a loss to understand why he

should part company with other philologists with regard to the origin

of conceptual terms. With them he asserts that there can be no concepts

without words (spoken or otherwise), and with them he maintains that

when the meanings of words are traced back as far as philology can

trace them, they obviously tend to the vanishing point of which Geiger

speaks. Yet, merely on the ground that this vanishing point can never

be actually reached by the investigations of philology—_i.e._, that

words cannot record the history of their own birth,—he stands out for

an interruption of the principle of continuity at the place where words

originate. A position so unsatisfactory I can only explain by supposing

that he has unconsciously fallen into the fallacy of concluding that

because all A is B, therefore all B is A. Finding that there can be no

concepts without names, he concludes that there can be no names without

concepts.[344] And on the basis of such a conclusion he naturally finds

it impossible to explain how either names or concepts could have had

priority in time: both, it seems, must have been of contemporaneous

origin; and, if this were so, it is manifestly impossible to account

for the natural genesis of either. But the whole of this trouble is

imaginary. Once discard the plainly illogical inference that because

names are necessary to concepts, therefore concepts are necessary

to names, and the difficulty is at an end. Now, I have proved, _ad

nauseam_, that there are names and names: names denotative, and names

denominative; names receptual, as well as names conceptual. Even if

we had not had the case of the growing child actually to prove the

process—a case which he, in common with all my other opponents, in

this connexion ignores,—on general grounds alone, and especially from

our observations on the lower animals, we might have been practically

certain that the faculty of sign-making _must_ have preceded that of

_thinking the signs_. And whether these pre-conceptual signs were

made by gesture, grimace, intonation, articulation, or all combined,

clearly no difference would arise so far as any question of their

influence on psychogenesis is concerned. As a matter of fact, we

happen to know that the semiotic artifice of articulating vocal tones

for purposes of denotation, dates back so far as to bring us within

philologically measurable distance of the origin of denomination, or

conceptual thought—although we have seen good reason to conclude that

before that time tone, gesture, and grimace must have been much more

extensively employed in sign-making by aboriginal man than they now

are by any of the lower animals. So that, upon the whole, unless it

can be shown that my distinction between denotation and denomination

is untenable—unless, for instance, it can be shown that an infant

requires to think of names as such before it can learn to utter

them,—then I submit that no shadow of a difficulty lies against the

theory of evolution in the domain of philology. While, on the other

hand, all the special facts as well as all the general principles

hitherto revealed by this science make entirely for the conclusion,

that pre-conceptual denotation laid the psychological conditions which

were necessary for the subsequent growth of conceptual denomination;

and, therefore, yet once again to quote the high authority of Geiger,

“Speech created Reason; before its advent mankind was reasonless.”[345]

And if this is true of philology, assuredly it is no less true of

psychology. For “the development of speech is only a copy of that chain

of processes, which began with the dawn of [human] consciousness, and

eventually ends in the construction of the most abstract idea.”[346]

Unless, therefore, it can be shown that my distinction between ideation

as receptual and conceptual is invalid, I know not how my opponents

are to meet the results of the foregoing analysis. Yet, if this

distinction should be denied, not only would they require to construct

the science of psychology anew; they would place themselves in the

curious position of repudiating the very distinction on which their

whole argument is founded. For I have everywhere been careful to place

it beyond question that what I have called receptual ideation, in all

its degrees, is identical with that which is recognized by my opponents

as non-conceptual; and as carefully have I everywhere shown that with

them I fully recognize the psychological difference between this order

of ideation and that which is conceptual. The only point in dispute,

therefore, is as to the possibility of a natural transition from the

one to the other. It is for them to show the impossibility. This they

have hitherto most conspicuously failed to do. On the other hand, I

now claim to have established the possibility beyond the reach of a

reasonable question. For I claim to have shown that the _probability_

of such a transition having previously occurred in the race, as it

now occurs in every individual, is a probability that has been raised

tower-like by the accumulated knowledge of the nineteenth century.

Or, to vary the metaphor, this probability has been as a torrent,

gaining in strength and volume as it is successively fed by facts and

principles poured into it by the advance of many sciences.

