LOGIC OF RECEPTS. We have seen that the great border-land, or terra media, lying between particular ideas and general ideas has been strangely neglected by psychologists, and we may now be prepared to find that a careful exploration of this border-land is a matter of the highest importance for the purposes of our inquiry. I will, therefore, devote the present chapter to a full consideration of what I have termed generic ideas, or recepts. It has already been remarked that, in order to form any of these generic ideas, the mind does not require to combine intentionally the particular ideas which go to construct it: a recept differs from a concept in that it is received, not conceived. The percepts out of which a recept is composed are of so comparatively simple a character, are so frequently repeated in observation, and present among themselves resemblances or analogies so obvious, that the mental images of them run together, as it were, spontaneously, or in accordance with the primary laws of merely sensuous association, without requiring any conscious act of comparison. This is a truth which has been noticed by several previous writers. For instance, I have in this connection already quoted a passage from M. Taine, and, if necessary, could quote another, wherein he very aptly likens what I have called recepts to the unelaborated ore out of which the metal of a concept is afterwards smelted. And still more to the purpose is the following passage, which I take from Mr. Sully:—“The more concrete concepts, or generic images, are formed to a large extent by a passive process of assimilation. The likeness among dogs, for example, Similarly, M. Perez remarks, “the necessity which children are under of seeing in a detached and scrappy manner in order to see well, makes them continually practise that kind of abstraction by which we separate qualities from objects. From those objects which the child has already distinguished as individual, there come to him at different moments particularly vivid impressions.... Dominant sensations of this kind, by their energy or frequency, tend to efface the idea of the objects from which they proceed, to separate or abstract themselves.... The flame of a candle is not always equally bright or flickering; tactile, sapid, olfactory, and auditive impressions do not always strike the child’s sensorium with the same intensity, nor during the same length of time. This is why the recollections of individual forms, although strongly graven on their intelligence, lose by degrees their first precision, so that the idea of a tree, for instance, furnished by direct and perfectly distinct memories, comes back to the mind in a vague and indistinct form, which might be taken for a general idea.” Again, in the opinion of John Stuart Mill, “It is the doctrine of one of the most fertile thinkers of modern times, Furthermore, Mansel tersely conveys the truth which I am endeavouring to present, thus:—“The mind recognizes the impression which a tree makes on the retina of the eye: this is presentative consciousness. It then depicts it. From many such pictures it forms a general notion, and to that notion it at last appropriates a name.” And, not to overburden the argument with quotations, I will furnish but one more, which serves if possible with still greater clearness to convey exactly what it is that I mean by a recept. Professor Huxley writes:—“An anatomist who occupies himself intently with the examination of several specimens of some new kind of animal, in course of time acquires so vivid a conception of its form and structure, that the idea may take visible shape and become a sort of waking dream.” Although the use of the word “conception” here is unfortunate in one way, I regard it as fortunate in another: it shows how desperate is the need for the word which I have coined. The above quotations, then, may be held sufficient to show that the distinction which I have drawn has not been devised merely to suit my own purposes. All that I have endeavoured so far to do is to bring this distinction into greater clearness, by assigning to each of its parts a separate name. And in doing this I have not assumed that the two orders of generalization comprised under recepts and concepts are the same in kind. So far I have left the question open as to whether a mind which can only attain to recepts differs in degree or in kind from the intellect which is able to go on to the formation of concepts. Had I said, with Sully, “When the resemblance is less striking, as in the case of more abstract The question, then, which we have to consider is whether there is a difference of kind, or only a difference of degree, between a recept and a concept. This is really the question with which the whole of the present volume will be concerned, and as its adequate treatment will necessitate somewhat First of all I will show, by means of illustrations, the highest levels of ideation that are attained within the domain of recepts; and, in order to do this, I will adduce my evidence from animals alone, seeing that here there can be no suspicion—as there might be in the case of infants—that the logic of recepts is assisted by any nascent growth of concepts. But, before proceeding to state this evidence, it seems desirable to say a few words on what I mean by the term just used, namely, Logic of Recepts. As argued in my previous work, all mental processes of an adaptive kind are, in their