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of the American character that no one has illustrated more happily than Mr. James himself. It might, we say again, be hard to define; it might be difficult to put one's finger on a passage and say: "It is here or there; it may be sumined up finally, perhaps, in the impression left by the volumes, as a whole, that the good and evil of the world indifferent to the author as an artist, are not indifferent to him as a

man. To quote his own words: "There is one point where the moral sense and the artistic sense lie very near together; that is, in the light of the very obvious truth that the deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer." It is in this sense that we seem to distinguish throughout Mr. James's work the faint aroma of the Puritan tradition. -Murray's Magazine.

IS MAN THE ONLY REASONER?

BY JAMES SULLY.

THE "whirligig of time" may be said to be bringing to the much-neglected brutes an ample revenge. The first naïve view of the animal mind entertained by the savage and the child is a respectful one, and may perhaps be roughly summed up in the formula in which a little boy once set forth his estimate of equine intelligence: "All horses know some things that people don't know, and some horses know more things than a great many people." But this pristine unsophisticated view of the animal world, though its survival may be traced in mythology and religious custom, has long since been scouted by philosophers. Thinkers, from Plato downward, have, not unnaturally perhaps, regarded the faculty of rational thought, which they themselves exhibited in the highest degree, as the distinguishing prerogative of man. The Christian religion, too, with its doctrine of immortality for mian and for man alone, has confirmed the tendency to put the animal mind as far below the human as possible. And so we find Descartes setting forth the hypothesis that animals are unthinking automata.

Not forever, however, was the animal world to suffer this indignity at the hands of inan. Thinkers themselves prepared the way for a rapprochement between the two. More particularly the English philosophers from Locke onwards, together with their French followers, pursuing their modest task of tracing back our most abstract ideas to impressions of sense, may be said by a sort of levelling down process, to have favored the idea of a mental kinship between man and brute. This work of the philosophers has been supplemented by the levelling-up work of the

modern biologist. There is not the least doubt that the wide and accurate observation of animal habits by the naturalists of the last century has tended to raise very greatly our estimate of their mental powers. So that it would seem as if in the estimation of animal intelligence, scientific knowledge is coming round to the opinion of the vulgar, and as if "the conviction which forces itself upon the stupid and the ignorant, is fortified by the reasonings of the intelligent, and has its foundation deepened by every increase of knowledge.'

*

Definiteness has been given to the question of the nature of animal intelligence by the new doctrine of Evolution. If man is descended from some lower or ganic form, we ought to be able to make out not merely a physical, but a psychical kinship between him and the lower creation; and the more favorable estimate of the animal mind taken by the modern savant is of great assistance here. Mr. Darwin has, indeed, shown in his valuable contributions to the subject, that the rude germ of all the more characteristic features of the human mind may be discovered in animals. At the same time, Mr. Darwin's investigations in this direction amounted only to a beginning. The crux of the evolutionist, the tracing of the continuity of crude, formless animal inference, up to the highest structural developments of logical or conceptual thought, still remained. And so, the most powerful attack on the theory of man's descent has come from the philosopher, the logician, and the metaphysical philologist,

* Professor Huxley, Hume, p. 104.

who have combined to urge the old argument that conceptual thought indissolubly bound up with language sets an impassable barrier between man and brute.

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Mr. Darwin's unfinished work has now been taken up by one who adds to the biological knowledge of the expert a considerable acquaintance with psychology. In his previous volume, "Mental Evolution in Animals," Dr. Romanes took a careful psychological survey of the animal world for the purpose of tracing out the successive grades of its mental life. In his recent volume, "Mental Evolution in Man" (Origin of Human Faculty), he essays to trace forward this general movement of mental evolution to the point where logical reasoning or conceptual thought" may be distinctly seen to emerge. That is to say, he adroitly seeks to leap the "impassable" barrier by merely denying its existence. Human reasoning and animal inference are not two widely dissimilar modes of intellection. The one is merely a more complex expansion of the other. If you start either at the human or the animal bank you can pass to the opposite one by a series of stepping-stones. In other words, the higher human product can be seen to have been evolved out of the lower by a continuous process of growth.

