IDEAS. 37 



binding them up as a bundle of similars, and labelling the 

 bundle with a name. But in order to form a recept, the mind 

 need perform no such intentional actions : the similarities 

 among the percepts with which alone this order of ideation is 

 concerned, are so marked, so conspicuous, and so frequently 

 repeated in observation, that in the very moment of perception 

 they sort themselves, and, as it were, fall into their appropriate 

 classes spontaneously, or without any conscious effort on the 

 part of the percipient. We do not require to name stones to 

 distinguish them from loaves, nor fish to distinguish them 

 from scorpions. Class distinctions of this kind are conveyed 

 in the very act of perception — e.g. the case of the infant 

 with the glass bottles, — and, as we shall subsequently see, in 

 the case of the higher animals admit of being carried to a 

 wonderful pitch of discriminative perfection. Recepts, then, 

 are spontaneous associations, formed unintentionally as what 

 may be termed unperceived abstractions.* 



* In this connection I may quote the following very lucid statements from a 

 paper by the Secretary of the Victoria Institute, which is directed against the 

 general doctrine th.it I am endeavouring to advance, i.e. that there is no distinc- 

 tion of kind between brute and human psychology. 



"Abstraction and generalization only become intellectual when they are 

 utilized by the intellect. A bull is irritated by a red colour, and not by the object 

 of which redness is a property ; but it would be absurd to say that the bull 

 voluntarily abstracts the phenomenon of reiiness from these objects. The process 

 b essentially one of abstraction, and yet at the same time it is essentially 

 automatic" And with reference to the ideation of brutes in general, he con- 

 tinues : — "Certain qualities of an object engage his attention to the exclusion 

 of other qualities, which are disregarded ; and thus he abstracts automatically. 

 The image of an object having been imprinted on his memory, the feelings which 

 it excitetl are also imprinted on his memory, and on the reproduction of the image 

 these feelings and the actions resulting therefrom are reproduced, likewise 

 automatically : thus he acts from experience, automatically still. The im.-ige 

 may be the im.-\ge of the same object, or the image of another object of the same 

 species, but the effect is the same, and thus he generalizes, automatically also." 

 Lastly, speaking of inference, he says: — "This method is common to man and 

 brute, and, like the faculties of abstraction, &c.,it only becomes intellectual when 

 we choose to make it so." (E. J. Morshead, in an essay on Comf'arative Psycholoi^', 

 Journ. Vic. Inst., vol. v., pj). 303, 304, 187a) In the work of M. Binet alre.idy 

 alluded to, the distinction in question is also recognized. For he says that the 

 " fusion " of sensations which t.^kes place in an act of perception is performed 

 automatically (/.f. is rcccptual) ; while the "fusion" o( pcrcipiioiis which are 

 concerned in an act of reason is performed intentionally (i>. is conceptual). 



