222 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON, 



The absolute enunciation of the copula " is " cannot 

 be needed if we can see that it is meant ; for, as Mr. 

 Romanes has so well said,* so that any one means, 

 the mode of expressing that meaning is 'unimportant. 

 In such childish sentences as that quoted, the copula 

 is evidently present in intention, though it may not 

 be uttered, and as Mr. Romanes further on truly ob- 

 serves, t the greatest of all distinctions in biology is 

 "potentiality." That is just it It is the distinction 

 between a nature which can and a nature which cannot 

 form intellectual conceptions, which is the distinction 

 between man and brute. But this latent power or 

 " potentiality " can only be made known by the out- 

 come. It is this which gives us such abundant reason 

 for regarding new-born infants and defectively organized 

 persons as potentially rational, and which justifies our 

 denying rationality to animals, since they never show us 

 they possess it — while we cannot doubt but that if they 

 did possess it they would soon convince us all of that 

 fact. We thus avoid both horns of our author's dilemma.t 



We conclude that the brute does not "judge," be- 

 cause it does not give the evidence of judgment which 

 a child who says " Dit ki " does give. The child who 

 uses that expression not only makes a judgment, but 

 the things it affirms exist in its mind beside the judg- 



* p. 164. t p. 233. 



$ He says (p. 227), " I put to my opponents the following 

 dilemma. Either you here have judgment, or else you have not. 

 If you hold that this is judgment, you must also hold that animals 

 judge. ... If, on the other hand, you answer that here you have 

 not judgment, I will ask you at what stage in the subsequent 

 development of the child's intelligence you would consider judg- 

 ment to arise?" 



