Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

CHAPTER II.

IDEAS.[13]

I now pass on to consider the only distinction which in my opinion can be properly drawn between human and brute psychology. This is the great distinction which furnishes a full psychological explanation of all the many and immense differences that unquestionably do obtain between the mind of the highest ape and the mind of the lowest savage. It is, moreover, the distinction which is now universally recognized by psychologists of every school, from the Romanist to the agnostic in Religion, and from the idealist to the materialist in Philosophy.

The distinction has been clearly enunciated by many writers, from Aristotle downwards, but I may best render it in the words of Locke:—

“If it may be doubted, whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas that way to any degree; this I think I may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to. For it is evident we observe no footsteps in them of making use of general signs for universal ideas; from which we have reason to imagine, that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or making general ideas, since they have no use of words, or any other general signs.

“Nor can it be imputed to their want of fit organs to frame articulate sounds that they have no use or knowledge of general words; since many of them, we find, can fashion such sounds, and pronounce words distinctly enough, but never with any such application; and, on the other side, men, who through some defect in the organs want words, yet fail not to express their universal ideas by signs, which serve them instead of general words; a faculty which we see beasts come short in. And therefore I think we may suppose, that it is in this that the species of brutes are discriminated from men; and it is that proper difference wherein they are wholly separated, and which at last widens to so vast a distance; for if they have any ideas at all, and are not bare machines (as some would have them), we cannot deny them to have some reason. It seems evident to me, that they do some of them in certain instances reason, as that they have sense; but it is only in particular ideas, just as they received them from their senses. They are the best of them tied up within those narrow bounds, and have not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of abstraction.”[14]

Here, then, we have stated, with all the common-sense lucidity of this great writer, what we may term the initial or basal distinction of which we are in search: it is that “proper difference” which, narrow at first as the space included between two lines of rails at their point of divergence, “at last widens to so vast a distance” as to end almost at the opposite poles of mind. For, by a continuous advance along the same line of development, the human mind is enabled to think about abstractions of its own making, which are more and more remote from the sensuous perception of concrete objects; it can unite these abstractions into an endless variety of ideal combinations; these, in turn, may become elaborated into ideal constructions of a more and more complex character; and so on until we arrive at the full powers of introspective thought with which we are each one of us directly cognisant.

We now approach what is at once a matter of refined analysis, and a set of questions which are of fundamental importance to the whole superstructure of the present work. I mean the nature of abstraction, and the classification of ideas. No small amount of ambiguity still hangs about these important subjects, and in treating of them it is impossible to employ terms the meanings of which are agreed upon by all psychologists. But I will carefully define the meanings which I attach to these terms myself, and which I think are the meanings that they ought to bear. Moreover, I will end by adopting a classification which is to some extent novel, and by fully giving my reasons for so doing.

Psychologists are agreed that what they call particular ideas, or ideas of particular objects, are of the nature of mental images, or memories of such objects—as when the sound of a friend’s voice brings before my mind the idea of that particular man. Psychologists are further agreed that what they term general ideas arise out of an assemblage of particular ideas, as when from my repeated observation of numerous individual men I form the idea of Man, or of an abstract being who comprises the resemblances between all these individual men, without regard to their individual differences. Hence, particular ideas answer to percepts, while general ideas answer to concepts: an individual preception (or its repetition) gives rise to its mnemonic equivalent as a particular idea; while a group of similar, though not altogether similar perceptions, gives rise to its mnemonic equivalent as a conception, which, therefore, is but another name for a general idea, thus generated by an assemblage of particular ideas. Just as Mr. Galton’s method of superimposing on the same sensitive plate a number of individual images gives rise to a blended photograph, wherein each of the individual constituents is partially and proportionally represented; so in the sensitive tablet of memory, numerous images of previous perceptions are fused together into a single conception, which then stands as a composite picture, or class-representation, of these its constituent images. Moreover, in the case of a sensitive plate it is only those particular images which present more or less numerous points of resemblance that admit of being thus blended into a distinct photograph; and so in the case of the mind, it is only those particular ideas which admit of being run together in a class that can go to constitute a clear concept.[15]

So much, then, for ideas as particular and general. Next, the term abstract has been used by different psychologists in different senses. For my own part, I will adhere to the usage of Locke in the passage above quoted, which is the usage adopted by the majority of modern writers upon these subjects. According to this usage, the term “abstract idea” is practically synonymous with the term “general idea.” For the process of abstraction consists in mentally analysing the complex which is presented by any given object of perception, and ideally extracting those features or qualities upon which the attention is for the time being directed. Even the most individual of objects cannot fail to present an assemblage of qualities, and although it is true that such an object could not be divided into all its constituent qualities actually, it does admit of being so divided ideally. The individual man whom I know as John Smith could not be disintegrated into so much heat, flesh, bone, blood, colour, &c., without ceasing to be a man at all; but this does not hinder that I may ideally abstract his heat (by thinking of him as a corpse), his flesh, bones, and blood (by thinking of him as a dissected “subject”), his white colour of skin, his black colour of hair, and so forth. Now, it is evident that in the last resort our power of forming general ideas, or concepts, is dependent on this power of abstraction, or the power of ideally separating one or more of the qualities presented by percepts, i.e. by objects of particular ideas. My general idea of heat has only been rendered possible on account of my having ideally abstracted the quality of heat from sundry heated bodies, in most of which it has co-existed with numberless different associations of other qualities. But this does not hinder that, wherever I meet with that one quality, I recognize it as the same; and hence I arrive at a general or abstract idea of heat, apart from any other quality with which in particular cases it may happen to be associated.[16]

This faculty of ideal abstraction furnishes the conditio sine quâ non to all grades in the development of thought; for by it alone can we compare idea with idea, and thus reach ever onwards to higher and higher levels, as well as to more and more complex structures of ideation. As to the history of this development we shall have more to say presently. Meanwhile I desire only to remark two things in connection with it. The first is that throughout this history the development is a development: the faculty of abstraction is everywhere the same in kind. And the next thing is that this development is everywhere dependent on the faculty of language. A great deal will require to be said on both these points in subsequent chapters; but it is needful to state the facts thus early—and they are facts which psychologists of all schools now accept,—in order to render intelligible the next step which I am about to make in my classification of ideas. This step is to distinguish between the faculty of abstraction where it is not dependent upon language, and where it is so dependent. I have just said that the faculty of abstraction is everywhere the same in kind; but, as I immediately proceeded to affirm that the development of abstraction is dependent upon language, I have thus far left the question open whether or not there can be any rudimentary abstraction without language. It is to this question, therefore, that we must next address ourselves.

On the one hand it may be argued that by restricting the term abstract to ideas which can only be formed by the aid of language, we are drawing an arbitrary line—fixing upon one degree in the continuous scale of a faculty which is throughout the same in kind. For, say some psychologists, it is evident that in our own case most of our more simple abstract or general ideas are not dependent for their existence upon words. Or, if this be disputed, these psychologists are able to point to infants, and even to the lower animals, in proof of their assertion. For an infant undoubtedly exhibits the possession of simple general ideas prior to the possession of any articulate language; and after it begins to use such language it does so by spontaneously widening the generality of signification attaching to its original words. In proof of both these statements numberless observations might be quoted, and further on will be quoted; but here I need only wait to give one in proof of each. As regards the first, Professor Preyer tells us that at eight months old,[17] and therefore long before it was able to speak, his child was able to classify all glass bottles as resembling—or belonging to the order of—a feeding-bottle.[18] As regards the second, M. Taine tells us of a little girl eighteen months old, who was amused by her mother hiding in play behind a piece of furniture, and saying “Coucou.” Again, when her food was too hot, when she went too near the fire or candle, and when the sun was warm, she was told “Ça brûle.” One day, on seeing the sun disappear behind a hill, she exclaimed, “‘A b’ûle coucou,” thereby showing both the formation and combination of general ideas, “not only expressed by words which we do not employ (and, therefore, not by any other words that she can have previously employed), but also corresponding to ideas, consequently to classes of objects and general characters which in our cases have disappeared. The hot soup, the fire on the hearth, the flame of the candle, the noonday heat in the garden, and last of all, the sun, make up one of these classes. The figure of the nurse or mother disappearing behind a hill, form the other class.”[19]

Coming next to the case of brutes, and to begin with the simplest kind of illustrations, all the higher animals have general ideas of “Good-for-eating,” and “Not-good-for-eating,” quite apart from any particular objects of which either of these qualities happens to be characteristic. For, if we give any of the higher animals a morsel of food of a kind which it has never before met with, the animal does not immediately snap it up, nor does it immediately reject our offer; but it subjects the morsel to a careful examination before consigning it to the mouth. This proves, if anything can, that such an animal has a general or abstract idea of sweet, bitter, hot, or, in general, Good-for-eating and Not-good-for-eating—the motives of the examination clearly being to ascertain which of these two general ideas of kind is appropriate to the particular object examined. When we ourselves select something which we suppose will prove good to eat, we do not require to call to our aid any of that higher class of abstract ideas for which we are indebted to our powers of language: it is enough to determine our decision if the particular appearance, smell, or taste of the food makes us feel that it probably conforms to our general idea of Good-for-eating. And, therefore, when we see animals determining between similar alternatives by precisely similar methods, we cannot reasonably doubt that the psychological processes are similar; for, as we know that these processes in ourselves do not involve any of the higher powers of our minds, there is no reason to doubt that the processes, which in their manifestations appear so similar, really are what they appear to be—the same. Again, if I see a fox prowling about a farm-yard, I infer that he has been led by hunger to go where he has a general idea that there are a good many eatable things to be fallen in with—just as I myself am led by a similar impulse to visit a restaurant. Similarly, if I say to my dog the word “Cat,” I arouse in his mind an idea, not of any cat in particular—for he sees so many cats,—but of a Cat in general. Or when this same dog accidentally crosses the track of a strange dog, the scent of this strange dog makes him stiffen his tail and erect the hair on his back in preparation for a fight; yet the scent of an unknown dog must arouse in his mind, not the idea of any dog in particular, but an idea of the animal Dog in general.

Thus far, it will be remembered, I have been presenting evidence in favour of the view that both infants and animals show themselves capable of forming general ideas of a simple order, and, therefore, that to the formation of such ideas the use of language is not essential. I will next consider what has to be said on the other side of the question; for, as previously remarked, many—I may say most—psychologists repudiate this kind of evidence in toto, as not germain to the subject of debate. First, therefore, I will consider their objections to this kind of evidence; next I will sum up the whole question; and, lastly, I will suggest a classification of ideas which in my opinion ought to be accepted by both sides as constituting a common ground of reconciliation.

To begin with another quotation from Locke, “How far brutes partake in this faculty [i.e. that of comparing ideas] is not easy to determine; I imagine they have it not in any great degree: for though they probably have several ideas distinct enough, yet it seems to me to be the prerogative of human understanding, when it has sufficiently distinguished any ideas, so as to perceive them to be perfectly different, and so consequently two, to cast about and consider in what circumstances they are capable to be compared: and therefore I think beasts compare not their ideas further than some sensible circumstances annexed to the objects themselves. The other power of comparing, which may be observed in men, belonging to general ideas, and useful only to abstract reasonings, we may probably conjecture beasts have not.

