204 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



with a continuous advance in degree as distinguished from a 

 difference of kind. 



First, then, let it be observed that in these rudimentary 

 judgments we already have a considerable advance upon those 

 which we have considered as occurring in animals. For in a 

 child between the second and third years we have these 

 rudimentary judgments, not only formed by the logic of 

 recepts, but expressed by a logic of pre-concepts in a manner 

 which is indistinguishable from predication, except by the 

 absence of self-consciousness. " Dit dow ga " is a proposition 

 in every respect, save in the absence of the copula ; which, as 

 I have previously shown, is a matter of no psychological 

 moment. The child here perceives a certain fact, and states 

 the perception in words, /;/ order to comimuiicate information 

 of the fact to other minds — just as an animal, under similar 

 circumstances, will use a gesture or a vocal sign ; but the 

 child is no more able than the animal designedly to make to 

 its own mind the statement which it makes to another. 

 Nevertheless, as the child has now at its disposal a much 

 more efficient system of sign-making than has the animal, 

 and moreover enjoys the double advantage of inheriting a 

 strong propensity to communicate perceptions by signs, and 

 of being surrounded by the medium of speech ; we can 

 scarcely wonder that its practical judgments (although still 

 unattended by self-consciousness) should be more habitually 

 expressed by signs than are the practical judgments of 

 animals, ^ox need we wonder, in view of the same consider- 

 ations, that the predicative phrases as used by a child at this 

 age show the great advance upon similar phrases as used by 

 a parrot, in that subjects and predicates are no longer bound 

 together in particular phrases — or, to revert to a previous 

 simile, are no longer stereotyped in such particular phrases, 

 but admit of being used as movable types, in order to 

 construct, by different combinations, a variety of different 

 phrases. To a talking bird a phrase, as we have seen, is no 

 more in point of signification than a single word ; while to 

 the child, at the stage which we are considering, it is very 



