REASON AND PRIMITIVE MAN. 293 



been said. But we may as well, perhaps, once more note 

 the absurd importance attached to the use of the first 

 person in speech, as to which Mr. Romanes says,* " Now, 

 this point I consider one of prime importance. For," he 

 adds, " it furnishes us with direct evidence of the fact 

 that, long after mankind had begun to speak, and even 

 long after they had gained considerable proficiency in 

 the art of articulate language, the speakers still continued 

 to refer to themselves in that same kind of objective 

 phraseology as is employed by a child before the dawn 

 of self-consciousness. . . . The outward and visible sign 

 of this inward and spiritual grace is given in the sub- 

 jective use of pronominal words." All this we once 

 more utterly deny. A man, pointing to himself, may, 

 by that alone, as truly say " I " mentally, as if he uttered 

 that vocable in every known language which possesses 

 such a term. 



"But if these things," he argues,! "admit of no 

 question in the case of an individual human mind — 

 if in the case of the growing child the rise of self- 

 consciousness is demonstrably the condition to that of 

 conceptual thought, — by what feat of logic can it be 

 possible to insinuate that in the growing psychology of 

 the race there may have been conceptual thought before 

 there was any true self-consciousness?" By what //logi- 

 cal feat, indeed, can such an absurdity as unconscious 

 conception be made to seem possible ? Mr. Romanes's 

 argument is valid but vain, because consciousness 

 exists in the child unable even to speak at all, and 

 therefore may well have existed in tribes of men (if such 

 * p. 388. t Ibid. 