“The next operation we may observe in the mind about its ideas, is composition; whereby it puts together several of those simple ones it has received from sensation and reflection, and combines them into complex ones. Under this head of composition may be reckoned also that of enlarging; wherein, though the composition does not so much appear as in more complex ones, yet it is nevertheless a putting several ideas together, though of the same kind. Thus, by adding several units together, we make the idea of a dozen; and by putting together the repeated ideas of several perches, we frame that of a furlong.

“In this, also, I suppose, brutes come far short of men; for though they take in, and retain together several combinations of simple ideas, as possibly the shape, smell, and voice of his master make up the complex idea a dog has of him, or rather are so many distinct marks whereby he knows him; yet I do not think they do of themselves ever compound them, and make complex ideas. And perhaps even where we think they have complex ideas, it is only one simple one that directs them in the knowledge of several things, which possibly they distinguish less by sight than we imagine; for I have been credibly informed that a bitch will nurse, play with, and be fond of young foxes, as much as, and in place of, her puppies; if you can but get them once to suck her so long, that her milk may go through them. And those animals, which have a numerous brood of young ones at once, appear not to have any knowledge of their number: for though they are mightily concerned for any of their young that are taken from them whilst they are in sight or hearing; yet if one or two be stolen from them in their absence, or without noise, they appear not to miss them, or have any sense that their number is lessened.”[20]

Now, from the whole of this passage, it is apparent that the “comparing,” “compounding,” and “enlarging” of ideas which Locke has in view, is the conscious or intentional comparing, compounding, and enlarging that belongs only to the province of reflection, or thought. He in no way concerns himself with such powers of “comparing and compounding of ideas” as he allows that animals present, unless it can be shown that animals are able to “cast about and consider in what circumstances they are capable to be compared.” And then he adds, “Therefore, I think, beasts compare not their ideas further than some sensible circumstances annexed to the objects themselves. The other power of comparing, which may be observed in men, belonging to general ideas, and useful only to abstract reasonings, we may probably conjecture beasts have not.” So far, then, it seems perfectly obvious that Locke believed animals to present the power of “comparing and compounding” “simple ideas,” up to the point where such comparison and composition begins to be assisted by the power of reflective thought. Therefore, when he immediately afterwards proceeds to explain abstraction thus: “The same colour being observed to-day in chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it considers that appearance alone, makes it a representative of all of that kind; and having given it the name whiteness, it by that sound signifies the same quality, wheresoever it be imagined or met with; and thus universals, whether ideas or terms, are made”—when he thus proceeds to explain abstraction, we can have no doubt that what he means by abstraction is the power of ideally contemplating qualities as separated from objects, or, as he expresses it, “considering appearances alone.” Therefore I conclude, without further discussion, that in the terminology of Locke the word abstraction is applied only to those higher developments of the faculty which are rendered possible by reflection.

Now, on what does this power of reflection depend? As we shall see more fully later on, it depends on Language, or on the power of affixing names to abstract and general ideas. So far as I am aware, psychologists of all existing schools are in agreement upon this point, or in holding that the power of affixing names to abstractions is at once the condition to reflective thought, and the explanation of the difference between man and brute in respect of ideation.

It seems needless to dwell upon a matter where all are agreed, and concerning which a great deal more will require to be said in subsequent chapters. At present I am only endeavouring to ascertain the ground of difference between those psychologists who attribute, and those who deny to animals the faculty of abstraction. And I think I am now in a position to render this point perfectly clear. As we have already seen, and we shall frequently see again, it is allowed on all hands that animals in their ideation are not shut up to the special imaging (or remembering) of particular perceptions; but that they do present the power, as Locke phrases it, of “taking in and retaining together several combinations of simple ideas.”[21] The only question, then, really is whether or not this power is the power of abstraction. In the opinion of some psychologists it is: in the opinion of other psychologists it is not. Now, on what does an answer to this question depend? Clearly it depends on whether we hold it essential to an abstract or general idea that it should be incarnate as a word. Under one point of view, to “take in and retain together several combinations of simple ideas,” is to form a general concept of so many percepts. But, under another point of view, such a combination of simple ideas is only then entitled to be regarded as a concept, when it has been conceived by the mind as a concept, or when, in virtue of having been bodied forth in a name, it stands before the mind as a distinct and organic offspring of mind—so becoming an object as well as a product of ideation. For then only can the abstract idea be known as abstract, and then only can it be available as a definite creation of thought, capable of being built into any further and more elaborate structure of ideation. Or, to quote M. Taine, who advocates this view with great lucidity, “Of our numerous experiences [i.e. individual perceptions of a show of araucarias] there remain on the following day four or five more or less distinct recollections, which obliterated themselves, leave behind in us a simple, colourless, vague representation, into which enter as components various reviving sensations, in an utterly feeble, incomplete, and abortive state. But this representation is not the general or abstract idea. It is but its accompaniment, and, if I may say so, the one from which it is extracted. For the representation, though badly sketched, is a sketch, the sensible sketch of a distinct individual; in fact, if I make it persist and dwell upon it, it repeats some special visual sensation; I see mentally some outline which corresponds only to some particular araucaria, and, therefore, cannot correspond to the whole class: now, my abstract idea corresponds to the whole class; it differs, then, from the representation of an individual. Moreover, my abstract idea is perfectly clear and determinate; now that I possess it, I never fail to recognize an araucaria among the various plants I may be shown; it differs, then, from the confused and floating representation I have of some particular araucaria. What is there, then, within me so clear and determinate, corresponding to the abstract character, corresponding to all araucarias, and corresponding to it alone? A class-name, the name araucaria.... Thus we conceive the abstract characters of things by means of abstract names which are our abstract ideas, and the formation of our abstract ideas is nothing more than the formation of names.”[22]

The real issue, then, is as to what we are to understand by this term abstraction, or its equivalents. If we are to limit the term to the faculty of “taking in and retaining together several combinations of simple ideas,” plus the faculty of giving a name to the resulting compound, then undoubtedly animals differ from men in not presenting the faculty of abstraction; for this is no more than to say that animals have not the faculty of speech. But if the term in question be not thus limited—if it be taken to mean the first of the above-named processes irrespective of the second,—then, no less undoubtedly, animals resemble men in presenting the faculty of abstraction. In accordance with the former definition, it necessarily follows that “we conceive the abstract characters of things by means of abstract names which ARE our abstract ideas;” and, therefore, that “the formation of our abstract ideas is nothing more than the formation of names.” But, in accordance with the latter view, great as may be the importance of affixing a name to a compound of simple ideas for the purpose of giving that compound greater clearness and stability, the essence of abstraction consists in the act of compounding, or in the blending together of particular ideas into a general idea of the class to which the individual things belong. The act of bestowing upon this compound idea a class-name is quite a distinct act, and one which is necessarily subsequent to the previous act of compounding: why then, it may be asked, should we deny that such a compound idea is a general or abstract idea, only because it is not followed up by the artifice of giving it a name?

In my opinion so much has to be said in favour of both of these views that I am not going to pronounce against either. What I have hitherto been endeavouring to do is to reveal clearly that the question whether or not there is any difference between the brute and the man in respect of abstraction, is nothing more than a question of terminology. The real question will arise only when we come to treat of the faculty of language: the question before us now is merely a question of psychological classification, or of the nomenclature of ideas. Now, it appears to me that this question admits of being definitely settled, and a great deal of needless misunderstanding removed, by a slight re-adjustment and a closer definition of terms. For it must be on all hands admitted that, whether or not we choose to denominate by the word abstraction the faculty of compounding simple ideas without the faculty of naming the compounds, at the place where this additional faculty of naming supervenes, so immense an accession to the previous faculty is furnished, that any system of psychological nomenclature must be highly imperfect if it be destitute of terms whereby to recognize the difference. For even if it were conceded by psychologists of the opposite school that the essence of abstraction consists in the compounding of simple ideas, and not at all in the subsequent process of naming the compounds; still the effect of this subsequent process—or additional faculty—is so prodigious, that the higher degrees of abstraction which by it are rendered possible, certainly require to be marked off, or to be distinguished from, the lower degrees. Without, therefore, in any way prejudicing the question as to whether we have here a difference of degree or a difference of kind, I will submit a classification of ideas which, while not open to objection from either side of this question, will greatly help us in our subsequent treatment of the question itself.

The word “Idea” I will use in the sense defined in my previous work—namely, as a generic term to signify indifferently any product of imagination, from the mere memory of a sensuous impression up to the result of the most abstruse generalization.[23]

By “Simple Idea,” “Particular Idea,” or “Concrete Idea,” I understand the mere memory of a particular sensuous perception.

By “Compound Idea,” “Complex Idea,” or “Mixed Idea,” I understand the combination of simple, particular, or concrete ideas into that kind of composite idea which is possible without the aid of language.

Lastly, by “General Idea,” “Abstract Idea,” “Concept,” or “Notion,” I understand that kind of composite idea which is rendered possible only by the aid of language, or by the process of naming abstractions as abstractions.

Now in this classification, notwithstanding that it is needful to quote at least ten distinct terms which are either now in use among psychologists or have been used by classical English writers upon these topics, we may observe that there are really but three separate classes to be distinguished. Moreover, it will be noticed that, for the sake of definition, I restrict the first three terms to denote memories of particular sensuous perceptions—refusing, therefore, to apply them to those blended memories of many sensuous perceptions which enable animals and infants (as well as ourselves) to form compound ideas of kind or class without the aid of language. Again, the first division of this threefold classification has to do only with what are termed percepts, while the last has to do only with what are termed concepts. Now there does not exist any equivalent word to meet the middle division. And this fact in itself shows most forcibly the state of ambiguous confusion into which the classification of ideas has been wrought. Psychologists of both the schools that we are considering—namely, those who maintain and those who deny that there is any difference of kind between the ideation of men and animals—are equally forced to allow that there is a great difference between what I have called a simple idea and what I have called a compound idea. In other words, it is a matter of obvious fact that the only distinction between ideas is not that between the memory of a particular percept and the formation of a named concept; for between these two classes of ideas there obviously lies another class, in virtue of which even animals and infants are able to distinguish individual objects as belonging to a sort or kind. Yet this large and important territory of ideation, lying between the other two, is, so to speak, unnamed ground. Even the words “compound idea,” “complex idea,” and “mixed idea,” are by me restricted to it without the sanction of previous usage; for, as above remarked, so completely has the existence of this intermediate land been ignored, that we have no word at all which is applicable to it in the same way that Percept and Concept are applicable to the lands on either side of it. The consequence is that psychologists of the one school invade this intermediate province of ideation with terms that are applicable only to the lower province, while psychologists of the other school invade it with terms which are applicable only to the higher: the one matter upon which they all appear to agree being that of ignoring the wide area which this intermediate territory covers—and, consequently, also ignoring the great distance by which the territories on either side of it are separated.

