76 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN, 



of intellectual territory which is covered by what are called 

 concepts. At the lowest level they are nothing more than 

 named recepts ; beyond that level they become the names of 

 other concepts ; and eventually they become the named 

 products of the highest and most complex co-ordinations of 

 concepts which have been achieved by the human mind. By 

 the term Lower Concepts, then, I will understand those which 

 are nothing more than named recepts, while by the term 

 Higher Concepts I will understand those which are compounded 

 of other concepts. 



The next thing I wish to make clear is that concepts of 

 the lower order of which I speak, notwithstanding that they 

 are the simplest kind of concepts possible, are already some- 

 thing more than the names of particular ideas : they are the 

 names of what I have called generic ideas, or recepts. We 

 may search through the whole dictionary of any language and 

 not find a single word which stands as a name for a truly 

 particular idea — i.e. for the memory of a particular percept. 

 Proper names are those which most nearly approach this 

 character ; but even proper names are really names of recepts 

 (as distinguished from particular percepts), seeing that every 

 object to which they are applied is a highly complex object, 

 presenting many and diverse qualities, all of which require to 

 be registered in memory as appertaining to that object if it 

 is again to be recognized as the same. 



Names, then, are not concerned with particular ideas, 

 strictly so called : concepts, even of the lowest order, have to 

 do with generic ideas. Furthermore, the generic ideas with 

 which they have to do are for the most part highly generic : 

 even before a recept is old enough to be baptized — or 

 sufficiently far developed to be admitted as a member of the 

 body conceptual, — it is already a highly organized product of 

 ideation. We have seen in the last chapter how wonderfully 

 far the combining power of imagination is able to go without 

 the aid of language ; and the consequence of this is, that 

 before the advent of language mind is already stored with a 



