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truth do away with the broad distinctions which psychologists are in the habit of drawing. Thus the recept only appears to connect the image and the concept just because it tries to be both at the same time. So the lower stadium of the sign only gives an appearance of bridging over the interval between signless ideation and sign-aided thought, just because it aims at once at being something less than a true sign, and this true sign itself.

If our criticisms are just, Dr. Romanes cannot be said to have succeeded in his main object, viz. the obliteration of all qualitative difference between human and anima! intellection by the interposition of psychological links which can be seen to have the essential characters of both. And here one is naturally led to ask whether the author is after all on the right track. For he is a master of his facts and shows considerable power in the marshalling of his arguments, and, as even a hasty perusal of the volume can show anybody, he has here concentrated his force in a severe and sustained effort. Where he has failed it is conjecturable that others may fail also. And so it behooves us to see whether he has approached the problem in the right way, or, at least, in the only possible way.

The introduction of all this technical mechanism of receptual ideation, lower concepts, and the rest, has for its avowed object the avoidance of all introduction of qualitative change in the process of intellectual evolution. Dr. Romanes tells us plainly at the outset that he is going to establish identity of kind between the animal and the human type of intellection. And, no doubt, if it were possible to do this in the way here attempted, that is to say by interposing transitional forms which virtually efface all qualitative unlikeness, it would be a great advantage to the evolutionist. But it may be said that it is not the only way of satisfying the requirements of the evolution hypothesis. Dr. Romanes pertinently reinarks, in meeting a priori objections to the derivation of human from animal intellection, that in the life of the human individual we actually have a series of transitions from animal to human psychosis. Now, a glance at the intellectual development of the individual shows us that distinct qualitative differences are introduced. Not to speak of the obvious fact that every new

sensation effects a qualitative addition to the infant's mental life, there is the more important fact that the first image of the absent mother or nurse introduces a new sphere of mental activity. The child that dreams and imagines is already a different being from the infant that merely touches and sees. Similarly it may be said that the first conscious process of breaking up its sense-presentations, the first distinct apprehension of relations, is epoch-making just because it marks the on-coming of a new mode of mental activity, a qualitative extension of its conscious life.

To say this, however, is not to say that the process of development is wanting in continuity. For, first of all, these higher forms of activity introduce themselves in the most gradual way, and only slowly disentangle themselves from the lower forms which constitute their matrix. Thus the image little by little lifts itself butterfly-like out of its chrysalis, the percept. Similarly, what we call thinking, with its conscious comparing and relating of the products of sense perception, emerges in the most gradual way out of lower forms of psychosis.

But this is not all, or the main thing. While the higher and lower forms of intellection undoubtedly exhibit qualitative differences, it may be possible to transcend these differences by going deeper, and detecting the veritable elements of the intellective process. This deeper analysis is emphatically the work of modern psychology, and, as every reader of Mr. Herbert Spencer knows, is of vast assistance to the evolutionist in following the psychical process from its rudest conceivable form in the lower grades of animal life up to the highest achievements of human thought. The luminous idea that all intelligence is at bottom a combination of two elementary processes, differentiation and integration, seems to lift one at once high above the perplexities with which our author so laboriously deals. It enables us to say that animal intelligence, just because it is intelligence, must be identical in substance with our own. The qualitative differences between perception and conception, or, to take Dr. Romanes' example, the logic of recepts" and the logic of concepts, which obstinately persist so long as we look at the process ab extra, now appear as mere results of different degrees of complexity, of unlike modes.

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of combination of the ultimate elements; just as to the physiologist the manifold variety of color resolves itself into different modes of combination of two or three elementary sentient processes.

When once this fundamental identity of all intellective processes is clearly apprehended, the question where exactly in the evolutionist's tree the twig of thought proper, or better, perhaps, of conscious generalization, branches off, sinks to its proper place as a question of quite secondary importance. At the same time we may agree with Dr. Romanes that the point has its real historical or genealogical interest, and that he has not done amiss to devote a volume to its discussion.

