GEXERAL SUMMARY AXD CGNCLUDIXG REMARKS. 403 



Upon the point, which is no less cogent than would be the 

 case if dogs and monkeys were able to talk. For, without 

 argumentative suicide, none of my opponents can afford to 

 suggest that, up to the age when self-consciousness dawns, 

 the young child is capable of conceptual connotation ; yet 

 it is unquestionable that up to that age a continuous growth 

 of connotation has been taking place, which, beginning with 

 the level that it shares with a parrot, is eventually able to 

 construct what 1 have called " receptual propositions," the 

 precise nature of which I will summarise in a subsequent 

 paragraph. The evidence which I have given of this conno- 

 tative extension of denotative names by children before the 

 age at which self-consciousness supervenes — and, therefore, 

 prior to the very condition which is required for conceptual 

 ideation — is, I think, overwhelming. And I do not see how 

 its place in my argument can be gainsaid by any opponent, 

 except at the cost of ignoring my distinction between conno- 

 tation as receptual and conceptual. Yet to do this would be 

 to surrender his whole case. Either there is a distinction, 

 or else there is not a distinction, between connotation that 

 is receptual, and connotation that is conceptual. If there is 

 no distinction, all argument is at an end : the brute and the 

 man are one in kind. But I allow that there is a distinction, 

 and I acknowledge that the distinction resides where it is 

 alleged to reside by my opponents — namely, in the presence 

 or absence of self-consciousness on the part of a mind which 

 bestows a name. Or, to revert to my own terminology, it is 

 the distinction between denotation and denomination. 



Now, in order to analyze this distinction, it became needful 

 further to distinguish between the highest level of receptual 

 ideation that is attained by any existing brute, and those 

 further developments of receptual ideation which arc presented 

 by the growing child, after it parts company with all existing 

 brutes, but before it assumes even the lowest stage of concep- 

 tual ideation — i.e. prior to the dawn of self-consciousness. 

 This subordinate distinction I characterized by the terms 

 " lower recepts " and " higher reccpts." Already I had insti- 



