Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

So far, then, as the earliest or indicative phase of language is concerned, no difference even of degree can be alleged between the infant and the animal. Neither can any such difference be alleged with respect to the earliest exhibitions of the next phases of language, namely, the denotative and receptually connotative. For we have seen that the only animals which happen to be capable of imitating articulate sounds will use these sounds with a truly denotative significance. Moreover, as we have also seen, within moderate limits they will even extend such denotative significance to other objects seen to belong to the same class or kind—thus raising the originally denotative sign to an incipiently connotative value. And although these receptually connotative powers of a parrot are soon surpassed by those of a young child, we have further seen that this is merely owing to the rapid advance in the degree of receptual life which takes place in the latter—or, in other words, that if a parrot resembled a dog in being able to see the resemblance between objects and their pictures, and also in being so much more able to understand the meanings of words, then, without doubt, their connotative extension of names would proceed further than it does; and hence in this matter the parallel between a parrot and child would proceed further than it does. The only reason, therefore, why a child thus gradually surpasses a parrot in the matter of connotation, is because the receptual life of a child gradually rises to that of a dog—as I have already proved by showing that the indicative or gesture-signs used by a child after it has thus surpassed the parrot, are psychologically identical with those which are used by a dog. Moreover, where denotation is late in beginning and slow in developing—as in the case of my own daughter—these indicative signs admit, as we have seen, of becoming much more highly perfected, so that under these circumstances a child of two years will perform a little pantomime for the purpose of relating its experiences. Now, this fact enables me to dispense with the imaginary comparison of a dog that is able to talk, or of a parrot as intelligent as a dog; for the fact furnishes me with the converse case of a child not able to talk at the usual age. No one can suggest that the intelligence of such a child at two years old differs in kind from that of another child of the same age, who, on account of having been earlier in acquiring the use of words, can afford to become less proficient in the use of gestures.[136] The case of a child late in talking may therefore be taken as a psychological index of the development of human ideation of the receptual order, which by accident admits of closer comparison with that of the higher mammalia than is possible in the case of a child who begins to talk at the usual age. But, as regards the former case, we have already seen that the gestures begin by being much less expressive than those of a dog, then gradually improve until they become psychologically identical, and, lastly, continue in the same gradual manner along the same line of advance. Therefore, if in this case no difference of kind can be alleged until the speaking age is reached, neither can it be alleged after the speaking age is reached in the case where this happens to be earlier. Or, in the words previously used, if a dog like a parrot were able to use verbal signs, or if a parrot were equal in intelligence to a dog, the connotative powers of a child would continue parallel with those of a brute through a somewhat longer reach of psychological development than we now find to be the case.

