[1] Man’s Place in Nature, p. 59.

[2] It is perhaps desirable to explain from the first that by the words “difference of kind,” as used in the above paragraph and elsewhere throughout this treatise, I mean difference of origin. This is the only real distinction that can be drawn between the terms “difference of kind” and “difference of degree;” and I should scarcely have deemed it worth while to give the definition, had it not been for the confused manner in which the terms are used by some writers—e.g. Professor Sayce, who says, while speaking of the development of languages from a common source, “differences of degree become in time differences of kind” (Introduction to the Science of Language, ii. 309).

[3] See Mental Evolution in Animals, chapter on the Emotions.

[4] Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 159. “The term is a generic one, comprising all the faculties of mind which are concerned in conscious and adaptive action, antecedent to individual experience, without necessary knowledge of the relation between means employed and ends attained, but similarly performed under similar and frequently recurring circumstances by all individuals of the same species.”

[5] Of course my opponents will not allow that this word can be properly applied to the psychology of any brute. But I am not now using it in a question-begging sense: I am using it only to avoid the otherwise necessary expedient of coining a new term. Whatever view we may take as to the relations between human and animal psychology, we must in some way distinguish between the different ingredients of each, and so between the instinct, the emotion, and the intelligence of an animal. See Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 335, et seq.

[6] If any one should be disposed to do so, I can only reply to him in the words of Professor Huxley, who puts the case tersely and well:—“What is the value of the evidence which leads one to believe that one’s fellow-man feels? The only evidence in this argument from analogy is the similarity of his structure and of his actions to one’s own, and if that is good enough to prove that one’s fellow-man feels, surely it is good enough to prove that an ape feels,” etc. (Critiques and Addresses, p. 282). To this statement of the case Mr. Mivart offers, indeed, a criticism, but it is one of a singularly feeble character. He says, “Surely it is not by similarity of structure or actions, but by language that men are placed in communication with one another.” To this it seems sufficient to ask, in the first place, whether language is not action; and, in the next, whether, as expressive of suffering, articulate speech is regarded by us as more “eloquent” than inarticulate cries and gestures?

[7] Of course where the term Reason is intended to signify Introspective Thought, the above remarks do not apply, further than to indicate the misuse of the term.

[8] I here neglect to consider the view of Bishop Butler, and others who have followed him, that animals may have an immortal principle as well as man; for, if this view is maintained, it serves to identify, not to separate, human and brute psychology. The dictum of Aristotle and Buffon, that animals differ from man in having no power of mental apprehension, may also be disregarded; for it appears to be sufficiently disposed of by the following remark of Dureau de la Malle, which I here quote as presenting some historical interest in relation to the theory of natural selection. He says: “Si les animaux n’étaient pas suscéptibles d’apprendre les moyens de se conserver, les espèces se seraient anéanties.”

[9] John Fiske, Excursions of an Evolutionist, pp. 42, 43 (1884).

[10] Natural Selection, p. 343. It will subsequently appear, as a general consequence of our investigation of savage psychology, that of these two opposite opinions the one advocated by Mr. Mivart is best supported by facts. But I may here adduce one or two considerations of a more special nature bearing upon this point. First, as to cerebral structure, the case is thus summed up by Professor Huxley:—“The difference in weight of brain between the highest and the lowest man is far greater, both relatively and absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest ape. The latter, as has been seen, is represented by, say 12 ounces of cerebral substance absolutely, or by 32:20 relatively; but, as the largest recorded human brain weighed between 65 and 66 ounces, the former difference is represented by more than 33 ounces absolutely, or by 65:32 relatively. Regarded systematically, the cerebral differences of man and apes are not of more than generic value—his family distinction resting chiefly on his dentition, his pelves, and his lower limbs” (Man’s Place in Nature, p. 103). Next, concerning cerebral function, Mr. Chauncey Wright well remarks:—“A psychological analysis of the faculty of language shows that even the smallest proficiency in it might require more brain power than the greatest proficiency in any other direction” (North American Review, Oct. 1870, p. 295). After quoting this, Mr. Darwin observes of savage man, “He has invented and is able to use various weapons, tools, traps, &c., with which he defends himself, kills or catches prey, and otherwise obtains food. He has made rafts or canoes for fishing, or crossing over to neighbouring fertile islands. He has discovered the art of making fire.... These several inventions, by which man in the rudest state has become so preeminent, are the direct results of the development of his powers of observation, memory, curiosity, imagination, and reason. I cannot, therefore, understand how it is that Mr. Wallace maintains that ‘natural selection could only have endowed the savage with a brain a little superior to that of an ape’” (Descent of Man, pp. 48, 49).

[11] The Human Species, English trans., p. 22.

[12] Sundry other and still more special distinctions of a psychological kind have been alleged by various writers as obtaining between man and the lower animals—such as making fire, employing barter, wearing clothes, using tools, and so forth. But as all these distinctions are merely particular instances, or detailed illustrations, of the more intelligent order of ideation which belongs to mankind, it is needless to occupy space with their discussion. Here, also, I may remark that in this work I am not concerned with the popular objection to Darwinism on account of “missing-links,” or the absence of fossil remains structurally intermediate between those of man and the anthropoid apes. This is a subject that belongs to palæontology, and, therefore, its treatment would be out of place in these pages. Nevertheless, I may here briefly remark that the supposed difficulty is not one of any magnitude. Although to the popular mind it seems almost self-evident that if there ever existed a long series of generations connecting the bodily structure of man with that of the higher apes, at least some few of their bones ought now to be forthcoming; the geologist too well knows how little reliance can be placed on such merely negative testimony where the record of geology is in question. Countless other instances may now be quoted of connecting links having been but recently found between animal groups which are zoologically much more widely separated than are apes and men. Indeed, so destitute of force is this popular objection held to be by geologists, that it is not regarded by them as amounting to any objection at all. On the other hand, the close anatomical resemblance that subsists between man and the higher apes—every bone, muscle, nerve, vessel, etc., in the enormously complex structure of the one coinciding, each to each, with the no less enormously complex structure of the other—speaks so voluminously in favour of an uninterrupted continuity of descent, that, as before remarked, no one who is at all entitled to speak upon the subject has ventured to dispute this continuity so far as the corporeal structure is concerned. All the few naturalists who still withhold their assent from the theory of evolution in its reference to man, expressly base their opinion on those grounds of psychology which it is the object of the present treatise to investigate.

