GENERAL SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS. 399 



signs he expresses his meaning. In other words, although 

 I endeavoured to prove that articulation must have been 

 of unique service in developing these intellectual powers, I 

 was emphatic in representing that, when once these powers 

 are present, it is psychologically immaterial whether they 

 find expression in gesture or in speech. In any case the- 

 psychological distinction between a brute and a man con- 

 sists in the latter being able to mean a proposition ; and 

 the kind of mental act which this involves is technically 

 termed a "judgment." Predication, or the making of a pro- 

 position — whether by gesture, tone, speech, or writing, — is 

 nothing more nor less than the expression of a judgment ; 

 and a judgment is nothing more nor less than the apprehen- 

 sion of whatever meaning it may be that a proposition serves 

 to set forth. 



Now, this is admitted by all my opponents who under- 

 stand the psychology of the subject. Moreover, they allow 

 that if once this chasm of predication were bridged, there 

 would be no further chasm to cross. For it is universally 

 acknowledged that, from the simplest judgment which it is 

 possible to make — and, therefore, from the simplest proposition 

 which it is possible to construct — human intelligence displays 

 an otherwise uninterrupted ascent through all the grades 

 of excellence which it afterwards presents. Here, therefore, 

 we had carefully to consider the psychology of predication. 

 And the result of our analysis was to show that the dis- 

 tinctively human faculty in question really occurs further 

 back than at the place where a mind is first able to construct 

 the formal proposition "A is B." It occurs at the place 

 where a mind is first able to bestow a name, known as such, 

 — to call A A, and B B, with a cognizance that in so doing it 

 is performing an act of conceptual classification. Therefore, 

 unless we extend the term "judgment" so as to embrace such 

 an act of conceptual naming (as well as the act of expressing 

 a relation between things conceptually named), we must 

 conclude that "the simplest element of thought" is not a 

 judgment, but a concept. It is needless again to go over 



