Page:The Monist Volume 2.djvu/96

84. besides vocal signs and they are for that reason not less language than speech. We have reason to believe that ants are in possession of symbolical signs and that most of them are communicated through their feelers.

Professor Romanes describes the origin of ideas (in the second chapter of "Mental Evolution in Man," p. 23) in the following way: "Just as Mr. Galton's method of superimposing on the same sensitive plate a number of individual images gives rise to a blended photograph, wherein each of the individual constituents is partially and proportionally represented; so in the sensitive tablet of memory, numerous images of previous perceptions are fused together into a single conception, which then stands as a composite picture, or class-representation, of these its constituent images. Moreover, in the case of a sensitive plate it is only those particular images which present more or less numerous points of resemblance that admit of being thus blended into a distinct photograph; and so in the case of the mind, it is only those particular ideas which admit of being run together in a class that can go to constitute a clear concept.

Professor Romanes calls such a composite picture of sense-impressions as must be supposed to exist in the animal brain "a recept" and he distinguishes it from "the concept" of man. He says: "Reception means a taking again. ... The word 'recept' is seen to be appropriate to the class of ideas in question, because in receiving such ideas the mind is passive." By "concept" however he understands "that kind of composite idea which is rendered possible only by the aid of language or by the process of naming abstractions as abstractions."

We agree with Professor Romanes in the main point, viz. that the process of evolution must be considered as uninterrupted, but we cannot agree with him on several minor points.

We must express our doubt concerning the propriety of calling the mind passive when receiving impressions. Every single sensation is an active process, just as much as a reflex motion, and it may