Mental Evolution in Man 29

Mental Evolution in Man 29

therefore, if

the denotative name originally assigned to a particular dog admitted

of being so assigned as merely the mark of that particular recept,

there is no reason to suppose that its subsequent extension to the

more generic recepts afterwards experienced involves any demand upon

the conceptual faculty, or implies that the child could only extend

this name from a house-dog to a terrier by first performing an act of

introspective thought—which, indeed, as we shall see later on, it is

demonstrably impossible that a child of this age can be able to do.

 

Nevertheless, it is evident that already the child has done more

than the parrot. For a parrot will never extend its denotative name

of a particular dog to the picture, or even to the image of a dog.

The utmost that a parrot will do is to extend the denotative name

from one particular dog to another particular dog, which, however,

may differ considerably from the former as to size, colour, and

general appearance. Still, I presume, no one will maintain that thus

far there is the faintest evidence of a difference of kind between

the connotative faculty of the bird and that of the child. All that

these facts can be held to show is that—in the words already quoted

from M. Taine while narrating these facts—“analogies which do not

strike animals strike men.” Or, in my own phraseology, the receptual

faculties of a parrot do not go further than the receptual faculties

of a very young child: consequently, the denotative name in the

case of the parrot only undergoes the first step in the process of

receptual extension—namely, from a house-dog to a terrier, a setter,

a mastiff, a Newfoundland, &c. But in the case of the child, _after

having reached this stage_, the process of extension continues, so as

to embrace images, and eventually pictures of dogs. This difference,

however, only shows an advance in the merely receptual faculties:

does not suggest that in order to carry the extension of the name

through these second and third stages, demand has yet been made on the

distinctively human powers of conceptual thought—any more than such

powers were required to carry it through the first stage in the case of

the parrot.

 

Hence we see again that the distinction already drawn between

denotative and connotative names is not co-extensive with the

distinction between ideas as receptual and conceptual. Or, in other

words, names may be in some measure connotative even in the absence

of self-consciousness. For if we say that a child is connoting

resemblances when it extends the name _Bow-wow_ from a particular

dog to dogs in general, clearly we must say the same thing of a

parrot when we find that thus far it goes with the child. Therefore

it is that I have distinguished between connotation as receptual and

conceptual—_i.e._ by calling the latter _denomination_. Receptual

connotation represents a higher level of ideational faculty than

mere denotation; but a lower level than conceptual connotation, or

denomination. Moreover, receptual connotation admits of many degrees

before we can discern the smallest reason for supposing that it is

even in the lowest degree conceptual. Connotation of all degrees

depending on perceptions of resemblances or analogies, the higher the

receptual life, and therefore the greater the aptitude of receptual

classification, the more will such classification become reflected in

connotative __EXPRESSION__. Therefore it is that the child will not only

surpass the parrot in its receptual connotation from dogs to pictures

of dogs; but, as we shall afterwards see, will go much further even

than this before it gives any signs at all of conceptual connotation,

or true denomination. Thus we see that between the most rudimentary

receptual connotation which a very young child shares with a parrot,

and the fully conceptual connotation which it subsequently attains,

there is a large intervening province due to the acquisition of a

higher receptual life. Or, to put the same thing in other words, there

is a large tract of ideation lying between the highest receptual

life of a brute and the lowest conceptual life of a man: this tract

is occupied by the growing child from the time at which its ideation

surpasses that of the brute, until it begins to attain the faculty

of self-conscious reflection. This intervening tract of ideation,

therefore, may be termed “higher receptual,” in contradistinction to

the lower receptual ideation which a younger child shares with the

lower animals.

 

At this point I must ask the reader carefully to fasten in his mind

these various distinctions. Nor will it be difficult to do so after a

small amount of attention. It will be remembered that in Chapter IV. I

instituted a distinction between concepts as higher and lower, which

was methodically similar to that which I have now to institute between

recepts. A “lower concept” was defined to be nothing more than a “named

recept,”[106] while a “higher concept” was understood to be one that is

“compounded of other concepts”—_i.e._ the named result of a grouping

of concepts, as when we speak of the “mechanical equivalent of heat.”

So that altogether we have four stages of ideation to recognize, each

of which occupies an immensely large territory of mind. These four

stages I will present in serial order.

 

(1) _Lower Recepts_, comprising the mental life of all the lower

animals, and so including such powers of receptual connotation as a

child when first emerging from infancy shares with a parrot.

 

(2) _Higher Recepts_, comprising all the extensive tract of ideation

that belongs to a child between the time when its powers of receptual

connotation first surpass those of a parrot, up to the age at which

connotation as merely denotative begins to become also denominative.

 

(3) _Lower Concepts_, comprising the province of conceptual ideation

where this first emerges from the higher receptual, up to the point

where denominative connotation has to do, not merely with the naming of

recepts, but also with that of associated concepts.

 

(4) _Higher Concepts_, comprising all the further excellencies of human

thought.

