Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

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.