In addition, then, to the terms Percept and Concept, I coin the word Recept. This is a term which seems exactly to meet the requirements of the case. For as perception literally means a taking wholly, and conception a taking together, reception means a taking again. Consequently, a recept is that which is taken again, or a recognition of things previously cognized. Now, it belongs to the essence of what I have defined as compound ideas (recepts), that they arise in the mind out of a repetition of more or less similar percepts. Having seen a number of araucarias, the mind receives from the whole mass of individuals which it perceives a composite idea of Araucaria, or of a class comprising all individuals of that kind—an idea which differs from a general or abstract idea only in not being consciously fixed and signed as an idea by means of an abstract name. Compound ideas, therefore, can only arise out of a repetition of more or less similar percepts; and hence the appropriateness of designating them recepts. Moreover, the associations which we have with the cognate words, Receive, Reception, &c., are all of the passive kind, as the associations which we have with the words Conceive, Conception, &c., are of the active kind. Now, here again, the use of the word recept is seen to be appropriate to the class of ideas in question, because in receiving such ideas the mind is passive, as in conceiving abstract ideas the mind is active. In order to form a concept, the mind must intentionally bring together its percepts (or the memories of them), for the purpose of binding them up as a bundle of similars, and labelling the bundle with a name. But in order to form a recept, the mind need perform no such intentional actions: the similarities among the percepts with which alone this order of ideation is concerned, are so marked, so conspicuous, and so frequently repeated in observation, that in the very moment of perception they sort themselves, and, as it were, fall into their appropriate classes spontaneously, or without any conscious effort on the part of the percipient. We do not require to name stones to distinguish them from loaves, nor fish to distinguish them from scorpions. Class distinctions of this kind are conveyed in the very act of perception—e.g. the case of the infant with the glass bottles,—and, as we shall subsequently see, in the case of the higher animals admit of being carried to a wonderful pitch of discriminative perfection. Recepts, then, are spontaneous associations, formed unintentionally as what may be termed unperceived abstractions.[24]

One further remark remains to be added before our nomenclature of ideas can be regarded as complete. It will have been noticed that the term “general idea” is equally appropriate to ideas of class or kind, whether or not such ideas are named. The ideas Good-for-eating and Not-good-for-eating are as general to an animal as they are to a man, and have in each case been formed in the same way—namely, by an accumulation of particular experiences spontaneously assorted in consciousness. General ideas of this kind, however, have not been contemplated by previous writers while dealing with the psychology of generalization: hence the term “general,” like the term “abstract,” has by usage become restricted to those higher products of ideation which depend on the faculty of language. And the only words that I can find to have been used by any previous writers to designate the ideas concerned in that lower kind of generalization which does not depend on language, are the words above given—namely, Complex, Compound, and Mixed. Now, none of these words are so good as the word General, because none of them express the notion of genus or class; and the great distinction between the idea which an animal or an infant has, say of an individual man and of men in general, is not that the one idea is simple, and the other complex, compound, or mixed; but that the one idea is particular and the other general. Therefore consistency would dictate that the term “general” should be applied to all ideas of class or kind, as distinguished from ideas of particulars or individuals—irrespective of the degree of generality, and irrespective, therefore, of the accident whether or not, quâ general, such ideas are dependent on language. Nevertheless, as the term has been through previous usage restricted to ideas of the higher order of generality, I will not introduce confusion by extending its use to the lower order, or by speaking of an animal as capable of generalizing. A parallel term, however, is needed; and, therefore, I will speak of the general or class ideas which are formed without the aid of language as generic. This word has the double advantage of retaining a verbal as well as a substantial analogy with the allied term general. It also serves to indicate that generic ideas, or recepts, are not only ideas of class or kind, but have been generated from the intermixture of individual ideas—i.e. from the blended memories of particular percepts.

My nomenclature of ideas, therefore, may be presented in a tabular form thus:—

IDEAS

General, Abstract, or Notional = Concepts. Complex, Compound, or Mixed = Recepts, or Generic Ideas. Simple, Particular, or Concrete = Memories of Percepts. [25]

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[CHAPTER III.]

LOGIC OF RECEPTS.

We have seen that the great border-land, or terra media, lying between particular ideas and general ideas has been strangely neglected by psychologists, and we may now be prepared to find that a careful exploration of this border-land is a matter of the highest importance for the purposes of our inquiry. I will, therefore, devote the present chapter to a full consideration of what I have termed generic ideas, or recepts.

It has already been remarked that, in order to form any of these generic ideas, the mind does not require to combine intentionally the particular ideas which go to construct it: a recept differs from a concept in that it is received, not conceived. The percepts out of which a recept is composed are of so comparatively simple a character, are so frequently repeated in observation, and present among themselves resemblances or analogies so obvious, that the mental images of them run together, as it were, spontaneously, or in accordance with the primary laws of merely sensuous association, without requiring any conscious act of comparison. This is a truth which has been noticed by several previous writers. For instance, I have in this connection already quoted a passage from M. Taine, and, if necessary, could quote another, wherein he very aptly likens what I have called recepts to the unelaborated ore out of which the metal of a concept is afterwards smelted. And still more to the purpose is the following passage, which I take from Mr. Sully:—“The more concrete concepts, or generic images, are formed to a large extent by a passive process of assimilation. The likeness among dogs, for example, is so great and striking that when a child, already familiar with one of these animals, sees a second, he recognizes it as identical with the first in certain obvious respects. The representation of the first combines with the representation of the second, bringing into distinct relief the common dog features, more particularly the canine form. In this way the images of different dogs come to overlap, so to speak, giving rise to a typical image of dog. Here there is very little of active direction of the mind from one thing to another in order to discover where the resemblance lies: the resemblance forces itself upon the mind. When, however, the resemblance is less striking, as in the case of more abstract concepts, a distinct operation of active comparison is involved.”[26]

Similarly, M. Perez remarks, “the necessity which children are under of seeing in a detached and scrappy manner in order to see well, makes them continually practise that kind of abstraction by which we separate qualities from objects. From those objects which the child has already distinguished as individual, there come to him at different moments particularly vivid impressions.... Dominant sensations of this kind, by their energy or frequency, tend to efface the idea of the objects from which they proceed, to separate or abstract themselves.... The flame of a candle is not always equally bright or flickering; tactile, sapid, olfactory, and auditive impressions do not always strike the child’s sensorium with the same intensity, nor during the same length of time. This is why the recollections of individual forms, although strongly graven on their intelligence, lose by degrees their first precision, so that the idea of a tree, for instance, furnished by direct and perfectly distinct memories, comes back to the mind in a vague and indistinct form, which might be taken for a general idea.”[27]

Again, in the opinion of John Stuart Mill, “It is the doctrine of one of the most fertile thinkers of modern times, Auguste Comte, that besides the logic of signs, there is a logic of images, and a logic of feelings. In many of the familiar processes of thought, and especially in uncultured minds, a visual image serves instead of a word. Our visual sensations, perhaps only because they are almost always present along with the impressions of our other senses, have a facility of becoming associated with them. Hence, the characteristic visual appearance of an object easily gathers round it, by association, the ideas of all other peculiarities which have, in frequent experience, co-existed with that appearance; and, summoning up these with a strength and certainty far surpassing that of merely casual associations which it may also raise, it concentrates the attention on them. This is an image serving for a sign—the logic of images. The same function may be fulfilled by a feeling. Any strong and highly interesting feeling, connected with one attribute of a group, spontaneously classifies all objects according as they possess, or do not possess, that attribute. We may be tolerably certain that the things capable of satisfying hunger form a perfectly distinct class in the mind of any of the more intelligent animals; quite as much as if they were able to use or understand the word food. We here see in a strong light the important truth that hardly anything universal can be affirmed in psychology except the laws of association.”[28]

Furthermore, Mansel tersely conveys the truth which I am endeavouring to present, thus:—“The mind recognizes the impression which a tree makes on the retina of the eye: this is presentative consciousness. It then depicts it. From many such pictures it forms a general notion, and to that notion it at last appropriates a name.”[29] Almost in identical language the same distinction is conveyed by Noiré thus:—“All trees hitherto seen by me may leave in my imagination a mixed image, a kind of ideal representation of trees. Quite different from this is the concept, which is never an image.”[30]

And, not to overburden the argument with quotations, I will furnish but one more, which serves if possible with still greater clearness to convey exactly what it is that I mean by a recept. Professor Huxley writes:—“An anatomist who occupies himself intently with the examination of several specimens of some new kind of animal, in course of time acquires so vivid a conception of its form and structure, that the idea may take visible shape and become a sort of waking dream.”[31]

Although the use of the word “conception” here is unfortunate in one way, I regard it as fortunate in another: it shows how desperate is the need for the word which I have coined.

The above quotations, then, may be held sufficient to show that the distinction which I have drawn has not been devised merely to suit my own purposes. All that I have endeavoured so far to do is to bring this distinction into greater clearness, by assigning to each of its parts a separate name. And in doing this I have not assumed that the two orders of generalization comprised under recepts and concepts are the same in kind. So far I have left the question open as to whether a mind which can only attain to recepts differs in degree or in kind from the intellect which is able to go on to the formation of concepts. Had I said, with Sully, “When the resemblance is less striking, as in the case of more abstract concepts, a distinct operation of active comparison is involved,” I should have been assuming that there is only a difference of degree between a recept and a concept: designating both by the same term, and therefore implying that they differ only in their level of abstraction, I should have assumed that what he calls the “passive process of assimilation,” whereby an infant or an animal recognizes an individual man as belonging to a class, is really the same kind of psychological process as that which is involved “in the case of more abstract concepts,” where the individual man is designated by a proper name, while the class to which he belongs is designated by a common name. Similarly, if I had said, with Thomas Brown, that in the process of generalization there is, “in the first place, the perception of two or more objects [percept]; in the second place, the feeling of their resemblance [recept]; and, lastly, the expression of this common relative feeling by a name, afterwards used as a general name [concept];”—if I had spoken thus, I should have virtually begged the question as to the universal continuity of ideation, both in brutes and men. Of course this is the conclusion towards which I am working; but my endeavour in doing so is to proceed in the proof step by step, without anywhere pre-judging my case. These passages, therefore, I have quoted merely because they recognize more clearly than others which I have happened to meet with what I conceive to be the true psychological classification of ideas; and although, with the exception of that quoted from Mill, no one of the passages shows that its writer had before his mind the case of animal intelligence—or perceived the immense importance of his statements in relation to the question which we have to consider,—this only renders of more value their independent testimony to the soundness of my classification.[32]

The question, then, which we have to consider is whether there is a difference of kind, or only a difference of degree, between a recept and a concept. This is really the question with which the whole of the present volume will be concerned, and as its adequate treatment will necessitate somewhat laborious inquiries in several directions, I will endeavour to keep the various issues distinct by fully working out each branch of the subject before entering upon the next.

