I90 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



Now, if all this be admitted in the case of a brute — as it 

 must be by any one who takes his stand on the faculty of 

 true or conceptual judgment, — obviously it must also be 

 admitted in the case of the growing child. In other words, 

 if it can be proved that a child is able to state a truth before 

 it can state a truth as true, it is thereby proved that in the 

 psychological history of every human being there is first 

 the incompleted kind of judgment required for dealing with 

 receptual knowledge, and so for stating truths perceived, and 

 next the completed judgment, which deals with conceptual 

 knowledge, and so is enabled to state truths perceived as true. 

 Of course the condition to the raising of this lower kind of 

 judgment (if for convenience we agree so to term it) into the 

 higher, is given by the advent of self-consciousness; and 

 therefore the place where statement of truth passes into 

 predication of truth must be determined by the place at which 

 this kind of consciousness first supervenes. Where it does 

 first supervene we shall presently have to consider. Mean- 

 while I am but endeavouring to make clear the fact that, 

 unless my opponents abandon their position altogether, they 

 must allow that there is soi7ie difference to be recognized 

 between the connotative powers of a parrot and the connota- 

 tive powers of a man. But if they do allow this, they must 

 further allow that between the place where the connotative 

 powers of a child first surpass those of a parrot, and the place 

 where those powers first become truly conceptual, there is a 

 large tract of ideation which it is impossible to ignore. In 

 order, therefore, not to prejudice the question before us, I have 



of talking birds is not entirely hypothetical : I have some evidence that it may be 

 actually realized. For instance, a correspondent writes of a cockatoo which had 

 been ill: — "A friend came the same afternoon, and asked him how he was. With 

 his head on one side and one of his cunning looks, he told her that he v/as 

 * a litile better ; ' and when she asked him if he had not been very ill, he said, 

 'Cockie better; Cockie ever so much better.' . . . When I came back (after a 

 prolonged absence) he said, ' Mother come back to little Cockie : Mother come 

 back to little Cockie. Come and love me and give me pretty kiss. Nobody pity 

 poor Cockie. The boy beat poor Cockie.' He always told me if Jes scolded or 

 beat him. He always told me as soon as he saw me, and in such a pitiful tone. 

 . . . The remarkable thing about this bird is that he does not merely ' talk ' like 

 parrots in general, but so habitually talks to the pir/ose." 