[13] In my previous work I devoted a chapter to “Imagination,” in which I treated of the psychology of ideation so far as animals are concerned. It is now needful to consider ideation with reference to man; and, in order to do this, it is further needful to revert in some measure to the ideation of animals. I will, however, try as far as possible to avoid repeating myself, and therefore in the three following chapters I will assume that the reader is already acquainted with my previous work. Indeed, the argument running through the three following chapters cannot be fully appreciated unless their perusal is preceded by that of chapters ix. and x. of Mental Evolution in Animals.

[14] Human Understanding, bk. ii., chap. ii., 10, 11. To this passage Berkeley objected that it is impossible to form an abstract idea of quality as apart from any concrete idea of object; e.g. an idea of motion distinct from that of any body moving. (See Principles of Human Knowledge, Introd. vii.-xix.). This is a point which I cannot fully treat without going into the philosophy of the great discussion on Nominalism, Realism, and Conceptualism—a matter which would take me beyond the strictly psychological limits within which I desire to confine my work. It will, therefore, be enough to point out that Berkeley’s criticism here merely amounts to showing that Locke did not pursue sufficiently far his philosophy of Nominalism. What Locke did was to see, and to state, that a general or abstract idea embodies a perception of likeness between individuals of a kind while disregarding the differences; what he failed to do was to take the further step of showing that such an idea is not an idea in the sense of being a mental image; it is merely an intellectual symbol of an actually impossible existence, namely, of quality apart from object. Intellectual symbolism of this kind is performed mainly through the agency of verbal or other conventional signs (as we shall see later on), and it is owing to a clearer understanding of this process that Realism was gradually vanquished by Nominalism. The only difference, then, between Locke and Berkeley here is, that the nominalism of the former was not so complete or thorough as that of the latter. I may remark that if in the following discussion I appear to fail in distinctly setting forth the doctrine of nominalism, I do so only in order that my investigation may avoid needless collision with conceptualism. For myself I am a nominalist, and agree with Mill that to say we think in concepts is only another way of saying that we think in class names.

[15] This simile has been previously used by Mr. Galton himself, and also by Mr. Huxley in his work on Hume.

[16] Hence, the only valid distinction that can be drawn between abstraction and generalization is that which has been drawn by Hamilton, as follows: “Abstraction consists in concentration of attention upon a particular object, or particular quality of an object, and diversion of it from everything else. The notion of the figure of the desk before me is an abstract idea—an idea that makes part of the total notion of that body, and on which I have concentrated my attention, in order to consider it exclusively. This idea is abstract, but it is at the same time individual: it represents the figure of this particular desk, and not the figure of any other body.” Generalization, on the other hand, consists in an ideal compounding of abstractions, “when, comparing a number of objects, we seize on their resemblances; when we concentrate our attention on these points of similarity.... The general notion is thus one which makes us know a quality, property, power, notion, relation, in short, any point of view under which we recognize a plurality of objects as a unity.” Thus, there may be abstraction without generalization; but inasmuch as abstraction has then to do only with particulars, this phase of it is disregarded by most writers on psychology, who therefore employ abstraction and generalization as convertible terms. Mill says, “By abstract I shall always, in Logic proper, mean the opposite of concrete; by an abstract name the name of an attribute; by a concrete name, the name of an object” (Logic, i. § 4). Such limitation, however, is arbitrary—it being the same kind of mental act to “concentrate attention upon a particular object,” as it is to do so upon any “particular quality of an object.” Of course in this usage Mill is following the schoolmen, and he expressly objects to the change first introduced (apparently) by Locke, and since generally adopted. But it is of little consequence in which of the two senses now explained a writer chooses to employ the word “abstract,” provided he is consistent in his own usage.

[17] The age here mentioned closely corresponds with that which is given by M. Perez, who says:—“At seven months he compares better than at three; and he appears at this age to have visual perceptions associated with ideas of kind: for instance, he connects the different flavours of a piece of bread, of a cake, of fruit, with their different forms and colours” (First Three Years of Childhood, English trans., p. 31).

[18] Die Seele des Kindes, s. 87.

[19] Taine, Intelligence, p. 18.

[20] Human Understanding, bk. ii., ch. ii., §§ 5-7.

[21] If required, proof of this fact is to be found in abundance in the chapter on “Imagination,” Mental Evolution in Animals, pp. 142-158. It is there shown that imagination in animals is not dependent only on associations aroused by sensuous impressions from without, but reaches the level of carrying on a train of mental imagery per se.

[22] Loc. cit., pp. 397-399. Allusion may also be here conveniently made to an interesting and suggestive work by another French writer, M. Binet (La Psychologie du Raisonnement, 1886). His object is to show that all processes of reasoning are fundamentally identical with those of perception. In order to do this he gives a detailed exposition of the general fact that processes of both kinds depend on “fusions” of states of consciousness. In the case of perception the elements thus fused are sensations, while in the case of reasoning they are perceptions—in both cases the principle of association being alike concerned.

