Chapter Xiv. the Earlier Psychologists, in Considering the “faculty of

comparison” which acts by resemblance and difference, as primordial, had observed the same fact, although they described it in different terms.

W. James, Psychology. Vol. I., pp. 502 and 506.

This term is borrowed from the well-known works of Galton on composite photographs, which are scarcely more than twenty years old. Huxley in his book on Hume (Chapter IV.) appears to be the first who introduced it into psychology, as shown by the following passage: “This mental operation may be rendered comprehensible by considering what takes place in the formation of compound photographs—when the images of the faces of six sitters, for example, are each received on the same photographic plate, for a sixth of the time requisite to take one portrait. The final result is that all those points in which the six faces agree are brought out strongly, while all those in which they differ are left vague; and thus what may be termed a generic portrait of the six is produced. Thus our ideas of single complex impressions are incomplete in one way, and those of numerous, more or less similar, complex impressions are incomplete in another way; that is to say, they are generic.... And hence it follows that our ideas of the impressions in question are not, in the strict sense of the word, copies of those impressions; while at the same time they may exist in the mind independently of language.” Romanes employs the word “recept” for “generic images,” as marking their intermediate place between the “percept” which is below, and the “concept” which is above them.

For details see Romanes, Animal Intelligence, Chapters III. and V. As to the probability of their possessing means of communication for assistance in their co-operative labors see below, Chapter II.

Romanes. Animal Intelligence, Chapter III.

C. Lloyd Morgan. Animal Life and Intelligence, Chapter IX., p. 364.

Houzeau, Etudes sur les facultés mentales des animaux, Vol. II., p. 264 et seq. The same author gives an example of generalisation in bees.

Darwin, The Descent of Man, Vol. I., Chapter III.

Romanes, loc. cit., Chapter XVII.

At the end of the passage in question there is an extraordinary account of the arithmetical powers of a dog which Lubbock explains by “thought reading.” I omit this instance, since we are deliberately rejecting all rare or doubtful cases.

Mental Evolution in Man, Chapter III., p. 58.

J. Sully, The Human Mind, I., 460. The author gives excellent diagrams to represent the difference in the two cases. For reasoning from particular to particular, cf. also J. S. Mill, Logic, II., Chapter III., p. 3; Bradley, Logic, II., Chapter II., p. 2.

In re analogy, consult Stern’s monograph, Die Analogie im volksthümlichen Denken, Berlin, 1894.

Three Introductory Lectures on the Science of Thought, delivered at the Royal Institution, appendix, p. 6, letter 4; Chicago, 1888. It should, however, be remembered that the writer who thus uses the logic of images has a mind preformed by the logic of signs: which is not the case with animals.

Psychology, II., 348 et seq. James, however, recalls the case of another dog accustomed to find and carry wedges for splitting wood. One day he did not return. After half an hour they looked for him; he was biting and tearing at the handle of a hatchet stuck in a block (the wedge was not forthcoming). Had this animal clear perception of the common character of the two instruments used for splitting? “This interpretation is possible, but it seems to me far to transcend the limits of ordinary canine abstraction.” (Loc. cit., p. 352.) James attempts another explanation. It is singular that he does not invoke training, and association with man: that this is an influential factor in the intellectual development of animals cannot be doubted. It is advisable to adduce exclusively their spontaneous inventions, with no possible suggestion: such facts alone are clear and convincing.

Lloyd Morgan, whose tendencies have already been indicated, distinguishes three sorts of inferences: (1) unconscious inference on immediate construction (perceptual); (2) intelligent inference (conceded to animals), dealing with constructs and reconstructs (perceptual); and (3) rational inference, implying analysis and isolation (conceptual). (Op. cit., p. 362.)

Nouveaux Essais, Book III., Chapter I.

Cf. Taine, L’Intelligence, Vol. I., Book I., Chapter II., Part 2, Note 1. Preyer, Die Seele des Kindes, Chapter XVI.

Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, p. 283.

B. Pérez, op. cit., 210.

Houzeau, op. cit., II., 202.

Cf. Revue Philosophique, July, 1890.

Max Müller, however, is an exception. He has not made the smallest concession on this point in any of his works, including the last (Three Lectures, etc., cited above). He even maintains that a society of deaf-mutes would hardly rise above the intellectual level of a chimpanzee. “A man born dumb, notwithstanding his great cerebral mass and his inheritance of strong intellectual instincts, would be capable of few higher intellectual manifestations than an orang or a chimpanzee, if he were confined to the society of dumb associates” (p. 92). This thesis was attacked by thirteen critics, including Romanes, Galton, the Duke of Argyle, etc., but Max Müller meets them all and replies to them without flinching. It must be confessed that the arguments invoked by his correspondents are very unequal in merit. Some are convincing, others not. The Duke of Argyle says happily that “words are necessary to the progress of thought, but not at all to the act of thinking.” Ebbels (p. 13, appendix) shows that Max Müller has unduly limited the question by excluding all processes anterior to the formation of concepts; we think in images; the transition from one form to another is imperceptible, and the faculty of abstraction does not appear suddenly along with the signs. On the other hand, we cannot admit as evidence the facts invoked by other correspondents, e. g., chess-players who combine and calculate solely by the aid of visual images; answers to letters, conceived in the first place as a general plan before they are developed in words, etc. It is forgotten that the persons capable of these operations have had long practice in verbal analysis, thereby attaining a high intellectual level. So, in the physical order, the practical gymnast, even when not executing any particular feat, possesses a suppleness and agility of body, due to exercise, which translates itself into all his movements.

De l’Education des sourds-muets, 2 vol., 1827. Notwithstanding its somewhat remote date, the book has lost none of its interest in this particular. It must also be remembered that institutions for deaf-mutes are far more numerous now than at the beginning of the century, and that the children are placed in them much earlier. Formerly they were abandoned to themselves or instructed very late; in proportion to their age, they presented better material for the study of their development.

Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 80. Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, Chapter VI.

Kussmaul, Die Störungen der Sprache, Chapter xxx.

Cf. as proof, the story related by Kussmaul (op. cit., VII.): A young deaf-mute was arrested by the police of Prague as a vagabond. He was placed in an institution and questioned by suitable methods, when he made known that his father had a mill with a house and surroundings which he described exactly; that his mother and sister were dead, and his father had re-married; that his step-mother had ill-treated him, and that he had planned an escape which had succeeded. He indicated the direction of the mill to the east of Prague. Inquiries were made, and all these statements were verified.

Romanes, Mental Evolution, etc., p. 150.

W. James, Psychology, I., 266, for the second observation; Philosophical Review, I., No. 6, p. 613 et seq. for the first.

Sign-Language Among the North American Indians, 1881. Published in Report of the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington. Cf. also: Tylor, op. cit.; Romanes, op. cit., VI.; Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation,