SPEECH, 189 



What, then, are we to say about the faculty of judgment 

 in relation to these three stages of ideation — namely, the 

 receptual, pre-conceptual, and conceptual ? We can only 

 institute the parallel and consequent distinction between 

 judgment as receptual, pre-conceptual, and conceptual.* As 

 now so often stated, the distinguishing features of a judgment 

 as fully displayed in any act of formal predication, are the 

 bringing together in self-conscious thought of two concepts, 

 and the distinguishing of some relation between them as such. 

 Therefore we do not say that a brute judges when, without 

 any self-conscious thought, it brings together certain remini- 

 scences of its past experience in the form of recepts, and 

 translates for us the results of its ideation by the performance 

 of what Mr. Mivart calls " practical inferences." Therefore, 

 also, if a brute which is able to name each of two recepts 

 separately (as is done by a talking bird), were to name the 

 two recepts simultaneously when thus combined in an act of 

 "practical inference," although there would then be the out- 

 ward semblance of a proposition, we should not be strictly 

 right in calling it a proposition. It would, indeed, be the 

 statement of a truth perceived; but not the statement of a 

 truth perceived as trne.\ 



made a mistake in this kind of nomenclature, and spontaneously called all pictorial 

 representations of men "Papa," of women "Mama," and of children "Ilda" 

 — the latter being the name which she had given to her younger brother. Moreover, 

 if a picture-book were given into her hands upside-down, she would immediately 

 perceive and rectify the mistake ; and whenever she happened to see a pictorial 

 representation of an animal— as, for instance, on a screen or wall-paper — she would 

 touch it and utter the sound that was her name for that animal. With a third child 

 who was still wholly speechless at eighteen months, I tried the experiment of spread- 

 ing out a number of photographic portraits, and asking him "Which is mamma? 

 Which is papa ? " &c. Without any hesitation he indicated them all correctly. 



* By using the word "judgment " in all these cases I am in no way prejudicincr 

 the argument of my opponents. The explanation which immediately follows in 

 the text is sufficient to show that the qualifying terms "receptual" and "pre- 

 conceptual" effectually guard against any abuse of the term — quite as much, for 

 instance, as when psychologists speak of "perceptual judgments," or "uncon- 

 scious judgments," or " intuitive judgments," in connection with still lower levels 

 of mental operation. And it seems to me better thus to qualify an existing term 

 than to add to the already large number of words I have found it necessary to coin. 



t I may here remark that this possibility of receptual predication on the part 