The question turns mainly on the point how much the animal can do by means of pure imagining and the aid of association. Our author clearly recognizes that this will carry animals some way, and may give to their mental operations the appearance of a true generalizing process. But he has not fixed the limits of this pictorial or suggestive inference with the precision one looks for, partly, no doubt, because his whole view of the generic image as somehow involving a generalizing process tended to obscure from him the real point. One might safely, perhaps, hazard the assertion that the diving-bird can get on very well without anything like a general idea of water, a pure (generic) image being all that seems necessary. On the other hand, one is disposed, on the evidence of the facts adduced by our author, to put the beginnings of the true generalizing process pretty low down. It certainly seems to be involved in the mental life of the ants, as elicited by Sir John Lubbock's experiments, and described by Dr. Romanes (p. 94 and following). And since these particular actions plainly imply the use of signs, and apparently signs capable of indicating such abstract ideas as those of quantity, there seems no reason why we should hesitate to call ants thinkers in the sense of being able to form general notions. The same applies to the mechanical inventions of the spider, described by Mr. Larkin (p. 62). Similarly, it is difficult to deny the rudiment of conceptual thought' to a fox who can reason on the matter of traps in the way described by Leroy (p. 56), or to a dog that was cured of his dread of imagined thunder by being shown the true cause of

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the disturbing noise, viz. the shooting bags of apples on to a floor (pp. 59, 60). No doubt there is a danger in straightway endowing animals with mental qualities identical with our own, when their actions resemble ours. There may, of course, be two psychological explanations of the same action. We cannot, however, escape our limitations, and, if we are to deal with animal ways at all, we are bound to interpret them in terms of our own mental processes.

The hesitation of the evolutionist to attribute rudimentary thought to animals, in which Dr. Romanes evidently shares, is no doubt due to the firmly established assumption that we generalize by help of language. To the nominalist more especially it savors of rank heresy to hint that animals apparently destitute of signs may be capable of generalizing their perceptions and reaching a dim consciousness of the distinction between the universal and the particular.

But is the nominalist's assumption that language is the indispensable instrument of thought above challenge? A considerable part of Dr. Romanes' volume deals with the relations of thought to language. He gives us a fairly good summary of the results of research into the origin of language. It cannot be said that these throw much light on the question. Perhaps it is unreasonable to expect that they should. Our author contends with some skill as against Professor Max Müller that the earliest traces of human language suggest a highly pictorial and non-conceptual mode of ideation. And in his ingenious hypothetical account of the genealogy of man as the articulate reasoner our author inclines to the idea that, so far from language making the thinker, the endowment of language has to be engrafted on a high quality of intelligence, and even then to undergo considerable development before it becomes a mechanism for conceptual thought.

The whole subject is still a dark and perplexing one, and we must refrain from dogmatizing. It may, however, be contended that the evidence on the whole supports the view that the generalizing process is up to a certain and not very high point independent of language. That is to say, an animal unassisted by any system of general signs may make a start along the path of comparing its ob

servations, resolving them into their constituents, and separating out some of these as common qualities. Whether in these nascent operations of thought there is some substitute for our mechanism of signs, we do not know and perhaps never shall know. However this be, they remain nascent processes never rising above a certain level. The addition of some kind of sign which can be used as a mark

of common features or qualities seems to be indispensable to any high degree of generalization, and to any elaborate process of reasoning. It is the want of such signs, and not the lack of the " power of abstraction," that keeps certain animals, for example the dog, from being rational animals in as complete a sense as a large number of our own species.-Nineteenth Century.

CHARLES STEWART PARNELL.

BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY, M. P.

I FIRST became acquainted with Mr. Parnell shortly after his entering the House of Commons in 1875. I knew nothing of him up to that time except his historic name. I knew that he belonged to the family of the Sir John Parnell who stood by Grattan's side in the long struggle against the passing of the fatal Act of Union. The mere name was naturally a recommendation to me. I used to watch the House of Commons very closely in those days, although I was not yet a member.

At that time I did not intend to be a member. I had been asked more than once to stand for an Irish constituency, and I had always refused. I did not see anything in particular to go into Parliament for. I could not be an English member-I mean, I could not stand for an English constituency-with my strong Irish national sentiments; and there did not seem much that an Irish representa tive could do. The national cause had indeed revived under the name of Home Rule, and there were many earnest men in the House of Commons, even in those days, to speak up for that cause.

Mr.

