322 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



First of all, when seeking to define "the simplest element 

 of thought," I showed that this does not occur in the fully- 

 formed proposition, but in the fully formed concept ; and 

 that it is only out of two such concepts as elements that full 

 or conceptual propositions can be formed as compounds. Or, 

 as this was stated in the chapter on Speech, "conceptual 

 names are the ingredients out of which is formed the structure 

 of propositions ; and, in order that this formation should take 

 place, there must be in the ingredients that element of concep- 

 tual ideation which is already present in every denominative 

 term." Or, yet again, as the same thing was there quoted 

 from Professor Sayce, " it is a truism of psychology that the 

 terms of a proposition, when closely interrogated, turn out to 

 be nothing but abbreviated judgments." * 



Having thus defined the simplest element of thought as a 

 concept, I went on to show from the psychogencsis of children, 

 that before there is any power of forming concepts — and 

 therefore of bestowing names as denominative teims, or, 

 a fortiori, of combining such terms in the form of conceptual 

 propositions — there is the power of forming recepts, of naming 

 these recepts by denotative terms, and even of placing such 

 terms in apposition for the purpose of conveying information 

 of a pre-conceptual kind. The pre-conceptual, rudimentary 

 or unthinking propositions thus formed occur in early child- 

 hood, prior to the advent of self-consciousness, and prior 

 therefore, to the very condition which is required for any process 

 of conceptual thought. Moreover, it was shown that this pre- 

 conceptual kind of predication is itself the product of a gradual 

 development. Taking its origin from the ground of gesture- 

 signs, when it first begins to sprout into articulate utterance 

 there is absolutely no distinction to be observed between " parts 

 of speech." Every word is what we now know as a " sentence- 

 word," any special applications of which can only be defined 

 by gesture. Next, these sentence-words, or others that are 

 afterwards acquired, begin to be imperfectly differentiated into 

 denotative names of objects, qualities, actions, and states ; and 



• Introduction, 6^<r., i. 15. 



