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bility," and "truth," etc., are latent and implied.* But such is not the case with recepts, every one of which, moreover, not only contains, but consists of, phantasmata -imaginary phenomena which accompany, but are far indeed from constituting, every concept.

Mr. Romanes offers us, as examples of recepts (senseperceptions), the impressions severally produced by water, ice, or dry land, on the psychical faculties of diving birds and men. Man, he tells us, "like the water-fowl, has two distinct recepts, one of which answers to solid ground, and the other to an unresisting fluid. But, unlike the water-fowl, he is able to bestow upon each of these recepts a name, and thus to raise them both to the level of concepts." But it is his very power of conception which enables him to give them a name. No concepts, therefore, can possibly be "merely the name of recepts;" they are results of, and embody that marvellous power which enables man to bestow a name.

Man, he tells us, "must be able to set his recept before his own mind as an object of his own thought: before he can bestow upon these generic ideas the names of 'solid' and 'fluid,' he must have cognized them as ideas." Here there is some confusion of thought. We do not bestow names upon our sensuous cognitions or recepts, unless we are occupied about psychology—unless we are considering mental processes. But we bestow names upon what we perceive to be objects of certain kinds, or upon qualities which we perceive concretely existing, as, e.g., in this land or that water. We do not perceive the various groups of sensuous affections we *See "On Truth," pp. 103-105. † p. 74.

ideas—which, indeed, they never

experience, as so many were and never will be. What we perceive are so many objective realities, and by turning back the mind to consider our mental experience, we can recognize that the presence of those objective realities has been revealed to our minds by means of the various unnoticed sensations and sense-perceptions, excited in us by them. These sensuous affections, as before said, hide themselves in making such objects and ideas known. But it is evident that they do not constitute such things, for, as we have pointed out, they persist and remain side by side with the ideas to which they minister.

Mr. Romanes further says: "Prior to this act of cognition, these ideas [of man] differed in no respect from the recepts of a water-fowl." Now, we do not desire to deny this-the question is for us quite immaterial. Nevertheless we do not think that such complete similarity can with reason be so dogmatically affirmed. It is by no means clear to us that the recepts formed by different animals from the very same objects must always "differ in no respect." The innate natures of different animals—e.g. birds and fishes-may so differ that the action of the same object on both may produce in those two classes of animals results more or less decidedly different. Mr. Romanes adds, "In virtue of this act of cognition, whereby he assigns a name to an idea known as such, he [man] has created for himself a priceless possession: he has formed a concept." But our author has previously affirmed, with great truth, that before a man can bestow names, he must have ideally cognized what he so names.

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Moreover, a man does not assign a name "to an idea known as such" (unless, as before said, he is occupied about psychology), but he assigns a name to an object of which he has already formed some sort of conception. How could a man name a thing of which he had no sort of conception whatever?

*

Mr. Romanes remarks that names are not concerned with particular ideas, strictly so called: concepts, even of the lowest order, have to do with generic ideas." Now, concepts "have to do with" general ideas; but, nevertheless, there are such things as individual concepts. We may have an idea of some individual man or animal, the absolute individuality (or "hæcceity")† of which forms so essential a part of our conception of it, that the conception would be essentially different without it.

But Mr. Romanes well expresses one relation in which intellectual perception stands to its sensuous antecedents. "The Logos," he says, "does not come upon the scene of its creative power to find only that which is without form and void: rather does it find a fair structure of no mean order of system, shaped by prior influences, and, so far as thus shaped, a veritable cosmos."

The reader has, however, in reading Mr. Romanes's work, to be almost constantly on his guard against misleading expressions which are very frequently introduced --we are convinced, in simple unconsciousness. Thus we read, "All concepts in their last resort depend on recepts, just as in their turn recepts depend on percepts." † A very convenient scholastic term. ‡ p. 77.

*

P. 76.

This statement is founded on a fact which it deforms. It is quite true that we can have no sense-perception without preceding or accompanying sensations, and no idea without some accompanying imaginations; but the expression, "in their last resort," implies that ideas are fundamentally only recepts. One thing is not another because it cannot exist without it. All active steamengines depend on water, but they are not water. Similarly the teaching contained in Mr. Romanes's book depends on printer's ink and printer's devils, yet it is altogether different from either.

It is but natural, then, in him to tell us that "the most highly abstract terms are derived from terms less abstract, until, by two or three such steps at the most, we are in all cases led directly back to their origin in a lower concept '-i.e. in the name of a recept." This statement is based partly upon the fact that the most abstract terms have had, originally, concrete significations. Indeed, as we shall later on have occasion to point out, we cannot, even if we would, make use of terms which have no concrete meanings. This, however, is no reason why such terms should not also serve to give expression, by analogy, to meanings which are altogether beyond the range of sense-perception.* They are certainly able to do so now, and we think it will by-and-by be made evident that they must always have done so. The idea "equality" is "abstract" enough; yet deaf-mutes have expressed it by placing their forefingers side by side. Why, then, should the

* That conception and intellect are not bounded by our sensitive powers, see "On Truth,” pp. 109-111.

relatively concrete and sensuous expression, "fingersparallel," be unable also to denote the abstract idea "equality"?

Mr. Romanes admits that a concept may cease to bear any easily perceptible likeness to what he calls "its parentage," "owing to the elaboration it subsequently undergoes in the region of Symbolism.” †

After reiterating statements of his view (already criticised by us) as to the relations of concepts to recepts, and as to what he deems the necessity of an intentional mental act in order to form a concept, he makes the somewhat startling assertion: "So far as my analysis has hitherto gone, I do not anticipate criticism or dissent from any psychologist, to whatever school he may belong"! What is above all re

markable in this sentence is the demonstration it gives that Mr. Romanes, in spite of the pains he has taken to read and reply to what his opponents have written, has so utterly failed to apprehend the most essential point of their whole contention. If we were Nominalists; if we were disciples of Locke; if we did not, in unison with the whole Aristotelian school, give to the word "idea" a fundamentally different meaning from what Mr. Romanes gives it; if we did not assert an essential difference of kind between recepts and concepts; and if we did not affirm that reasoning consists in drawing inferences, not in the detection of ratios

*

p. 77.

t The region of Symbolism" is an odd name for the active intellect of man!

+ p. 80

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