REASON AND DIVERS TONGUES. 269 



imply concepts." He tells us that the Professor " does 

 not sufficiently recognize that there may be a power of 

 bestowing names as signs, without the power of think- 

 ing these signs as names." Mr. Romanes thus implies 

 that a name cannot denote a concept unless he who 

 employs it adverts to the fact of its being a name. 

 But a name signifies a concept, without any advertence 

 on the part of the utterer of it to its conceptual nature, 

 or to the fact that it is a name ; nor is it less con- 

 ceptual in essence because the utterer of it is at the 

 time of his utterance and for some time afterwards 

 unable from circumstances to advert to and recognize 

 the fact that it is a name. Mr. Romanes gives,* as his 

 case in point, the instance of a child of his who "on 

 first beginning to speak had a generalized idea of simi- 

 larity between all kinds of brightly shining objects, and 

 therefore called them all by the one denotative name 

 of ' star.' The astronomer has a general idea answering 

 to his denominative name of ' star ; ' but this has been 

 arrived at after a prolonged course of mental evolution, 

 wherein conceptual analysis has been engaged in con- 

 ceptual classification in many and various directions : 

 it therefore represents the psychological antithesis of 

 the generalized idea, which was due to the merely 

 sensuous associations of preconceptual thought. Ideas, 

 then, as general and generic severally occupy the 

 very antipodes of Mind." This is really nonsense. 

 The child's term *' star," was in its way as good and 

 true a " universal " as the term " star " of the greatest 

 astronomer who ever lived or shall live. But the 



* P- 336- 