First of all I will show, by means of illustrations, the highest levels of ideation that are attained within the domain of recepts; and, in order to do this, I will adduce my evidence from animals alone, seeing that here there can be no suspicion—as there might be in the case of infants—that the logic of recepts is assisted by any nascent growth of concepts. But, before proceeding to state this evidence, it seems desirable to say a few words on what I mean by the term just used, namely, Logic of Recepts.

As argued in my previous work, all mental processes of an adaptive kind are, in their last resort, processes of classification: they consist in discriminating between differences and resemblances. An act of simple perception is an act of noticing resemblances and differences between the objects of such perception; and, similarly, an act of conception is the taking together—or the intentional putting together—of ideas which are recognized as analogous. Hence abstraction has to do with the abstracting of analogous qualities; reason is ratiocination, or the comparison of ratios; and thus the highest operations of thought, like the simplest acts of perception, are concerned with the grouping or co-ordination of resemblances, previously distinguished from differences.[33] Consequently, the middle ground of ideation, or the territory occupied by recepts, is concerned with this same process on a plane higher than that which is occupied by percepts, though lower than that which is occupied by concepts. In short, the object or use, and therefore the method or logic, of all ideation is the same. It is, indeed, customary to restrict the latter term to the higher plane of ideation, or to that which has to do with concepts. But, as Comte has shown, there is no reason why, for purposes of special exposition, this term should not be extended so as to embrace all operations of the mind, in so far as these are operations of an orderly kind. For in so far as they are orderly or adaptive—and not merely sentient or indifferent—such operations all consist, as we have just seen, in processes of ideal grouping, or binding together.[34] And therefore I see no impropriety in using the word Logic for the special purpose of emphasizing the fundamental identity of all ideation—so far, that is, as its method is concerned. I object, however, to the terms “Logic of Feelings” and “Logic of Signs.” For, on the one hand, “Feelings,” have to do primarily with the sentient and emotional side of mental life, as distinguished from the intellectual or ideational. And, on the other hand, “Signs” are the expressions of ideas; not the ideas themselves. Hence, whatever method, or meaning, they may present is but a reflection of the order, or grouping, among the ideas which they are used to express. The logic, therefore, is neither in the feelings nor in the signs; but in the ideas. On this account I have substituted for the above terms what I take to be more accurate designations—namely, the Logic of Recepts, and the Logic of Concepts.[35]

In the present chapter we have only to consider the logic of recepts, and, in order to do so efficiently, we may first of all briefly note that even within the region of percepts we meet with a process of spontaneous grouping of like with like, which, in turn, leads us downwards to the purely unconscious or mechanical grouping of stimuli in the lower nerve-centres. So that, as fully argued out in my previous work, on its objective face the method has everywhere been the same: whether in the case of reflex action, of sensation, perception, reception, conception, or reflection, on the side of the nervous system, the method of evolution has been uniform: “it has everywhere consisted in a progressive development of the power of discriminating between stimuli, joined with the complementary power of adaptive response.”[36] But although this is a most important truth to recognize (as it appears to have been implicitly recognized—or, rather, accidentally implied—by using a variant of the same term to designate the lowest and the highest members of the above-named series of faculties), for the purposes of psychological as distinguished from physiological inquiry, it is convenient to disregard the objective side of this continuous process, and therefore to take up our analysis at the place where it is attended by a subjective counterpart—that is, at Perception.

So much has already been written on what is termed the “unconscious judgments” or “intuitive judgments” incidental to all our acts of perception, that I feel it is needless to occupy space by dwelling at any length upon this subject. The familiar illustration of looking straight into a polished bowl, and alternately perceiving it as a bowl and a sphere, is enough to show that here we do have a logic of feelings: without any act of ideation, but simply in virtue of an automatic grouping of former percepts, the mind spontaneously infers—or unconsciously judges—that an object, which must either be a bowl or a sphere, is now one and now the other.[37] From which we gather that all our visual perceptions are thus of the nature of automatic inferences, based upon previous correspondencies between them and perceptions of touch. From which, again, we gather that perceptions of every kind depend upon previous grouping, whether between those supplied by the same sense only, or also in combination with those supplied by other senses.

Now, if this is so well known to be the case with percepts, obviously it must also be the case with recepts. If we thus find by experiment that all our perceptions are dependent on sub-conscious co-ordination wholly automatic, much more may we be prepared to find that the simplest of our ideas are dependent on spontaneous co-ordinations almost equally automatic. Accordingly, it requires but a slight analysis of our ordinary mental processes to prove that all our simpler ideas are group-arrangements, which have been formed as I say spontaneously, or without any of that intentionally comparing, sifting, and combining process which is required in the higher departments of ideational activity. The comparing, sifting, and combining is here done, as it were, for the conscious agent; not by him. Recepts are received: it is only concepts that require to be conceived. For a recept is that kind of idea the constituent parts of which—be they but the memories of percepts, or already more or less elaborated as recepts—unite spontaneously as soon as they are brought together. It matters not whether this readiness to unite is due to obvious similarity, or to frequent repetition: the point is that there is so strong an affinity between the elementary constituents, that the compound is formed as a consequence of their mere apposition in consciousness. If I am crossing a street and hear behind me a sudden shout, I do not require to wait in order to predicate to myself that there is probably a hansom cab just about to run me down: a cry of this kind, and in those circumstances, is so intimately associated in my mind with its purpose, that the idea which it arouses need not rise above the level of a recept; and the adaptive movements on my part which that idea immediately prompts, are performed without any intelligent reflection. Yet, on the other hand, they are neither reflex actions nor instinctive actions: they are what may be termed receptual actions, or actions depending on recepts.

This, of course, is an exceedingly simple illustration, and I have used it in order to make the further remark that actions depending on recepts, although they often thus lie near to reflex actions, are by no means bound to do so. On the contrary, as we shall immediately find, actions depending on recepts are often so highly “intelligent,” that in our own case it is impossible to draw the line between them and actions depending on concepts. That is to say, in our own case there is a large border-land where introspection is unable to determine whether adjustive action is due to recepts or to concepts; and hence it is only in the case of animals that we can be certain as to the limits of intelligent adjustment which are possible under the operation of recepts alone. The question therefore, now arises,—How far can this process of spontaneous or unintentional comparing, sifting, and combining go without the intentional co-operation of the conscious agent? To what level of ideation can recepts attain without the aid of concepts? We have seen in the last chapter that animals display generic or receptual ideas of Good-for-eating, Not-good-for-eating, &c.; and we know that in our own case we “instinctively” avoid placing our hands in a flame, without requiring to formulate any proposition upon the properties of flame. How far, then, can this kind of unnamed or non-conceptional ideation extend? Or, in other words, how far can mind travel without the vehicle of Language? For the reasons already given, I will answer this question by fastening attention exclusively on the mind of brutes.

To lead off with a few instances which have been already selected for substantially the same purpose by Mr. Darwin:—

“Houzeau relates that, while crossing a wide and arid plain in Texas, his two dogs suffered greatly from thirst, and that between thirty and forty times they rushed down the hollows to search for water. These hollows were not valleys, and there were no trees in them, or any other difference in the vegetation; and as they were absolutely dry, there could have been no smell of damp earth. The dogs behaved as if they knew that a dip in the ground offered them the best chance of finding water, and Houzeau has often witnessed the same behaviour in other animals.”

I have myself frequently observed this association of ideas between hollow ground and probability of finding water in the case of setter-dogs, which require much water while working; and it is evident that the ideas associated are of a character highly generic.

Further, Mr. Darwin writes:—“I have seen, as I dare say have others, that when a small object is thrown on the ground beyond the reach of one of the elephants in the Zoological Gardens, he blows through his trunk on the ground beyond the object, so that the current reflected on all sides may drive the object within his reach. Again, a well-known ethnologist, Mr. Westropp, informs me that he observed in Vienna a bear deliberately making with his paw a current in some water, which was close to the bars of his cage, so as to draw a piece of floating bread within his reach.”[38]

In Animal Intelligence it will be seen that both these observations are independently confirmed by letters which I have received from correspondents; so that the facts must be accepted. And they imply a faculty of forming generic ideas of a high order of complexity. Indeed, these are not unlike the generic ideas of intelligent water-dogs with reference to water-currents, which induce the animals to make allowance for the force of the current by running in the opposite direction to its flow before entering the water. Dogs accustomed to tidal rivers, or to swimming in the sea, acquire a still further generic idea of uncertainty as to the direction of the flow at any given time; and therefore some of the more intelligent of these dogs first ascertain the direction in which the tide is running by placing their fore-paws in the stream, and then proceed to make their allowance for driftway accordingly.[39]

Lastly, Mr. Darwin writes:—“When I say to my terrier in an eager voice (and I have made the trial many times), ‘Hi, hi, where is it?’ she at once takes it as a sign that something is to be hunted, and generally first looks quickly all around, and then rushes into the nearest thicket, to scout for any game, but finding nothing, she looks up into any neighbouring tree for a squirrel. Now, do not these actions clearly show that she had in her mind a general idea, or concept, that some animal is to be discovered and hunted?”[40]

From the many instances which I have already given in Animal Intelligence of the high receptual capabilities of ants, it will here be sufficient to re-state the following, which is quoted from Mr. Belt, whose competency as an observer no one can dispute.

“A nest was made near one of our tramways, and to get to the trees the ants had to cross the rails, over which the waggons were continually passing and re-passing. Every time they came along a number of ants were crushed to death. They persevered in crossing for some time, but at last set to work and tunnelled underneath each rail. One day, when the waggons were not running, I stopped up the tunnels with stones; but although great numbers carrying leaves were thus cut off from the nest, they would not cross the rails, but set to work making fresh tunnels underneath them.”

These facts cannot be ascribed to “instinct,” seeing that tram-cars could not have been objects of previous experience to the ancestors of the ants; and therefore the degree of receptual intelligence, or “practical inference,” which was displayed is highly remarkable. Clearly, the insects must have appreciated the nature of these repeated catastrophes, and correctly reasoned out the only way by which they could be avoided.

