Higher Recepts, then, are what may be conveniently termed Pre-concepts:[107] they occupy the interval between the receptual life of brute and the earliest dawn of the conceptual life of man. A pre-concept, therefore, is that kind of higher recept which is not to be met with in any brute; but which occurs in the human being after surpassing the brute and before attaining self-consciousness. Be it observed that in thus coining the words higher recepts or pre-concepts, I am not in any way prejudicing the case of my opponents; I am merely marking off a certain territory of ideation which has now for the first time been indicated. Of course my object eventually is to show that in the history of a growing child, just as sensations give rise to percepts, and percepts to recepts (as they do among animals), so do recepts give rise to pre-concepts, pre-concepts to concepts, concepts to propositions, and propositions to syllogisms. But in now supplying this intermediate link of pre-concepts I am not in any way pre-judging the issue: I am merely marking out the ground for discussion. No one of my opponents can dispute my facts, which are too obvious to admit of question. Therefore, if they object to my classification of them so far as the novel division of pre-concepts is concerned, it must be because they think that by instituting this division I am surreptitiously bringing the mind of a child nearer to that of an animal than they deem altogether safe. What, then, I ask, would they have me do? If I fail to institute this division, I should have to prejudice the question indeed. Either there is some distinction between the naming powers of a parrot and those of a young child, or else there is not. If there is no distinction, so much the better for the purposes of my argument. But I allow that there is a distinction, and I draw it at the first place where it can possibly be said that the intelligence of a child differs in any way at all from that of a parrot—_i.e._ where the naming powers of a child demonstrably excel those of a parrot, or any other brute. If this place happens to be before the rise of conceptual powers, I am not responsible for the fact; nor in stating it am I at all disparaging the position of any opponent who takes his stand upon these powers as distinctive of man. If his position were worth anything before, it cannot be affected by my drawing attention to the fact that, while a parrot will extend its denotative name of a dog from a terrier to a setter, it will not follow a child any further in the process of receptual connotation.