2/8 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



" generality " than belongs to what I have called a " pre-con- 

 cept," i.e. a " named recept." But precisely the same con- 

 siderations apply to both. For, even supposing that a named 

 recept was originally a word used only to designate a " par- 

 ticular" as distinguished from a "generic" idea, obviously it 

 would have stood but a poor chance of surviving as a root 

 unless it had first undergone a sufficient degree of extension to 

 have become what I call receptually connotative. A proper 

 name, for instance, could not, as such, become a root. Not 

 until it had become extended to other persons or things of 

 a like class could it have secured a chance of surviving as a 

 root in the struggle for existence. As a matter of fact, I 

 think it most probable — not only from general considerations, 

 but also from a study of the spontaneous names first coined 

 in "baby-language," — that aboriginal speech w^as concerned 

 simultaneously with the naming both of particular and of 

 generic ideas — i.e. of individual percepts and of reccpts. It 

 will be remembered that in Chapter III., while treating of 

 the Logic of Rccepts, I dealt at some length with this subject 

 Here, therefore, it will be sufficient to quote the conclusion to 

 which my analysis led. 



" A generic idea is generic because the particular ideas of 

 which it is composed present such obvious points of resem- 

 blance that they spontaneously fuse together in consciousness ; 

 but a general idea is general for precisely the opposite reason — 

 namely, because the points of resemblance which it has seized 

 are obscured from immediate perception, and therefore could 

 never have fused together in consciousness but for the aid of 

 intentional abstraction, or of the power of a mind knowingly 

 to deal with its own ideas as ideas. In other words, the kind 

 of classification with which recepts are concerned is that 

 which lies nearest to the kind of classification with which all 

 processes of so called perceptual inference depend — such as 

 mistaking a bowl for a sphere. But the kind of classification 

 with which concepts are concerned is that which lies furthest 

 from this purely automatic grouping of perceptions. Classi- 

 fication there doubtless is in both cases ; but in the one order it 



