Take an example. At the present moment I happen to have an infant who has not yet acquired the use of any one articulate word. Being just able to toddle, he occasionally comes to grief in one way or another; and when he does so he seeks to communicate the nature of his mishap by means of gesture-signs. To-day, for instance, he knocked his head against a table, and forthwith ran up to me for sympathy. On my asking him where he was hurt, he immediately touched the part of his head in question—_i.e._ _indicated_ the painful spot. Now, will it be said that in doing this the child was _predicating_ the seat of injury? If so, all the distinctive meaning which belongs to the term predicating, or the only meaning on which my opponents have hitherto relied, is discharged. The gesture-signs which are so abundantly employed by the lower animals would then also require to be regarded as predicatory, seeing that, as before shown at considerable length, they differ in no respect from those of the still speechless infant. Therefore, whether my opponents allow or disallow the quality of predication to sentence-words, alike and equally this argument collapses. Their only logical alternative is to vacate their argument altogether; no longer to maintain that “Speech is the Rubicon of Mind,” but to concede that, as between the indicative phase of language which we share with the lower animals, and the truly predicative phase which belongs only to man, there is no distinction of kind to be attributed; seeing that, on the contrary, whether we look to the psychogenesis of the individual or to that of the race, we alike find a demonstrable continuity of evolution from the lowest to the highest level of the sign-making faculty. CHAPTER XV. THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY (_continued_). In the last chapter we have been concerned with the philology of predication. In the present chapter I propose to consider the philology of conception. Of course the distinction is not one that can be very sharply drawn, because, as fully shown in my chapter on Speech, every concept embodies a judgment, and therefore every denominative term is a condensed proposition. Nevertheless, as my opponents have laid so much stress on full or formal predication, as distinguished from conception, I have thought it desirable, as much as possible, to keep these two branches of our subject separate. Therefore, having now disposed of all opposition that can possibly be raised on the ground of formal predication, I will conclude by throwing the light of philology on the origin of material predication, or the passage of receptual denotation into conceptual denomination, as this is shown to have occurred in the pre-historic evolution of the race.