Of course it is always easy to withhold assent from a probability,

however strong: “My belief,” it may be said, “is not to be wooed; it

shall only be compelled.” Indeed, a man may even pride himself on the

severity of his requirements in this respect; and in popular writings

we often find it taken for granted that any scientific doctrine is

then only entitled to be regarded as scientific when it has been

demonstrated. But in science, as in other things, belief ought to be

proportionate to evidence; and although for this very reason we should

ever strive for the attainment of better evidence, scientific caution

of such a kind must not be confused with a merely ignorant demand

for impossible evidence. Actually to demonstrate the transition from

non-conceptual to conceptual ideation in the race, as it is every day

demonstrated in the individual, would plainly require the impossible

condition that conceptual thought should have observed its own origin.

To demand any demonstrative proof of the transition in the race would

therefore be antecedently absurd. But if, as Bishop Butler says,

“probability is the very guide of life,” assuredly no less is it the

very guide of science; and here, I submit, we are in the presence of

a probability so irresistible that to withhold from it the embrace of

conviction would be no longer indicative of scientific caution, but of

scientific incapacity. For if, as I am assuming, we already accept the

theory of evolution as applicable throughout the length and breadth of

the realm organic, it appears to me that we have positively _better_

reasons for accepting it as applicable to the length and breadth of

the realm mental. In other words, looking to all that has now been

said, I cannot help feeling that there is actually better evidence of

a psychological transition from the brute to the man, than there is of

a morphological transition from one organic form to another, in any

of the still numerous instances where the intermediate links do not

happen to have been preserved. Thus, for example, in my opinion an

evolutionist of to-day who seeks to constitute the human mind a great

exception to the otherwise uniform principle of genetic continuity, has

an even more hopeless case than he would have were he to argue that a

similar exception ought to be made with regard to the structure of the

worm-like creature Balanoglossus.

If this comparison should appear to betray any extravagant estimate

on my part of the cogency of the evidence which has thus far been

presented, I will now in conclusion ask it to be remembered that

my case is not yet concluded. For hitherto I have almost entirely

abstained from considering the mental condition of _savages_. The

reason why this important branch of my subject has not been touched

is because I reserve it for the next instalment of my work. But when

we leave the groundwork of psychological principles on which up to

this point we have been engaged, and advance to the wider field of

anthropological research in general, we shall find much additional

evidence of a more concrete kind, which almost uniformly tends to

substantiate the conclusions already gained. The corroboration thus

afforded is indeed, to my thinking, superfluous; and, therefore,

will not be adduced in this connection. Nevertheless, while tracing

the principles of mental evolution from the lowest levels which are

actually occupied by existing man, we shall find that no small light

is incidentally thrown upon the demonstrably still more primitive

intelligence of pre-historic man. Thus shall we find that we are

led back by continuous stages to a state of still human ideation,

which brings us into contact almost painfully close with that of the

higher apes. This, indeed, is a side of the general question which my

opponents are prone to ignore—just as they ignore the parallel side

which has to do with the psychogenesis of a child. And, of course,

when they thus ignore both the child and the savage, so as directly to

contrast the adult psychology of civilized man with that of the lower

animals, it is easy to show an enormous difference. But where the

question is as to whether this is a difference of degree or of kind,

the absurdity of disregarding the intermediate phases which present

themselves to actual observation is surely too obvious for comment.

At all events I think it may be safely promised, that when we come to

consider the case of savages, and through them the case of pre-historic

man, we shall find that, in the great interval which lies between such

grades of mental evolution and our own, we are brought far on the way

towards bridging the psychological distance which separates the gorilla

from the gentleman.

INDEX.

A

Abstraction. _See_ Ideas

Addison, Mrs. K., on sign-making by a jackdaw, 97

Adjectives, appropriately used by parrots, 129, 130, 152;

early use of, by children, 219;

not differentiated in early forms of speech, 295 _et seq._;

origin of Aryan, 306;

and in language generally, 385-86.

