7 8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



before the other language centers begin to work and after they 

 have been destroyed. Therefore, the auditory center must do the 

 essential work of rousing ideas in reading. But if it does this, 

 why is the motor center needed at all ? We have seen that a be- 

 ginner has to read aloud to stimulate the auditory center to do its 

 work. In quiet reading the utterance-memory probably reacts 

 upon the sound-memory, making it more vivid, and thus causing 

 the auditory center to send out stronger association impulses. 

 Possibly visual words first arouse a memory of the utterance 

 instead of that of the sound, as I suppose. But, be this as it may, 

 the facts clearly indicate that, in the evolution of language, the 

 auditory center has acquired the position of a central station, 

 through which the other language centers communicate with the 

 centers for ideas. The sound of a word is the word itself. Printed 

 words are only convenient symbols for recalling the sounds. 



This gains in interest when considered in the light of Max 

 Muller's views concerning the relation of language to thought. 

 His motto is : " No reason without language ; no language with- 

 out reason." He contends that the scattered sense-memories can 

 not be bound together to form a concept without a word, so words 

 are essential to thought. He does not mean thought to include 

 the inference that a dog makes when he sees his master start for 

 a walk, or that which a driver makes when he sees a stone ahead 

 of him and pulls the rein to avoid it. Undoubtedly such mental 

 processes may go on without words. But it must be acknowl- 

 edged that general or abstract thinking, such as places man so 

 far above the lower animals, does require the use of words. 



Now, what are the words that are essential to such thinking ? 

 Surely not visual words, but the words heard and uttered, as any 

 one may know by attending for a few moments to his own think- 

 ing. And do not all the philologists tell us that the laws re- 

 vealed by a study of the life and growth of language are phonetic 

 laws ? 



Max M filler also alludes to the interesting distinction made by 

 the German language in the two forms for the plural of Wort. 

 Worte means living words actually engaged in conveying con- 

 cepts from one mind to another ; Woerter means words consid- 

 ered as mere objects. Visual words are only Woerter, dead bod- 

 ies unable to support the burden of thought, mere effigies of the 

 living sounds. 



It is not meant, however, to deny the possibility of a different 

 relation of the language centers to one another in abnormal or in 

 exceptional individuals. Deaf-mutes may learn to read and even 

 to speak, and doubtless to use visual words in thinking ; but it 

 is with much more than ordinary difficulty, and, in the opinion 

 of some of their ablest teachers, the results are not so satisfac- 



