176 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



the conditions to the occurrence of cither. What these con- 

 ditions are I will consider later on. Meanwhile, and in order 

 that we may be perfectly clear about the all-important dis- 

 tinction which is before us, I will re-state it in other terms. 



What is the difference between a recept and a concept ? 

 I cannot answer this question more clearly or concisely than 

 in the words of the writer in the Dublin Review before quoted. 

 " The difference is all the difference between seeing two 

 things united, and seeing them as united." The difference 

 is all the difference between perceiving relations, and per- 

 ceiving the relations as related, or between cognizing a truth, 

 and recognizing that truth as true. The diving bird, which 

 avoids a rock and fearlessly plunges into the sea, unquestion- 

 ably displays a receptual knowledge of certain " things," 

 " relations," and " truths ; " but it does not know any of them 

 as such : although it knows them, it does not knoza tJiat it 

 knows them : however well it knows them, it does not think 

 them, or regard the things, the relations, and the truths which 

 it perceives as themselves the objects of perception. Now, over 

 and above this merely receptual knowledge, man displays 

 conceptual, which means that he is able to do all these things 

 that the bird cannot do : in other words, he is able to set 

 before his mind all the recepts which he has in common with 

 the bird, to think about them as recepts, and by the mere 

 fact, or in the very act of so doing, to convert them into 

 concepts. Concepts, then, differ from recepts in that the}- 

 are recepts which have themselves become objects of know- 

 ledge, and the condition to their taking on this important 

 character is the presence of self-consciousness in the percipient 

 mind.* 



I have twice stated the distinction as clearly as I am able ; 

 but, in order to do it the fullest justice, I will now render it 

 a third time in the words of Mr. Mivart — some of whose 

 terms I have borrowed in the above paragraph, and therefore 



* Of course concepts may be something more than mere recepts known as 

 such : they may be the knowledge of other concepts. But with this higher stage 

 of conceptual ideation I am not here concerned. 



