53 SSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



is worth comparing with Mr. Romanes' view : 

 cuaOrimg, sensation, which is common, though in 

 different degrees, to all animals, is what Mr. 

 Romanes means by percepts ; e/unrsipia, experience, 

 the result of many particular " percepts " retained 

 by memory, corresponds to his " receptual idea- 

 tion." But it is in man only that we get the 

 true apxn, in Mr. Romanes' language the "con- 

 ceptual ideation." The child subsumes in its 

 intellectual life the processes of the lower animals ; 

 but it rises above them, and till it rises above them 

 it is only potentially human. Let us hear Mr. 

 Romanes : 



"The whole distinction between man and brute resides 

 in the presence or absence of conceptual thought, which in 

 man is but the expression of the presence or absence of self- 

 consciousness." "The distinction between a recept and a 

 concept is really the only distinction about which there can 

 be no dispute." " A receptual judgment is always separated 

 from a conceptual inference or true judgment by the immense 

 distinction that it is not itself an object of knowledge." 



It is all the difference between " truth perceived 

 and truth perceived as true," and this difference 

 is reflected in language : 



" The line must be drawn, not at language or sign-making, 

 but at that particular kind of sign-making which we under- 

 stand by speech." " So that a man means, it matters not 

 by what system of signs he expresses his meaning ; the dis- 

 tinction between him and the brute consists in his being able 

 to mean a proposition!' 1 " This is the ' Rubicon of mind ' 

 which separates the brute from the man." 



