be taught to apprehend a surprisingly large extension of connotative significance. Consequently, if they could but _imitate_ these sounds, after the manner of a parrot, it is certain that they would greatly distance the parrot in this matter of receptual connotation. But, lastly, we are not shut up to any such hypothetical case. For the growing child itself furnishes us with evidence upon the point, which is no less cogent than would be the case if dogs and monkeys were able to talk. For, without argumentative suicide, none of my opponents can afford to suggest that, up to the age when self-consciousness dawns, the young child is capable of conceptual connotation; yet it is unquestionable that up to that age a continuous growth of connotation has been taking place, which, beginning with the level that it shares with a parrot, is eventually able to construct what I have called “receptual propositions,” the precise nature of which I will summarise in a subsequent paragraph. The evidence which I have given of this connotative extension of denotative names by children before the age at which self-consciousness supervenes—and, therefore, _prior to the very condition which is required for conceptual ideation_—is, I think, overwhelming. And I do not see how its place in my argument can be gainsaid by any opponent, except at the cost of ignoring my distinction between connotation as receptual and conceptual. Yet to do this would be to surrender his whole case. Either there is a distinction, or else there is not a distinction, between connotation that is receptual, and connotation that is conceptual. If there is no distinction, all argument is at an end: the brute and the man are one in kind. But I allow that there is a distinction, and I acknowledge that the distinction resides where it is alleged to reside by my opponents—namely, in the presence or absence of self-consciousness on the part of a mind which bestows a name. Or, to revert to my own terminology, it is the distinction between denotation and denomination.