2i6 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



such. But although we have in this distinction what I agree 

 with my opponents in regarding as the greatest single 

 distinction that is to be met with in psychology, I altogether 

 object to their mode of analyzing it. For what they do is to 

 take the concept in its most highly developed form, and then 

 contrast this with the recept of an animal. Nay, as we have 

 seen, they even go beyond a concept, and allege that "the 

 simplest element of thought" is a judgment as bodied forth 

 in a proposition — ix. tzvo concepts pltcs the predication of a 

 relationship between them ! Truly, we might as well allege 

 that the simplest element of matter is H2 S O4, or the 

 simplest element of sound a bar of the C Minor Symphony. 

 Obviously, therefore, or as a mere matter of the most 

 rudimentary psychological analysis, if we say that the simplest 

 element of thought is a judgment, we must extend the 

 meaning of this word from the mental act concerned in full 

 predication, to the mental act concerned in the simplest 

 conception. 



And not only so. Not only have my opponents committed 

 the slovenly error of regarding a predicative judgment as 

 " the simplest element of thought ; " they have also omitted 

 to consider that even a concept requires to be analyzed with 

 respect to its antecedents, before this the really simplest 

 element of thought can be pointed to as proving a psycholo- 

 gical distinction of kind in the only known intelligence which 

 presents it. Now, the result of my analysis of the concept 

 has been to show that it is preceded by what I have termed 

 pre-concepts, which admit of being combined into what I 

 have termed nascent, rudimentary, or pre-conceptual judg- 

 ments. In other words, we have seen that the receptual life 

 of man reaches a higher level of development than the recep- 

 tual life of brutes, even before it passes into that truly concep- 

 tual phase which is distinguished by the presence of self- 

 conscious reflection. In order, therefore, to mark off this 

 higher receptual life of a human being from the lower recep- 

 tual life of a brute, I have used the terms just mentioned. 



So much, then, for these several stages of ideation, which 