As this is an important branch of my subject, I will add a few more illustrations drawn from vertebrated animals, beginning with some from the writings of Leroy, who had more opportunity than most men of studying the habits of animals in a state of nature.[41]

He says of the wolf:—“When he scents a flock within its fold, memory recalls to him the impression of the shepherd and his dog, and balances that of the immediate neighbourhood of the sheep; he measures the height of the fence, compares it with his own strength, takes into account the additional difficulty of jumping it when burdened with his prey, and thence concludes the uselessness of the attempt. Yet he will seize one of a flock scattered over a field, under the very eyes of the shepherd, especially if there be a wood near enough to offer him a hope of shelter. He will resist the most tempting morsel when accompanied by this alarming accessory [the smell of man]; and even when it is divested of it, he is long in overcoming his suspicions. In this case the wolf can only have an abstract idea of danger—the precise nature of the trap laid for him being unknown.... Several nights are hardly sufficient to give him confidence. Though the cause of his suspicions may no longer exist, it is reproduced by memory, and the suspicion is unremoved. The idea of man is connected with that of an unknown danger, and makes him distrustful of the fairest appearances.”[42]

Leroy also well observes:—“Animals, like ourselves, are forced to make abstractions. A dog which has lost his master runs towards a group of men, by virtue of a general abstract idea, which represents to him the qualities possessed in common with these men by his master. He then experiences in succession several less general, but still abstract ideas of sensation, until he meets the particular sensation which he seeks.”[43]

Again, with regard to the stag, this author writes:—“He exhausts every variety and every design of which the action of flight consists. He has perceived that in thickets, where the passage of his body leaves a strong trace, the dogs follow him ardently, and without any checks; he therefore leaves the thicket and plunges into the forests where there is no underwood, or else skirts the high-road. Sometimes he leaves that part of the country altogether, and depends wholly on his speed for escape. But even when out of hearing of the dogs, he knows that they will soon come up with him; and, instead of giving himself up to false security, he avails himself of this respite to invent new artifices to throw them out. He takes a straight course, returns on his steps, and bounding from the earth many times consecutively, throws out the sagacity of the dogs.... When hard pressed he will often drop down in the hope that their ardour will carry them beyond the track, and should it do so he retraces his steps. Often he seeks the company of others of his species, and when his friend is sufficiently heated to share the peril with, he leaves him to his fate and escapes by rapid flight. Frequently the quarry is thus changed, and this artifice is one the success of which is most certain.”[44]

“Often (when not being hunted at all), instead of returning home in confidence and straightway lying down to rest, he will wander round the spot; he enters the wood, leaves it, goes and returns on his steps many times. Without having any immediate cause for his uneasiness, he employs the same artifices which he would have employed to throw out the dogs, if he were pursued by them. This foresight is an evidence of remembered facts, and of a series of ideas and suppositions resulting from those facts.”[45]

It is remarkable enough that an animal should seek to confuse its trail by such devices, even when it knows that the hounds are actually in pursuit; but it is still more so when the devices are resorted to in order to confuse imaginary hounds which may possibly be on the scent. Perhaps to some persons it may appear that such facts argue on the part of the animals which exhibit them some powers of representative thought, or some kind of reflection conducted without the aid of language. Be it remembered, therefore, I am not maintaining that they do not: I am merely conceding that the evidence is inadequate to justify the conclusion that they do; and all I am now concerned with is to make it certain that in animals there is a logic, be it a logic of recepts only, or likewise what I shall afterwards explain as a logic of pre-concepts.

Again, Leroy says of the fox:—“He smells the iron of the trap, and this sensation has become so terrible to him, that it prevails over every other. If he perceives that the snares become more numerous, he departs to seek a safe neighbourhood. But sometimes, grown bold by a nearer and oft-repeated examination, and guided by his unerring scent, he manages, without hurt to himself, to draw the bait adroitly out of the trap.... If all the outlets of his den are guarded by traps, the animal scents them, recognizes them, and will suffer the most acute hunger rather than attempt to pass them. I have known foxes keep their dens a whole fortnight, and only then make up their minds to come out because hunger left them no choice but as to the mode of death.... There is nothing he will not attempt in order to save himself. He will dig till he has worn away his claws to effect his exit by a fresh opening, and thus not unfrequently escapes the snares of the sportsman. If a rabbit imprisoned with him gets caught in one of the snares, or if by any other means one should go off, he infers that the machine has done its duty, and walks boldly and securely over it.”[46]

Lastly, this author gives the case, which has since been largely quoted—although its source is seldom given—of crows which it is desired to shoot upon their nests, in order to destroy birds and eggs at the same time. The crows will not return to their nests during daylight, if they see any one waiting to shoot them. If, to lull suspicion, a hut is made below the rookery and a man conceal himself in it with a gun, he waits in vain if the bird has ever before been shot at in a similar manner. “She knows that fire will issue from the cave into which she saw a man enter.” Leroy then goes on to say:—“To deceive this suspicious bird, the plan was hit upon of sending two men into the watch-house, one of whom passed on while the other remained; but the crow counted and kept her distance. The next day three went, and again she perceived that only two returned. In fine it was found necessary to send five or six men to the watch-house in order to put her out of her calculation.”

Now, as Leroy is not a random writer, and as his life’s work was that of Ranger at Versailles, we must not lightly set aside this statement as incredible, more especially as he adds that the “phenomenon is always to be repeated when the attempt is made,” and so is to be regarded as “among the very commonest instances of the sagacity of animals.”[47] If it is once granted that a bird has sagacity enough to infer that where she has observed two men pass in and only one come out, therefore the second man remains behind, it is only a matter of degree how far the differential perception may extend. Of course it would be absurd to suppose that the bird counts out the men by any process of notation, but we know that for simple ideas of number no symbolism in the way of figures is necessary. If we were to see three men pass into a building and only two come out, we should not require to calculate 3-2=1; the contrast between the simultaneous sense-perception of A+B+C, when receptually compared with the subsequently serial perceptions of A and B, would be sufficient for the spontaneous inference that C must still be in the building. And this process would in our own case continue possible up to the point at which the simultaneous perception was not composed of too many parts to be afterwards receptually analysed into its constituents.[48]

In this connection also I may state that, with the assistance of the keeper, I have succeeded in teaching the Chimpanzee now at the Zoological Gardens to count correctly as far as five. The method adopted is to ask her for one straw, two straws, three straws, four straws, or five straws—of course without observing any order in the succession of such requests. If more than one straw is asked for, the ape has been taught to hold the others in her mouth until the sum is completed, so that she may deliver all the straws simultaneously. For instance, if she is asked for four straws, she successively picks up three straws and puts them in her mouth: then she picks up the fourth, and hands over all the four together. This method prevents any possible error arising from her interpretation of vocal tones, which might well arise if each straw were asked for separately. Thus there can be no doubt that the animal is able to distinguish receptually between the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and understands the name for each. Further than this I have not attempted to take her. I may add that her performance has been witnessed by the officers of the Zoological Society and also by other naturalists, who will be satisfied with the accuracy of the above account. But the ape is capricious, and, unless she happens to be in a favourable mood at the time, visitors must not be disappointed if they fail to be entertained by an exhibition of her learning.

The great physiologist Müller and the great philosopher Hegel are quoted by Mr. Mivart as maintaining, that “to form abstract conceptions of such operations as of something common to many under the notion of cause and effect, is a perfect impossibility to them” (animals[49]); and no doubt many other illustrious names might be quoted in support of the same statement. But it seems to me that needless obscurity is imported into this matter, by not considering in what our own idea of causality consists. It is clear that to attain a general idea of causality as universal, &c., demands higher powers of abstract thought than are possessed by any animals, or even by the great majority of men; but it is no less clear that all men and most animals have a generic idea of causality, in the sense of expecting uniform experience under uniform conditions. A cat sees a man knock at the knocker of a door, and observes that the door is afterwards opened: remembering this, when she herself wants to get in at that door, she jumps at the knocker, and waits for the door to be opened.[50] Now, can it be denied that in this act of inference, or imitation, or whatever name we choose to call it, the cat perceives such an association between the knocking and the opening as to feel that the former as antecedent was in some way required to determine the latter as consequent? And what is this but such a perception of causal relation as is shown by a child who blows upon a watch to open the case—thinking this to be the cause of the opening from the uniform deception practised by its parent,—or of the savage who plants nails and gunpowder to make them grow? And endless illustrations of such a perception of causality might be drawn from the everyday life of civilized man: indeed, how seldom does any one of us wait to construct a general proposition about causality in the abstract before we act on our practical knowledge of it. And that this practical knowledge in the case of animals enables them to form a generic idea, or recept, of the equivalency between causes and effects—such that a perceived equivalency is recognized by them as an explanation—would appear to be rendered evident by the following fact, which I carefully observed for the express purpose of testing the question. I quote the incident from an already-published lecture, which was given before the British Association at Dublin, in 1878.

“I had a setter dog which was greatly afraid of thunder. One day a number of apples were being shot upon the wooden floor of an apple-room, and, as each bag of apples was shot, it produced through the rest of the house a noise resembling that of distant thunder. My dog became terror-stricken at the sound; but as soon as I brought him to the apple-room and showed him the true cause of the noise, he became again buoyant and cheerful as usual.”[51]

The importance of clearly perceiving that animals have a generic, as distinguished from an abstract, idea of causation—and, indeed, must have such an idea if they are in any way at all to adjust their actions to their circumstances—the importance of clearly perceiving this is, that it carries with it a proof of the logic of recepts being able to reach generic ideas of principles, as well as of objects, qualities, and actions. In order to prove this important fact still more unquestionably, I will here quote a passage from the biography of the cebus which I kept for the express purpose of observing his intelligence.

“To-day he obtained possession of a hearth-brush, one of the kind which has the handle screwed into the brush. He soon found the way to unscrew the handle, and, having done that, he immediately began to try to find out the way to screw it in again. This he in time accomplished. At first he put the wrong end of the handle into the hole, but turned it round and round the right way for screwing. Finding it did not hold, he turned the other end of the handle, carefully stuck it into the hole, and began again to turn it the right way. It was, of course, a very difficult feat for him to perform, for he required both his hands to hold the handle in the proper position, and to turn it between his hands in order to screw it in; and the long bristles of the brush prevented it from remaining steady, or with the right side up. He held the brush with his hind hands, but even so it was very difficult for him to get the first turn of the screw to fit into the thread; he worked at it, however, with the most unwearying perseverance until he got the first turn of the screw to catch, and he then quickly turned it round and round until it was screwed up to the end. The most remarkable thing was that, however often he was disappointed in the beginning, he never was induced to try turning the handle the wrong way; he always screwed it from right to left. As soon as he had accomplished his wish, he unscrewed it again, and then screwed it on again the second time rather more easily than the first, and so on many times.”

The above is extracted from the diary kept by my sister. I did not myself witness the progress of this research with the hearth-brush, as I did so many of the other investigations successfully pursued by that wonderful animal. But I have a perfect confidence in the accuracy of my sister’s observation, as well as in the fidelity of her account; and, moreover, the point with which I am about to be concerned has reference to what followed subsequently, as to which I had abundant opportunities for close and repeated observations. For the point is that, after having thus discovered the mechanical principle of the screw in that one particular case, the monkey forthwith proceeded to generalize, or to apply his newly gained knowledge to every other case where it was at all probable that the mechanical principle in question was to be met with. The consequence was that the animal became a nuisance in the house by incessantly unscrewing the tops of fire-irons, bell-handles, &c., &c., which he was by no means careful always to replace. Here, therefore, I think we have unquestionable evidence of intelligent recognition of a principle, which in the first instance was discovered by “the most unwearying perseverance” in the way of experiment, and afterwards sought for in multitudes of wholly dissimilar objects.[52]

To these numerous facts I will now add one other, which is sufficiently remarkable to deserve republication for its own sake. I quote the account from the journal Science, in which it appeared anonymously. But finding on inquiry that the observer was Mr. S. P. Langley, the well-known astronomer, and being personally assured by him that he is certain there is no mistake about the observation, I will now give the latter in his own words.

