TB OUGHT AND LANGUAGE. 217 



that we can not think (that is, combine, associate) without mental ob- 

 jects to associate, and that every mental object is a portion of lan- 

 guage. To assert this would not be a " revolution in philosophy," but 

 we might properly call it a revolution in the science of language. 



Let us now consider the formation of concepts or general notions 

 upon which the author lays so much stress as supporting his theory. 

 Professor Muller brings forward the doctrine of Locke, Berkeley, and 

 Hume, that " a general is nothing but a particular idea annexed to a 

 general term — that is, to a term from which a customary conjunction 

 has a relation to many other particular ideas and readily recalls them 

 in imagination." It can not be doubted that there is substantial truth 

 in this statement, though it needs qualification, but it does not prove 

 Professor Muller's point. There must, indeed, be 2, fundamentura in 

 every general notion, a nucleus, a type, a symbol. When we have in 

 our minds the general notion horse, we have some particular horse, 

 either remembered or constructed in imagination from former ex- 

 periences of horses. With this goes the cognition that there are other 

 objects like this one. To elucidate, I may, perhaps, be permitted to 

 quote from a former analysis of my own : * " Whatever association 

 brings up the concept evokes the cognition of one or a small plural 

 number of individuals which are either remembered as wholes or con- 

 structed out of remembered parts, and with which is associated the 

 idea that there is a number of objects not definitely recalled which are 

 similar to the individuals before the mind in the particulars character- 

 izing the concept. . . . When we think of man, we remember a par- 

 ticular man, or imagine one ; or the mind runs over the representa- 

 tions of several men, after which it rests content with the idea of an 

 indefinite number of men about the same as those ideally presented." 

 Kow, the office of a name in such a connection is to furnish a connect- 

 ing link in thought between a present cognition (or experience gener- 

 ally) and past ones. When I see a moving object in the distance, and 

 as it comes nearer I identify it, I doubtless think by saying to myself, 

 " It is a man." But if I see a strange creature, the likeness of which 

 I had never seen but once before, and which, so far as I am concerned, 

 is nameless, when I observe the second, the first is recalled, and iden- 

 tification takes place. This is just as much thought as if there were 

 the intervention of a name. Suppose I see a third creature, which, by 

 representative association, I class with the other two. Common char- 

 acters are noticed, and I begin the formation of a general notion. This 

 is completely done by the mere association of any striking resem- 

 blance, as a horn, a spotted skin, a peculiar howl, an odor. Any one 

 of these peculiarities may form the nucleus or mark which will recall 

 the creature, and knowledge of it can be communicated to others by 

 gesture, by a picture, or by a word. Thought consists in identifica- 

 tion and discrimination in present and past experiences, and between 

 * "A System of Psychology," Chapter L, Longmans, 1884. 



