21 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the two. Predication is the expression of a judgment, and a judg- 

 ment is a cognition of agreement or difference ; this takes place con- 

 stantly without language, which latter only facilitates the processes 

 of association. Indeed, a little reflection will convince us that lan- 

 guage itself is not logically possible without prior thought. For a 

 word or a name only becomes such by a process of thinking. It must 

 be lirst fixed by association before it begins to do duly. Before I 

 cognize an object, as a horse, the term horse itself must have become 

 associated with other objects which have come into experience. If 

 the attaching of a word horse, a percept, to another percept — a horse 

 actually seen, as the mark of the latter, is not thinking; then the asso- 

 ciation of the horse seen with the word horse established as a mark of 

 past experiences can not be thinking, for the two processes are pre- 

 cisely the same. The truth is, that both processes are thought. We 

 may freely admit a great deal that Professor Miiller asserts ; but when 

 we follow out his own propositions to their proper sequences, we find 

 that his thesis is only true on the hypothesis that language and ohjects 

 of cognition are convertible terms. People ordinarily understand that 

 language consists of articulate words. Communication of one mind 

 with another may take place by gestures, facial expressions, contor- 

 tions of the body, inarticulate sounds, or by simple touch. But none 

 of these are properly language. Written words are symbolic of 

 spoken words, which are themselves articulations of the voice, and, 

 while the former perform the oflSce of concentrating, recording, and 

 perpetuating mental experiences, as do many other symbols, their 

 essential character, as language, consists in their relation to articulate 

 communication. 



While our author declares himself to be an evolutionist in general, 

 certainly in the science of language, he brings out as a prominent con- 

 sequence of the truth of his theory of thought, the untruth of that 

 particular doctrine, commonly known as the Darwinian — namely, that 

 man is descended from lower forms of animal life. This Professor 

 Miiller asserts to be impossible ; and the proof is that animals have 

 no language or any capacity to form language. " If concepts are 

 impossible without names, ... we then have a right to say that the 

 whole genus man possesses something — namely, language, of which 

 no trace can be found even in the most highly-developed animal, and 

 that therefore a genealogical descent of man from animal is impossi- 

 ble." It may be admitted freely that animals have sensations and 

 percepts ; they feel, they perceive, they remember, they act. But 

 concepts they do not have. They are without the power of forming 

 general notions. This is evidenced in the fact that they are without 

 language, concepts being impossible without names. Now, it is quite 

 obvious, to the casual reader even, that Professor Miiller has destroyed 

 his own argument on this point by his previous positions. For he 

 takes considerable pains to prove that percepts are impossible without 