[23] Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 118.

[24] In this connection I may quote the following very lucid statements from a paper by the Secretary of the Victoria Institute, which is directed against the general doctrine that I am endeavouring to advance, i.e. that there is no distinction of kind between brute and human psychology.

“Abstraction and generalization only become intellectual when they are utilized by the intellect. A bull is irritated by a red colour, and not by the object of which redness is a property; but it would be absurd to say that the bull voluntarily abstracts the phenomenon of redness from these objects. The process is essentially one of abstraction, and yet at the same time it is essentially automatic.” And with reference to the ideation of brutes in general, he continues:—“Certain qualities of an object engage his attention to the exclusion of other qualities, which are disregarded; and thus he abstracts automatically. The image of an object having been imprinted on his memory, the feelings which it excited are also imprinted on his memory, and on the reproduction of the image these feelings and the actions resulting therefrom are reproduced, likewise automatically: thus he acts from experience, automatically still. The image may be the image of the same object, or the image of another object of the same species, but the effect is the same, and thus he generalizes, automatically also.” Lastly, speaking of inference, he says:—“This method is common to man and brute, and, like the faculties of abstraction, &c., it only becomes intellectual when we choose to make it so.” (E. J. Morshead, in an essay on Comparative Psychology, Journ. Vic. Inst., vol. v., pp. 303, 304, 1870.) In the work of M. Binet already alluded to, the distinction in question is also recognized. For he says that the “fusion” of sensations which takes place in an act of perception is performed automatically (i.e. is receptual); while the “fusion” of perceptions which are concerned in an act of reason is performed intentionally (i.e. is conceptual).

[25] The more elaborate analysis of German psychologists has yielded five orders instead of three; namely, Wahrnehmung, Anschauung, Vorstellungen, Erfahrungsbegriff, and Verstandesbegriff. But for the purposes of this treatise it is needless to go into these finer distinctions.

[26] Outlines of Psychology, p. 342. The italics are mine. It will be observed that Mr. Sully here uses the term “generic” in exactly the sense which I propose.

[27] First Three Years of Childhood, English trans., pp. 180-182.

[28] Examination of Hamilton’s Philosophy, p. 403.

[29] To this, Max Müller objects on account of its veiled conceptualism—seeing that it represents the “notion” as chronologically prior to the “name” (Science of Thought, p. 268). With this criticism, however, I am not concerned. Whether “the many pictures” which the mind thus forms, and blends together into what Locke terms a “compound idea,” deserve, when so blended, to be called “a general notion” or a “concept”—this is a question of terminology of which I steer clear, by assigning to such compound ideas the term recepts, and reserving the term notions, or concepts, for compound ideas after they have been named.

[30] Logos, p. 175, quoted by Max Müller, who adds:—“The followers of Hume might possibly look upon the faded images of our memory as abstract ideas. Our memory, or, what is often equally important, our oblivescence, seems to them able to do what abstraction, as Berkeley shows, never can do; and under its silent sway many an idea, or cluster of ideas, might seem to melt away till nothing is left but a mere shadow. These shadows, however, though they may become very vague, remain percepts; they are not concepts” (Science of Thought, p. 453). Now, I say it is equally evident that these shadows are not percepts: they are the result of the fusion of percepts, no one of which corresponds to their generic sum. Seeing, then, that they are neither percepts nor concepts, and yet such highly important elements in ideation, I coin for them the distinctive name of recepts.

[31] Life of Hume, p. 96.

[32] Steinthal and Lazarus, however, in dealing with the problem touching the origin of speech, present in an adumbrated fashion this doctrine of receptual ideation with special reference to animals. For instance, Lazarus says, “Es gibt in der gewöhnlichen Erfahrung kein so einfaches Ding von einfacher Beschaffenheit, dass wir es durch eine Sinnesempfindung wahrnehmen könnten; erst aus der Sammlung seiner Eigenschaften, d. h. erst aus der Verbindung der mehreren Empfindungen ergibt sich die Wahrnehmung eines Dinges: erst indem wir die weisse Farbe sehen, die Härte fühlen und den süssen Geschmack empfinden, erkennen wir ein Stück Zucker” (Das Leben der Seele (1857), 8, ii. 66). This and other passages in the same work follow the teaching of Steinthal; e.g. “Die Anschauung von einem Dinge ist der Complex der sämmtlichen Empfindungserkenntnisse, die wir von einem Dinge haben ... die Anschauung ist eine Synthesis, aber eine unmittelbare, die durch die Einheit der Seele gegeben ist.” And, following both these writers, Friedrich Müller says, “Diese Sammlung und Einigung der verschiedenen Empfindungen gemäss der in den Dingen verbundenen Eigenschaften heisst Anschauung” (Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, i. 26). On the other hand, their brother philologist, Geiger, strongly objects to this use of the term Anschauung, under which, he says, “wird theils etwas von der Sinneswahrnehmung gar nicht Unterschiedenes verstanden, theils auch ein dunkles Etwas, welches, ohne dass die Bedingungen und Ursachen zu erkennen sind, die Einheit der Wahrnehmungen zu kleineren und grössern Complexen bewirken soll.... So dass ich eine solche ‘Synthesis’ nicht auch bei dem Thiere ganz ebenso wie bei dem Menschen voraussetze: ich glaube im Gegentheile, dass es sich mit der Sprache erst entwickelt” (Ursprung der Sprache, 177, 178). Now, I have quoted these various passages because they serve to render, in a brief and instructive form, the different views which may be taken on a comparatively simple matter owing to the want of well-defined terms. No doubt the use of the term Anschauung by the above writers is unfortunate; but by it they appear to me clearly to indicate a nascent idea of what I mean by a recept. They all three fail to bring out this idea in its fulness, inasmuch as they restrict the powers of non-conceptual “synthesis” to a grouping of simple perceptions furnished by different sense-organs, instead of extending it to a synthesis of syntheses of perceptions, whether furnished by the same or also by different senses. But these three philologists are all on the right psychological track, and their critic Geiger is quite wrong in saying that there can be no synthesis of (non-conceptual) ideas without the aid of speech. As a matter of fact the dunkles Etwas which he complains of his predecessors as importing into the ideation of animals, is an Etwas which, when brought out into clearer light, is fraught with the highest importance. For, as we shall subsequently see, it is nothing less than the needful psychological condition to the subsequent development both of speech and thought. The term Apperception as used by some German psychologists is also inclusive of what I mean by receptual ideation. But as it is also inclusive of conceptual, nothing would here be gained by its adoption. Indeed F. Müller expressly restricts its meaning to conceptual ideation, for he says, “Alle psychischen Processe bis einschliesslich zur Perception lassen sich ohne Sprache ausführen und vollkommen begreifen, die Apperception dagegen lässt sich nur an der Hand der Sprache denken” (loc. cit. i., 29).

