250 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 



able difficulty in the otherwise even path of evolu- 

 tionary explanation. But, as a matter of fact, these 

 writers are no less mistaken about the primitive nature 

 of the substantive verb itself, than they are upon the 

 function which it accidentally discharges in copulation." 



He then refers to the following assertion of ours— 

 before quoted * by Mr. Romanes : " If a brute could 

 think ' is,' brute and man would be brothers. * Is/ as 

 the copula of a judgment, implies the mental separation, 

 and recombination of two terms that only exist united 

 in nature, and can therefore never have impressed the 

 sense except as one thing. And 'is,' considered as a 

 substantive verb, as in the example, ' This man is,' 

 contains in itself the application of the copula of judg- 

 ment to the most elementary of all abstractions — 

 * thing,' or ' something.' Yet if a being has the power 

 of thinking—* thing,' or * something,' it has the power of 

 transcending space and time by dividing or decomposing 

 the phenomenally one. Here is the point where instinct 

 ends and reason begins." 



To this statement of ours f we most thoroughly 

 adhere, and are unable to find that Mr. Romanes can 

 bring one valid argument against it. But he seems 

 to think that people who have no distinct vocables 

 answering to our words " exists," or " existence," cannot 

 have the conceptions thereto answering. His whole 

 contention rests on this, and on the absurd notion that 

 a child who only speaks of himself as " Charley," is not 

 a self-conscious being. Nevertheless we shall see that, 



* p. 167. 



t Originally made in " Lessons from Nature," pp. 226, 227. 



