are no longer stereotyped in such particular phrases, but admit of being used as movable types, in order to construct, by different combinations, a variety of different phrases. To a talking bird a phrase, as we have seen, is no more in point of signification than a single word; while to the child, at the stage which we are considering, it is very much more than this: it is the separately constructed vehicle for the conveyance of a particular meaning, which may never have been conveyed by that or by any other phrase before. But while we thus attach due importance to so great an advance towards the faculty of true predication, we must notice, on the one hand, that as yet it is _not_ true predication in the sense of being the expression of a true or conceptual judgment; and, on the other hand, we must notice that the power of thus using words as movable types does not deserve to be regarded as any wonderful or unaccountable advance in the faculty of sign-making, when we pay due regard to the several considerations above stated. The really important point to notice is that, notwithstanding this great _advance_ towards the faculty of predication, this faculty _has not yet been reached_: the propositions which are made are still unattended by self-consciousness: they are not conceptual, but pre-conceptual. Given, then, this stage of mental evolution, and what follows? Be it remembered I am not endeavouring to solve the impossible problem as to the intrinsic nature of self-consciousness, or how it is that such a thing is possible. I am merely accepting its existence (and therefore its possibility) as a fact; and upon the basis of this fact I shall now endeavour to show how, in my opinion, self-consciousness may be seen to follow upon the stage of mental evolution which we have here reached. * * * * *