[33] As stated in a previous foot-note, this truth is well exhibited by M. Binet, loc. cit.

[34] The word Logic is derived from λόγος, which in turn is derived from λέδω, to arrange, to lay in order, to pick up, to bind together.

[35] The terms Logic of Feelings and Logic of Signs were first introduced and extensively employed by Comte. Afterwards they were adopted, and still more extensively employed by Lewes, who, however, seems to have thought that he so employed them in some different sense. To me it appears that in this Lewes was mistaken. Save that Comte is here, as elsewhere, intoxicated with theology, I think that the ideas he intended to set forth under these terms are the same as those which are advocated by Lewes—although his incoherency justifies the remark of his follower:—“Being unable to understand this, I do not criticize it” (Probs. of Life and Mind, iii., p. 239). The terms in question are also sanctioned by Mill, as shown by the above quotation (p. 42).

[36] Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 62.

[37] Special attention, however, may be drawn to the fact that the term “unconscious judgment” is not metaphorical, but serves to convey in a technical sense what appears to be the precise psychology of the process. For the distinguishing element of a judgment, in its technical sense, is that it involves an element of belief. Now, as Mill remarks, “when a stone lies before me, I am conscious of certain sensations which I receive from it; but if I say that these sensations come to me from an external object which I perceive, the meaning of these words is, that receiving the sensations, I intuitively believe that an external cause of those sensations exists” (Logic, i., p. 58). In cases, such as that mentioned in the text, where the “unconscious judgment” is wrong—i.e. the perception illusory—it may, of course, be over-ridden by judgment of a higher order, and thus we do not end by believing that the bowl is a sphere. Nevertheless, so far as it is dependent on the testimony of our senses, the mind judges erroneously in perceiving the bowl as a sphere. In his work on Illusions, Mr. Sully has shown that illusions of perception arise through the mental “application of a rule, valid for the majority of cases, to an exceptional case.” In other words, an erroneous judgment is made by the non-conceptual faculties of perception—this judgment being formed upon the analogies supplied by past experience. Of course, such an act of merely perceptual inference is not a judgment, strictly so called; but it is clearly allied to judgment, and convenience is consulted by following established custom in designating it “unconscious,” “intuitive,” or “perceptual judgment.”

[38] Descent of Man, p. 76.

[39] See Animal Intelligence, pp. 465, 466.

[40] Of course the words “general idea” and “concept” here are open to that psychological objection for the avoidance of which I have coined the terms generic idea and recept.

[41] In my previous works I have already quoted facts of animal intelligence narrated by this author, but not any of those which I am now about to use.

[42] Intelligence of Animals, English trans., p. 20.

[43] Ibid., p. 107. This identical illustration appears to have occurred independently both to Mr. Darwin and Mr. Leslie Stephen. All these writers use the terms “abstract” and “general” as above; but, of course, as shown in my last chapter, this is merely a matter of terminology—in my opinion, however, objectionable, because appearing to assume, without analysis, that the ideation of brutes and of men is identical in kind.

[44] Ibid., pp. 43, 44.

[45] Ibid., p. 39.

[46] Ibid., p. 30. In the present connection, also, I may refer to the chapter on Imagination in my previous work, where sundry illustrations are given of this faculty as it occurs in animals; for wherever imagination leads to appropriate action, there is evidence of a Logic of Recepts, which in the higher levels of imagination, characteristic of man, passes into a Logic of Concepts.

Since publishing the chapter just alluded to, I have received an additional and curious illustration of the imaginative faculty in animals, which I think deserves to be published for its own sake. Of course we may see in a general way that dogs and cats resemble children in their play of “pretending” that inanimate objects are alive, and this betokens a comparatively high level of the imaginative faculty. The case which I am about to quote, however, appears to show that this kind of imaginative play may extend in animals, as in children, to the still higher level of not only pretending that inanimate objects are alive, but of “peopling space with fancy’s airy forms.” I shall quote the facts in the words of my correspondent, who is Miss Bramston, the authoress.