Dr. Romanes' present contribution to the theory of evolution is thus emphatically the construction of hypothetical stepping-stones for the purpose of passing smoothly from the territory of animal to that of human reasoning. In order to this, he has on the one hand to follow up animal intellection to its most noteworthy achievements, and on the other hand to trace the process of human intellection down to its crudest forms in the individ ual and in the race.

As it is obviously language which marks off human thought from its analogue in the animal world, our author is naturally concerned to limit the function of language. While allowing as a matter of course that the "conceptual thought" of the logician involves language as its proper instrument or vehicle, he urges that there is a good deal of rudimentary generalizing prior to, and therefore independent of, language. To establish this a careful examination of the higher processes of animal ideation" has to be carried out. In doing this Dr. Romanes introduces a

number of psychological distinctions of a somewhat technical kind. Of these the most important perhaps is that between the time-honored concept of the logician. and the recept. This last corresponds to Mr. Galton's generic image or the common image (Gemeinbild) of the German psychologists. It is an image formed out of a number of slightly dissimilar percepts corresponding to different members of a narrow concrete class, such as dog or water. According to our author animal reasoning remains on the plane of recepts. It is carried on by pictorial representations. At the same time it involves a process of classification or generalizing. A diving-bird must be supposed to have a generalized idea (recept) of water, a dug a generalized idea of man, and so forth. Nay more, this receptual ideation enables the animal to reach " unperceived abstractions," as the idea of the quality of hollowness in the ground, and even "generic ideas of principles," as when the writer's own monkey having discovered the way to take the handle out of the hearth-brush by unscrewing it, proceeded to apply the principle of the screw to the fire-irons, bell-handle, etc.

The author's whole account of this receptual ideation or the logic of recepts is interesting and persuasive. He has, it must be owned, clearly made out the existence of a very creditable power among aniinals of carrying out processes analogous to our own reasonings without any aid from language. Yet a doubt may be entertained whether the author has really got at the bottom of these mental feats. The whole account of the recept is a little unsatisfactory, owing to the circumstance that the writer does not make it quite clear in what sense it involves generalization. He writes in some places as if the fact of the generic image having been formed out of a number of percepts corresponding to different members of a class, e.g. different sheets of water seen by the diving-bird, gives it a general representative character. But this, as indeed Dr. Romanes himself appears to recognize in other places, is by no means a necessary consequence. A generic image may form itself more readily than a particular one, just because the animal is unable to note differences sufficiently to distinguish one sheet of water or one man from another. A baby's application of the common epi

thet "dada" to all bearded persons suggests not that it is carrying out any process of conscious generalization, but rather that it is failing to discriminate where there are striking and interesting features of similarity. It would seem as if an idea only acquires a properly general function after certain higher intellectual processes have been carried out. These inay be roughly described as the active manipulation of percepts and images, by analytical resolution of these into their constituent features, and a due relating or ordering of these elements. Only in this way does it appear possible to reach a rudimentary form of a properly general notion; that is to say, an idea which is consciously apprehended as representing common features among a number of distinct objects. Mere superposition of images may result in a new typical image; but the mind in which such an image forms itself cannot know this to be generic or general till these processes which underlie active thought have been carried out. Now we ourselves carry out these operations of resolving into clements and recombining these elements (analysis and synthesis) largely by the help of class-symbols or general names, which come to be general symbols just because we make use of thein for the purpose of noting down and keeping distinct the results of our successive comparisons and analyses. And the really pressing question for the evolutional psychologist is: How does this manipulation of the mind's imagery get carried out where the serviceable instrument of language is absent? That it does get carried out to some extent may be readily allowed. A sagacious and well-bred collie, who combines with a judicious preference for his owner a certain mild complacency toward mankind at large (with some possible exceptions), may be rightly regarded as having attained to a rudimentary consciousness of the distinction between the general and the particular, the "class" and its constituent members. But how this has been attained Dr. Romanes' account of receptual ideation hardly helps us to understand.

The recept or generic image is the first of the psychological stepping-stones leading across the unfordable Rubicon, and it is also the principal stepping stone. Should this prove to be unstable the transit would certainly become exceedingly

doubtful.

From the recept we pass to the concept, which, according to our author, is in its simplest form a named recept. The addition of the name or sign is thus the differentiating character of the concept. We may have generic images, but no concepts apart from names or other signs.

