382 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



might have gradually taken place, up to the psychological 

 level supposed, may or may not be true ; but, at least, it does 

 not beg the question. The question is whether the distinc- 

 tively human faculty of conceptual ideation differs in kind 

 or in degree from the lower faculty of receptual ideation ; 

 and my present suggestion amounts to nothing more than a 

 supposition that receptual ideation may have been developed 

 in the animal kingdom to some such level as it reaches in a 

 child who is late in beginning to speak.* If any opponent 

 should object to this suggestion on the score of its appearing 

 to beg the question, he must remember that this question 

 only arises — in accordance with his own argument — at the 

 place where the faculty of sign-making ministers to that of 

 introspective thought. The question as to how far the lower 

 faculties of mind admit of being developed apart from (or, as 

 I believe, antecedent to) the occurrence of introspective 

 thought, is obviously quite a distinct question. And it is a 

 question that can only be answered by observation. Now, I 

 have already shown that in the case of intelligent animals 

 — and still more in that of a growing child — the faculties of 

 receptual ideation do admit of being wrought up to an as- 

 tonishing degree of adaptive efficiency, without the possibility 

 of their having been in any way indebted to the distinctively 

 human faculty of conceptual thought. 



On the whole, then, it seems to me probable, on grounds 



In the case of the gorilla, indeed, although the fore-limbs quit the ground and the 

 locomotion thus becomes bipedal, the body is never fully straightened up ; but in 

 the case of the gibbon the erect attitude may be said to be complete when the 

 animal is walking. (Huxley, Man's Place ift Nature, pp. 36-49). With regard 

 to the selection and use of stones as tools, Commander Alfred Carpenter, R.N., 

 thus describes the modus operandi of monkeys inhabiting islands off S. Burmah : — 

 "The rocks at low-water are covered with oysters. The monkeys select stones 

 of the best shape for their purpose from shingle of the beach, and cany them to 

 the low-water mark, where the oysters live, which may be as far as eighty yards 

 from the beach. This monkey has chosen the easiest way to open the rock-oyster, 

 namely, to dislocate the valves by a blow on the base of the upper one, and to 

 break the shell over the attaching muscle " {Nature, vol. xxxvi., p. 53. In 

 connection with this subject see also Animal Intelligeuce, p. 481). 

 * See above, p. 220. 



