Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

Such being the mental conditions precedent to the rise of true self-consciousness, we may next turn to the growing child for evidence of subsequent stages in the gradual evolution of this faculty. All observers are agreed that for a considerable time after a child is able to use words as expressive of ideas, there is no vestige of true self-consciousness. But, to begin our survey before this period, at a year old even its own organism is not known to the child as part of the self, or, more correctly, as anything specially related to feelings. Professor Preyer observed that his boy, when more than a year old, bit his own arm just as though it had been a foreign object; and thus may be said to have shown even less consciousness of a limb as belonging to “self,” than did Buffon’s parrot, which would first ask itself for its own claw, and then comply with the request by placing the claw in its own beak—in the same way as it would give the claw to any one else who asked for it in the same words.

Later on, when the outward self-consciousness already explained has begun to be developed, we find that the child, like the animal, has learnt to associate its own organism with its own mental states, in such wise that it recognizes its body as belonging in a peculiar manner to the self, so far as the self is recognizable by the logic of recepts. This is the stage that we meet with in animals. Next the child begins to talk, and, as we might expect, this first translation of the logic of recepts reveals the fact that as yet there is no inward self-consciousness, but only outward: as yet the child has paid no attention to his own mental states, further than to feel that he feels them; and in the result we find that the child speaks to himself as an object, i.e. by his proper name or in the third person. That is to say, “the child does not as yet set himself in opposition to all outer objects, including all other persons, but regards himself as one among many objects.”[119] The change of a child’s phraseology from speaking of self as an object to speaking of self as a subject does not take place—or but rarely so—till the third year. When it has taken place we have definite evidence of true self-consciousness, though still in a rudimentary stage. And it is doubtful whether this change would take place even at so early an age as the third year, were it not promoted by the “social environment.” For, as Mr. Sully observes, “the relation of self and not self, including that between the I and the You, is continually being pressed on the child’s attention by the language of others.”[120] But, taking this great change during the time of life when it is actually observed to be in progress, let us endeavour to trace the phases of its development.

It will no doubt be on all hands freely conceded, that at least up to the time when a child begins to speak it has no beginning of any true or introspective consciousness of self; and it will further be conceded that when this consciousness begins to dawn, the use of language by a child may be taken as a fair exponent of all its subsequent progress. Now we have already seen that, long before any words are used indicative of even a dawning consciousness of self as self, the child has already advanced so far in its use of language as to frame implicit propositions. But lest it should be thought that my judgment in this matter is biased by the exigencies of my argument, I may again quote Mr. Sully as at once an impartial witness and a highly competent authority on matters of purely psychological doctrine.

“When a child of eighteen months on seeing a dog exclaims ‘Bow-wow,’ or on taking his food exclaims ‘Ot’ (Hot), or on letting fall his toy says ‘Dow’ (Down), he may be said to be implicitly framing a judgment: ‘That is a dog,’ ‘This milk is hot,’ ‘My plaything is down.’ The first explicit judgments are concerned with individual objects. The child notes something unexpected or surprising in an object, and expresses the result of his observation in a judgment. Thus, for example, the boy more than once referred to, whom we will call C., was first observed to form a distinct judgment when nineteen months old, by saying ‘Dit ki’ (Sister is crying). These first judgments have to do mainly with the child’s food, or other things of prime importance to him. Thus, among the earliest attempts at combining words in propositions made by C. already referred to, were the following: ‘Ka in milk,’ (Something nasty in milk); ‘Milk dare now’ (There is still some more milk in the cup). Towards the end of the second year quite a number of judgments is given out having to do with the peculiarities of objects which surprise or impress the mind, their altered position in space, &c. Among these may be instanced the following: ‘Dat a big bow-wow’ (That is a large dog); ‘Dit naughty’ (Sister is naughty); ‘Dit dow ga’ (sister is down on the grass). As the observing powers grow, and the child’s interest in things widens, the number of his judgments increases. And as his powers of detaching relations and of uttering and combining words develop, he ventures on more elaborate statements, e.g. ‘Mama naughty say dat.’”[121]

Were it necessary, I could confirm all these statements from my own notes on the development of children’s intelligence; but I prefer, for the reason already given, to quote such facts from an impartial witness. For I conceive that they are facts of the highest importance in relation to our present subject, as I shall immediately proceed to show.