Isaac Butt was the Home Rule leader, and among his followers were my late friend Alexander M. Sullivan, one of the most brilliant speakers who ever addressed the House of Commons as an Irish representative since the days of O'Counell; and there were many other eloquent and capa

ble men. But there did not seem to me to be much life in the whole affair. The policy of Mr. Butt was to have what is called a "full dress debate" on Home Rule once in every Session. Mr. Butt made a capital speech himself, full of argument and eloquence, and several of his

followers made brilliant speeches. In fact, they had the argument and the eloquence all to themselves. Very few English or Scottish members took any part in the debate. Two nights were resignedly given up to the parade of the Irish members, and that was all. At the close of the debate the Minister in charge got up and made a speech in which he complimented Mr. Butt on his ability and his eloquence-praised the general tone of the Irish speakers--gently deprecated the extreme utterances of some few of them, and then blandly put the whole question away. He merely declared that it would not be possible for any English Government even to argue the Honie Rule question seriously but considerately added that he and his colleagues did not object to the Irish members having their annual say on the subject. Then the division was taken, thirty or forty one way-some hundreds the other way. Next morning the London daily papers all said that no English statesman could possibly promise even to grant an inquiry into the reason of the demand for Home Rule in Ireland. At that time all that members from Ireland asked for was a Committee or Commission to inquire into the reasonableness of the demand for Home Rule.

I did not see much promise in all this. Yet I had nothing better to suggest. The people of Ireland then took but little interest in Parliamentary agitation. There was no popular suffrage. Men who went into Parliament as avowed Irish Nationalists usually ended by taking some sort of office or place of emolument under the Government. The memory of the treason of Keogh and Sadleir was still keen and

bitter. Of the thoroughly honest Irishmen who had stood up for the cause in the most desolate and desperate moments there were few left. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy was settled in Australia. My old friend, John Francis Maguire, was dead. Frederick Lucas, that noble Englishman who loved Ireland as though she had been his own land, was dead. George Henry Moore was dead. John Pope Hennessy had taken to the Colonial service, and was fighting everywhere a stout and gallant fight for the same rights of native populations which he had made while he was in the House of Commons. The moment seemed dark. Suddenly Mr. Parnell came into the House of Commons as successor to John Martin-"honest John Martin," as friends and opponents alike called him -one of the rebels of Forty-eight and a brother-in-law of John Mitchel. Mr. Parnell took up and systematized the plan of obstruction which Mr. Biggar had started and was carrying on in a more or less haphazard sort of way. I was im pressed with Mr. Parnell's force of character from the very first. His peculiar quietness of manner, combined with his indomitable perseverance and his dauntless courage, filled me with respect and admiration. It seemed nothing to him, a raw young man just come from Cambridge, to stand up night after night and every night, and face the whole hostile House of Commons. He was a bad speaker at first-he was not anything of an orator even at the last; he had a poor vocabulary-words came to him with difficulty-his range of ideas seemed curiously narrow; in short, according to all recognized rules and traditions of Parliamentary criticism he ought to have been a dead failure in the House of Commons. Yet there was the hard fact staring any impartial observer in the face he was not a dead failure. The House for the most part-almost altogether-hated him; but it could not despise him or ignore him it had to listen to him-it had to take account of him. The strength of genuine conviction and of thorough manhood was in him. If the House of Commons cannot conquer one man, then the one man conquers the House of Commons. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the House conquers the man. In Mr. Parnell's case the man conquered the House.

I soon began to look for great things

from Mr. Parnell. I felt sure I had got at the purpose of his policy of obstruction. It was no mere wanton longing to disturb the business and the order of a Parliamentary assembly. It was a settled statesmanlike policy, at once bold and subtle. I read it thus. Mr. Parnell was a man who had no faith in the possibility of success for the Irish national cause by an armed insurrection. I have often heard him say that an armed insurrection is a hopeless business in a country which has no mountains inland. Mountains round the coastline only, and a flat country all between, make guerilla warfare hopeless, he used to point out, and give the struggle into the hands of the Imperial enemy with his ironclads and his long-range guns. But neither had Mr. Parnell auy faith in the sort of Parliamentary action which was being carried on just then, the annual debate on Home Rule and the academic arguments drawn from the United States and Canada and Australia and AustriaHungary. He saw that the vast majority of the people of Great Britain did not know or care anything about Home Rule

hardly knew that there was such a thing as a Home Rule party in Parliament. The great object, then, was to compel the English public to listen; and Mr. Parnell became more and more convinced that the great platform to use for that purpose was the House of Commons. If we could only compel the English public to listen, there would be some chance of our convincing them and carrying them with us. Without them, we could do nothing. But they would have to pay some attention to us, when we systematically said to the House of Commons: "If you will not listen to our claims you shall do no other business whatever. If you will not read our petition, we can at least, like the woman in the Roman story, throw ourselves down before the feet of your horses and compel you either to stop on your way or to trample over our bodies."

