MENTAL STATES AND PROCESSES. 95 



Moreover, a man does not assign a name " to an idea 

 known as such " (unless, as before said, he is occupied 

 about psychology), but he assigns a name to an object of 

 which he has already formed some sort of conception. 

 How could a man name a thing of which he had no sort 

 of conception whatever ? 



Mr. Romanes remarks* that "names are not con- 

 cerned with particular ideas, strictly so called : concepts, 

 even of the lowest order, have to do with generic ideas." 

 Now, concepts " have to do with " general ideas ; but, 

 nevertheless, there are such things as individual con- 

 cepts. We may have an idea of some individual man 

 or animal, the absolute individuality (or "hsecceity")t of 

 which forms so essential a part of our conception of 

 it, that the conception would be essentially different 

 without it. 



But Mr. Romanes well expresses one relation in 

 which intellectual perception stands to its sensuous 

 antecedents. "The Logos," he says,:|: "does not come 

 upon the scene of its creative power to find only that 

 which is without form and void : rather does it find a 

 fair structure of no mean order of system, shaped by 

 prior influences, and, so far as thus shaped, a veritable 

 cosmos." 



The reader has, however, in reading Mr. Romanes's 

 work, to be almost constantly on his guard against mis- 

 leading expressions which are very frequently introduced 

 — we are convinced, in simple unconsciousness. Thus 

 we read, "All concepts in their last resort depend on 

 recepts, just as in their turn recepts depend on percepts." 

 * p. 76. t A very convenient scholastic term. J p. 77, 



