78 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN, 



scale of generality has been due to a progressive widening 

 of conceptual significance at the hands of symbolical thought 

 In other words, and to revert to my previous terminology, 

 ** higher concepts" can in no case originate de novo: they can 

 only be born of " lower concepts," which, in turn, are the 

 progeny of recepts. 



I must now recur to a point with which we were con- 

 cerned at the close of the last chapter. I there showed that 

 the kind of classification, or mental grouping of ideas, which 

 goes to constitute the logic of recepts, differs from the mental 

 grouping of ideas which constitutes the logic of concepts, in 

 that while the former has to do with similarities which are 

 most obvious to perception, and therefore with analogies 

 which most obtrude themselves upon attention, the latter have 

 to do with similarities which are least obvious to perception, 

 and therefore with analogies which are least readily apparent 

 to the senses. Classification there is in both cases ; but while 

 in the one it depends on the closeness of the resemblances in 

 an act of perception, m the other it is expressive of their 

 remoteness. Now, from this it follows that the more con- 

 ceptual the classification, the less obvious to immediate per- 

 ception are the similarities between the things classified ; and, 

 consequently, the higher a generalization the greater must be 

 the distance by which it is removed from the merely auto- 

 matic groupings of receptual ideation. 



For example, the earliest classification of the animal king- 

 dom with which we are acquainted, grouped together, under 

 the common designation of " creeping things," articulata, 

 moUusca, reptiles, amphibia, and even certain mammals, such 

 as weasels, &c. Here, it is evident, the classification reposed 

 only on the very superficial resemblances which are exhibited 

 by these various creatures in their modes of locomotion. As 

 yet conceptual thought had not been directed to the anatomy 

 of animals ; and, therefore, when it undertook a classification 

 of animals, in the first instance it went no further than to note 

 the most obvious differences as to external form and move- 