We have now before us unquestionable evidence that in the growing child there is a power, not only of forming, but of expressing a pre-conceptual judgment, long before there is any evidence of the child presenting the faintest rudiment of internal, conceptual, or true self-consciousness. In other words, it must be admitted that long before a human mind is sufficiently developed to perceive relations as related, or to state a truth as true, it is able to perceive relations and to state a truth: the logic of recepts is here concerned with those higher receptual judgments which I have called pre-conceptual, and is able to express such judgments in verbal signs without the intervention of true (i.e. introspective) self-consciousness. It will be remembered that I have coined these various terms in order to acknowledge the possible objection that there can be no true judgments without true self-consciousness. But I do not care what terms are employed whereby to designate the different and successive phases of development which I am now endeavouring to display. All that I desire to make clear is that here we unquestionably have to do with a growth, or with a continuous advance in degree as distinguished from a difference of kind.

First, then, let it be observed that in these rudimentary judgments we already have a considerable advance upon those which we have considered as occurring in animals. For in a child between the second and third years we have these rudimentary judgments, not only formed by the logic of recepts, but expressed by a logic of pre-concepts in a manner which is indistinguishable from predication, except by the absence of self-consciousness. “Dit dow ga” is a proposition in every respect, save in the absence of the copula; which, as I have previously shown, is a matter of no psychological moment. The child here perceives a certain fact, and states the perception in words, in order to communicate information of the fact to other minds—just as an animal, under similar circumstances, will use a gesture or a vocal sign; but the child is no more able than the animal designedly to make to its own mind the statement which it makes to another. Nevertheless, as the child has now at its disposal a much more efficient system of sign-making than has the animal, and moreover enjoys the double advantage of inheriting a strong propensity to communicate perceptions by signs, and of being surrounded by the medium of speech; we can scarcely wonder that its practical judgments (although still unattended by self-consciousness) should be more habitually expressed by signs than are the practical judgments of animals. Nor need we wonder, in view of the same considerations, that the predicative phrases as used by a child at this age show the great advance upon similar phrases as used by a parrot, in that subjects and predicates are no longer bound together in particular phrases—or, to revert to a previous simile, are no longer stereotyped in such particular phrases, but admit of being used as movable types, in order to construct, by different combinations, a variety of different phrases. To a talking bird a phrase, as we have seen, is no more in point of signification than a single word; while to the child, at the stage which we are considering, it is very much more than this: it is the separately constructed vehicle for the conveyance of a particular meaning, which may never have been conveyed by that or by any other phrase before. But while we thus attach due importance to so great an advance towards the faculty of true predication, we must notice, on the one hand, that as yet it is not true predication in the sense of being the expression of a true or conceptual judgment; and, on the other hand, we must notice that the power of thus using words as movable types does not deserve to be regarded as any wonderful or unaccountable advance in the faculty of sign-making, when we pay due regard to the several considerations above stated. The really important point to notice is that, notwithstanding this great advance towards the faculty of predication, this faculty has not yet been reached: the propositions which are made are still unattended by self-consciousness: they are not conceptual, but pre-conceptual.

Given, then, this stage of mental evolution, and what follows? Be it remembered I am not endeavouring to solve the impossible problem as to the intrinsic nature of self-consciousness, or how it is that such a thing is possible. I am merely accepting its existence (and therefore its possibility) as a fact; and upon the basis of this fact I shall now endeavour to show how, in my opinion, self-consciousness may be seen to follow upon the stage of mental evolution which we have here reached.

The child, like the animal, is supplied by its logic of recepts with a world of images, standing as signs of outward objects; with an ejective knowledge of other minds; and with that kind of recognition of self as an active, suffering and accountable agent which, following Mr. Chauncey Wright, I have called “outward self-consciousness.” But, over and above the animal, the child has at its command, as we have just seen, the more improved machinery of sign-making which enables it to signify to other minds (ejectively known) the contents of its receptual knowledge. Now, among these contents is the child’s perception of the mental states of others as expressed in their gestures, tones, and words. These severally receive their appropriate names, and so gain clearness and precision as ejective images of the corresponding states experienced by the child itself. “Mama pleased to Dodo” would have no meaning as spoken by a child, unless the child knew from his own feelings what is the state of mind which he thus ejectively attributes to another. Therefore we cannot be surprised to find that at the same stage of mental evolution the child will say, “Dodo pleased to mama.” Yet it is evident that we here approach the very borders of true self-consciousness. “Dodo” is no doubt still speaking of himself in objective terminology; but he has advanced so far in the interpretation of his own states of mind as to name them no less clearly than he names any external objects of sense perception. Thus he is enabled to fix these states before his mental vision as things which admit of being denoted by verbal signs, albeit he is not yet able to denominate.

The step from this to recognizing “Dodo” as not only the object, but also the subject of mental changes, is not a large step. The mere act of attaching verbal signs to inward mental states has the effect of focussing attention upon those states; and, when attention is thus focussed habitually, there is supplied the only further condition required to enable the mind, through its memory of previous states, to compare its past with its present, and so to reach that apprehension of continuity among its own states wherein the full introspective consciousness of self consists.