SPEECH. 185 



up to the age at which connotation as merely denotative 

 begins to become also denominative. 



(3) Lower Concepts, comprising the province of con- 

 ceptual 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 ex- 

 cellencies of human thought. 



Higher Recepts, then, are what may be conveniently 

 termed Pre-concepts : * 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 attain- 

 ing self-consciousness. Be it observed that in thus coining the 

 words higher recepts or pre-concepts, I am not in any way pre- 

 judicing 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 prc-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 classifi- 

 cation 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 



* I coin this word on the pattern already furnished by "pre-perception," 

 which was first introduced by Lewes, and is now in general use among psycholo- 

 gists. 