“Watch is a collie dog belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury; but lives with me a good deal, as Lambeth does not suit him. He is a very remarkable dog in many ways, which I will not inflict on you. He is very intelligent, understands many words, and can perform tricks. What I mention him for, however, is that he is the only dog I ever met with a dramatic faculty. His favourite drama is chasing imaginary pigs. He used now and then to be sent to chase real pigs out of the field, and after a time it became a custom for Miss Benson to open the door for him after dinner in the evening, and say, ‘Pigs!’ when he always ran about, wildly chasing imaginary pigs. If no one opened the door, he went to it himself wagging his tail, asking for his customary drama. He now reaches a further stage, for as soon as we get up after our last meal he begins to bark violently, and if the door is open he rushes out to chase imaginary pigs with no one saying the word ‘pigs’ at all. He usually used to be sent out to chase pigs after prayers in the evening, and when he came to my small house it was amusing to see that he recognized the function of prayers, performed with totally different accompaniments, to be the same as prayers performed in an episcopal chapel, so far as he expected ‘Pigs’ to be the end of both. The word ‘Pigs,’ uttered in any tone, will always set him off playing the same drama.”

[47] Ibid., pp. 125, 126.

[48] Professor Preyer has ascertained experimentally the number of objects (such as shot-corns, pins, or dots on a piece of paper), which admit of being simultaneously estimated with accuracy. (Sitzungs berichten der Gesellschaft für Medicin und Naturwissenshaft, 29 Juli, 1881.) The number admits of being largely increased by practice, until, with an exposure to view of one second’s duration, the estimate admits of being correctly made up to between twenty and thirty objects. (See also Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 138.)

[49] Lessons from Nature, pp. 219, 220.

[50] See Animal Intelligence, pp. 422-424.

[51] I may here observe that the earliest age in the infant at which I have observed such appreciation of causality to occur is during the sixth month. With my own children at that age I noticed that if I made a knocking sound with my concealed foot, they would look round and round the room with an obvious desire to ascertain the cause that was producing the sound. Compare, also, Mental Evolution in Animals, pp. 156-158, on emotions aroused in brutes by sense of the mysterious—i.e. the unexplained.

[52] The reader is referred to the whole biography of this monkey (Animal Intelligence, pp. 484-498) for a number of other facts serving to show to how high a level of intelligent grouping—or of “logic”—recepts may attain without the aid of concepts. In the same connection I may refer to the chapter on “Imagination” in Mental Evolution in Animals, and also to the following pages in Animal Intelligence:—128-40; 181-97, 219-222, 233, 311-335, 337, 338, 340, 348-352, 377-385, 397-410, 413-425, 426-436, 445-470, 478-498.

[53] Taine, On Intelligence, pp. 16, 17.

[54] Lectures, vol. ii., p. 290.

[55] Science of Thought, p. 35. For his whole argument, see pp. 30-64.

[56] Ursprung der Sprache, s. 91.

[57] Grundriss der Sprachwissenshaft, i., s. 16. It will be observed that there is an obvious analogy between the process above described, whereby conceptual ideation becomes degraded into receptual, and that whereby, on a lower plane of mental evolution, intelligence becomes degraded into instinct. In my former work I devoted many pages to a consideration of this subject, and showed that the condition to intelligent adjustments thus becoming instinctive is invariably to be found in frequency of repetition. Instincts of this kind (“secondary instincts”) may be termed degraded recepts, just as the recepts spoken of in the text are degraded concepts; neither could be what it now is, but for its higher parentage. Any one who is specially interested in the question whether there can be thought without words, may consult the correspondence between Prof. Max Müller, Mr. Francis Galton, myself, and others, in Nature, May and June, 1887 (since published in a separate form); between the former and Mr. Mivart, in Nature, March, 1888. Also an article by Mr. Justice Stephen in the Nineteenth Century, April, 1888. Prof. Whitney has some excellent remarks on this subject in his Language and the Study of Language, pp. 405-411.

[58] From this it will be seen that by using such terms as “inference,” “reason,” “rational,” &c., in alluding to mental processes of the lower animals, I am in no way prejudicing the question as to the distinction between man and brute. In the higher region of recepts both the man and the brute attain in no small degree to a perception of analogies or relations: this is inference or ratiocination in its most direct form, and differs from the process as it takes place in the sphere of conceptual thought only in that it is not itself an object of knowledge. But, considered as a process of inference or ratiocination, I do not see that it should make any difference in our terminology whether or not it happens to be itself an object of knowledge. Therefore I do not follow those numerous writers who restrict such terms to the higher exhibitions of the process, or to the ratiocination which is concerned only with introspective thought. It may be a matter of straw-splitting, but I think it is best to draw our distinctions where the distinctions occur; and I cannot see that it modifies the process of inference, as inference, whether or not the mind, in virtue of a superadded faculty, is able to think about the process as a process—not any more, for instance, than the process of association is altered by its becoming itself an object of knowledge. Therefore, I hope I have made it clear that in maintaining the rationality of brutes I am not arguing for anything more than that they have the power, as Mr. Mivart himself allows, of drawing “practical inferences.” Hitherto, then, my difference with Mr. Mivart—and, so far as I know, with all other modern writers who maintain the irrationality of brutes—is only one of terminology.

[59] See Animal Intelligence, p. 158.

[60] Animal Intelligence, pp. 114-116.

[61] Kreplin, quoted by Büchner.

[62] The best instances of sign-making among Invertebrata other than the Hymenoptera which I have met with is one that I have myself observed and already recorded in Mental Evolution in Animals (p. 343, note). The animal is the processional caterpillar. These larvæ migrate in the form of a long line, crawling Indian file, with the head of the one touching the tail of the next in the series. If one member of the series be removed, the next member in advance immediately stops and begins to wag its head in a peculiar manner from side to side. This serves as a signal for the next member also to stop and wag his head, and so on till all the members in front of the interruption are at a standstill, all wagging their heads. But as soon as the interval is closed up by the advance of the rear of the column, the front again begins to move forward, when the head-wagging ceases.

