“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.