“The interesting description by Mr. Larkin (Science, No. 58) of the lifting by a spider of a large beetle to its nest, reminds me of quite another device by which I once saw a minute spider (hardly larger than the head of a pin) lift a house-fly, which must have been more than twenty times its weight, through a distance of over a foot. The fly dangled by a single strand from the cross-bar of a window-sash, and, when it first caught my attention, was being raised through successive small distances of something like a tenth of an inch each; the lifts following each other so fast, that the ascent seemed almost continuous. It was evident that the weight must have been quite beyond the spider’s power to stir by a ‘dead lift;’ but his motions were so quick, that at first it was difficult to see how this apparently impossible task was being accomplished. I shall have to resort to an illustration to explain it; for the complexity of the scheme seems to belong less to what we ordinarily call instinct than to intelligence, and that in a degree we cannot all boast ourselves.

“The little spider proceeded as follows:—

“a b is a portion of the window-bar, to which level the fly was to be lifted, from his original position at F vertically beneath a; the spider’s first act was to descend halfway to the fly (to d), and there fasten one end of an almost invisible thread; his second to ascend to the bar and run out to b, where he made fast the other end, and hauled on his guy with all his might. Evidently the previously straight line must yield somewhat in the middle, whatever the weight of the fly, who was, in fact, thereby brought into position F´, to the right of the first one and a little higher. Beyond this point, it might seem, he could not be lifted; but the guy being left fast at b, the spider now went to an intermediate point c directly over his victim’s new position, and thus spun a new vertical line from c, which was made fast at the bend at d´, after which a d was cast off, so that the fly now hung vertically below c, as before below a, but a little higher.”

“The same operation was repeated again and again, a new guy being occasionally spun, but the spider never descending more than about halfway down the cord, whose elasticity was in no way involved in the process. All was done with surprising rapidity. I watched it for some five minutes (during which the fly was lifted perhaps six inches), and then was called away.”

Without further burdening the argument with illustrative proof, it must now be evident that the “ore” out of which concepts are formed is highly metalliferous: it is not merely a dull earth which bears no resemblance to the shining substance smelted from it in the furnace of Language; it is already sparkling to such an extent that we may well feel there is no need of analysis to show it charged with that substance in its pure form—that what we see in the ore is the same kind of material as we take from the melting-pot, and differs from it only in the degree of its agglomeration. Nevertheless, I will not yet assume that such is the case. Before we can be perfectly sure that two things which seem to the eye of common sense so similar are really the same, we must submit them to a scientific analysis. Even though it be certain that the one is extracted from the other, there still remains a possibility that in the melting-pot some further ingredient may have been added. Human intelligence is undoubtedly derived from human experience, in the same way as animal intelligence is derived from animal experience; but this does not prove that the ideation which we have in common with brutes is not supplemented by ideation of some other order, or kind. Presently I shall consider the arguments which are adduced to prove that it has been, and then it will become apparent that the supplement, if any, must have been added in the smelting-fire of Language—a fact, be it observed, which is conceded by all modern writers who deny the genetic continuity of mind in animal and human intelligence. Thus far, then, I have attempted nothing more than a preliminary clearing of the ground—first by carefully defining my terms and impartially explaining the psychology of ideation; next by indicating the nature of the question which has presently to be considered; and, lastly, by showing the level to which intelligence attains under the logic of recepts, without any possibility of assistance from the logic of concepts.

Only one other topic remains to be dealt with in the present chapter. We continually find it assumed, and confidently stated as if the statement did not admit of question, that the simplest or most primitive order of ideation is that which is concerned only with particulars, or with special objects of perception. The nascent ideas of an infant are supposed to crystallize around the nuclei furnished by individual percepts; the less intelligent animals—if not, indeed, animals in general—are supposed, as Locke says, to deal “only in particular ideas, just as they receive them from the senses.” Now, I fully assent to this, if it is only meant (as I understand Locke to mean) that infants and animals are not able consciously, intentionally, or, as he says, “of themselves, to compound and make complex ideas.” In order thus intentionally, or of themselves, to compound their ideas, they would require to think about their ideas as ideas, or consciously to set one idea before another as two distinct objects of thought, and for the known purpose of composition. To do this requires powers of introspective reflection; therefore it is a kind of mental activity impossible to infants or animals, since it has to do with concepts as distinguished from recepts. But, as we have now so fully seen, it does not follow that because ideas cannot be thus compounded by infants or animals intentionally, therefore they cannot be compounded at all. Locke is very clear in recognizing that animals do “take in and retain together several combinations of simple ideas to make up a complex idea:” he only denies that animals “do of themselves ever compound them and make complex ideas.” Thus, Locke plainly teaches my doctrine of recepts as distinguished from concepts; and I do not think that any modern psychologist—more especially in view of the foregoing evidence—will so far dispute this doctrine. But the point now is that, in my opinion, many psychologists have gone astray by assuming that the most primitive order of ideation is concerned only with particulars, or that in chronological order the memory of percepts precedes the occurrence of recepts. It appears to me that a very little thought on the one hand, and a very little observation on the other, is enough to make it certain that so soon as ideas of any kind begin to be formed at all, they are formed, not only as memories of particular percepts, but also as rudimentary recepts; and that in the subsequent development of ideation the genesis of recepts everywhere proceeds pari passu with that of percepts. I say that a very little thought is enough to show that this must be so, while a very little observation is enough to show that it is so. For, a priori, the more unformed the powers of perception, the less able must they be to take cognizance of particulars. The development of these powers consists in the ever-increasing efficiency of their analysis, or cognition of smaller and smaller differences of detail; and, consequently, of their recognition of these differences in different combinations. Hence, the feebler the powers of perception, the more must they occupy themselves with the larger or class distinctions between objects of sensuous experience, and the less with the smaller or more individual distinctions. Or, if we like, what afterwards become class distinctions, are at earlier stages of ideation the only distinctions; and, therefore, all the same as what are afterwards individual distinctions. But what follows? Surely that—be it in the individual or the race—when these originally individual distinctions begin to grow into class distinctions, they leave in the mind an indelible impress of their first nativity: they were the original recepts of memory, and if they are afterwards slowly differentiated as they slowly become organized into many particular parts, this does not hinder that throughout the process they never lose their organic unity: the mind must always continue to recognize that the parts which it subsequently perceived as successively unfolding from what at first was known only as a whole, are parts which belong to that whole—or, in other words, that the more newly observed particulars are members of what is now perceived as a class. Therefore, I say, on merely a priori grounds we might banish the gratuitous statement that the lower the order of ideation the more it is concerned with particular distinctions, or the less with class distinctions. The truth must be that the more primitive the recepts the larger are the class distinctions with which they are concerned—provided, of course, that this statement is not taken to apply beyond the region of sensuous perception.

Accordingly we find, as a matter of fact, both in infants and in animals, that the lower the grade of intelligence, the more is that intelligence shut up to a perception of class distinctions. “We pronounce the word Papa before a child in its cradle, at the same time pointing to his father. After a little, he in turn lisps the word, and we imagine that he understands it in the same sense that we do, or that his father’s presence only will recall the word. Not at all. When another person—that is, one similar in appearance, with a long coat, a beard, and loud voice—enters the room, he calls him also Papa. The name was individual; he has made it general. In our case it is applicable to one person only; in his, to a class.... A little boy, a year old, had travelled a good deal by railway. The engine, with its hissing sound and smoke, and the great noise of the train, struck his attention, and the first word he learned to pronounce was Fefer (chemin de fer). Then afterwards, a steam-boat, a coffee-pot with spirit lamp—everything that hissed or smoked was a Fefer.”[53]

“Now, I have quoted such familiar instances from this author because he adduces them as proof of the statement that here there appears a delicacy of impression which is special to man.” Without waiting to inquire whether this statement is justified by the evidence adduced, or even whether the infant has personally distinguished his father from among other men at the time when he first calls all men by the same name; it is enough for my present purposes to observe the single fact, that when a child is first able to show us the nature of its ideation by means of speech, it furnishes us with ample evidence that this ideation is what I have termed generic. The dress, the beard, and the voice go to form a recept to which all men are perceived to correspond: the most striking peculiarities of a locomotive are vividly impressed upon the memory, so that when anything resembling them is met with elsewhere, it is receptually classified as belonging to an object of analogous character. Only much later, when the analytic powers of perception have greatly developed, does the child begin to draw its distinctions with sufficient “refinement” to perceive that this classification is too crude—that the resemblances which most struck its infant imagination were but accidental, and that they have to be disregarded in favour of less striking resemblances which were originally altogether unnoticed. But although the process of classification is thus perpetually undergoing improvement with advancing intelligence, from the very first it has been classification—although, of course, thus far only within the region of sensuous perception. And similarly with regard to animals, it is sufficiently evident from such facts as those already instanced, that the imagery on which their adaptive action depends is in large measure generic.

Therefore, without in any way pre-judging the question as to whether or not there is any radical distinction between a mind thus far gifted and the conceptual thought of man, I may take it for granted that the ideation of infants is from the first generic; and hence that those psychologists are greatly mistaken who thoughtlessly assume that the formation of class-ideas is a prerogative of more advanced intelligence. No doubt their view of the matter seems plausible at first sight, because within the region of conceptual thought we know that progress is marked by increasing powers of generalisation—that it is the easiest steps which have to do with the cognition of particulars; the more difficult which have to do with abstractions. But this is to confuse recepts with concepts, and so to overlook a distinction between the two orders of generalization which it is of the first importance to be clear about. A generic idea is generic because the particular ideas of which it is composed present such obvious points of resemblance that they spontaneously fuse together in consciousness; but a general idea is general for precisely the opposite reason—namely, because the points of resemblance which it has seized are obscured from immediate perception, and therefore could never have fused together in consciousness but for the aid of intentional abstraction, or of the power of a mind knowingly to deal with its own ideas as ideas. In other words, the kind of classification with which recepts are concerned is that which lies nearest to the kind of classification with which all processes of so-called “intuitive inference” depend—such as mistaking a bowl for a sphere. But the kind of classification with which concepts are concerned is that which lies furthest from this purely automatic grouping of perceptions. Classification there doubtless is in both cases; but the one order is due to the closeness of resemblances in an act of perception, while in the other order it is an expression of their remoteness from merely perceptual associations.

Or, to put the matter in yet another light, if we think it sounds less paradoxical to speak of the process of classification as everywhere the same in kind, we must conclude that the groupings of recepts stand to those of concepts in much the same relation as the groupings of percepts do to those of recepts. In each case it is the lower order of grouping which furnishes material for the higher: and the object of this chapter has been to show, first, that the unintentional grouping which is distinctive of recepts may be carried to a wonderful pitch of perfection without any aid from the intentional grouping which is distinctive of concepts; and, second, that from the very beginning conscious ideation has been concerned with grouping. Not only, or not even chiefly, has it had to do with the registration in memory of particular percepts; but much more has it had to do with the spontaneous sorting of such percepts, with the spontaneous arrangement of them in ideal (or imagery) systems, and, consequently, with the spontaneous reflection in consciousness of many among the less complex relations—or the less abstruse principles—which have been uniformly encountered by the mind in its converse with an orderly world.