 

Higher Recepts, then, are what may be conveniently termed

Pre-concepts:[107] they occupy the interval between the receptual

life of brute and the earliest dawn of the conceptual life of man. A

pre-concept, therefore, is that kind of higher recept which is not to

be met with in any brute; but which occurs in the human being after

surpassing the brute and before attaining self-consciousness. Be it

observed that in thus coining the words higher recepts or pre-concepts,

I am not in any way prejudicing the case of my opponents; I am merely

marking off a certain territory of ideation which has now for the

first time been indicated. Of course my object eventually is to show

that in the history of a growing child, just as sensations give rise

to percepts, and percepts to recepts (as they do among animals), so do

recepts give rise to pre-concepts, pre-concepts to concepts, concepts

to propositions, and propositions to syllogisms. But in now supplying

this intermediate link of pre-concepts I am not in any way pre-judging

the issue: I am merely marking out the ground for discussion. No one of

my opponents can dispute my facts, which are too obvious to admit of

question. Therefore, if they object to my classification of them so far

as the novel division of pre-concepts is concerned, it must be because

they think that by instituting this division I am surreptitiously

bringing the mind of a child nearer to that of an animal than they deem

altogether safe. What, then, I ask, would they have me do? If I fail

to institute this division, I should have to prejudice the question

indeed. Either there is some distinction between the naming powers of

a parrot and those of a young child, or else there is not. If there is

no distinction, so much the better for the purposes of my argument.

But I allow that there is a distinction, and I draw it at the first

place where it can possibly be said that the intelligence of a child

differs in any way at all from that of a parrot—_i.e._ where the

naming powers of a child demonstrably excel those of a parrot, or any

other brute. If this place happens to be before the rise of conceptual

powers, I am not responsible for the fact; nor in stating it am I at

all disparaging the position of any opponent who takes his stand upon

these powers as distinctive of man. If his position were worth anything

before, it cannot be affected by my drawing attention to the fact that,

while a parrot will extend its denotative name of a dog from a terrier

to a setter, it will not follow a child any further in the process of

receptual connotation.

 

Or, to put it in another way, when the child says _Bow-wow_ to a

setter, after having learnt this name for a terrier, it is either

judging a resemblance and predicating a fact, or else it is doing

neither of these things. If my opponents elect to say that the child is

doing both these things, there is an end of the only issue between us;

for in that case a parrot also is able both to judge and to predicate.

On the other hand, if my opponents adopt the wiser course, and accept

my distinction between names as receptual and conceptual, they must

also follow me in recognizing the border-land of pre-concepts as lying

between the recepts of a bird and the concepts of a man—_i.e._ the

territory which is first occupied by the higher receptual life of a

child before this passes into the conceptual life of a man,—for that

such a border-land does exist I will prove still more incontestably

later on. There is, then, as a matter of observable fact, a territory

of ideation which separates the highest recepts of a brute from the

lowest concepts of a human being; and all that my term pre-conception

is designed to do is to name this intervening territory.

 

Now, if this is the case with regard to naming, clearly it must also be

the case with regard to judging: if there is a stage of pre-conception,

there must also be a stage of pre-judgment. For we have seen that it is

of the essence of a judgment that it should be concerned with concepts:

if the mind be concerned merely with recepts, no act of true judgment

can be said to have been performed. When a child says _Bow-wow_ to

the picture of a dog, no one can maintain that he is actually judging

the resemblance of the picture to a dog, unless it be supposed that

for this act of receptual classification distinctively human powers

of conceptual thought are required. But, as just shown, no opponent

of mine can afford to adopt this supposition, because behind the case

of the child there stands that of the parrot. True, the parrot does

not proceed in its receptual classification further than to extend its

name for a particular dog to other living dogs; but if any one were

foolish enough to stake his whole argument on so slender a distinction

as this—to maintain that at the place where the connotation of a child

first surpasses that of a parrot we have evidence of a psychological

distinction of kind, _on the sole ground that the child has begun to

surpass the parrot_—it would be enough for me to remark that not

_every_ parrot will thus extend its denotative sign from one dog

to another of greatly unlike appearance. Different birds display

different degrees of intelligence in this respect. Most of them will

say _Bow-wow_, will bark, or utter any other denotative sign which they

may have learnt or invented, when they see dogs more or less resembling

the one to which the denotative sign was originally applied; but it

is not every parrot which will thus extend the sign from a terrier to

a mastiff or a Newfoundland. Therefore, if any one were to maintain

that the difference between the intelligence which can discern, and

one which cannot discern, the likeness of a dog in the image or the

picture of a dog, is a difference of kind, consistency should lead

him to draw a similar distinction between the intelligence which can

discern, and one which cannot discern, the likeness of a terrier to a

mastiff. But, if so, the intelligence of one parrot would be different

in kind from that of another parrot; and the child’s intelligence

at one age would differ in kind from the intelligence of that same

child when a week or two older—both of which statements would be

manifestly absurd. The truth can only be that up to the point where

the intelligence of the child surpasses that of the bird they are both

in the receptual stage of sign-making; and that the only reason why

the child does surpass the bird is not, in the first instance, because

the child there suddenly attains the power of conceptual ideation, but

because it gradually attains a higher level of receptual ideation. This

admits of direct proof from the fact that animals more intelligent

than parrots are unquestionably able to recognize sculptured and even

pictorial representations: hence there can be no doubt that if talking

birds had attained a similar level of intelligence—or if the other and more intelligent animals had been able, like the talking birds, to use denotative signs,—the child would not have parted company with the brute at quite so early a stage of receptual nomenclature.