1 84 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



subsequently attains, there is a large intervening province 

 due to the acquisition of a higher receptual life. Or, to put 

 the same thing in other words, there is a large tract of idea- 

 tion lying between the highest receptual life of a brute and 

 the lowest conceptual life of a man : this tract is occupied by 

 the growing child from the time at which its ideation 

 surpasses that of the brute, until it begins to attain the 

 faculty of self-conscious reflection. This intervening tract of 

 ideation, therefore, may be termed "higher receptual," in 

 contradistinction to the lower receptual ideation which a 

 younger child shares with the lower animals. 



At this point I must ask the reader carefully to fasten in 

 his mind these various distinctions. Nor will it be difficult 

 to do so after a small amount of attention. It will be 

 remembered that in Chapter IV. I instituted a distinction 

 between concepts as higher and lower, which was methodically 

 similar to that which I have now to institute between recepts. 

 A " lower concept " was defined to be nothing more than a 

 "named recept," * while a "higher concept" was understood 

 to be one that is " compounded of other concepts " — i.e. the 

 named result of a grouping of concepts, as when we speak of 

 the " mechanical equivalent of heat." So that altogether we 

 have four stages of ideation to recognize, each of which 

 occupies an immensely large territory of mind. These four 

 stages I will present in serial order. 



(i) Lower Recepts, comprising the mental life of all the 

 lower animals, and so including such powers of receptual 

 connotation as a child when first emerging from infancy 

 shares with a parrot. 



(2) Higher Recepts, comprising all the extensive tract of 

 ideation that belongs to a child between the time when its 

 powers of receptual connotation first surpass those of a parrot, 



* Or, as we may now more closely define it, a denominated recept. A merely 

 denotated recept (such as a parrot's name for its recept of dog) is not conceptual, 

 even in the lowest degree. In other words, named recepts, merely as such, are 

 not necessarily concepts. Whether or not they are concepts depends on whether 

 the naming has been an act of denotation or of denomination — conscious only, or 

 likewise j^^-conscious. 