In order to understand how the concept is marked off from the recept we must accordingly inquire into the psychological conditions and concomitants of the naming process. And this our author does at some length. He gives us a full and detailed account of names and of signs in general, distinguishing different grades of sign-making from the merely indicative pointing or other gesture up to the bestowal of a general symbol with a consciousness of its significance as connoting certain common qualities. Into much of this it is not needful for us to follow Dr. Romanes, but brief reference may be made to one or two points of special importance as bearing on the evolution of the higher conceptual thought. One of the most curious features of Dr. Romanes' theory of concepts and naming is the proposition that the name is bestowed on the idea, and has for its psychological condition an act of introspection. He tells us that before we can bestow a name on a recept we must be able to set this recept before our mind as an object of our own thought. Or, to express the truth in the author's own words, self-consciousness is the necessary presupposition of naming and so of conceptual thought. Before I can name an idea I must reflect on the idea as mine, and before I can judge in the logical sense, I must realize the truth of the proposition as such, that is presumably as truth for me, so that self-consciousness would seem to come in necessarily at all stages of conceptual thought.

This doctrine seems by no means as clear and convincing as the author supposes. He is, as he clearly tells us, confining himself to the psychological treatment of his subject. This being so, it may fairly be urged that in making an act of subjective introspection an essential factor in the process of naming he is psychologically wrong. Is a child when inventing a name for his toy-horse or doll reflecting on his idea as his and naming this idea? Is he not rather thinking wholly about the object, and is not the name given to this external object and not

to the idea in the namer's mind at all? * No doubt the completed process of logical reflection on names and propositions brings in the subjective element, that is to say the mind's consciousness of its ideas and judgments as representations of the realities thought about. But this reference to self, this act of introspection, so far from being involved in every act of conceptual thought, is directly excluded

from it.

This brings one to the next point. In naming things the mind is busily occupied, not with itself and its ideas, but with the "not-self," the qualities and relations of the things perceived or represented. And this suggests first of all that naming, properly so called, only begins when things come to be apprehended as such, that is to say, as wholes or unities. And here the question occurs whether an animal, say a dog that is just coming on to understand a name or two, as that of the baby of the house, can be said to have an organized percept precisely analogous to our own percepts? Dr. Romanes does not raise the question, but in view of the light thrown by modern psychology on the complexity of the process of perception, it might not have been redundant. But waiving this point as possibly snacking of the frivolous, we have to ask whether an animal at the stage of mental development at which it appears to begin to understand names, and even to make use of them, is capable of carrying out the processes that go along with, and in fact constitute, naming in its true and complete sense. These processes have already been referred to in connection with the subject of general ideas. To name an object appears to mean to apprehend that object as a complex of qualities, to make mental separation of these, and so to relate it to other objects both by way of similarity (classification) and dissimilarity (individuation). To use a name intelligently at all would seem to imply that these processes have been carried out in a rough fashion at least. This being so we must be prepared when we endow an animal with the power of naming, whether under the form

I believe that observers of children will endorse the remark that children regard names as objective realities mysteriously bound up with the things, and in a manner necessary to them. A nameless object is, for a child, something incomplete-almost uncanny. NEW SERIES.-VOL. LIV. No. 6.

of understanding or that of using names, to say that it is carrying out in a rudimentary way at least these thought-processes. How, it may be asked, does Dr. Romanes deal with this point?

The answer to this question will be found by turning to new distinctions or "stepping-stones" in the movement of thought-evolution. Our author attaches importance to the distinction between higher and lower forms of the concept. Not only is there the generic image to carry us on smoothly from image to concept, but within the limits of the concept itself there are higher and lower forms. Since, according to our author, a concept is any named idea, a proper understanding of these conceptual grades can only be obtained by a glance at his scheme of names.