[63] Fac. Ment. des Animaux, tom. ii., p. 348.

[64] Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 84, 85.

[65] Nature, April 10, 1884, pp. 547, 548.

[66] For information on all these points, see Darwin, Expression of the Emotions.

[67] Quoted by Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 80.

[68] Burton, City of the Saints, p. 151.

[69] Loc. cit., p. 78.

[70] Sign-language among the North American Indians, &c., by Lieut.-Col. Garrick Mallery (First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1881).

[71] Mallery, loc. cit., p. 320. The author gives several very interesting records of such conversations, and adds that the mutes show more aptitude in understanding the Indians than vice versâ, because to them “the ‘action, action, action,’ of Demosthenes is their only oratory, and not a heightening of it, however valuable.”

[72] Loc. cit., p. 39.

[73] See especially Tylor, loc. cit., pp. 28-30, where an interesting account is given of the elaborate and yet self-speaking signs whereby an adult deaf-mute gave directions for the drawing up of his will.

[74] Early History of Mankind, pp. 24-32.

[75] Loc. cit., p. 54.

[76] Further information of a kind corroborating what has been given in the foregoing chapter concerning gesture-language may be found in Long’s Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, and Kleinpaul’s paper in Völkerpsychologie, &c., vi. 352-375. The subject was first dealt with in a philosophical manner by Leibnitz, in 1717, Collectanea Etymologia, ch. ix.

[77] For meaningless articulation by idiots, see Scott’s Remarks on Education of Idiots. The fact is alluded to by most writers on idiot psychology, and I have frequently observed it myself. But the case of uneducated deaf-mutes is here more to the purpose. I will, therefore, furnish one quotation in evidence of the above statement. “It is a very notable fact bearing upon the problem of the Origin of Language, that even born-mutes, who never heard a word spoken, do of their own accord and without any teaching make vocal sounds more or less articulate, to which they attach a definite meaning, and which, when once made, they go on using afterwards in the same unvarying sense. Though these sounds are often capable of being written down more or less accurately with our ordinary alphabets, this effect on those who make them can, of course, have nothing to do with the sense of hearing, but must consist only in particular ways of breathing, combined with particular positions of the vocal organs” (Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 72, where see for evidence). The instinctive articulations of Laura Bridgman (who was blind as well as deaf) are in this connection even still more conclusive (see ibid., pp. 74, 75).

[78] Writers on infant psychology differ as to the time when words are first understood by infants. Doubtless it varies in individual cases, and is always more or less difficult to determine with accuracy. But all observers agree—and every mother or nurse could corroborate—that the understanding of many words and sentences is unmistakable long before the child itself begins to speak. Mr. Darwin’s observations showed that in the case of his children the understanding of words and sentences was unmistakable between the tenth and twelfth months.

[79] See Animal Intelligence: for Fish, p. 250; for Frogs and Toads, p. 225; for Snakes, p. 261; for Birds and Mammals in various parts of the chapters devoted to these animals. The case quoted on the authority of Bingley regarding the tame bees of Mr. Wildman, which he had taught to obey words of command (p. 189), would, if corroborated, carry the faculty in question into the invertebrated series.

[80] Although the ages at which talking proper begins varies much in different children, it may be taken as a universal rule—as stated in the last foot-note—that words, and even sentences, are understood long before they are intelligently articulated; although, as previously remarked, even before any words are understood meaningless syllables may be spontaneously or instinctively articulated.

[81] See, for instance, Watson’s Reasoning Power in Animals, pp. 137-149, and Meunier’s Les Animaux Perfectibles, ch. xii.

[82] Ursprung der Sprache, p. 122.

[83] Some cases are on record of dogs having been taught to articulate. Thus the thoughtful Leibnitz vouches for the fact (which he communicated to the Académie Royale at Paris, and which that body said they would have doubted had it not been observed by so eminent a man), that he had heard a peasant’s dog distinctly articulate thirty words, which it had been taught to say by the peasant’s son. The Dumfries Journal, January, 1829, mentions a dog as then living in that town, who uttered distinctly the word “William,” which was the name of a person to whom he was attached. Again, Colonel Mallery writes:—“Some recent experiments of Prof. A. Graham Bell, no less eminent from his work in artificial speech than in telephones, shows that animals are more physically capable of pronouncing articulate sounds than has been supposed. He informed the writer that he recently succeeded by manipulation in causing an English terrier to form a number of the sounds of our letters, and particularly brought out from it the words ‘How are you, grandmama,’ with distinctness.” As I believe that the barrier to articulation in dogs is anatomical and not psychological, I regard it as merely a question of observation whether this barrier may not in some cases be partly overcome; but, as far as the evidence goes, I think it is safer to conclude that the instances mentioned consisted in the animals so modulating the tones of their voices as to resemble the sounds of certain words.