last resort, processes of classification: they consist in discriminating between differences and resemblances. An act of simple perception is an act of noticing resemblances and differences between the objects of such perception; and, similarly, an act of conception is the taking together—or the intentional putting together—of ideas which are recognized as analogous. Hence abstraction has to do with the abstracting of analogous qualities; reason is ratiocination, or the comparison of ratios; and thus the highest operations of thought, like the simplest acts of perception, are concerned with the grouping or co-ordination of resemblances, previously distinguished from differences. In the present chapter we have only to consider the logic of recepts, and, in order to do so efficiently, we may first of all briefly note that even within the region of percepts we meet with a process of spontaneous grouping of like with like, which, in turn, leads us downwards to the purely unconscious or mechanical grouping of stimuli in the lower nerve-centres. So that, as fully argued out in my previous work, on its objective face the method has everywhere been the same: So much has already been written on what is termed the “unconscious judgments” or “intuitive judgments” incidental to all our acts of perception, that I feel it is needless to occupy space by dwelling at any length upon this subject. The familiar illustration of looking straight into a polished bowl, and alternately perceiving it as a bowl and a sphere, is enough to show that here we do have a logic of feelings: without any act of ideation, but simply in virtue of an automatic grouping of former percepts, the mind spontaneously infers—or unconsciously judges—that an object, which must either be a bowl or a sphere, is now one and now the other. Now, if this is so well known to be the case with percepts, obviously it must also be the case with recepts. If we thus find by experiment that all our perceptions are dependent on sub-conscious co-ordination wholly automatic, much more may we be prepared to find that the simplest of our ideas are dependent on spontaneous co-ordinations almost equally automatic. Accordingly, it requires but a slight analysis of our ordinary mental processes to prove that all our simpler ideas are group-arrangements, which have been formed as I say spontaneously, or without any of that intentionally comparing, sifting, and combining process which is required in the higher departments of ideational activity. The comparing, sifting, and combining is here done, as it were, for the conscious agent; not by him. Recepts are received: it is only concepts that require to be conceived. For a recept is that kind of idea the constituent parts of which—be they but the memories of percepts, or already more or less elaborated as recepts—unite spontaneously as soon as they are brought together. It matters not whether this readiness to unite is due to obvious similarity, or to frequent repetition: the point is that there is so strong an affinity between the elementary constituents, that the compound is formed as a consequence This, of course, is an exceedingly simple illustration, and I have used it in order to make the further remark that actions depending on recepts, although they often thus lie near to reflex actions, are by no means bound to do so. On the contrary, as we shall immediately find, actions depending on recepts are often so highly “intelligent,” that in our own case it is impossible to draw the line between them and actions depending on concepts. That is to say, in our own case there is a large border-land where introspection is unable to determine whether adjustive action is due to recepts or to concepts; and hence it is only in the case of animals that we can be certain as to the limits of intelligent adjustment which are possible under the operation of recepts alone. The question therefore, now arises,—How far can this process of spontaneous or unintentional comparing, sifting, and combining go without the intentional co-operation of the conscious agent? To what level of ideation can recepts attain without the aid of concepts? We have seen in the last chapter that animals display generic or receptual ideas of Good-for-eating, Not-good-for-eating, &c.; and we know that in our own case we “instinctively” avoid placing our hands in a flame, without requiring to formulate any proposition upon the properties of flame. How far, then, can this kind of unnamed or non-conceptional ideation extend? Or, in other words, how far can mind travel without the vehicle of Language? For the To lead off with a few instances which have been already selected for substantially the same purpose by Mr. Darwin:— “Houzeau relates that, while crossing a wide and arid plain in Texas, his two dogs suffered greatly from thirst, and that between thirty and forty times they rushed down the hollows to search for water. These hollows were not valleys, and there were no trees in them, or any other difference in the vegetation; and as they were absolutely dry, there could have been no smell of damp earth. The dogs behaved as if they knew that a dip in the ground offered them the best chance of finding water, and Houzeau has often witnessed the same behaviour in other animals.” I have myself frequently observed this association of ideas between hollow ground and probability of finding water in the case of setter-dogs, which require