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[CHAPTER IV].

LOGIC OF CONCEPTS.

The device of applying symbols to stand for ideas, and then using the symbols as ideas, operates to the formation of more highly abstract ideas in a manner that is easily seen. For instance, because we observe that a great many objects present a certain quality in common, such as redness, we find it convenient to give this quality a name; and, having done so, we speak of redness in the abstract, or as standing apart from any particular object. Our word “redness” then serves as a sign or symbol of a quality, apart from any particular object of which it may happen to be a quality; and having made this symbolic abstraction in the case of a simple quality, such as redness, we can afterwards compound it with other symbolic abstractions, and so on till we arrive at verbal symbols of more and more abstract or general qualities, as well as qualities further and further removed from immediate perception. Thus, seeing that many other objects agree in being yellow, others blue, and so on, we combine all these abstractions into a still more general concept of Colour, which, quâ more abstract, is further removed from immediate perception—it being impossible that we can ever have a percept answering to the amalgamated concept of colour, although we have many percepts answering to the constituent concepts of colours.

So in the analogous case of objects. The proper names Peter, Paul, John, &c., stand in my mind as marks of my individual concepts: the term Man serves to sum up all the points of agreement between them—and also between all other individuals of their kind—without regard to their points of disagreement: the word Animal takes a still wider range, and so with nearly all words denoting objects. Like words connoting qualities, they may be arranged in rank above rank according to the range of their generality: and it is obvious that the wider this range the further is their meaning withdrawn from anything that can ever have been an object of immediate perception.

We shall afterwards find it is of the highest importance to note that these remarks apply quite as much to actions and states as they do to objects and qualities. Verbs, like nouns and adjectives, may be merely the names of simple recepts, or they may be compounds of other concepts—in either case differing from nouns and adjectives only in that they have to do with actions and states. To sow, to dig, to spin, &c., are names of particular actions; to labour is the name of a more general action; to live is the symbol of a concept yet more general. And it is obvious that here, as previously, the more general concepts are built out of the more special.

Later on I will adduce evidence to show that, whether we look to the growing infant or to the history of mankind as newly unearthed by the researches of the philologist, we alike find that no one of these divisions of simple concepts—namely, nouns, adjectives, and verbs—appears to present priority over the others. Or, if there is any evidence of such priority, it appears to incline in favour of nouns and verbs. But the point on which I desire to fasten attention at present is the enormous leverage which is furnished to the faculty of ideation by thus using words as the mental equivalents of ideas. For by the help of these symbols we climb into higher and higher regions of abstraction: by thinking in verbal signs we think, as it were, with the semblance of ideas: we dispense altogether with the necessity of actual images, whether of precepts or of recepts: we quit the sphere of sense, and rise to that of thought.

Take, for example, another type of abstract ideation, and one which not only serves better than most to show the importance of signs as substitutes for ideas, but also best illustrates the extraordinary results to which such symbolism may lead when carried out persistently. I refer to mathematics. Of course, before the idea of number or of relation can arise at all, the faculty of conception must have made great advances; but let us take this faculty at the point where the artifice of substituting signs for ideas has gone as far as to enable a mind to count by means of simple notation. It would clearly be impossible to conduct the least intricate trains of reasoning which invoke any ideas of number or proportion, were we deprived of the power of attaching particular signs to particular ideas of number. We could not even tell whether a clock had struck eleven or twelve, unless we were able to mark off each successive stroke with some distinctive sign; so that when it is said, as it often is, that an animal cannot count, we must remember that neither could a senior wrangler count if deprived of his symbols. “Man begins by counting things, grouping them visibly [i.e. by the Logic of Recepts]. He then learns to count simply the numbers, in the absence of things, using his fingers and toes for symbols. He then substitutes abstract signs, and Arithmetic begins. From this he passes to Algebra, the signs of which are not merely abstract but general; and now he calculates numerical relations, not numbers. From this he passes to the higher calculus of relations.”

And just as in mathematics the symbols that are employed contain in an easily manipulated form enormous bodies of meaning—possibly, indeed, the entire meaning of a long calculation,—so in all other kinds of abstract ideation, the symbols which we employ—whether in gesture, speech, or writing—contain more or less condensed masses of signification. Or, to take another illustration, which, like the last example, I quote from Lewes, “It is the same with the development of commerce. Men begin by exchanging things. They pass to the exchange of values. First money, then notes or bills, is the symbol of value. Finally men simply debit and credit one another, so that immense transactions are effected by means of this equation of equations. The complicated processes of sowing, reaping, collecting, shipping, and delivering a quantity of wheat, are condensed into the entry of a few words in a ledger.”

Thus, without further treatment, it must be obvious that it is impossible for us to over-estimate the importance of Language as the handmaid of Thought. “A sign,” as Sir William Hamilton says, “is necessary to give stability to our intellectual progress—to establish each step in our advance as a new starting-point for our advance to another beyond.... Words are the fortresses of thought. They enable us to make every intellectual conquest the basis of operations for others still beyond.” Moreover, thought and language act and react upon one another; so that, to adopt a happy metaphor from Professor Max Müller, the growth of thought and language is coral-like. Each shell is the product of life, but becomes in turn the support of new life. In the same manner each word is the product of thought, but becomes in turn a new support for the growth of thought.

It seems needless to say more in order to show the immense importance of sign-making to the development of ideation—the fact being one of universal recognition by writers of every school. I will, therefore, now pass on to the theme of the present chapter, which is that of tracing in further detail the logic of this faculty, or the method of its development.

From what I have already said, it may have been gathered that the simplest concepts are merely the names of recepts; while concepts of a higher order are the names of other concepts. Just as recepts may be either memories of particular percepts, or the results of many percepts (i.e. sundry other recepts) grouped as a class; so concepts may be either names of particular recepts, or the results of many named recepts (i.e. sundry other concepts) grouped as a class. The word “red,” for example, is my name for a particular recept; but the word “colour” is my name for a whole group of named recepts. And similarly with words signifying objects, states, and actions. Hence, we may broadly distinguish between concepts as of two orders—namely, those which have to do with recepts, and those which have to do with other concepts. For a concept is a concept even though it be nothing more than a named recept; and it is still a concept, even though it stands for the highest generalization of thought. I will make this distinction yet more clear by means of better illustrations.

Water-fowl adopt a somewhat different mode of alighting upon land, or even upon ice, from that which they adopt when alighting upon water; and those kinds which dive from a height (such as terns and gannets) never do so upon land or upon ice. These facts prove that the animals have one recept answering to a solid substance, and another answering to a fluid. Similarly, a man will not dive from a height over hard ground or over ice, nor will he jump into water in the same way as he jumps upon dry land. In other words, like the water-fowl, he has two distinct recepts, one of which answers to solid ground, and the other to an unresisting fluid. But, unlike the water-fowl, he is able to bestow upon each of these recepts a name, and thus to raise them both to the level of concepts. So far as the practical purposes of locomotion are concerned, it is of course immaterial whether or not he thus raises his recepts into concepts; but, as we have seen, for many other purposes it is of the highest importance that he is able to do this. Now, in order to do it, he must be able to set his recept before his own mind as an object of his own thought: before he can bestow upon these generic ideas the names of “solid” and “fluid,” he must have cognized them as ideas. Prior to this act of cognition, these ideas differed in no respect from the recepts of a water-fowl; neither for the ordinary requirements of his locomotion is it needful that they should: therefore, in so far as these requirements are concerned, the man makes no call upon his higher faculties of ideation. But, in virtue of this act of cognition, whereby he assigns a name to an idea known as such, he has created for himself—and for purposes other than locomotion—a priceless possession: he has formed a concept.

Nevertheless, the concept which he has formed is an extremely simple one—amounting, in fact, to nothing more than the naming of one among the most habitual of his recepts. But it is of the nature of concepts that, when once formed, they admit of being intentionally compared; and thus there arises a new possibility in the way of grouping ideas—namely, no longer by means of sensuous associations, but by means of symbolic representations. The names of recepts now serve as symbols of the recepts themselves, and so admit of being grouped without reference to the sensuous perceptions out of which they originally sprang. No longer restricted to time, place, circumstance, or occasion, ideas may now be called up and manipulated at pleasure; for in this new method of ideation the mind has, as it were, acquired an algebra of recepts: it is no longer necessary that the actual recepts themselves should be present to sensuous perception, or even to representative imagination. And as concepts are thus symbols of recepts, they admit, as I have said, of being compared and combined without reference to the recepts which they serve to symbolize. Thus we become able, as it were, to calculate in concepts in a way and to an extent that would be quite impossible in the merely perceptual medium of recepts. Now, it is in this algebra of the imagination that all the higher work of ideation is accomplished; and as the result of long and elaborate syntheses of concepts we turn out mental products of enormous intricacy—which, nevertheless, may be embodied in single words. Such words, for example, as Virtue, Government, Mechanical Equivalent, stand for immensely more elaborated concepts than the words Solid or Fluid—seeing that to the former there are no possible equivalents in the way of recepts.

Hence I say we must begin by recognizing the great reach of intellectual territory which is covered by what are called concepts. At the lowest level they are nothing more than named recepts; beyond that level they become the names of other concepts; and eventually they become the named products of the highest and most complex co-ordinations of concepts which have been achieved by the human mind. By the term Lower Concepts, then, I will understand those which are nothing more than named recepts, while by the term Higher Concepts I will understand those which are compounded of other concepts.

The next thing I wish to make clear is that concepts of the lower order of which I speak, notwithstanding that they are the simplest kind of concepts possible, are already something more than the names of particular ideas: they are the names of what I have called generic ideas, or recepts. We may search through the whole dictionary of any language and not find a single word which stands as a name for a truly particular idea—i.e. for the memory of a particular percept. Proper names are those which most nearly approach this character; but even proper names are really names of recepts (as distinguished from particular percepts), seeing that every object to which they are applied is a highly complex object, presenting many and diverse qualities, all of which require to be registered in memory as appertaining to that object if it is again to be recognized as the same.

Names, then, are not concerned with particular ideas, strictly so called: concepts, even of the lowest order, have to do with generic ideas. Furthermore, the generic ideas with which they have to do are for the most part highly generic: even before a recept is old enough to be baptized—or sufficiently far developed to be admitted as a member of the body conceptual,—it is already a highly organized product of ideation. We have seen in the last chapter how wonderfully far the combining power of imagination is able to go without the aid of language; and the consequence of this is, that before the advent of language mind is already stored with a rich accumulation of orderly ideas, grouped together in many systems of logical coherency. When, therefore, the advent of language does take place, it is needless that this work of logical grouping should be recommenced ab initio. What language does is to take up the work of grouping where it has been left by generic ideation; and if it is found expedient to name any generic ideas, it is the more generic as well as the less generic that are selected for the purpose. In short, immense as is the organizing power of the Logos, it does not come upon the scene of its creative power to find only that which is without form and void: rather does it find a fair structure of no mean order of system, shaped by prior influences, and, so far as thus shaped, a veritable cosmos.

