GENERAL SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS. 413 



propositions are made for the practical purposes of commu- 

 nication, or without the mind pausing to contemplate the pro- 

 positions in the light of self-consciousness. No doubt in many 

 cases, or in those where highly abstract ideation is concerned, 

 this independence of the two faculties is more apparent than 

 real : it arises from each having undergone so much elabo- 

 ration by the assistance which it has derived from the other, 

 that both are now in possession of a large body of organized 

 material on which to operate, without requiring, whenever they 

 are exercised, to build up the structure of this material ab 

 initio. When I say " Heat is a mode of motion," I am using 

 what is now to me a mere verbal sign, which expresses an 

 external fact : I do not require to examine my own ideas 

 upon the abstract relation which the proposition sets forth, 

 although for the original attainment of these ideas I had to 

 exercise many and complex efforts of conceptual thought. 

 But although I hold this to be the true explanation of the 

 apparent independence of predication and introspection in 

 all cases of highly abstract thought, I am convinced, on the 

 ground of adequate reasons given, that in all cases where 

 those lower orders of ideation are concerned to which I 

 have so often referred as receptual and pre-conceptual, the 

 independence is not only apparent, but real. Now, if the 

 reasons which I have assigned for this conclusion are ade- 

 quate — and they are reasons sanctioned by Mill, — it follows 

 that the ideation concerned in ordinary predication becomes 

 so closely affiliated with that which is expressed in the lower 

 levels of sign-making, that even if the connecting links were 

 not supplied by the growing child, no one would be justified, 

 on psychological grounds alone, in alleging any difference of 

 kind between one level and another. The object of all sign- 

 making is communication, and from our study of the lower 

 animals we know that communication first has to do exclu- 

 sively with recepts, while from our study of the growing child 

 we know that it is the signs used in the communication of 

 recepts which first lead to the formation of concepts. For 

 concepts are first of all named recepts, known as such ; and 



