Were it necessary, I could quote from his work, entitled _Lessons from Nature_, sundry further passages expressing the same distinction in other words; but I have already been careful, even to redundancy, in presenting this distinction, not only because it is the distinction on which Mr. Mivart rests his whole argument for the separation of man from the rest of the animal kingdom as a being unique in kind; but still more because it is, as he is careful to point out, the one real distinction which has hitherto always been drawn by philosophers since the time of Aristotle. And, as I have already observed, it is a distinction which I myself fully recognize, and believe to be the most important of all distinctions in psychology. The only point of difference, therefore, between my opinions and those—I will not say of Mr. Mivart, but—of any other or possible opponent who understands the psychology of this subject, is on the question whether, in view of the light which has now been shed on psychology by the theory of evolution, this important distinction is to be regarded as one of degree or as one of kind. I shall now proceed to unfold the reasons which lead me to differ on this point from Mr. Mivart, and so from all the still extensive school of which he is, in my opinion, much the ablest spokesman.
We have seen that the distinction in question consists in the presence or absence of the faculty now fully explained, of reflective thought, and that of this faculty the simplest manifestation is, as alleged by my opponents, that which is afforded by “judgment.” But we have also seen that this faculty of judgment does not first appear in predication, unless we extend the term so as to embrace all acts of denomination. In other words, we have seen that judgment first arises with conception—and necessarily so, seeing that neither of these things can occur without the other, but both arise as direct exhibitions of that faculty of self-conscious or reflective thought of which they are everywhere the immediate expression. I will, therefore, begin with a careful analysis of conceptual judgment.
We must first recur to the distinctions set forth at the close of the last chapter, where it was shown that, without any prejudice to the question touching the distinction between man and brute, there are five different stages of intentional sign-making to be recognized—namely, the indicative, the denotative, the connotative, the denominative, and the predicative. From what has now been said regarding the essentially predicative nature of all conceptual names, we may disregard the last of these distinctions, and consider the denominative phase of language as psychologically identical with the predicative. Similarly, we may now neglect the indicative phase, as one which bears no relation to the matters at present before us. Thus we have to fasten attention only upon the differences between the denotative, the connotative, and the denominative phases of language. This has already been done in general terms; but must now be done in more detail. And for the sake of being clear, even at the risk of being tedious, I will begin by repeating the important distinctions already explained.