[84] Mr. Darwin writes:—“It is certain that some parrots, which have been taught to speak, connect unerringly words with things, and persons with events. I have received several detailed accounts to this effect. Admiral Sir J. Sullivan, whom I know to be a careful observer, assures me that an African parrot, long kept in his father’s house, invariably called certain persons of the household, as well as visitors, by their names. He said ‘Good morning’ to every one at breakfast, and ‘Good night’ to each as they left the room at night, and never reversed these salutations. To Sir J. Sullivan’s father he used to add to the ‘good morning’ a short sentence, which was never repeated after his father’s death. He scolded violently a strange dog which came into the room through an open window, and he scolded another parrot (saying, ‘You naughty polly!’), which had got out of its cage, and was eating apples on the kitchen table. Dr. A. Moschkan informs me that he knew a starling which never made a mistake in saying in German ‘good morning’ to persons arriving, and ‘good-bye, old fellow’ to those departing. I could add several other cases” (Descent of Man, p. 85). Similarly Houzeau gives some instances of nearly the same kind (Fac. Ment. des Anim., tom, ii., p. 309, et seq.); and Mrs. Lee, in her Anecdotes records several still more remarkable cases (which are quoted by Houzeau), as does also M. Meunier in his recently published work on Les Animaux Perfectibles. In my own correspondence I have received numerous letters detailing similar facts, and from these I gather that parrots often use comical phrases when they desire to excite laughter, pitiable phrases when they desire to excite compassion, and so on; although it does not follow from this that the birds understand the meanings of these phrases, further than that they are as a whole appropriate to excite the feelings which it is desired to excite. I have myself kept selected parrots, and can fully corroborate all the above statements from my own observations.

[85] Journal of Mental Science, July, 1879.

[86] This term has been previously used by some philologists to signify ejaculation by man. It will be observed that I use it in a more extended sense.

[87] Man’s Place in Nature, p. 52. I may here appropriately allude to a paper which elicited a good deal of discussion some years ago. It was read before the Victoria Institute in March, 1872, by Dr. Frederick Bateman, under the title “Darwinism tested by Recent Researches in Language;” and its object was to argue that the faculty of articulate speech constitutes a difference of kind between the psychology of man and that of the lower animals. This argument Dr. Bateman sought to establish, first on the usual grounds that no animals are capable of using words with any degree of understanding, and, second, on grounds of a purely anatomical kind. In the text I fully deal with the first allegation: as a matter of fact, many of the lower animals understand the meanings of many words, while those of them which are alone capable of imitating our articulate sounds not unfrequently display a correct appreciation of their use as signs. But what I have here especially to consider is the anatomical branch of Dr. Bateman’s argument. He says:—“As the remarkable similarity between the brain of man and that of the ape cannot be disputed, if the seat of human speech could be positively traced to any particular part of the brain, the Darwinian could say that, although the ape could not speak, he possessed the germ of that faculty, and that in subsequent generations, by the process of evolution, the ‘speech centre’ would become more developed, and the ape would then speak.... If the scalpel of the anatomist has failed to discover a material locus habitandi for man’s proud prerogative—the faculty of Articulate Language; if science has failed to trace speech to a ‘material centre,’ has failed thus to connect matter with mind, I submit that speech is the barrier between men and animals, establishing between them a difference not only of degree but of kind; the Darwinian analogy between the brain of man and that of his reputed ancestor, the ape, loses all its force, whilst the common belief in the Mosaic account of the origin of man is strengthened.” Now, I will not wait to present the evidence which has fully satisfied all living physiologists that “the faculty of Articulate Language” has “a material locus habitandi;” for the point on which I desire to insist is that it cannot make one iota of difference to “the Darwinian analogy” whether this faculty is restricted to a particular “speech-centre,” or has its anatomical “seat” distributed over any wider area of the cerebral cortex. Such a “seat” there must be in either case, if it be allowed (as Dr. Bateman allows) that the cerebral cortex “is undoubtedly the instrument by which this attribute becomes externally manifested.” The question whether “the material organ of speech” is large or small cannot possibly affect the question on which we are engaged. Since Dr. Bateman wrote, a new era has arisen in the localization of cerebral functions; so that, if there were any soundness in his argument, one would now be in a position immensely to strengthen “the Darwinian analogy;” seeing that physiologists now habitually utilize the brains of monkeys for the purpose of analogically localizing the “motor centres” in the brain of man. In other words, “the Darwinian analogy” has been found to extend in physiological, as well as in anatomical detail, throughout the entire area of the cortex. But, as I have shown, there is no soundness in his argument; and therefore I do not avail myself of these recent and most wonderfully suggestive results of physiological research.

[88] I may, however, add the following corroborative observations, as they have not been previously published. I owe them to the kindness of my friend Mr. A. E. Street, who kept a diary of his children’s psychogenesis. When about two years of age one of these children possessed the following vocabulary:—

Af-ta (in imitation of the sound which the nurse used to make when pretending to drink) = drinking or a drink, drinking-vessel, and hence a glass of any kind.

Vy = a fly.

Vy-’ta = window, i.e. the ‘ta or af-ta (glass) on which a fly walks.

Blow = candle.

Blow-hattie = a lamp, i.e. candle with a hat or shade.

’Nell = a flower, i.e. smell.

These words are clearly all of imitative origin. The following, however, seem to have been purely arbitrary:—

Numby = food of any kind (onomatopoetic).

Nunny = dress of any kind.

Milly = dressing, and any article used in dressing, e.g. a pin.

Lee = the name for her nurse, though no one else called the woman by any other name than nurse.

Diddle-iddle = a hole; hence a thimble; hence a finger.

Wasky = the sea.

Bilu-bilu = the printed character “&,” invented on learning the first letters of her alphabet, and always afterwards used.

[89] Touching the comparative rapidity with which signs admit of being made to the eye and ear respectively, it may be pointed out that there is a physiological reason why the latter should have the advantage; for while the ear can distinguish successive sensations separated only by an interval of .016 sec., the eye cannot do so unless the interval is more than .047 sec. (Wundt).

[90] Encyclop. Brit., 9th ed., art. Philology.