much water while working; and it is evident that the ideas associated are of a character highly generic. Further, Mr. Darwin writes:—“I have seen, as I dare say have others, that when a small object is thrown on the ground beyond the reach of one of the elephants in the Zoological Gardens, he blows through his trunk on the ground beyond the object, so that the current reflected on all sides may drive the object within his reach. Again, a well-known ethnologist, Mr. Westropp, informs me that he observed in Vienna a bear deliberately making with his paw a current in some water, which was close to the bars of his cage, so as to draw a piece of floating bread within his reach.” In Animal Intelligence it will be seen that both these observations are independently confirmed by letters which I have received from correspondents; so that the facts must be accepted. And they imply a faculty of forming generic ideas of a high order of complexity. Indeed, these are not unlike the generic ideas of intelligent water-dogs with reference to Lastly, Mr. Darwin writes:—“When I say to my terrier in an eager voice (and I have made the trial many times), ‘Hi, hi, where is it?’ she at once takes it as a sign that something is to be hunted, and generally first looks quickly all around, and then rushes into the nearest thicket, to scout for any game, but finding nothing, she looks up into any neighbouring tree for a squirrel. Now, do not these actions clearly show that she had in her mind a general idea, or concept, that some animal is to be discovered and hunted?” From the many instances which I have already given in Animal Intelligence of the high receptual capabilities of ants, it will here be sufficient to re-state the following, which is quoted from Mr. Belt, whose competency as an observer no one can dispute. “A nest was made near one of our tramways, and to get to the trees the ants had to cross the rails, over which the waggons were continually passing and re-passing. Every time they came along a number of ants were crushed to death. They persevered in crossing for some time, but at last set to work and tunnelled underneath each rail. One day, when the waggons were not running, I stopped up the tunnels with stones; but although great numbers carrying leaves were thus cut off from the nest, they would not cross the rails, but set to work making fresh tunnels underneath them.” These facts cannot be ascribed to “instinct,” seeing that tram-cars could not have been objects of previous experience to the ancestors of the ants; and therefore the degree of receptual intelligence, or “practical inference,” which was displayed is highly remarkable. Clearly, the insects must have appreciated the nature of these repeated catastrophes, and correctly reasoned out the only way by which they could be avoided. As this is an important branch of my subject, I will add a few more illustrations drawn from vertebrated animals, beginning with some from the writings of Leroy, who had more opportunity than most men of studying the habits of animals in a state of nature. He says of the wolf:—“When he scents a flock within its fold, memory recalls to him the impression of the shepherd and his dog, and balances that of the immediate neighbourhood of the sheep; he measures the height of the fence, compares it with his own strength, takes into account the additional difficulty of jumping it when burdened with his prey, and thence concludes the uselessness of the attempt. Yet he will seize one of a flock scattered over a field, under the very eyes of the shepherd, especially if there be a wood near enough to offer him a hope of shelter. He will resist the most tempting morsel when accompanied by this alarming accessory [the smell of man]; and even when it is divested of it, he is long in overcoming his suspicions. In this case the wolf can only have an abstract idea of danger—the precise nature of the trap laid for him being unknown.... Several nights are hardly sufficient to give him confidence. Though the cause of his suspicions may no longer exist, it is reproduced by memory, and the suspicion is unremoved. The idea of man is connected with that of an unknown danger, and makes him distrustful of the fairest appearances.” Leroy also well observes:—“Animals, like ourselves, are Again, with regard to the stag, this author writes:—“He exhausts every variety and every design of which the action of flight consists. He has perceived that in thickets, where the passage of his body leaves a strong trace, the dogs follow him ardently, and without any checks; he therefore leaves the thicket and plunges into the forests where there is no underwood, or else skirts the high-road. Sometimes he leaves that part of the country altogether, and depends wholly on his speed for escape. But even when out of hearing of the dogs, he knows that they will soon come up with him; and, instead of giving himself up to false security, he avails himself of this respite to invent new artifices to throw them out. He takes a straight course, returns on his steps, and bounding from the earth many times consecutively, throws out the sagacity of the dogs.... When hard pressed he will often drop down in the hope that their ardour will carry them beyond the track, and should it do so he retraces his steps. Often he seeks the company of others of his species, and when his friend is sufficiently heated to share the peril with, he leaves him to his