21 8 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



to indicate that the intellect of the individual has there and 

 then undergone a change of kind. 



Such being an outline sketch of my argument, I will 

 now proceed to fill in the details, taking in historical order 

 the various stages of ideation which I have named — i.e. the 

 receptual, the pre-conceptual, and the conceptual. 



Seeing that this is, as I apprehend, the central core of the 

 question, I will here furnish some additional instances of 

 receptual and pre-conceptual ideation as expressed by denota- 

 tive and connotative signs on the part of a child which I care- 

 fully observed for the purpose. 



At eighteen months old my daughter, who was late in 

 beginning to speak, was fond of looking at picture-books, and 

 as already stated in a previous chapter, derived much pleasure 

 from naming animals therein represented, — saying Ba for a 

 sheep, Moo for a cow, uttering a grunt for a pig, and throwing 

 her head up and down with a bray for a horse or an ass. 

 These several sounds and gestures she had been taught by 

 the nurse as noun-substantives, and she correctly applied 

 them in every case, whether the picture-book happened to be 

 one with which she was familiar or one which she had never 

 seen before ; and she would similarly name all kinds of ani- 

 mals depicted on the wall-paper, chair-covers, &c., in strange 

 houses, or, in short, whenever she met with representations of 

 objects the nursery names of which she knew. Thus there is 

 no doubt that, long before she could form a sentence, or in any 

 proper sense be said to speak, this child was able to denote 

 objects by voice and gesture. At this time, also, she correctly 

 used a limited number of denotative words significant of 

 actions — i.e. active verbs. 



Somewhat later by a few weeks she showed spontaneously 

 the faculty of expressing an adjective. Her younger brother 

 she had called " Ilda," and soon afterwards she extended 

 the name to all young children.* Later still, while looking 



* The boy's name was Ernest, and was thus called by all other members of the 

 household. As I could not find any imitative source of the dissimilar name used 