Remembering, then, that brutes so low in the psychological scale as talking birds reach the level of denotating objects, qualities, &c.; remembering that some of these birds will extend their denotative names to objects and qualities conspicuously belonging to the same class; remembering, further, that all children before they begin to speak have greatly distanced the talking birds in respect of indicative language or gesture-signs, while some children (or those late in beginning to speak) will raise this form of language to the level of pantomime, thus proving that the receptual ideation of infants just before they begin to speak is invariably above that of talking birds, and often far above that of any other animal;—remembering all these things, I say it would indeed be a most unaccountable fact if children, soon after they do begin to speak, did not display a great advance upon the talking birds in their use of denotative signs, and also in their extension of such signs into connotative words. As we have seen, it must be conceded by all prudent adversaries that, before he is able to use any of these signs, an infant is moving in the receptual sphere of ideation, and that this sphere is already (between one and two years) far above that of the parrot. Yet, like the parrot, one of the first uses that he makes of these signs is in the denotation of individual objects, &c. Next, like the more intelligent parrots, he extends the meaning of his denotative names to objects most obviously resembling those which were first designated. And from that point onwards he rapidly advances in his powers of connotative classification. But can it be seriously maintained, in view of all the above considerations, that this rapid advance in the powers of connotative classification betokens any difference of kind between the ideation of the child and that of the bird? If it is conceded (as it must be unless my opponents commit argumentative suicide), that before he could speak at all the infant was confined to the receptual sphere of ideation, and that within this sphere his ideation was already superior to the ideation of a bird,—this is merely to concede that analogies must strike the child which are somewhat too remote to strike the bird. Therefore, while the bird will only extend its denotative name from one kind of dog to another, the child, after having done this, will go on to apply the name to an image, and, lastly, to the picture of a dog. Surely no one will be fatuous enough to maintain that here, at the commencement of articulate sign-making, there is any evidence of generic distinction between the human mind and the mind of even so poor a representative of animal psychology as we meet with in a parrot. But, if no such distinction is to be asserted here, neither can it be asserted anywhere else, until we arrive at the stage of human ideation where the mind is able to contemplate that ideation as such. So far, therefore, as the stages which we are now considering are concerned (i.e. the denotative and receptually connotative), I submit that my case is made out. And yet these are really the most important stages to be clear about; for, on account of their having been ignored by nearly all writers who argue that there is a difference of kind between man and brute, the most important—because the initial—stages of transition have been lost sight of, and the fully developed powers of human thought contrasted with their low beginnings in the brute creation, without any attention having been paid to the probable history of their development. Hitherto, so far as I can find, no psychologist has presented clearly the simple question whether the faculty of naming is always and necessarily co-extensive with that of thinking the names; and, therefore, the two faculties have been assumed to be one and the same. Yet, as I have shown in an earlier chapter, even in the highest forms of human ideation we habitually use names without waiting to think of them as names—which proves that even in the highest regions of ideation the two faculties are not necessarily coincident.[137] And here I have further shown that, whether we look to the brute or to the human being, we alike find that the one faculty is in its inception wholly independent of the other—that there are connotative names before there are any denominative thoughts, and that these connotative names, when they first occur in brute or child, betoken no further aptitude of ideation than is betokened by those stages in the language of gesture which they everywhere overlap. The named recepts of a parrot cannot be held by my opponents to be true concepts, any more than the indicative gestures of an infant can be held by them to differ in kind from those of a dog.

I submit, then, that neither as regards the indicative, the denotative, nor the connotative stages of sign-making is it argumentatively possible to allege any difference of kind between animal and human intelligence—apart, I mean, from any evidence of self-consciousness in the latter, or so long as the intelligence of either is moving in what I have called the receptual sphere. Let us, then, next consider what I have called the pre-conceptual stage of ideation, or that higher receptual life of a child which, while surpassing the receptual life of any brute, has not yet attained to the conceptual life of a man.

From what I have already said it must, I should suppose, be now conceded that, at the place where the receptual life of a child first begins to surpass the receptual life of any other mammal, no psychological difference of kind can be affirmed. Let us, therefore, consent to tap this pre-conceptual life at a considerably higher level, and analyze the quality of ideation which flows therefrom: let us consider the case of a child about two years old, who is able to frame such a rudimentary, communicative, or pre-conceptual proposition as Dit ki (Sister is crying). At this age, as already shown, there is no consciousness of self as a thinking agent, and, therefore, no power of stating a truth as true. Dit is the denotative name of one recept, ki the denotative name of another: the object and the action which these two recepts severally represent happen to occur together before the child’s observation: the child therefore denotes them both simultaneously—i.e. brings than into apposition. This it does by merely following the associations previously established between the recept of a familiar object with its denotative name dit, and the recept of a frequent action with its denotative name ki. The apposition in consciousness of these two recepts, with their corresponding denotations, is thus effected for the child by what may be termed the logic of events: it is not effected by the child in the way of any intentional or self-conscious grouping of its ideas, such as we have seen to constitute the distinguishing feature of the logic of concepts.

Such being the state of the facts, I put to my opponents the following dilemma. Either you here have judgment, or else you have not. If you hold that this is judgment, you must also hold that animals judge, because I have proved a ready that (according to your own doctrine as well as mine) the only point wherein it can be alleged that the faculty of judgment differs in animals and in man consists in the presence or absence of self-consciousness. If, on the other hand, you answer that here you have not judgment, inasmuch as you have not self-consciousness, I will ask you at what stage in the subsequent development of the child’s intelligence you would consider judgment to arise? If to this you answer that judgment first arises when self-consciousness arises, I will ask you to note that, as already proved, the growth of self-consciousness is itself a gradual process; so that, according to your present limitation of the term judgment, it becomes impossible to say when this faculty does arise. In point of fact, it grows by stages, pari passu with the growth of self-consciousness. But, if so, where the faculty of stating a truth perceived passes into the higher faculty of perceiving the truth as true, there must be a continuous series of gradations connecting the one faculty with the other. Up to the point where this series of gradations begins, we have seen that the mind of an animal and the mind of a man are parallel, or not distinguishable from each other by any one principle of psychology. Will you, then, maintain that up to this time the two orders of psychical existence are identical in kind, but that during its ascent through this final series of gradations the human mind in some way becomes distinct in kind, not merely from the mind of animals, but also from its own previous self? If so, I must at this point part company with you in argument, because at this point your argument ends in a contradiction. If A and B are affirmed to be similar in origin or kind, and if B is affirmed to grow into C—or to differ from both A and B only in degree,—it becomes a contradiction further to affirm that C differs from A in kind. Therefore I submit that, so far as the pre-conceptual stage of ideation is concerned, it is still argumentatively impossible for my opponents to show that there is any psychological difference of kind between man and brute.