fate and escapes by rapid flight. Frequently the quarry is thus changed, and this artifice is one the success of which is most certain.” “Often (when not being hunted at all), instead of returning home in confidence and straightway lying down to rest, he will wander round the spot; he enters the wood, leaves it, It is remarkable enough that an animal should seek to confuse its trail by such devices, even when it knows that the hounds are actually in pursuit; but it is still more so when the devices are resorted to in order to confuse imaginary hounds which may possibly be on the scent. Perhaps to some persons it may appear that such facts argue on the part of the animals which exhibit them some powers of representative thought, or some kind of reflection conducted without the aid of language. Be it remembered, therefore, I am not maintaining that they do not: I am merely conceding that the evidence is inadequate to justify the conclusion that they do; and all I am now concerned with is to make it certain that in animals there is a logic, be it a logic of recepts only, or likewise what I shall afterwards explain as a logic of pre-concepts. Again, Leroy says of the fox:—“He smells the iron of the trap, and this sensation has become so terrible to him, that it prevails over every other. If he perceives that the snares become more numerous, he departs to seek a safe neighbourhood. But sometimes, grown bold by a nearer and oft-repeated examination, and guided by his unerring scent, he manages, without hurt to himself, to draw the bait adroitly out of the trap.... If all the outlets of his den are guarded by traps, the animal scents them, recognizes them, and will suffer the most acute hunger rather than attempt to pass them. I have known foxes keep their dens a whole fortnight, and only then make up their minds to come out because hunger left them no choice but as to the mode of death.... There is nothing he will not attempt in order to save himself. He will dig till he has worn away his claws to effect his exit by a Lastly, this author gives the case, which has since been largely quoted—although its source is seldom given—of crows which it is desired to shoot upon their nests, in order to destroy birds and eggs at the same time. The crows will not return to their nests during daylight, if they see any one waiting to shoot them. If, to lull suspicion, a hut is made below the Now, as Leroy is not a random writer, and as his life’s work was that of Ranger at Versailles, we must not lightly set aside this statement as incredible, more especially as he adds that the “phenomenon is always to be repeated when the attempt is made,” and so is to be regarded as “among the very commonest instances of the sagacity of animals.” In this connection also I may state that, with the assistance of the keeper, I have succeeded in teaching the Chimpanzee now at the Zoological Gardens to count correctly as far as five. The method adopted is to ask her for one straw, two straws, three straws, four straws, or five straws—of course without observing any order in the succession of such requests. If more than one straw is asked for, the ape has been taught to hold the others in her mouth until the sum is completed, so that she may deliver all the straws simultaneously. For instance, if she is asked for four straws, she successively picks up three straws and puts them in her mouth: then she picks up the fourth, and hands over all the four together. This method prevents any possible error arising from her interpretation of vocal tones, which might well arise if each straw were asked for separately. Thus there can be no doubt that the animal is able to distinguish receptually between the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and understands the name for each. Further than this I have not attempted to take her. I may add that her performance has been witnessed by the officers of the Zoological Society and also by other naturalists, who will be satisfied with the accuracy of the above account. But the ape is capricious, and, unless she happens to be in a favourable mood at the time, visitors must not be disappointed if they fail to be entertained by an exhibition of her learning. The great physiologist MÜller and the great philosopher Hegel are quoted by Mr. Mivart as maintaining, that “to form abstract conceptions of such operations as of something common to many under the notion of cause and effect, is a perfect impossibility to them” (animals “I had a setter dog which was greatly afraid of thunder. One day a number of apples were being shot upon the The importance of clearly perceiving that animals have a generic, as distinguished from an abstract, idea of causation—and, indeed, must have such an idea if they are in any way at all to adjust their actions to their circumstances—the importance of clearly perceiving this is, that it carries with it a proof of the logic of recepts being able to reach generic ideas of principles, as well as of objects, qualities, and actions. In order to prove this important fact still more unquestionably, I will here quote a passage from the biography of the cebus which I kept for the express purpose of observing his intelligence. “To-day he obtained possession of a hearth-brush, one of the kind which has the handle screwed into the brush. He soon found the way to unscrew the handle, and, having done that, he immediately began to try to find out the way to