90 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 



parallelism of results in the effects of one set of ob- 

 jective external conditions acting upon two distinct 

 kinds of internal subjective powers — one sentient, the 

 other rational. The wonders of vegetable life, of senti- 

 ency, and of intellect, are all parallel and similarly 

 inexplicable. In plants we have chemical combinations 

 organized and vivified ; in animals we have vegetative, 

 organic life raised to sentiency and receptive power ; 

 and in man we have animal, sentient life raised to 

 perception and conceptual power. 



His fourth chapter Mr. Romanes devotes to a con- 

 sideration of the " Logic of Concepts." He begins it by 

 affirming (what no reasonable person can deny) the great 

 importance of " sign-making " and " symbols " for the 

 growth and advance of intellectual life. But he gives 

 us no definition or explanation as to what he means by 

 a sign, while he makes observations, by the way, which 

 must not be allowed to pass without criticism. Thus 

 he says : * " By the help of these symbols we climb into 

 higher and higher regions of abstraction : by thinking in 

 verbal signs we think, as it were, with the semblance of 

 ideas : we dispense altogether with the necessity of 

 actual images, whether of percepts or of recepts : we 

 quit the sphere of sense, and rise to that of thought." 

 But so long as life, as we know it, lasts, we can never 

 dispense with the use of mental images (phantasmata)t 

 of some kind — whether it be of sights or of sounds or of 

 some form of our own activity. Such images, however, 

 are not the "semblance of ideas," but survivals and 

 reminiscences of sensuous experiences. 



* p. 71. t As to this, see " On Truth," pp. 87, 88. 



