THE TRANSITION IN THE INDIVIDUAL. 229 



there is a pre-conccptual kind of predication, wherein 

 denotative and connotative terms are brought together 

 without any conceptual cognizance of the relation thus 

 virtually alleged between them. For I have proved in the 

 last chapter that it is not until its third year that a child 

 acquires true or conceptual self-consciousness, and therefore 

 attains the condition to true or conceptual predication. Yet 

 long before that time, as I have also proved, the child forms 

 what I have called rudimentary, or pre-conceptual, and, 

 therefore, unthinking propositions. Such propositions, then, 

 are statements of truth made for the practical purposes of 

 communication ; but they are not statements of truth as true, 

 and therefore not, strictly speaking, propositions at all. 

 They are translations of the logic of recepts ; but not of the 

 logic of concepts. For neither the truth so stated, nor the 

 idea thus translated, can ever have been placed before the 

 mind as itself an object of thought. In order to have been 

 thus placed, the mind must have been able to dissociate 

 this its product from the rest of its structure — or, as Mr 

 Mivart says, to make the things affirmed " exist beside 

 the judgment, not in it." And, in order to do this, the 

 mind must have attained to self-consciousness. But, as 

 just remarked, such is not yet the case with a child of the 

 age in question ; and hence we are bound to conclude 

 that before there is judgment or predication in the sense 

 understood by psychologists (conceptual), there is judgment 

 and predication of a lower order (pre-conceptual), wherein 

 truths are stated for the sake of communicating simple ideas, 

 while the propositions which convey them are not themselves 

 objects of thought. And, be it carefully observed, predication 

 of this rudimentary or pre-conceptual kind is accomplished by 

 the mere apposition of denotative signs, in accordance with 

 the general principles of association. A being the denotative 

 name of an object a, and B the denotative name of a quality 

 or action b, when a b occur together in nature, the relation 

 between them is pre-conceptually affirmed by the mere act 

 of bringing into apposition the corresponding denotations 