screw it in again. This he in time accomplished. At first he put the wrong end of the handle into the hole, but turned it round and round the right way for screwing. Finding it did not hold, he turned the other end of the handle, carefully stuck it into the hole, and began again to turn it the right way. It was, of course, a very difficult feat for him to perform, for he required both his hands to hold the handle in the proper position, and to turn it between his hands in order to screw it in; and the long bristles of the brush prevented it from remaining steady, or with the right side up. He held the The above is extracted from the diary kept by my sister. I did not myself witness the progress of this research with the hearth-brush, as I did so many of the other investigations successfully pursued by that wonderful animal. But I have a perfect confidence in the accuracy of my sister’s observation, as well as in the fidelity of her account; and, moreover, the point with which I am about to be concerned has reference to what followed subsequently, as to which I had abundant opportunities for close and repeated observations. For the point is that, after having thus discovered the mechanical principle of the screw in that one particular case, the monkey forthwith proceeded to generalize, or to apply his newly gained knowledge to every other case where it was at all probable that the mechanical principle in question was to be met with. The consequence was that the animal became a nuisance in the house by incessantly unscrewing the tops of fire-irons, bell-handles, &c., &c., which he was by no means careful always to replace. Here, therefore, I think we have unquestionable evidence of intelligent recognition of a principle, which in the first instance was discovered by “the most unwearying perseverance” in the way of experiment, and afterwards sought for in multitudes of wholly dissimilar objects. To these numerous facts I will now add one other, which is sufficiently remarkable to deserve republication for its own sake. I quote the account from the journal Science, in which it appeared anonymously. But finding on inquiry that the observer was Mr. S. P. Langley, the well-known astronomer, and being personally assured by him that he is certain there is no mistake about the observation, I will now give the latter in his own words. “The interesting description by Mr. Larkin (Science, No. 58) of the lifting by a spider of a large beetle to its nest, reminds me of quite another device by which I once saw a minute spider (hardly larger than the head of a pin) lift a house-fly, which must have been more than twenty times its weight, through a distance of over a foot. The fly dangled by a single strand from the cross-bar of a window-sash, and, when it first caught my attention, was being raised through successive small distances of something like a tenth of an inch each; the lifts following each other so fast, that the ascent seemed almost continuous. It was evident that the weight must have been quite beyond the spider’s power to stir by a ‘dead lift;’ but his motions were so quick, that at first it was difficult to see how this apparently impossible task was being accomplished. I shall have to resort to an illustration to explain it; for the complexity of the scheme seems to belong less to what we ordinarily call instinct than to intelligence, and that in a degree we cannot all boast ourselves. “The little spider proceeded as follows:— “a b is a portion of the window-bar, to which level the fly was to be lifted, from his original position at F vertically beneath a; the spider’s first act was to descend halfway to the fly (to d), and there fasten one end of an almost invisible thread; his second to ascend to the bar and run out to b, where he made fast the other end, and hauled on his guy “The same operation was repeated again and again, a new guy being occasionally spun, but the spider never descending more than about halfway down the cord, whose elasticity was in no way involved in the process. All was done with surprising rapidity. I watched it for some five minutes (during which the fly was lifted perhaps six inches), and then was called away.” Without further burdening the argument with illustrative proof, it must now be evident that the “ore” out of which concepts are formed is highly metalliferous: it is not merely a dull earth which bears no resemblance to the shining substance smelted from it in the furnace of Language; it is already sparkling to such an extent that we may well feel there is no need of analysis to show it charged with that substance in its pure form—that what we see in the ore is the same kind of material as we take from the melting-pot, and differs from it only in the degree of its agglomeration. Nevertheless, I will not yet assume that such is the case. Before we can be perfectly sure that two things which seem to the eye of common sense so similar are really the same, we must submit them to a scientific analysis. Even though it be certain that the one is extracted from the other, there still Only one other topic remains to be dealt with in the present chapter. We continually find it assumed, and confidently stated as if the statement did not admit of question, that the simplest or most primitive order of ideation is that which is concerned only with particulars, or with special objects of perception. The nascent ideas of an infant are supposed to