As regards this stage of ideation, then, I claim to have shown that, just as there is a pre-conceptual kind of naming, wherein originally denotative words are progressively extended through considerable degrees of connotative meaning; so there is a pre-conceptual kind of predication, wherein denotative and connotative terms are brought together without any conceptual cognizance of the relation thus virtually alleged between them. For I have proved in the last chapter that it is not until its third year that a child acquires true or conceptual self-consciousness, and therefore attains the condition to true or conceptual predication. Yet long before that time, as I have also proved, the child forms what I have called rudimentary, or pre-conceptual, and, therefore, unthinking propositions. Such propositions, then, are statements of truth made for the practical purposes of communication; but they are not statements of truth as true, and therefore not, strictly speaking, propositions at all. They are translations of the logic of recepts; but not of the logic of concepts. For neither the truth so stated, nor the idea thus translated, can ever have been placed before the mind as itself an object of thought. In order to have been thus placed, the mind must have been able to dissociate this its product from the rest of its structure—or, as Mr. Mivart says, to make the things affirmed “exist beside the judgment, not in it.” And, in order to do this, the mind must have attained to self-consciousness. But, as just remarked, such is not yet the case with a child of the age in question; and hence we are bound to conclude that before there is judgment or predication in the sense understood by psychologists (conceptual), there is judgment and predication of a lower order (pre-conceptual), wherein truths are stated for the sake of communicating simple ideas, while the propositions which convey them are not themselves objects of thought. And, be it carefully observed, predication of this rudimentary or pre-conceptual kind is accomplished by the mere apposition of denotative signs, in accordance with the general principles of association. A being the denotative name of an object a, and B the denotative name of a quality or action b, when a b occur together in nature, the relation between them is pre-conceptually affirmed by the mere act of bringing into apposition the corresponding denotations A B—an act which is rendered inevitable by the elementary laws of psychological association.[138]

The matter, then, has been reduced to the last of the three stages of ideation which have been marked out for discussion—namely, the conceptual. Now, whether or not there is any difference of kind between the ideation which is capable and the ideation which is not capable of itself becoming an object of thought, is a question which can only be answered by studying the relations that obtain between the two in the case of the growing child. But, as we have seen, when we do study these relations, we find that they are clearly those of a gradual or continuous passage of the one ideation into the other—a passage, indeed, so gradual and continuous that it is impossible, even by means of the closest scrutiny, to decide within wide limits where the one begins and the other ends. Therefore I need not here recur to this point. Having already shown that the very condition to the occurrence of conceptual ideation (namely, self-consciousness) is of gradual development in the growing child, it is needless to show at any greater length that the development of conceptual out of pre-conceptual ideation is of a similarly gradual occurrence. This fact, indeed, is in itself sufficient to dispose of the allegation of my opponents—namely, that there is evidence of receptual ideation differing from conceptual in origin or kind. Only if it could be shown—either that the receptual ideation of an infant differs in kind from that of an animal, or that the pre-conceptual ideation of a child so differs from the preceding receptual ideation of the same child, or lastly, that this pre-conceptual ideation so differs from the succeeding conceptual ideation—only if one or other of the alternatives could be proved would my opponents be able to justify their allegation. And, as a mere matter of logic, to prove either of the last two alternatives would involve a complete reconstruction of their argument. For at present their argument goes upon the assumption that throughout all the phases of its development a human mind is one in kind—that it is nowhere fundamentally changed from one order of existence to another. But in case any subtle opponent should suggest that, although I have proved the first of the above three alternatives untenable—and, therefore, that there is no difference even of degree between the mind of an infant and that of an animal,—I have nevertheless ignored the possibility that in the subsequent development of every human being a special miracle may be wrought, which regenerates that mind, gives it a new origin, and so changes it as to kind—in case any one should suggest this, I here entertain the two last alternatives as logically possible. But, even so, as we have now so fully seen, study of the child’s intelligence while passing through its several phases of development yields no shadow of evidence in favour of any of these alternatives; while, on the contrary, it most clearly reveals the fact that transition from each of the levels of ideation to the next above it is of so gradual and continuous a character that it is practically impossible to draw any real lines of demarcation between them. This, then, I say is in itself enough to dispose of the allegation of my opponents, seeing that it shows the allegation to be, not only gratuitous, but opposed to the whole body of evidence which is furnished by a study of the facts. Nevertheless, still restricting ourselves to grounds of psychology alone, there remains two general and important considerations of an independent or supplementary kind, which tend strongly to support my side of the argument. These two considerations, therefore, I will next adduce.

