542 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



formalities, and are therefore explicable by the law of least effort 

 the tendency, that is, of man to resolve the difficulties he en- 

 counters in the path of civilization by the methods which cost 

 the least mental effort, accepting the most obvious solutions, and 

 contenting himself with these until through the increase of his 

 needs they become entirely inadequate to his requirements." 



Ferrero then treats of descriptive symbols, enumerating them 

 separately, and narrating how, from the primitive signs of recog- 

 nition known to savages, we have arrived at the alphabetic writ- 

 ing, justly called by Ferrero " the most laborious and most com- 

 plex of all the means of communication of use among men." And 

 he is right, for writing is a most complicated association of optic 

 sensations, acoustic images, and mental images and ideas. To 

 read, we must be able to associate with the sight of a certain num- 

 ber of letters the images of certain sounds, drawing thus from 

 graphic signs the acoustic image of the spoken word. We use 

 these signs as spoken words, associating with them a given idea, 

 a complexity of functions which is demonstrated also by physi- 

 ology, because a particular nerve center is probably attached to 

 the function of reading, as is shown by those persons who suffer 

 from the malady called verbal blindness that is, those who lose 

 the sense of sight for graphic signs only, while they can see per- 

 sons, houses, objects, etc., though they no longer recognize letters, 

 either written or printed. 



Symbols of survival, the hinges of the law, form the argument 

 of another chapter. Born from the right of occupation and con- 

 quest, the epochs in which the res nullius abounded, they have 

 come down to us, growing gradually, and forming in their turn 

 those which regulate all the social movement of nations. Ferrero 

 examines the analogies between these symbols in different nation- 

 alities, and concludes : " We have thus a fresh proof that man 

 has never created institutions and customs, etc., according to a 

 preconceived idea, and that his own determination counts for 

 nothing in the ultimate results of his work. It was not the idea 

 of contract or of pacific discussion which led to the substitution 

 of purchase and judgment for rapine and the duel, but purchase 

 and judgment substituted for rapine and the duel generated by 

 slow suggestion the idea of contract and pacific discussion in the 

 brain of man." 



The sensations we experience of complex things are reduced 

 sensations. Spencer also affirms this in his First Principles. The 

 eye sees reduced images ; the mind, by the theory of least effort, 

 receives reduced sensations ; and this phenomenon exerts a great 

 influence upon the formation of symbols. For example, the re- 

 duplication which takes place in many languages in the forma- 

 tion of the plural, when it is the custom to repeat the substan- 