[91] It will be remembered that in a previous chapter I argued the impossibility of estimating the reflex influence of speech upon gesture, in the case of the high development attained by the latter in man. In the text I am now considering the converse influence of gesture upon speech, and find that it is no more easy precisely to estimate. There can be no doubt, however, that the reciprocal influence must have been great in both directions, and that it must have proceeded from gesture to speech in the first instance, and afterwards, when the latter had become well developed as a system of auditory signs, from speech to gesture. More will require to be said upon this point in a future chapter.

[92] “The remark made by Tiedemann on the imperative intention of tears, is confirmed by similar observations of Charles Darwin’s. At the age of eleven weeks, in the case of one of his children, a little sooner in another, the nature of their crying changed according to whether it was produced by hunger or suffering. And this means of communication appeared to be very early placed at the service of the will. The child seemed to have learnt to cry when he wished, and to contract his features according to the occasion, so as to make known that he wanted something. This development of the will takes place towards the end of the third month.” (Perez, First Three Years of Childhood, English trans., p. 101.)

[93] Several writers of repute have habitually used the word “Judgment” in a most unwarrantable manner—Lewes, for instance, making it stand indifferently for an act of sensuous determination and an act of conceptual thought. I may, therefore, here remark that in the following analysis I shall not be concerned with any such gratuitous abuses of the term, but will understand it in the technical sense which it bears in logic and psychology. The extraordinary views which Mr. Huxley has published upon this subject I can only take to be ironical. For instance, he says:—“Ratiocination is resolvable into predication, and predication consists in marking in some way the existence, the co-existence, the succession, the likeness and unlikeness, of things or their ideas. Whatever does this, reasons; and I see no more ground for denying to it reasoning power, because it is unconscious, than I see for refusing Mr. Babbage’s engine the title of a calculating machine on the same grounds” (Critiques and Addresses, p. 281). If this statement were taken seriously, of course the answer would be that Mr. Babbage’s engine is called a calculating machine only in a metaphorical sense, seeing that it does not evolve its results by any process at all resembling, or in any way analogous to, those of a human mind. It would be an absurd misstatement to say that a machine either reasons or predicates, only because it “marks in some way the existence, the co-existence, the succession, and the likeness and unlikeness of things.” A rising barometer or a striking clock do not predicate, any more than a piece of wood, shrieking beneath a circular saw, feels. To denominate purely mechanical or unconscious action—even though it should take place in a living agent and be perfectly adjustive—reason or predication, would be to confuse physical phenomena with psychical; and, as I have shown in my previous work, even if it be supposed that the latter are mere “indices” or “shadows” of the former, still the fact of their existence must be recognized; and the processes in question have reference to them, not to their physical counterparts. It is, therefore, just as incorrect to say that a calculating machine really calculates, or predicates the result of its calculations, as it would be to say that a musical-box composes a tune because it plays a tune, or that the love of Romeo and Juliet was an isosceles triangle, because their feelings of affection, each to each, were, like the angles at the base of that figure, equal. But, as I have said, I take it that Professor Huxley must here have been writing in some ironical sense, and therefore purposely threw his criticisms into a preposterous form.

[94] The “images answering respectively to ‘a thing being,’ and ‘a thing not being,’ and to ‘at the same time’ and ‘in the same sense,’” must indeed be “vague.” How is it conceivable that “the imagination” can entertain any such “images” at all, apart from the “abstract ideas” of the “mind”? Such ideas as “a thing not being,” or “being in the same sense,” &c., belong to the sphere of conceptual thought, and cannot have any existence at all except as “abstract ideas of the mind.”

[95] Nature, August 21, 1879.

[96] The statement conveyed in this sentence I am not able to understand, and therefore will not hereafter endeavour to criticize. If it be taken literally—and I know not in what other sense to take it—we must suppose the writer to mean that “greenness” only occurs in “grass,” or, which is the same thing, that only grass is green.

[97] Lessons from Nature, pp. 226, 227.

[98] For instance, Professor Francis Bowen, of Harvard College, in an essay on The Human and Brute Mind, Princeton Review, 1880.

[99] Mill, following the schoolmen, uses the terms connotation and denomination as synonymous. For the distinction which I have drawn between them see above, p. 162.

[100] Sayce, Introduction to the Science of Language, i., 115.

[101] This view of a concept as already embodying the idea of existence is not really opposed to that of Mill, where he points out that if we pronounce the word “Sun” alone we are not necessarily affirming so much as existence of the sun (Logic, i., p. 20); for, although we are not affirming existence of that particular body, we must at least have the idea of its existence as a possibility: the use of the term carries with it the implied idea of such a possibility, and therefore the idea of existence—whether actual or potential—as already present to the mind of the speaker.

[102] In order to avoid misapprehension, I may observe that the criticism which Mill passes upon this analysis of the proposition by Hobbes (Logic, i., p. 100) has no reference to the only matter with which I am at present concerned—namely, the function of the copula. Indeed, with regard to this matter I am in full agreement with both the Mills. For James Mill, see Analysis of the Human Mind, i. 126, et seq.; Mr. John Stuart Mill writes as follows:—“It is important that there should be no indistinctness in our conception of the nature and office of the copula; for confused notions respecting it are among the causes which have spread mysticism over the field of logic, and perverted its speculations into logomachies. It is apt to be supposed that the copula is something more than a mere sign of predication; that it also signifies existence. In the proposition, Socrates is just, it may seem to be implied not only that the quality just can be affirmed of Socrates, but moreover that Socrates is, that is to say exists. This, however, only shows that there is an ambiguity in the word is; a word which not only performs the function of a copula in affirmations, but has also a meaning of its own, in virtue of which it may itself be made the predicate of a proposition” (Logic, i., p. 86). In my chapters on Philology I shall have to recur to the analysis of predication, and then it will be seen how completely the above view has been corroborated by the progress of linguistic research.