crystallize around the nuclei furnished by individual percepts; the less intelligent animals—if not, indeed, animals in general—are supposed, as Locke says, to deal “only in particular ideas, just as they receive them from the senses.” Now, I fully assent to this, if it is only meant (as I understand Locke to mean) that infants and animals are not able consciously, intentionally, or, as he says, “of themselves, to compound and make complex ideas.” In order thus intentionally, or of themselves, to compound their ideas, they would require to think about their ideas as ideas, or consciously to set one idea before another as two distinct objects of thought, and for the Accordingly we find, as a matter of fact, both in infants and in animals, that the lower the grade of intelligence, the more is that intelligence shut up to a perception of class distinctions. “We pronounce the word Papa before a child in its cradle, at the same time pointing to his father. After a little, he in turn lisps the word, and we imagine that he understands it in the same sense that we do, or that his father’s presence only will recall the word. Not at all. When another person—that is, one similar in appearance, with a long coat, a beard, and loud voice—enters the room, he calls him also Papa. The name was individual; he has made it general. In our case it is applicable to one person only; in his, to a class.... A little boy, a year old, had travelled a good deal “Now, I have quoted such familiar instances from this author because he adduces them as proof of the statement that here there appears a delicacy of impression which is special to man.” Without waiting to inquire whether this statement is justified by the evidence adduced, or even whether the infant has personally distinguished his father from among other men at the time when he first calls all men by the same name; it is enough for my present purposes to observe the single fact, that when a child is first able to show us the nature of its ideation by means of speech, it furnishes us with ample evidence that this ideation is what I have termed generic. The dress, the beard, and the voice go to form a recept to which all men are perceived to correspond: the most striking peculiarities of a locomotive are vividly impressed upon the memory, so that when anything resembling them is met with elsewhere, it is receptually classified as belonging to an object of analogous character. Only much later, when the analytic powers of perception have greatly developed, does the child begin to draw its distinctions with sufficient “refinement” to perceive that this classification is too crude—that the resemblances which most struck its infant imagination were but accidental, and that they have to be disregarded in favour of less striking resemblances which were originally altogether unnoticed. But although the process of classification is thus perpetually undergoing improvement with advancing intelligence, from the very first it has been classification—although, of course, thus far only within the region of sensuous perception. And similarly with regard to animals, it is sufficiently evident from such facts as those already instanced, that the imagery on which their adaptive action depends is in large measure generic. Therefore, without in any way pre-judging the question as to whether or not there is any radical distinction between a mind thus far gifted and the conceptual thought of man, I may take it for granted that the ideation of infants is from the first generic; and hence that those psychologists are greatly mistaken who thoughtlessly assume that the formation of class-ideas is a prerogative of more advanced intelligence. No doubt their view of the matter seems plausible at first sight, because within the region of conceptual thought we know that progress is marked by increasing powers of generalisation—that it is the easiest steps which have to do with the cognition of particulars; the more difficult which have to do with abstractions. But this is to confuse recepts with concepts, and so to overlook a distinction between the two orders of generalization which it is of the first importance to be clear about. A generic idea is generic because the particular ideas of which it is composed present such obvious points of resemblance that they spontaneously fuse together in consciousness; but a general idea is general for precisely the opposite reason—namely, because the points of resemblance which it has seized are obscured from immediate perception, and therefore could never have fused together in consciousness but for the aid of intentional abstraction, or of the power of a mind knowingly to deal with its own ideas as ideas. In other words, the kind of classification with which recepts are concerned is that which lies nearest to the kind of classification with which all processes of so-called “intuitive inference” depend—such as mistaking a bowl for a sphere. But the kind of classification with which concepts are concerned is that which lies furthest from this purely automatic grouping of perceptions. Classification there doubtless is in both cases; but the one order is due to the closeness of resemblances in an act of perception, while in the other order it is an expression of their remoteness from merely perceptual associations. Or, to put the matter in yet another light, if we think it sounds less paradoxical to speak of the process of classification |