Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

Nevertheless, there is thus given a rudimentary or nascent form of self-consciousness, which up to the stage of development that it attains in a brute or an infant may be termed receptual self-consciousness; while in the more advanced stages which it presents in young children it may be termed pre-conceptual self-consciousness. Pre-conceptual self-consciousness is exhibited by all children after they have begun to talk, but before they begin to speak of themselves in the first person, or otherwise to give any evidence of realizing their own existence as such. Later on, when true self-consciousness does arise, the child, of course, is able to do this; and then only is supplied the condition sine quâ non to a reflection upon its own ideas—hence to a knowledge of names as names, and so to a statement of truths as true. But long before this stage of true or conceptual self-consciousness is reached—whereby alone is rendered possible true or conceptual predication—the child, in virtue of its pre-conceptual self-consciousness, is able to make known its wants, and otherwise to communicate its ideas, by way of pre-conceptual predication. I gave many instances of this pre-conceptual predication, which abundantly proved that the pre-conceptual self-consciousness of which it is the expression amounts to nothing more than a practical recognition of self as an active and feeling agent, without any introspective recognition of that self as an object of knowledge.

Given, then, this stage of mental evolution, and what follows? 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 to which allusion has just been made. But, over and above the animal, the child has now at its command a much more improved machinery of sign-making, which, as we have before seen, is due to the higher evolution of its receptual ideation. Now among the contents of this ideation is a better apprehension of the mental states of other human beings, together with a greatly increased power of denotative utterance, whereby the child is able to name receptually such ejective states as it thus receptually apprehends. These, therefore, severally receive their appropriate denotations, and so gain clearness and precision as ejective images of the corresponding states experienced by the child itself. “Mamma 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 his mother. Hence, we find that at the same age the child will also say “Dodo pleased to mamma.” Now it is evident that we are here approaching the very borders of true or conceptual self-consciousness. The child, no doubt, is still speaking of himself in objective phraseology; but he has advanced so far in the interpretation of his own states of mind as clearly to name them, in the same way as he would name any external objects of sense-perception. Thus is he enabled to fix these states before his mental vision as things which admit of being denoted by verbal signs, although as yet he has never thought about either the states of mind or his names for them as such, and, therefore, has not yet attained to the faculty of denomination. But the interval between denotation and denomination has now become so narrow that the step from recognizing “Dodo” as not only the object, but also the subject of mental changes, is rendered at once easy and inevitable. The mere fact of attaching verbal signs to 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 which is required to enable a 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, or conceptual consciousness of self consists.

Several subordinate features in the evolution of this conceptual from pre-conceptual self-consciousness were described; but it is needless again to mention them. Enough has been here said to show ample grounds for the conclusions which my chapter on “Self-consciousness” was mainly concerned in establishing—namely, that language is quite as much the antecedent as it is the consequent of self-consciousness; that pre-conceptual predication is indicative of a pre-conceptual self-consciousness; and that from these there naturally and inevitably arise those higher powers of conceptual predication and conceptual self-consciousness on which my opponents (disregarding the phases that lead up to them) have sought to rear their alleged distinction of kind between the brute and the man.

Thus, as a general result of the whole inquiry so far, we may say that throughout the entire range of mental phenomena we have found one and the same distinction to obtain between the faculties of mind as perceptual, receptual, and conceptual. Percept, Recept, and Concept; Perceptual Judgment, Receptual Judgment, and Conceptual Judgment; Indication, Denotation, and Denomination;—these are all manifestations, in different regions of psychological inquiry, of the same psychological distinctions. And we have seen that the distinction between a Recept and a Concept, which is thus carried through all the fabric of mind, is really the only distinction about which there can be any dispute. Moreover, we have seen that the distinction is on all hands allowed to depend on the presence or absence of self-consciousness. Lastly, we have seen that even in the province of self-consciousness itself the same distinction admits of being traced: there is a form of self-consciousness which may be termed receptual, as well as that which may be termed conceptual. The whole question before us thus resolves itself into an inquiry touching the relation between these two forms of self-consciousness: is it or is it not observable that the one is developmentally continuous with the other? Can we or can we not perceive that in the growing child the powers of receptual self-consciousness, which it shares with a brute, pass by slow and natural stages into those powers of conceptual self-consciousness which are distinctive of a man?

This question was fully considered in Chapter XI. I had previously shown that so far as the earliest, or indicative phase of language is concerned, no difference even of degree can be alleged between the infant and the animal. I had also shown that neither could any such difference be alleged with regard to the earlier stages of the next two phases—namely, the denotative and the receptually connotative. Moreover, I had shown that no difference of kind could be alleged between this lower receptual utterance which a child shares with a brute, and that higher receptual utterance which it proceeds to develop prior to the advent of self-consciousness. Lastly, I had shown that this higher receptual utterance gives to the child a psychological instrument whereby to work its way from a merely receptual to an incipiently conceptual consciousness of self. Such being the state of the facts as established by my previous analysis, I put to my opponents the following dilemma. Taking 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), I proceeded thus.