Of

There are, according to Dr. Romanes. four stadia in the evolution of the complete logical sign or general name. these the first is (a) the indicative sign, that is a significant tone or gesture intentionally expressive of a mental state, as the characteristic tones by which animals express their emotions. These are not names at all. Next to these in the order of evolution come (b) denotative signs. These, whether used by children or animals, e.g. talking birds, simply mark" particular objects, qualities, and actions." They are learned by association, and are not consciously employed as names. By the use of such a sign the talking bird merely fixes a vocal mark to a particular object, quality, or action it does not extend the sign to any other similar objects, qualities, or actions of the same class; and therefore by its use of that sign does not really connote anything of the particular object, quality, or action which it denotes. Next in order (c) follow connotative signs which involve the "classificatory attribution of qualities to objects." This attribution of qualities may be effected. either by a receptual or a properly conceptual mode of ideation. For example, a parrot had come to use a barking sound when a particular dog appeared on the scene. This sign was afterward extended to other dogs, showing that there was a certain recognition of the common qualities or attributes of the dog. Similarly when the writer's own child, among its first words, used the term star for all brightly shining objects. Here again there was perception of likeness, but no

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setting the term before its mind as an object of thought. Lastly (d) we have the denominative sign, which means a connotative sign consciously bestowed as such with a full conceptual appreciation of its office and purpose as a name.

In this scheme Dr. Romanes evidently recognizes the point we are now dealing with, viz. the implication of a true thought-process in the proper use of a name. He seems to be trying to dispense with this as long as possible, with the view of securing a number of intermediate stepping-stones. Can he be said to have succeeded? Does this hierarchy of signs with its parallel scale of ideation carry us up to logical thought? Is it even intelligible? Let us briefly examine it.

To begin with, it staggers one not a little to find that long before the "classificatory attribution of qualities" is possible, the animal somehow manages to mark "particular qualities," whatever these may mean. How, one asks, can a sign be appended to a quality without becoming a "connotative sign," that is, attributing a quality to a thing? But let us pass to the really important point, viz. the alleged power of the animal, e.g. the talking bird, to extend a sign to different members of a class, and so to attribute common qualities or resemblances to these, while it is unable to form a concept in the full sense. This extension, we are told, takes place in the case of the sign-using bird by receptual ideation. And here the critic may as well confess himself fairly beaten. On the one hand, Dr. Romanes tells us that such a named recept is a concept (lower concept), and moreover that the sign employed is a connotative sign; on the other hand he hastens to assure us that it is not a name, and therefore presumably not a concept, in the rigorous or perfect sense, since the sign is not consciously employed as a sign. Here we seem to have a stepping-stone which it is impossible to define, a sort of tertium quid between the image and the concept which is at once neither and both. Surely if a sound is used for the purpose of marking resemblances and attributing qualities, it is a genuine name, and the mental process underlying it is a germ of true conceptual thought. To say that the parrot attributes qualities, and attributes them in a "classificatory' way too, seems indeed to mean that the bird has got a

considerable way along the conceptual path, and is fairly within sight of our distinctions of thing and quality, individual and class. Why logical reflection on this name as such should be needed to raise such a performance to the dignity of a true conceptual act, one is at a loss to understand. derstand. And indeed, the author himself appears to recognize all this in a dim way at least, when he adds that the connotative sign may be the acccompaniment not only of receptual but of truly conceptual ideation. At the same time this addition may very well complete the reader's perplexity, for it appears to render the next stage of evolution, the denominative sign, unnecessary.

Altogether the author's account of signaccompanied ideation is not quite satisfactory. To begin with, one misses an adequate psychological treatment of signs in general, their nature and function in our mental processes, such as M. Taine has given us in the beginning of his work "On Intelligence." Then our author has left us very much in the dark as to what it is that the sign does for the intellective process, when it begins to be used. On the one hand, since we are told that the mere addition of a name transforms the generic image into a concept," we naturally expect the function of the sign to be a large and important one. On the other hand, we gather that signs can be used at the level of receptual ideation, where, consequently, true conceptual thought is wholly excluded.

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This confusion seems to have its main source in the curious theory that while an idea may be general, it cannot become a true concept till it is introspectively regarded as our idea; and its counterpart, that while a sign may be a true sign and even subserve the attribution of qualities to objects, it cannot grow into the full stature of a name till it is reflected on as a name. By this doctrine, Dr. Romanes seems unwittingly to have substituted the logical for the psychological definition of the concept, and so to have put the latter higher up in the evolutional scale than it ought to be. To this, it must be added that the author appears to have been overanxious, with the view of making the transit smooth, to multiply distinctions. Such intermediate forms as Dr. Romanes here attempts to interpolate in the process of intellectual development cannot in

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