That was the meaning of Mr. Parnell's obstruction. Of course, he was not the inventor of Parliamentary obstruction. l'arliamentary obstruction has been a weapon applied at all times since ever there was a constitutional Parliament in England. But it was always before employed for the purpose of resisting some particular measure or delaying some particular policy. Mr. Parnell employed it

for the purpose of obtaining a hearing for a great national cause. We know what happened. He obtained the hearing, and the true Liberalism of England and Scotland and Wales admitted at last the justice of the cause.

It soon became apparent to me that Mr. Parnell was on the right track, and I felt a strong desire to be with him in his plan of campaign. Still I did not accept his leadership. He offered me his influence and support if I would consent to stand for an Irish county under his leadership. I refused to accept the offer. I preferred to keep myself free. Suddenly a vacancy occurred in a county, and I was invited to stand. I was asked simply on my reputation as an Irish literary man, who, although making his living in London, had never ceased to be a Nationalist. I accepted the invitation, and was elected without opposition. I was not asked one single question about Mr. Parnell or his policy. I went into the House of Commons absolutely free and unpledged to any party-except, of course, to whatever party best represented in my opinion the cause of Ireland. This was while Mr. Butt still retained the leadership.

Mr. Butt died soon after. Some of Mr. Butt's devoted followers declared that Mr. Parnell had hounded him to his death. Of course, when any public man dies such a charge is made against somebody. It was flung out as an accusation against Sir Robert Peel that he had hounded Canning to his death. What Mr. Parnell did with regard to Mr. Butt was that he pressed on a plan of action more strong and direct than any of the methods which Mr. Butt was willing to adopt. I knew Mr. Butt and greatly admired his varied abilities. But I could not help seeing that his policy was thoroughly played out. I believed then, and I believe now, that Mr. Parnell had breathed a fresh and vigorous life into the party, and I gave him such support as I could give. I think Mr. Parnell was perfectly right in the course he took. It is childish, and worse than childish, to say that if you set yourself in opposition to some particular policy conducted by a public man, with whose political purposes you are mainly in sympathy, and that man afterward dies, you are open to the charge of having hounded him to his death. Such an absurd principle would render all

progress in political affairs impossible. Yet it was for a long time a charge against Mr. Parnell that he had hounded Isaac Butt to his death. Before Mr. Butt's death, I had identified myself with Mr. Parnell's little party of some eight or ten members, and I stayed with him through many dark days and many grim fortunes.

On the death of Mr. Butt, Mr. Shaw became leader of our party for a short time. But after the General Elections of 1880 it was clear to most of us that Mr. Parnell was destined to be the popular man in Ireland, and he was chosen leader over the head of Mr. Shaw. Had Mr. Shaw died anywhere about that time, we should of course have been charged with having hounded him to his death. Then came the most important crisis which, in my opinion, Mr. Parnell ever had to face. All the "moderate men," as they used to be called, and as they called themselves, straightway deserted him and us, and sat on benches opposed to us. Let it be remembered that at that time there was no popular franchise in Ireland. We knew very well that if the Irish peasant could be allowed to give his vote, that vote would have been given without hesitation for Mr. Parnell. But the suffrage in Ireland was still very narrow, and the peasant on the fields and the artisan in the towns had little or nothing to do with it. When we got, through Mr. Gladstone's means, the extended franchise some years after, we swept the country of the men who had followed Mr. Shaw. Not one of them, I think, came in at the elections of 1880. But in the meantime it was a terrible crisis for Mr. Parnell. He had not a majority of Irish members. He had no absolutely conclusive proof that the people of Ireland in general were with him; in the absence of a popular suffrage he could have no such proof. Yet he held his course with the sustaining conviction that time would prove him to be in the right. I admired him thoroughly during all those years of trial. We had to fight a long battle against coercion, and we had those against us who ought to have been for us. Mr. Parnell never lost courage, temper, or confidence. came the terrible crisis of the Phonix Park. For a moment, Mr. Parnell seemed desponding almost despairing. "It is always like this in Ireland," he said more than once; "whenever she

Then

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