NATURE 



313 



THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, W 



MIND IN MAN AND BRUTE. 

 Mental Evolution in Man : Origin of Human Faculty. 

 By G. J. Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S. (London : 

 Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co., 1888.) 



THE subject with which Mr. Romanes deals in this 

 volume is one which presents great, if not insuper- 

 able, difficulties. Whether or not there be a difference 

 in kind— that is, in origin — between the mind of man and 

 the mind of the brute, it is only in terms of the former 

 that the latter can be interpreted. We can only reach 

 minds other than our own by an ejective process of infer- 

 ence. Fully admitting that the evidence is amply suffi- 

 cient to justify us in inferring the existence of mental 

 processes in our dumb companions, the fact remains that 

 there are enormous difficulties in getting at the nature of 

 these mental processes. Our mental life is carried on in 

 a rare atmosphere of self-conscious conceptual thought. 

 And before we can put ourselves ejectively into the place 

 of the brute, we have to divest ourselves of our conceptual 

 habiliments ; nay, more, we have — if current views be cor- 

 rect — to strip off the inner garment of our self-conscious- 

 ness. Hence, some thinkers are driven to the extremity 

 of agnosticism in this matter, and hold with Prof. Max 

 Miiller that, "according to the strict rules of positive 

 philosophy, we have no right to assert or deny anything 

 with reference to the so-called mind of animals." This, 

 no doubt, is going too far. But, seeing that mind in the 

 animal world and in very young children has to be inter- 

 preted not only by, but also in terms of, human con- 

 sciousness, it behoves the investigator to at least express 

 his opinions with becoming modesty. I cannot say that 

 Mr. Romanes's modesty is obtrusive. There is, indeed, 

 a tone of " cocksureness " ill befitting the subject in 

 hand, and painfully marring the dignity of a work the 

 ability and earnestness of which are conspicuous. 



The problem which Mr. Romanes has set himself to 

 solve in this volume is the genesis of self-consciousness 

 and conceptual thought. He therefore begins by analyz- 

 ing and classifying /^.?aj. " Psychologists," he says, "are 

 agreed that what they call particular ideas, or ideas of 

 particular objects, are of the nature of mental images, or 

 memories of such objects — as when the sound of a friend's 

 voice brings before my mind the idea of that particular 

 man. Psychologists are further agreed that what they 

 term general ideas arise out of an assemblage of par- 

 ticular ideas, as when, from my repeated observation of 

 numerous individual men, I form the idea of man, or of 

 an abstract being who comprises the resemblances be- 

 tween all these individual men, without regard to their 

 individual differences. Hence, particular ideas answer 

 to percepts, while general ideas answer to concepts.'' 

 This twofold classification, thus broadly and somewhat 

 unsatisfactorily stated, Mr. Romanes deems inadequate. 

 Defining idea as a generic term to signify indifferently 

 any product of imagination, from the memory of a sen- 

 suous impression up to the result of the most abstract 

 generalization, he classifies as under. 



A " simple idea," " particular idea," or " concrete idea," 

 is the mere memory of a particular sensuous perception. 

 Vol. xxxix.— No. 1005. 



A " compound idea," " complex idea," or " mixed idea," 

 is the combination of simple ideas into that kind of 

 composite which is possible without the aid of language. 



A "general idea," "abstract idea," "concept," or 

 " notion," is that kind of composite idea which is ren- 

 dered possible by the aid of language, or by the process 

 of naming abstractions as abstractions. 



With regard to these, he says that the first division has 

 to do only with what are termed percepts, while the 

 last has to do with what are termed concepts. And there 

 being no word to meet the middle division, he coins the 

 term recept (= generic idea), which appears to him ex- 

 actly to meet the requirements of the case, because in 

 receiving such ideas the mind is passive, whereas in 

 conceiving abstract ideas the mind is active. 



I do not regard this classification as very satisfactory, 

 and I doubt whether it will find much favour among 

 modern psychologists. Regarding, as I do, every percept 

 as a synthesis effected by the mind at the bidding of a 

 sense-impression, I am not prepared to regard the mind 

 as passive in what Mr. Romanes calls " reception." And 

 I think that a subdivision of percepts into particular and 

 generic would have been sufficient to meet all the require- 

 ments of Mr. Romanes's argument. As it is, he narrows 

 down perception to a very limited province ; for he admits 

 that the ideation of infants is from the first generic. 

 Throughout the whole of this chapter on ideas, Mr. 

 Romanes seems to ride the "sensitive plate" analogy 

 too hard. His percepts are photographs of particular 

 objects ; his recepts are composite photographs, like Mr. 

 Galton's picture of the average blackguard. But this is 

 to lose sight of the activity of mind, which, automatic 

 though it be, is none the less real. In the great body of 

 percepts and recepts there is far more give than take in 

 the mental operation involved. 



Turning to one of the examples of what, I presume, 

 Mr. Romanes regards as a recept, he says : " All the 

 higher animals have general ideas of * good-for-eating '' 

 and * not-good-for-eating,' quite apart from any particu- 

 lar objects of which either of these qualities happens to 

 be characteristic." I very much question whether any 

 animals have the power of isolating qualities, implied in- 

 the words I have italicized. Nor should I call the idea: 

 of such an isolated quality either a percept or a recept. 

 A dog may, by an automatic action of the mind, build 

 into his percepts or recepts the element of niceness or 

 nastiness as part of the object constructed by mental 

 synthesis. But this is a very different thing from having 

 a general (or generic) idea of niceness or nastiness apart 

 from the object. Such an idea is the result of analysis, 

 and the hanging of the isolated results of analysis on 

 separate name-pegs. 



Much of Mr. Romanes's work is necessarily devoted 

 to language, and here, although he does not profess to 

 speak as an expert, will be found much that will repay 

 careful perusal. He introduces the term " denominative "" 

 for a sign consciously bestowed as such with a full con- 

 ceptual appreciation of its office and purpose as a name. 

 He considers that a parrot may use bow-wow as a de- 

 notative sign for a particular dog, and then extend it to 

 other dogs, thus using it as a connotative sign. No parrot, 

 however, could employ a word in its truly denominative 

 sense. This is a conceptual, as opposed to a merely re^ 



P 



