Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

And not only so. Not only have my opponents committed the slovenly error of regarding a predicative judgment as “the simplest element of thought;” they have also omitted to consider that even a concept requires to be analyzed with respect to its antecedents, before this the really simplest element of thought can be pointed to as proving a psychological distinction of kind in the only known intelligence which presents it. Now, the result of my analysis of the concept has been to show that it is preceded by what I have termed pre-concepts, which admit of being combined into what I have termed nascent, rudimentary, or pre-conceptual judgments. In other words, we have seen that the receptual life of man reaches a higher level of development than the receptual life of brutes, even before it passes into that truly conceptual phase which is distinguished by the presence of self-conscious reflection. In order, therefore, to mark off this higher receptual life of a human being from the lower receptual life of a brute, I have used the terms just mentioned.

So much, then, for these several stages of ideation, which I have now reiterated ad nauseam. Turning next to my analysis of their several modes of expression, or of their translation into their severally equivalent systems of signs, we have seen that many of the lower animals are able to communicate their recepts by means of gestures significant of objects, qualities, actions, desires, &c.; and that in the only case where they are able to articulate, they so communicate their recepts by means of words. Therefore, in a sense, these animals may be said to be using names; but, in order not to confuse this kind of naming with that which is distinctive of conceptual thought, I have adopted the scholastic terminology, and called the former kind of naming an act of denotating, as distinguished from an act of denominating. Furthermore, seeing that denotative language is able, as above observed, to signify qualities and actions as well as objects, it follows that in the higher receptual (i.e. pre-conceptual) stages of ideation, denotative language is able to construct what I have termed pre-conceptual propositions. These differ from true or conceptual propositions in the absence of true self-consciousness on the part of the speaker, who therefore, while communicating receptual knowledge, or stating truths, cannot yet know his own knowledge, or state the truths as true. But it does not appear that a pre-conceptual proposition differs from a conceptual one in any other respect, while it does appear that the one passes gradually into the other with the rise of self-consciousness in every growing child. Now, if all these things are so, we are entitled to affirm that analysis has displayed an uninterrupted transition between the denotation of a brute and the predication of a man. For the mere fact that it is the former phase alone which occurs in the brute, while in the man, after having run a parallel course of development, this phase passes into the other—the mere fact that this is so cannot be quoted as evidence that a similar transition never took place in the psychological history of our species, unless it could be shown that when the transition takes place in the psychological history of the individual, it does so in such a sudden and remarkable manner as of itself to indicate that the intellect of the individual has there and then undergone a change of kind.

Such being an outline sketch of my argument, I will now proceed to fill in the details, taking in historical order the various stages of ideation which I have named—i.e. the receptual, the pre-conceptual, and the conceptual.

Seeing that this is, as I apprehend, the central core of the question, I will here furnish some additional instances of receptual and pre-conceptual ideation as expressed by denotative and connotative signs on the part of a child which I carefully observed for the purpose.

At eighteen months old my daughter, who was late in beginning to speak, was fond of looking at picture-books, and as already stated in a previous chapter, derived much pleasure from naming animals therein represented,—saying Ba for a sheep, Moo for a cow, uttering a grunt for a pig, and throwing her head up and down with a bray for a horse or an ass. These several sounds and gestures she had been taught by the nurse as noun-substantives, and she correctly applied them in every case, whether the picture-book happened to be one with which she was familiar or one which she had never seen before; and she would similarly name all kinds of animals depicted on the wall-paper, chair-covers, &c., in strange houses, or, in short, whenever she met with representations of objects the nursery names of which she knew. Thus there is no doubt that, long before she could form a sentence, or in any proper sense be said to speak, this child was able to denote objects by voice and gesture. At this time, also, she correctly used a limited number of denotative words significant of actions—i.e. active verbs.

Somewhat later by a few weeks she showed spontaneously the faculty of expressing an adjective. Her younger brother she had called “Ilda,” and soon afterwards she extended the name to all young children.[131] Later still, while looking over her picture-books, whenever she came upon a representation of a sheep with lambs, she would point to the sheep and say Mama-Ba, while to the lambs she would say Ilda-Ba. Similarly with ducks and ducklings, hens and chickens, and indeed with all the animals to which she had given names. Here it is evident that Ilda served to convey the generic idea of Young, and so, from having been originally used as a proper or denotative name, was now employed as an adjective or connotative name. But although it expressed a quality, the quality was one of so sensible a kind that the adjective amounted to virtually the same thing as substantive, so far as any faculty of abstraction was concerned: it was equivalent to the word Baby, when by connotative extension this comes to be used as an adjective in the apposition Baby-Ba for a lamb, &c.

