Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

This distinction I have drawn by assigning the word denomination to all connotation which is of a truly conceptual nature—or to the bestowing of names consciously recognized as such. And I have just shown that when connotation is thus denominative or conceptual, it is psychologically the same as predication. Therefore it is only in this denominative sense of the word, or in cases where conceptual ideation is concerned, that an act of naming involves an act of judgment, strictly so called.

Such being the psychological standing of the matter, it is evident that the whole question before us is narrowed down to a clearing up of the relations that obtain between connotation as receptual and conceptual—or between connotation, that is, and connotation that is not, denominative. To do this I will begin by quoting an instance of un-denominative or receptual connotation in the case of a young child.

“There is this peculiar to man—the sound which has been associated in his case with the perception of some particular individual is called up again, not only at the sight of absolutely similar individuals, but also by the presence of individuals strikingly different, though in some respects comprised in the same class. In other words, analogies which do not strike animals strike men. The child says Bow-wow, first to the house-dog, then, after a little, he says Bow-wow to the terriers, mastiffs, and Newfoundlands he sees in the street. A little later he does what an animal never does, he says Bow-wow to a paste-board dog which barks when squeezed, then to a paste-board dog which does not bark, but runs on wheels, then to the silent motionless bronze dog which ornaments the drawing-room, then to his little cousin who runs about the room on all fours, then, at last, to a picture representing a dog.”[105]

Now, in this small but typical history we have a clear exhibition, in a simple form, of the development of a connotative name within the purely receptual sphere. At first the word Bow-wow was merely a denotative name—or a mark affixed to a particular object of perception. But when the child’s mind took cognizance of the resemblances between the house-dog, terriers, mastiffs, and Newfoundlands, it expressed the fact by extending the name Bow-wow to all these dogs. The name, from being particular, thus became generic, or indicative of resemblances; and, therefore, from being merely denotative, became truly connotative: it now served to express common attributes. Next, this receptual connotation of the name was still further widened, so as to include—or to signify—the resemblances between dogs and their images, pictures, &c. Now, in these several and successive acts of connotative naming, the child was obviously advancing to higher and higher levels of receptual classification; but, no less obviously, it would be absurd to suppose that the child was thus raising the name Bow-wow to any conceptual value. All that any child in such a case is doing is to extend its receptual appreciation of resemblance through widening circles of generic grouping, and correspondingly to extend the receptual connotation of a denotative name. In order to do this (within the limits that we are now considering), there is no need for any introspective regarding of the name as a name: there is no need to contemplate the widening connotation of the name: there is no need to judge, to define, to denominate. Such classification as is here effected can be effected within the region of receptual consciousness alone (as we well know from the analogous case of the parrot, and the “practical inferences” of the lower animals generally); therefore, if the denotative name originally assigned to a particular dog admitted of being so assigned as merely the mark of that particular recept, there is no reason to suppose that its subsequent extension to the more generic recepts afterwards experienced involves any demand upon the conceptual faculty, or implies that the child could only extend this name from a house-dog to a terrier by first performing an act of introspective thought—which, indeed, as we shall see later on, it is demonstrably impossible that a child of this age can be able to do.

Nevertheless, it is evident that already the child has done more than the parrot. For a parrot will never extend its denotative name of a particular dog to the picture, or even to the image of a dog. The utmost that a parrot will do is to extend the denotative name from one particular dog to another particular dog, which, however, may differ considerably from the former as to size, colour, and general appearance. Still, I presume, no one will maintain that thus far there is the faintest evidence of a difference of kind between the connotative faculty of the bird and that of the child. All that these facts can be held to show is that—in the words already quoted from M. Taine while narrating these facts—“analogies which do not strike animals strike men.” Or, in my own phraseology, the receptual faculties of a parrot do not go further than the receptual faculties of a very young child: consequently, the denotative name in the case of the parrot only undergoes the first step in the process of receptual extension—namely, from a house-dog to a terrier, a setter, a mastiff, a Newfoundland, &c. But in the case of the child, after having reached this stage, the process of extension continues, so as to embrace images, and eventually pictures of dogs. This difference, however, only shows an advance in the merely receptual faculties: does not suggest that in order to carry the extension of the name through these second and third stages, demand has yet been made on the distinctively human powers of conceptual thought—any more than such powers were required to carry it through the first stage in the case of the parrot.

Hence we see again that the distinction already drawn between denotative and connotative names is not co-extensive with the distinction between ideas as receptual and conceptual. Or, in other words, names may be in some measure connotative even in the absence of self-consciousness. For if we say that a child is connoting resemblances when it extends the name Bow-wow from a particular dog to dogs in general, clearly we must say the same thing of a parrot when we find that thus far it goes with the child. Therefore it is that I have distinguished between connotation as receptual and conceptual—i.e. by calling the latter denomination. Receptual connotation represents a higher level of ideational faculty than mere denotation; but a lower level than conceptual connotation, or denomination. Moreover, receptual connotation admits of many degrees before we can discern the smallest reason for supposing that it is even in the lowest degree conceptual. Connotation of all degrees depending on perceptions of resemblances or analogies, the higher the receptual life, and therefore the greater the aptitude of receptual classification, the more will such classification become reflected in connotative expression. Therefore it is that the child will not only surpass the parrot in its receptual connotation from dogs to pictures of dogs; but, as we shall afterwards see, will go much further even than this before it gives any signs at all of conceptual connotation, or true denomination. Thus we see that between the most rudimentary receptual connotation which a very young child shares with a parrot, and the fully conceptual connotation which it subsequently attains, there is a large intervening province due to the acquisition of a higher receptual life. Or, to put the same thing in other words, there is a large tract of ideation lying between the highest receptual life of a brute and the lowest conceptual life of a man: this tract is occupied by the growing child from the time at which its ideation surpasses that of the brute, until it begins to attain the faculty of self-conscious reflection. This intervening tract of ideation, therefore, may be termed “higher receptual,” in contradistinction to the lower receptual ideation which a younger child shares with the lower animals.

At this point I must ask the reader carefully to fasten in his mind these various distinctions. Nor will it be difficult to do so after a small amount of attention. It will be remembered that in Chapter IV. I instituted a distinction between concepts as higher and lower, which was methodically similar to that which I have now to institute between recepts. A “lower concept” was defined to be nothing more than a “named recept,”[106] while a “higher concept” was understood to be one that is “compounded of other concepts”—i.e. the named result of a grouping of concepts, as when we speak of the “mechanical equivalent of heat.” So that altogether we have four stages of ideation to recognize, each of which occupies an immensely large territory of mind. These four stages I will present in serial order.

(1) Lower Recepts, comprising the mental life of all the lower animals, and so including such powers of receptual connotation as a child when first emerging from infancy shares with a parrot.

(2) Higher Recepts, comprising all the extensive tract of ideation that belongs to a child between the time when its powers of receptual connotation first surpass those of a parrot, up to the age at which connotation as merely denotative begins to become also denominative.

(3) Lower Concepts, comprising the province of conceptual ideation where this first emerges from the higher receptual, up to the point where denominative connotation has to do, not merely with the naming of recepts, but also with that of associated concepts.