Again, all concepts in their last resort depend on recepts, just as in their turn recepts depend on percepts. This fact admits of being abundantly proved, not only by general considerations, but also by the etymological derivation of abstract terms. The most highly abstract terms are derived from terms less abstract, and these from others still less abstract, until, by two or three such steps at the most, we are in all cases led directly back to their origin in a “lower concept”—i.e. in the name of a recept. As I will prove later on, there is no abstract word or general term in any language which, if its origin admits of being traced at all, is not found to have its root in the name of a recept. Concepts, therefore, are originally nothing more than named recepts; and hence it is a priori impossible that any concept can be formed unless it does eventually rest upon the basis of recepts. Owing to the elaboration which it subsequently undergoes in the region of symbolism, it may, indeed, so far cease to bear any likeness to its parentage that it is only the philologist who can trace its lineage. When we speak of Virtue, we need no longer think about a man, nor need we make any conscious reference to the steering of a ship when we use the word Government. But it is none the less obvious that both these highly abstract words have originated in the naming of recepts (the one of an object, the other of an action); and that their subsequent elevation in the scale of generality has been due to a progressive widening of conceptual significance at the hands of symbolical thought. In other words, and to revert to my previous terminology, “higher concepts” can in no case originate de novo: they can only be born of “lower concepts,” which, in turn, are the progeny of recepts.

I must now recur to a point with which we were concerned at the close of the last chapter. I there showed that the kind of classification, or mental grouping of ideas, which goes to constitute the logic of recepts, differs from the mental grouping of ideas which constitutes the logic of concepts, in that while the former has to do with similarities which are most obvious to perception, and therefore with analogies which most obtrude themselves upon attention, the latter have to do with similarities which are least obvious to perception, and therefore with analogies which are least readily apparent to the senses. Classification there is in both cases; but while in the one it depends on the closeness of the resemblances in an act of perception, in the other it is expressive of their remoteness. Now, from this it follows that the more conceptual the classification, the less obvious to immediate perception are the similarities between the things classified; and, consequently, the higher a generalization the greater must be the distance by which it is removed from the merely automatic groupings of receptual ideation.

For example, the earliest classification of the animal kingdom with which we are acquainted, grouped together, under the common designation of “creeping things,” articulata, mollusca, reptiles, amphibia, and even certain mammals, such as weasels, &c. Here, it is evident, the classification reposed only on the very superficial resemblances which are exhibited by these various creatures in their modes of locomotion. As yet conceptual thought had not been directed to the anatomy of animals; and, therefore, when it undertook a classification of animals, in the first instance it went no further than to note the most obvious differences as to external form and movement. In other words, this earliest conceptual classification was little more than the verbal statement of a receptual classification. But when the science of comparative anatomy was inaugurated by the Greeks, a much more conceptual classification of animals emerged—although the importance of anything like a systematic arrangement of the animal kingdom as a whole was so little appreciated that it does not appear to have been attempted, even by Aristotle. For, marvellous as is the advance of conceptual grouping here displayed by him, he confined himself to drawing anatomical comparisons between one group of animals and another; he neither had any idea of group subordinate to group which afterwards constituted the leading principle of taxonomic research, nor does he anywhere give a tabular statement of his own results, such as he could scarcely have failed to give had he appreciated the importance of classifying the animal kingdom as a systematic whole. Lastly, since the time of Ray the best thought of the best naturalists has been bestowed upon this work, with the result that conceptual ideation has continuously ascended through wider and wider generalizations, or generalizations more and more chastened by the intentional and combined accumulations of knowledge. How enormous, then, is the contrast between the first simple attempt at classification as made by the early Jews, and the elaborate body of abstract thought which is presented by the taxonomic science of to-day.

Similar illustrations might be drawn from any of the other departments of conceptual evolution, because everywhere such evolution essentially consists in the achievement of ideal integrations further and further removed from simple perceptions. Or, as Sir W. Hamilton puts it, “by a first generalization we have obtained a number of classes of resembling individuals. But these classes we can compare together, observe their similarities, abstract from their differences, and bestow on their common circumstance a common name. On the second classes we can again perform the same operation, and thus, ascending through the scale of general notions, throwing out of view always a greater number of differences, and seizing always on fewer similarities in the formation of our classes, we arrive at length at the limit of our ascent in the notion of being or existence.”[54]

Now, the point on which I wish to be perfectly clear about is, that this process of conceptual ideation, whereby ideas become general, must be carefully distinguished from the processes of receptual ideation, whereby ideas become generic. For these latter processes consist in particular ideas, which are given immediately in sense perception, becoming by association of similarity or contiguity automatically fused together; so that out of a number of such associated percepts there is formed a recept, without the need of any intentional co-operation of the mind in the matter. On the other hand, a general idea, or concept, can only be formed by the mind itself intentionally classifying its recepts known as such—or, in the case of creating “higher concepts,” performing the same process with its already acquired general ideas, for the purpose of constructing ideas still more general. A generic idea, then, is generalized in the sense that a naturalist speaks of a lowly organism as generalized—i.e. as not yet differentiated into the groups of higher and more specialized structures that subsequently emanate therefrom. But a general idea is generalized in the sense of comprising a group of such higher and more specialized structures, already formed and named under a common designation with reference to their points of resemblance. Classification there is in all cases; but in the receptual order it is automatic, while in the conceptual order it is introspective.

So far as my analysis has hitherto gone, I do not anticipate criticism or dissent from any psychologist, to whatever school he may belong. But there is one matter of subordinate importance which I may here most conveniently dispose of, although my views with regard to it may not meet with universal assent.

It appears to me an obvious feature of our introspective life that we are able to carry on elaborate processes of ideation without the aid of words—or, to put it paradoxically, that we are able to conceive without concepts. I am, of course, aware that this apparently obvious power of being able to think without any mental rehearsal of verbal signs (the verbum mentale of scholasticism) is denied by several writers of good standing—notably, for instance, by Professor Max Müller, who seeks with much elaboration to prove that “not only to a considerable extent, but always and altogether, we think by means of names.”[55] Now this statement appears to me either a truism or untrue: it is either tautological in expression, or erroneous in fact. If we restrict the term “thought” to the operation of naming, it is merely a truism to say that there can be no thought without language; for this is merely to say that there can be no naming without names. But if the term “thought” is taken to cover all processes of ideation which we do not share with brutes, I hold that the statement is opposed to obvious fact; and, therefore, I agree with the long array of logicians and philosophers whom Professor Max Müller quotes as showing what he calls “hesitation” in accepting a doctrine which in his opinion is the inevitable conclusion of Nominalism. For to me it appears evident that within the region of concepts, the frequent handling of those with which the mind is familiar enables the mind to deal with them in somewhat the same automatic manner as, on a lower plane of coordinated action, the pianist deals with his chords and phrases. Whereas at first it required intentional and laborious effort to perform these many varied and complex adjustments, by practice their performance passes more and more out of the range of conscious effort, until they come to be executed in a manner well-nigh mechanical. So in the case of purely mental operations, even of the highest order. At first every link in the chain of ideation requires to be separately fastened to attention by means of a word: every step in a process of reasoning requires to be taken on the solid basis of a proposition. But by frequent habit the thinking faculty ceases to be thus restricted: it passes, so to speak, from one end of the chain to the other without requiring to pause at every link: for its original stepping-stones it has substituted a bridge, over which it can pass almost at a bound. Or, again, to change the metaphor, there arises a method of short-hand thinking, wherein even the symbols of ideas (concepts) need no longer appear in consciousness: judgment follows judgment in logical sequence, yet without any articulate expression by the verbum mentale. This, I say, is a matter of fact which it appears to me a very small amount of introspection is enough to verify. On reading a letter, for instance, we may instantaneously decide upon our answer, and yet have to pause before we are able to frame the propositions needed to express that answer. Or, while writing an essay, how often does one feel, so to speak, that a certain truth stands to be stated, although it is a truth which we cannot immediately put into words. We know, in a general way, that a truth is there, but we cannot supply the vehicle which is to bring it here; and it is not until we have tried many devices, each of which involve long trains of sequent propositions, that we begin to find the satisfaction of rendering explicit in language what was previously implicit in thought. Again, in playing a game of chess we require to take cognizance of many and complex relations, actual and contingent; so that to play the game as it deserves to be played, we must make a heavy demand on our powers of abstract thinking. Yet in doing this we do not require to preach a silent monologue as to all that we might do, and all that may be done by our opponent. Lastly, to give only one other illustration, in some forms of aphasia the patient has lost every trace of verbal memory, and yet his faculties of thought for all the practical purposes of life are not materially impaired.

On the whole, therefore, I conclude that, although language is a needful condition to the original construction of conceptional thought, when once the building has been completed, the scaffolding may be withdrawn, and yet leave the edifice as stable as before. In this way familiar concepts become, as it were, degraded into recepts, but recepts of a degree of complexity and organization which would not have been possible but for their conceptional parentage. With Geiger we may say, “So ist denn überall die Sprache primar, der Begriff entsteht durch das Wort.”[56] Yet this does not hinder that with Friedrich Müller we should add, “Sprechen ist nicht Denken, sondern es ist nur Ausdruck des Denkens.”[57]

With the exception of the last paragraph, my analysis, as already observed, will probably not be impugned by any living psychologist, either of the evolutionary or non-evolutionary schools; for, with the exception of this paragraph, I have purposely arranged my argument so as thus far to avoid debatable questions. And it will be observed that even this paragraph has really nothing to do with the issue which lies before us; seeing that the question with which it deals is concerned only with intellectual processes exclusively human. But now, after having thus fully prepared the way by a somewhat lengthy clearing of preliminary ground, we have to proceed to the question whether it is conceivable that the faculty of speech, with all the elaborate structure of ideation to which it has led, can have arisen by way of a natural genesis from the lower faculties of mind. As we have now seen, it is on all hands agreed that the one and only distinction between human and animal psychology consists in the former presenting this faculty which, otherwise stated, means, as we have likewise seen, the power of translating ideas into symbols, and using these symbols in the stead of ideas.

This, I say, is the one distinction upon which all are agreed; the only question is as to whether it is a distinction of kind or of degree. Since the time when the ancient Greeks applied the same word to denote the faculty of language and the faculty of thought, the philosophical propriety of the identification has become more and more apparent. Obscured as the truth may have become for a time through the fogs of Realism, discussion of centuries has fully cleared the philosophical atmosphere so far as this matter is concerned. Hence, in these latter days, the only question here presented to the evolutionist is—Why has no mere brute ever learnt to communicate with its fellows? Why has man alone of animals been gifted with the Logos? To answer this question we must undertake a somewhat laborious investigation of the philosophy of Language.

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