“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 simultaneously—i.e. brings them into apposition. The apposition in consciousness of these two recepts, with their corresponding denotations, is thus effected for the child by 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 be the distinguishing feature of the logic of concepts. Here, then, comes the dilemma. For I say, either you here have conceptual judgment, or else you have not. If you say that this is conceptual judgment, you destroy the basis of your own distinction between man and brute, because then you must also say that brutes conceptually judge—the child as yet not having attained to conceptual self-consciousness. If, on the other hand, you say that here you have not conceptual judgment, inasmuch as you have not self-consciousness, I ask at what stage in the subsequent development of the child’s intelligence you would consider conceptual judgment to arise. Should you answer that it first arises when conceptual self-consciousness first supplies the condition to its arising, I must refer you to the proof already given that the advent of self-consciousness is itself a gradual process, the precedent conditions of which are supplied far down in the animal series. But if this is so, where the faculty of stating a truth perceived passes into the higher faculty of perceiving the truth as true, there is a continuous series of gradations connecting the one faculty with the other. Up to the point where this continuous series of gradations begins, the mind of the child is, as I have already proved, indistinguishable from the mind of an animal 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 intelligence becomes distinct in kind from that of animals, and therefore also from its own previous self? If so, your argument here ends in a contradiction.

In confirmation of this my general argument, two subsidiary considerations were then added. The first was that although the advance to true self-consciousness from lower grades of mental development is no doubt a very great and important matter, still 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 even when self-consciousness does arise, and has become fairly well developed, the powers of the human mind are still in an almost infantile condition. In other words, the first genesis of true 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 upon, and therefore lies so near to, those precedent conditions in merely animal psychology to which I have assigned it. But, if so, does it not follow that, great as the importance of self-consciousness afterwards proves to be in the development of distinctively human ideation, in itself, or in its first beginning, it does not betoken any very perceptible advance upon those powers of pre-conceptual ideation which it immediately follows? There is thus shown to be even less reason for regarding the first advent of conceptual 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.

The second subsidiary consideration which I adduced was, that even in the case of a fully developed self-conscious intelligence, both receptual and pre-conceptual ideation continue to play an important part. The vast majority of our verbal propositions are made for the practical purposes of communication, or without the mind pausing to contemplate the propositions in the light of self-consciousness. No doubt in many cases, or in those where highly abstract ideation is concerned, this independence of the two faculties is more apparent than real: it arises from each having undergone so much elaboration by the assistance which it has derived from the other, that both are now in possession of a large body of organized material on which to operate, without requiring, whenever they are exercised, to build up the structure of this material ab initio. When I say “Heat is a mode of motion,” I am using what is now to me a mere verbal sign, which expresses an external fact: I do not require to examine my own ideas upon the abstract relation which the proposition sets forth, although for the original attainment of these ideas I had to exercise many and complex efforts of conceptual thought. But although I hold this to be the true explanation of the apparent independence of predication and introspection in all cases of highly abstract thought, I am convinced, on the ground of adequate reasons given, that in all cases where those lower orders of ideation are concerned to which I have so often referred as receptual and pre-conceptual, the independence is not only apparent, but real. Now, if the reasons which I have assigned for this conclusion are adequate—and they are reasons sanctioned by Mill,—it follows that the ideation concerned in ordinary predication becomes so closely affiliated with that which is expressed in the lower levels of sign-making, that even if the connecting links were not supplied by the growing child, no one would be justified, on psychological grounds alone, in alleging any difference of kind between one level and another. The object of all sign-making is communication, and from our study of the lower animals we know that communication first has to do exclusively with recepts, while from our study of the growing child we know that it is the signs used in the communication of recepts which first lead to the formation of concepts. For concepts are first of all named recepts, known as such; and we have seen in previous chapters that this kind of knowledge (i.e. of names as names) is rendered possible by introspection, which, in turn, is reached by the naming of self as an agent. But even after the power of conceptual introspection has been fully reached, demand is not always made upon it for the communication of merely receptual knowledge; and therefore it is that not every proposition requires to be introspectively contemplated as such before it can be made. Given the power of denotative nomination on the one hand, and the power of even the lowest degree of connotative nomination on the other, and all the conditions are furnished to the formation of non-conceptual statements, which differ from true propositions only in that they do not themselves become objects of thought. And the only difference between such a statement when made by a young child, and the same statement when similarly made by a grown man, is that in the former case it is not even potentially capable of itself becoming an object of thought.

The investigation having been thus concluded so far as comparative psychology was concerned, I next turned upon the subject the independent light of comparative philology. Whereas we had hitherto been dealing with what on grounds of psychological analysis alone we might fairly infer were the leading phases in the development of distinctively human ideation, we now turned to that large mass of direct evidence which is furnished by the record of Language, and is on all hands conceded to render a kind of unintentional record of the pre-historic progress of this ideation.

The first great achievement of comparative philology has been that of demonstrating, beyond all possibility of question, that language as it now exists did not appear ready-made, or by way of any specially created intuition. Comparative philology has furnished a completed proof of the fact that language, as we now know it, has been the result of a gradual evolution. In the chapter on “Comparative Philology,” therefore, I briefly traced the principles of language growth, so far as these are now well recognized by all philologists. It was shown, as a matter of classification, that the thousand or more existing languages fall into about one hundred families, all the members of each family being more or less closely allied, while members of different families do not present evidence of genetic affinity. Nevertheless, these families admit of being comprised under larger groups or “orders,” in accordance with certain characteristics of structure, or type, which they present. Of these types all philologists are agreed in distinguishing between the Isolating, the Agglutinating, and the Inflectional. Some philologists make a similar distinction between these and the Polysynthetic, while all are agreed that from the agglutinative the Incorporating type has been derived, and from the inflectional the Analytic.