[35] The terms Logic of Feelings and Logic of Signs were first introduced and extensively employed by Comte. Afterwards they were adopted, and still more extensively employed by Lewes, who, however, seems to have thought that he so employed them in some different sense. To me it appears that in this Lewes was mistaken. Save that Comte is here, as elsewhere, intoxicated with theology, I think that the ideas he intended to set forth under these terms are the same as those which are advocated by Lewes—although his incoherency justifies the remark of his follower:—“Being unable to understand this, I do not criticize it” (Probs. of Life and Mind, iii., p. 239). The terms in question are also sanctioned by Mill, as shown by the above quotation (p. 42).
[36] Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 62.
[37] Special attention, however, may be drawn to the fact that the term “unconscious judgment” is not metaphorical, but serves to convey in a technical sense what appears to be the precise psychology of the process. For the distinguishing element of a judgment, in its technical sense, is that it involves an element of belief. Now, as Mill remarks, “when a stone lies before me, I am conscious of certain sensations which I receive from it; but if I say that these sensations come to me from an external object which I perceive, the meaning of these words is, that receiving the sensations, I intuitively believe that an external cause of those sensations exists” (Logic, i., p. 58). In cases, such as that mentioned in the text, where the “unconscious judgment” is wrong—i.e. the perception illusory—it may, of course, be over-ridden by judgment of a higher order, and thus we do not end by believing that the bowl is a sphere. Nevertheless, so far as it is dependent on the testimony of our senses, the mind judges erroneously in perceiving the bowl as a sphere. In his work on Illusions, Mr. Sully has shown that illusions of perception arise through the mental “application of a rule, valid for the majority of cases, to an exceptional case.” In other words, an erroneous judgment is made by the non-conceptual faculties of perception—this judgment being formed upon the analogies supplied by past experience. Of course, such an act of merely perceptual inference is not a judgment, strictly so called; but it is clearly allied to judgment, and convenience is consulted by following established custom in designating it “unconscious,” “intuitive,” or “perceptual judgment.”
[38] Descent of Man, p. 76.
[39] See Animal Intelligence, pp. 465, 466.
[40] Of course the words “general idea” and “concept” here are open to that psychological objection for the avoidance of which I have coined the terms generic idea and recept.
[41] In my previous works I have already quoted facts of animal intelligence narrated by this author, but not any of those which I am now about to use.
[42] Intelligence of Animals, English trans., p. 20.
[43] Ibid., p. 107. This identical illustration appears to have occurred independently both to Mr. Darwin and Mr. Leslie Stephen. All these writers use the terms “abstract” and “general” as above; but, of course, as shown in my last chapter, this is merely a matter of terminology—in my opinion, however, objectionable, because appearing to assume, without analysis, that the ideation of brutes and of men is identical in kind.
[44] Ibid., pp. 43, 44.