Before giving examples that determine the nature and intellectual trend of the lower forms, a theoretical question presents itself which cannot be eluded, albeit any profound discussion of it belongs to the theory of cognition rather than to psychology. It is as follows: Is the difference between generic images and the lowest concepts, one of nature or of degree? This question has sometimes been propounded in a less general and more concrete form; Is there any radical difference, any impassable gulf between animal intelligence[67] in its higher, and human intelligence in its lower aspects? Some authors give an absolute negation, others admit community of nature, and of transitional forms.
I shall first reject as inadmissible the argument that identifies abstraction with the use of words. Taine seems at times to admit this: “We think,” he says, “the abstract characters of things by means of the abstract names that are our abstract ideas, and the formation of our ideas is no more than the formation of names which are substitutes.”[68] Clearly if abstraction is impossible without words, this operation could only begin with speech. All that was said above ([Chap. I]) proves the inanity of such an assertion.
Let us, in order to discuss the question profitably, sum up the principal characteristics of generic images on the one hand, of inferior concepts on the other.
Generic images are: (1) simple and of the practical order; (2) the result of often-repeated experiences; (3) extracts from very salient resemblances; (4) a condensation into a visual, auditory, tactile, or olfactory representation. They are the fruit of passive assimilation.
The inferior concepts most akin to them, which we are studying in the present instance, are in character: (1) less simple; (2) less frequently repeated in experience; (3) they assume as material, similarities mingled with sufficiently numerous differences; (4) they are fixed by a word. They are the fruit of active assimilation.
It may be said that the two classes, when thus opposed to each other, present but minimal differences, save for the addition of words. For the moment, indeed, the word is only an instrument handled by a bad workman, who ignores its efficacy and highest significance, as will be proved below. But were it otherwise, and were the delimitation between the two classes in no way fluctuating, the thesis of a progressive evolution must needs be given up, unless it be admitted to begin only with the appearance of speech.[69]
Romanes describes the passage from the generic image to the concept as follows:
“Water-fowl adopt a somewhat different mode of alighting upon land, or even upon ice, from that which they adopt when alighting upon water; and those kinds which dive from a height (such as terns and gannets) never do so upon land or ice. These facts prove that these animals have one recept answering to a solid substance, and another answering to a fluid. Similarly a man will not dive from a height over hard ground, or over ice, nor will he jump into water in the same way as he jumps upon land. In other words, like the water-fowl, he has two distinct recepts, one of which answers to solid ground, and the other to an unresisting fluid. But unlike the water-fowl, he is able to bestow upon each of these recepts a name, and thus to raise them both to the level of concepts. So far as the practical purposes of locomotion are concerned, it is, of course, immaterial whether or not he thus raises his recepts into concepts; but, as we have seen, for many other purposes it is of the highest importance that he is able to do this. Now, in order to do it, he must be able to set his recept before his own mind as an object of his own thought: before he can bestow upon these generic ideas the names of “solid” and “fluid,” he must have cognised them as ideas. Prior to this act of cognition, these ideas differed in no respect from the recepts of a water-fowl; neither for the requirements of his locomotion is it needful that they should: therefore, in so far as these requirements are concerned, the man makes no call upon his higher faculties of ideation. But, in virtue of this act of cognition whereby he assigns a name to an idea known as such, he has created for himself—and for purposes other than locomotion—a priceless possession; he has formed a concept.”[70]
In point of fact, the transition is not so simple. Romanes omits the intermediate stages: for with fluid and liquid we penetrate into a more elevated order of concepts than those immediately bordering on the generic image. What he well brings out is that the bare introduction of words does not explain everything. It must not be forgotten that if the higher development of the intelligence depends upon the higher development of abstraction, which itself depends upon the development of speech, this last is conditioned, not simply by the faculty of articulation, which exists among many animals, but by anterior cerebral conditions that have to be sought out.