Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human FacultyRomanes, George John
Science
Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty
Romanes, George John
Evolution; Psychology, Comparative
Now in this classification, notwithstanding that it is needful to
quote at least ten distinct terms which are either now in use among
psychologists or have been used by classical English writers upon
these topics, we may observe that there are really but three separate
classes to be distinguished. Moreover, it will be noticed that, for
the sake of definition, I restrict the first three terms to denote
memories of particular sensuous perceptions—refusing, therefore, to
apply them to those blended memories of many sensuous perceptions
which enable animals and infants (as well as ourselves) to form
compound ideas of kind or class without the aid of language. Again,
the first division of this threefold classification has to do only
with what are termed percepts, while the last has to do only with what
are termed concepts. Now there does not exist any equivalent word to
meet the middle division. And this fact in itself shows most forcibly
the state of ambiguous confusion into which the classification of
ideas has been wrought. Psychologists of both the schools that we are
considering—namely, those who maintain and those who deny that there
is any difference of kind between the ideation of men and animals—are
equally forced to allow that there is a great difference between what
I have called a simple idea and what I have called a compound idea. In
other words, it is a matter of obvious fact that the only distinction
between ideas is _not_ that between the memory of a particular percept
and the formation of a named concept; for between these two classes
of ideas there obviously lies another class, in virtue of which even
animals and infants are able to distinguish individual objects as
belonging to a sort or kind. Yet this large and important territory of
ideation, lying between the other two, is, so to speak, unnamed ground.
Even the words “compound idea,” “complex idea,” and “mixed idea,” are
by me restricted to it without the sanction of previous usage; for, as
above remarked, so completely has the existence of this intermediate
land been ignored, that we have no word at all which is applicable to
it in the same way that Percept and Concept are applicable to the
lands on either side of it. The consequence is that psychologists of
the one school invade this intermediate province of ideation with terms
that are applicable only to the lower province, while psychologists
of the other school invade it with terms which are applicable only to
the higher: the one matter upon which they all appear to agree being
that of ignoring the wide area which this intermediate territory
covers—and, consequently, also ignoring the great distance by which
the territories on either side of it are separated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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