Almost contemporaneously with the acquisition of adjectives, this child began to learn the use of a few passive verbs, and words significant of certain states of feeling; she also added to her vocabulary a few prepositions indicating space relations, such as Up, Down, &c.[132]

While these advances were being made, a general progress of the sign-making faculty was also, and even more conspicuously, shown in another direction. For speech, in the sense of formal predication, not having yet begun, the development in question took place in the region of gesture. She was then (two years) able to express a great many simple ideas by the combined use of gesture-signs, vocal-tones, and a large connotative extension of her words. The gesture-signs, however, were still of the simplest or most receptual order, such as pulling one by the dress to open a door, pointing to a tumbler to signify her desire for a drink, &c. That is to say, the indicative stage of language largely coincided with, or overlapped, the earliest phases of the denotative and receptually connotative. I have already said that this indicative stage of language constituted the earliest appearance of the sign-making faculty which I observed in my own children, at a time when the only desire expressed seemed to be that of being taken to the object indicated; and, so far as I can ascertain, this is universally true of all children. But the point now is, that when the logic recepts had become more full, the desires expressed by pointing became of a more and more varied kind, until, at the age of two and a half (i.e. after significant articulation or true word-making had well set in), the indicative phase of language developed into regular pantomime, as the following instance will show. Coming into the house after having bathed in the sea for the first time, she ran to me to narrate her novel experience. This she did by first pointing to the shore, then pretending to take off her clothes, to walk into the sea, and to dip: next, passing her hands up the body to her head, she signified that the water had reached as high as her hair, which she showed me was still wet. The whole story was told without the use of a single articulate sound.

Now, in the case of these illustrations (and many more of the same kind might be added if needful), we find the same general fact exemplified—namely, that the earliest phase of language in the young child is that which I have called the indicative,—i.e. tones and gestures significant of feelings, objects, qualities, and actions. This indicative phase of language, or sign-making, lasts much longer in some children than in others (particularly in those who are late in beginning to speak); and the longer it lasts the more expressive does it become of advancing ideation. But in all cases two things have to be observed in connection with it. The first is that, in its earliest stages, and onwards through a considerable part of its history, it is precisely identical with the corresponding phases of indicative sign-making in the lower animals. Thus, for instance, Professor Preyer observed that at sixteen months his own child—who at that age could not speak a word—used to make a gesture significant of petitioning with its hands (“Bittbewegung”), as indicative of desire for something to be done. This, of course, I choose as an instance of indicative sign-making at a comparatively high level of development; but it is precisely paralleled by an intelligent dog which “begs” before a water-jug to signify his desire for a drink, or before any other object in connection with which he desires something to be done.[133] And so it is with children who pull one’s dress towards a closed door through which they wish to pass, significantly cry for what they want to possess, or to have done for them, &c.: children are here doing exactly what cats and dogs will do under similar circumstances.[134] And although many of the gesture-signs of children at this age (i.e. up to about eighteen months) are not precisely paralleled by those of the lower animals, it is easy to see that where there is any difference it is due to different circumstances of bodily shape, social conditions, &c.: it is not due to any difference of ideation. That the kind of ideation which is expressed by the indicative gestures of young children is the same as that which prompts the analogous gestures of brutes, is further shown by the fact that, even before any articulate words are uttered, the infant (like the animal) will display an understanding of many articulate words when uttered in its presence, and (also like the animal) will respond to such words by appropriate gestures. For instance, again to quote Preyer, he found that his hitherto speechless infant was able correctly to point to certain colours which he named; and although, as far as I am aware, no one has ever tried to teach an animal to do this, we know that trained dogs will display an even better understanding of words by means of appropriate gestures.[135]

The other point which has to be noticed in connection with these early stages of indicative sign-making in the young child is that, sooner or later, they begin to overlap the earliest stage of articulate sign-making, or verbal denotation. In other words, denotative sign-making never begins to occur until indicative sign-making has advanced considerably; and when denotative sign-making does begin, it advances parallel with indicative: that is to say, both kinds of sign-making then proceed to develop simultaneously. But when the vocabulary of denotation has been sufficiently enriched to enable the child to dispense with the less efficient material furnished by indication, indicative signs gradually become starved out by denotative, and words replace gestures.