Adverbs not differentiated in early forms of speech, 306

African Bushmen. _See_ Hottentots

African languages. _See_ Languages

Agglomerative. _See_ Languages

Agglutinating. _See_ Languages

American languages. _See_ Languages

Analytic. _See_ Languages

Anatomy, evidence of man’s descent supplied by, 19

Animals. _See_ Brutes

Animism of primitive man, 275

Ants, intelligence of, 52, 53;

sign-making by, 91-95

Apes, brain-weight of, 16;

bodily structure of, 19;

counting by, 58, 215;

understanding of words by, 125, 126;

unable to imitate articulate sounds, 153-157;

psychological characters of anthropoid, in relation to the descent

of man, 364-370;

singing, 370, 373-378;

other vocal sounds made by, 374;

erect attitude assumed by, 381, 382

Appleyard on language of savages, 349

Apposition. _See_ Predication

Aristotle, on intelligence of brutes, 12,

and of man, 20;

his classification of the animal kingdom, 79;

his logic based on grammar of the Greek language, 314, 320

Articulation, chap. vii.;

classification of different kinds of, 121;

meaningless, 121, 122;

understanding of, 122-129;

by dogs, 128;

use of, with intelligent signification by talking birds, 129-139;

arbitrary use of, by young children, 138-144;

relation of, to tone and gesture, 145-162;

importance of sense of sight to development of, 366, 367;

probable period and mode of genesis of in the race, 370-373

Aryan languages. _See_ Languages

Aryan race, civilization of, 272;

antiquity of, 273

Audouin on a monkey recognizing pictorial representations, 188

Axe, discovery of, by neolithic man, 214

B

Barter only used by man, 19

Basque language. _See_ Language

Bateman, Dr. F., on speech-centre of brain, 134, 135

Bates, on intelligence of ants, 92, 93;

on a monkey recognizing pictorial representations, 188.

Bats the only mammals capable of flight, 156

Bear, intelligence of, 51;

understanding tones of human voice, 124

Beattie, Dr., on intelligence of a dog, 100

Bees, sign-making by, 90

Bell, Professor A. Graham, on teaching a dog to articulate, 128;

on the ideation of deaf-mutes, 150

Belt on intelligence of ants, 52, 92

Benfry on roots of Sanskrit, 267

Berkeley on ideas, 21, 22

Binet on analogies between perception and reason, 32

and sensation, 37, 46

Bingley on bees understanding tones of human voice, 124

Bleek, on origin of pronouns, 302;

on the sentence-words of African Bushmen, 316, 337, 338;

on onomatopœia, 339;

on the clicks of Hottentots and African Bushmen, 373

Bonaparte, Prince Lucien, on possible number of articulate sounds, 373

Bopp on the origin of speech, 240

Bowen, Professor F., on psychology of judgment, 167

Boyd Dawkins, Professor, on discovery of axe by neolithic man, 214

Bramston, Miss, on intelligence of a dog, 56

Brazil, climate and native languages of, 262, 263

Brown, Thomas, on generalization, 44

Browning, A. H., on intelligence of a dog, 99, 100

Brutes, mind of, compared with human, 6-39;

emotions of, 7;

instincts of, 8;

volition of, 8;

intellect of, 9;

Mr. Mivart on psychology of, 10, 177;

as machines, 11;

rationality of, 11, 12;

soul of, 12;

Bishop Butler on immortality of, 12;

instances of intelligence of, 51-63;

ideas of causality in, 58-60;

appreciation of principles by, 60, 61;

sign-making by, 88-102;

understanding of words by, 123-127;

articulation by, 128-138, 152;

reasons why none have become intellectual rivals of man, 154-157;

self-consciousness in relation to, 175-178;

recognizing pictorial representations, 188, 189;

conditions to genesis of self-consciousness manifested by, 195-199;

counting by, 56-58, 214, 215;

psychology of, in relation to the descent of man, 364-384

Buffon, on intelligence of brutes, 12, 117;

his parrot, 201

Bunsen, on onomatopœia, 282;

on Egyptian language, 297, 298;

on the substantive verb, 309

Burton on sign-making by Indians, 105

Bushmen, clicks in the language of, 291

Butler, Bishop, on immortality of brutes, 12