THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE. 213 



gin collecting all the insects wliich I could find dead, for, on consult- 

 ing my sister, I concluded that it was not right to kill insects for the 

 sake of making a collection. From reading White's " Selborne," I 

 took much pleasure in watching the habits of birds, and even made 

 notes on the subject. In my simplicity I remember wondering why 

 ev^ery gentleman did not become an ornithologist. 



Toward the close of my school-life, my brother worked hard at 

 chemistry, and made a fair laboratory with proper apparatus, in the 

 tool-house in the garden, and I was allowed to aid him as a servant in 

 most of his experiments. He made all the gases and many compounds, 

 and I read with great care several books on chemistry, such as Henry 

 and Parkes's " Chemical Catechism." The subject interested me greatly, 

 and we often used to go on working till rather late at night. This 

 was the best part of my education at school, for it showed me practi- 

 cally the meaning of experimental science. The fact that we worked 

 at chemistry somehow got known at school, and, as it was an unprece- 

 dented fact, I was nicknamed "Gas." I was also once publicly re- 

 buked by the head-master. Dr. Butler, for thus wasting my time on 

 such useless subjects ;' and he called me, very unjustly, z^poco curcmte, 

 and, as I did not understand what he meant, it seemed to me a fearful 

 reproach. 



THOUGHT AXD LA^^GUAGE. 



Br DANIEL GEEENLEAF THOMPSOX. 



MODERN philosophers and psychologists have acknowledged in 

 no equivocal terms the great debt which thought owes to lan- 

 guage. They have unhesitatingly admitted that without language 

 little progress could have been made in the development of the think- 

 ing powers and their product, knowledge. It has been conceded to be 

 the principal expression of thought and feeling, and the chief means 

 of communication between one mind and another. Many writers upon 

 the science of mind have even deemed that, before proceeding to an 

 examination of the mental powers and their exercises, some analysis 

 of language as the supreme instrument of thought was a "necessary 

 preliminary " (Mill's " Logic "). 



Notwithstanding these emphatic and cordial tributes to the im- 

 portance of linguistic systems to the growth of intelligence, proceed- 

 ing both from the Lockian and the Kantian side of philosophical 

 debate. Professor F. Max Miiller is not satisfied with the position thus 

 accorded to language in its relations to psychological science. He 

 comes forward to contend * that thought without language (or its 



* "The Science of Thought." New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1887. 2 vols., pp. 

 325, 330. Price per vol., §2. 



" Xo reason without language, 

 No languai'e without reason." 



