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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



I do not object to this statement so long as it is 

 only meant as a protest against the received 

 opinion that language is the handiwork of rea- 

 son ; that man, because he was possessed of rea- 

 son, was able to frame for himself and others an 

 instrument of communication in language. Gei- 

 ger's words convey much truth, as calling atten- 

 tion to the fact that it is reason rather which was 

 built up by language than language by reason. 

 But what is reason without language? What 

 shall we think of language without reason ? 

 When we say that language has been built up 

 by reason, it is the same as when we say that 

 a living body is built up by a vital force. Rea- 

 son, like vital force, is a result which we sub- 

 stantiate and change into a cause. With every 

 new word there is more reason, and every prog- 

 ress of reason is marked by a new word. The 

 growth of reason and language is coral-like. 

 Each shell is the product of life, but becomes in 

 turn the support of new life. In the same man- 

 ner each word is the product of reason, but be- 

 comes in turn a new step in the growth of reason. 

 Reason and language, if we must separate them 

 for our own purposes, are always held together 

 in mutual dependence ; and if we wish to arrive 

 at a true understanding of their nature, all we 

 can do is to break up the two words and knead 

 them into one, viz., Logos. Then and then only 

 shall we see that reason by itself and language 

 by itself are nonentities, and that they are in 

 reality two sides of one act which cannot be torn 

 asunder. 



" Then what is Logos ? " it will be said. " Is 

 that term clearer than language and reason ? Are 

 we not simply placing one idol in the place of 

 two ? " I believe not! Logos is the act of the 

 monon, freeing itself, by means of signs, from the 

 oppressive weight of sensations. Logos is what 

 its name signifies, the act of collecting, arranging, 

 classifying; and this act is performed by signs, 

 and chiefly by words. 



PERCEPTS AND CONCEPTS. 



In order to understand this process of gather- 

 ing and naming, we must go back to where we 

 left the stream of the philosophy of language, and 

 chiefly to Locke's observation that words are the 

 signs of concepts, confirmed as it was by the later 

 discoveries of Comparative Philology, that all 

 words are derived from roots, and that roots ex- 

 press general concepts. If that is so — and no 

 one doubts it — then the question recurs, " How 

 does sensation, which deals with percepts only, 

 arrive at concepts, and how can concepts be ex- 



pressed by vocal sounds ? " Our chief difficulties 

 here too are again created by language. Nothing 

 is more useful than the distinction between per- 

 cepts and concepts, yet the line which separates 

 them from each other, like that which separates 

 sensation from reason, is by no means so sharp 

 as we imagine. Instead of saying that we can- 

 not think in sight nor see in thought, I should 

 say, on the contrary, that we never really see 

 without thought, and never really think without 

 sight. There is no percept which, if we examine 

 it closely, does not participate more or less in the 

 nature of a concept, nor is a concept possible 

 except on the ruins of percepts. We hardly 

 ever take in a thing as a whole. When we look 

 at a poppy, we see its red color, and perhaps, to 

 make quito sure, the shape of its leaves; but 

 then we have done. We have here a percept 

 which, on account of its very incompleteness, 

 represents the first step toward a concept. 

 From these imperfect percepts still more drops 

 away when the immediate impression ceases. I 

 call this a kind of involuntary abstraction, I 

 might also call it memory. Much difficulty has 

 been raised about the so-called faculty of mem- 

 ory, but the truth is, that the real problem to be 

 solved does not lie in our remembering, but in 

 our forgetting. If no force is ever lost, why 

 should the force of our sensations ever become 

 less vivid ? The right answer is that their force 

 is never lost, but determined only by new forces, 

 and in the end changed into those faint and more 

 general sensations which we call memory. These 

 remembered sensations lead us another step 

 nearer toward concepts. In one sense concepts 

 may be called higher than percepts, and they cer- 

 tainly constitute, as all true philosophers have 

 seen, the chief difference between man and brute. 

 But from another point of view concepts are low- 

 er, less vivid, less clear and accurate than per- 

 cepts, and they certainly constitute the chief 

 source of our errors. Kant says that concepts 

 without percepts are empty, percepts . without 

 concepts blind; it would perhaps be truer to 

 say that concepts and percepts are inseparable ; 

 and if torn asunder, they are nothing. 



HOW ARE CONCEPTS NAMED? 



The process by which percepts are constantly 

 being changed into concepts is by no means uni- 

 form, but admits of endless variety. * What con- 

 cerns us, however, at present, is not so much the 

 formation of concepts, as the process by which a 

 concept can be fixed and named. We may un- 

 derstand how the faint recollection of the red 



