LOGIC OF CONCEPTS. 83 



the scaffolding may be withdrawn, and yet leave the edifice 

 as stable as before. In this way familiar concepts become, 

 as it were, degraded into recepts, but recepts of a degree of 

 complexity and organization which would not have been 

 possible but for their conceptional parentage. With Geiger 

 we may say, " So ist denn uberall die Sprache primar, der 

 Begriff entsteht durch das Wort." * Yet this does not hinder 

 that with Friedrich Muller we should add, " Sprechen ist 

 nicht Denken, sondern es ist nur Ausdruck des Denkens."t 



With the exception of the last paragraph, my analysis, as 

 already observed, will probably not be impugned by any 

 living psychologist, either of the evolutionary or non-evolu- 

 tionary schools ; for, with the exception of this paragraph, I 

 have purposely arranged my argument so as thus far to avoid 

 debatable questions. And it will be observed that even this 

 paragraph has really nothing to do with the issue which lies 

 before us ; seeing that the question with which it deals is 

 concerned only with intellectual processes exclusively human. 

 But now, after having thus fully prepared the way by a 

 somewhat lengthy clearing of preliminary ground, we have to 

 proceed to the question whether it is conceivable that the 

 faculty of speech, with all the elaborate structure of ideation 

 to which it has led, can have arisen by way of a natural 



* Ur sprung der sprache, s. 91. 



t Grundriss der Sprach'vissenshaft, i., s. 16. It will be observed that tliere 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 con- 

 dition 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 Miiller, Mr. Francis 

 Galton, myself, and others, in Nalure, May and June, 1887 (since published in a 

 separate form) ; between the former and Mr. Mivart, in Nature, March, 1SS8. 

 Also an article by Mr. Justice Stephen in the Niueteenth Century, April, 188S. 

 Prof. Whitney has some excellent remarks on this subject in his Language and the 

 Study of Language, pp. 405-41 1. 