The first consideration is, that although the advance to self-consciousness from lower grades of mental development is no doubt a very great and important matter, it is not so great and important in comparison with what this development is afterwards destined to become, as to make us feel that it constitutes any distinction sui generis—or even, perhaps, the principal distinction—between the man and the brute. For while, on the one hand, we have now fully seen that, given the protoplasm of judgment and of predication as these occur in the young child (or as they may be supposed to have occurred in our semi-human ancestors), and self-consciousness must needs arise; on the other hand, there is evidence to show that when self-consciousness does arise, and even when it is fairly well developed, the powers of the human mind are still in an almost infantile condition. Thus, for instance, I have observed in my own children that, while before their third birthday they employed appropriately and always correctly the terms “I,” “my,” “self,” “myself,” at that age their powers of reasoning were so poorly developed as scarcely to be in advance of those which are exhibited by an intelligent animal. To give only one instance of this. My little girl when four and a half years old—or nearly two years after she had correctly used the terms indicative of true self-consciousness—wished to know what room was beneath the drawing-room of a house in which she had lived from the time of her birth. When she asked me to inform her, I told her to try to think out the problem for herself. She first suggested the bath-room, which was not only above the drawing-room, but also at the opposite side of the house; next she suggested the dining-room, which, although below the drawing-room, was also at the other side of the house; and so on, the child clearly having no power to think out so simple a problem as the one which she had spontaneously desired to solve. From which (as from many other instances on my notes in this connection) I conclude that the genesis of self-consciousness marks a comparatively low level in the evolution of the human mind—as we might expect that it should, if its genesis depends on the not unintelligible conditions which I have endeavoured to explain in the last chapters. But, if so, does it not follow that great as the importance of self-consciousness afterwards proves to be as a condition to the higher development of ideation, in itself, or in its first beginning, it does not betoken any very perceptible improvement upon those powers of pre-conceptual ideation which it immediately follows? In other words, there is thus shown to be even less reason to regard the advent of self-consciousness as marking a psychological difference of kind, than there would be so to regard the advent of those higher powers of conceptual ideation which subsequently—though as gradually—supervene between early childhood and youth. Yet no one has hitherto ventured to suggest that the intelligence of a child and the intelligence of a youth display a difference of kind.

Or, otherwise stated, the psychological interval between my cebus and my child (when the former successfully investigated the mechanical principle of the screw by means of his highly developed receptual faculties, while the latter unsuccessfully attempted to solve a most simple topographical problem by means of her lowly developed conceptual faculties), was assuredly much less than that which afterwards separated the intelligence of my child from this level of its own previous self. Therefore, on merely psychological grounds, I conclude that there would be better—or less bad—reasons for alleging that there is an observable difference of kind between the lowest and the highest levels of conceptual ideation, than there is to allege that any such difference obtains between the lowest level of conceptual ideation and the highest level of receptual.

“The greatest of all distinctions in biology,” when it first arises, is thus seen to lie in its potentiality rather than in its origin. Self-consciousness is, indeed, the condition to an immeasurable change in the mind which presents it; but, in order to become so, it must be itself conditioned: it must itself undergo a long and gradual development under the guiding principles of a natural evolution.