Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/532

514 of the sign only gives an appearance of bridging over the interval between signless ideation and sign-aided thought, just because it aims at once at being something less than a true sign, and this true sign itself.

If our criticisms are just. Dr. Romanes can not be said to have succeeded in his main object, viz., the obliteration of all qualitative difference between human and animal intellection by the interposition of psychological links which can be seen to have the essential characters of both. And here one is naturally led to ask whether the author is after all on the right track. For he is a master of his facts and shows considerable power in the marshaling of his arguments, and, as even a hasty perusal of the volume can show anybody, he has here concentrated his force in a severe and sustained effort. Where he has failed it is conjecturable that others may fail also. And so it behooves us to see whether he has approached the problem in the right way, or, at least, in the only possible way.

The introduction of all this technical mechanism of receptual ideation, lower concepts, and the rest, has for its avowed object the avoidance of all introduction of qualitative change in the process of intellectual evolution. Dr. Romanes tells us plainly at the outset that he is going to establish identity of kind between the animal and the human type of intellection. And, no doubt, if it were possible to do this in the way here attempted—that is to say, by interposing transitional forms which virtually efface all qualitative unlikeness—it would be a great advantage to the evolutionist. But it may be said that it is not the only way of satisfying the requirements of the evolution hypothesis. Dr. Romanes pertinently remarks, in meeting a priori objections to the derivation of human from animal intellection, that in the life of the human individual we actually have a series of transitions from animal to human psychosis. Now, a glance at the intellectual development of the individual shows us that distinct qualitative differences are introduced. Not to speak of the obvious fact that every new sensation effects a qualitative addition to the infant's mental life, there is the more important fact that the first image of the absent mother or nurse introduces a new sphere of mental activity. The child that dreams and imagines is already a different being from the infant that merely touches and sees. Similarly it may be said that the first conscious process of breaking up its sense-presentations, the first distinct apprehension of relations, is epoch-making just because it marks the oncoming of a new mode of mental activity, a qualitative extension of its conscious life.

To say this, however, is not to say that the process of development is wanting in continuity. For, first of all, these higher forms of activity introduce themselves in the most gradual way,