THE TRANSITION IN THE INDIVIDUAL. 21 y 



I have now reiterated ad nauseam. Turning next to my ana- 

 lysis of their several modes of expression, or of their transla- 

 tion into their severally equivalent systems of signs, we have 

 seen that many of the lower animals are able to communicate 

 their recepts by means of gestures significant of objects, 

 qualities, actions, desires, &c. ; and that in the only case 

 where they are able to articulate, they so communicate their 

 recepts by means of words. Therefore, in a sense, these 

 animals may be said to be using names ; but, in order not to 

 confuse this kind of naming with that which is distinctive of 

 conceptual thought, I have adopted the scholastic terminology, 

 and called the former kind of naming an act of denotating, as 

 distinguished from an act of denominating. Furthermore, 

 seeing that denotative language is able, as above observed, to 

 signify qualities and actions as well as objects, it follows 

 that in the higher receptual {i.e. pre-conceptual) stages of 

 ideation, denotative language is able to construct what I have 

 termed pre-conceptual propositions. These differ from true 

 or conceptual propositions in the absence of true self-con- 

 sciousness on the part of the speaker, who therefore, while 

 communicating receptual knowledge, or stating truths, cannot 

 yet know his own knowledge, or state the truths as true. But 

 it does not appear that a pre-conceptual proposition differs 

 from a conceptual one in any other respect, while it does 

 appear that the one passes gradually into the other with 

 the rise of self-consciousness in every growing child. Now, if 

 all these things are so, we are entitled to affirm that analysis 

 has displayed an uninterrupted transition between the denota- 

 tion of a brute and the predication of a man. For the mere 

 fact that it is the former phase alone which occurs in the 

 brute, while in the man, after having run a parallel course of 

 development, this phase passes into the other — the mere fact 

 that this is so cannot be quoted as evidence that a similai 

 transition never took place in the psychological history of our 

 species, unless it could be shown that when the transition 

 takes place in the psychological history of the individual, it 

 does so in such a sudden and remarkable manner as of itself 



