Upon the whole, then, it appears to me perfectly evident that language is quite as much the antecedent as it is the consequent of self-consciousness. We have seen that in its first beginnings, or before the child is able to state a truth as true, what I have called rudimentary or pre-conceptual predication is concerned only with existence as objective or ejective: all these propositions, which are made by children during the first two years of their life, have reference to objects of sense, states of feeling, &c.; but never to self as self, and therefore never to truths as true. But as soon as the protoplasm of predication, or sign-making at this stage of elaboration, begins to mix freely with the protoplasm of judgment, or the logic of recepts at that stage of elaboration, an intimate movement of action and reaction ensues: the judgments are rendered clearer and more comprehensive by being thrown into the formal shape of even rudimentary propositions, while the latter are promoted in their development by the growing powers of judgment. And when this advancing organization of faculties has proceeded to the extent of enabling the mind incipiently to predicate its own states, the mental organism may be said for the first time to be quickening into the life of true self-consciousness.[128] CHAPTER XI. THE TRANSITION IN THE INDIVIDUAL. We are now, I think, in possession of sufficient material to begin our answer to the question with which we set out—namely, Is it conceivable that the human mind can have arisen by way of a natural genesis from the minds of the higher quadrumana? I maintain that the material now before us is sufficient to show, not only that this is conceivable, but inevitable. First of all we must remember that we share in common with the lower animals not only perceptual, but also what I have termed receptual life. Thus far, no difference of kind can be even so much as suggested. The difference then, be it one of kind or of degree, concerns only those superadded elements of psychology which are peculiar to man, and which, following other psychologists, I have termed conceptual. I say advisedly the _elements_, because it is by no one disputed that all differences of conceptual life are differences of degree, or that from the ideation of a savage to that of a Shakespeare there is unquestionably a continuous ascent. The only question, then, that obtains is as to the relation between the highest recept of a brute and the lowest concept of a man.