436 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN 



therefore, yet once again to quote the high authority of 

 Geiger, " Speech created Reason ; before its advent mankind 

 was reasonless." * 



And if this is true of philology, assuredly it is no less true 

 of psychology. P'or " the development of speech is only a copy 

 of that chain of processes, which began with the dawn of 

 [human] consciousness, and eventually ends in the construction 

 of the most abstract idea." f Unless, therefore, it can be shown 

 that my distinction between ideation as receptual and con- 

 ceptual is invalid, I know not how my opponents are to meet 

 the results of the foregoing analysis. Yet, if this distinction 

 should be denied, not only would they require to construct the 

 science of psychology anew ; they would place themselves in 

 the curious position of repudiating the very distinction on 

 which their whole argument is founded. For I have every- 

 where been careful to place it beyond question that what I 

 have called receptual ideation, in all its degrees, is identical 

 with that which is recognized by my opponents as non-con- 

 ceptual ; and as carefully have I everywhere shown that with 

 them I fully recognize the psychological difference between 

 this order of ideation and that which is conceptual. The 

 only point in dispute, therefore, is as to the possibility of a 

 natural transition from the one to the other. It is for them 

 to show the impossibility. This they have hitherto most 

 conspicuously failed to do. On the other hand, I now 

 claim to have established the possibility beyond the reach 

 of a reasonable question. For I claim to have shown 

 that the probability of such a transition having previously 

 occurred in the race, as it now occurs in every individual, 

 is a probability that has been raised tower-like by the ac- 

 cumulated knowledge of the nineteenth century. Or, to 

 vary the metaphor, this probability has been as a torrent, 

 gaining in strength and volume as it is successively fed by 



* Ursprung dcT Sprache, s. 91. The exact words are, "Die Sprache hat die 

 Vernunft erschaffen : vor ihr war der Mensch vernunftlos." It is needless to 

 observe that the word which I liave rendered by its English equivalent " Reason " 

 is here used in the sense of conceptual thought. 



t Wundt, Vorksiatgtn, &rc., ii. 2S2. 



