IS MAN THE ONLY BEASONER? 509 



because tlie 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 epithet " dada " to all bearded 

 persons suggests not that it is carrying out any process of con- 

 scious 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 func- 

 tion after certain higher intellectual processes have been carried 

 out. These may 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 ele- 

 ments. Only in this way does it appear possible to reach a rudi- 

 mentary form of a properly general notion ; that is to say, an idea 

 which is consciously apprehended as representing common feat- 

 ures 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 can not 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 elements and recombining these elements (anal- 

 ysis and synthesis) largely by the help of class-symbols or general 

 names, which come to be general symbols just because we make 

 use of them 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 man- 

 kind at large (with some possible exceptions), may be rightly re- 

 garded 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 

 i)r. Eomanes's 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 un- 

 stable, 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 



