Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

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:—