200 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 







As we have already remarked, with the mental processes, intricate 

 or otherwise, involved in the exercise of language we have nothing at 

 present to do. Admitting that, as is highly probable, the exercise of 

 speech implies and means the possession of an intricate power of mus- 

 cular co-ordination, with the transformation of ideas into words 

 itself an intricate and inexplicable process we may more profitably 

 inquire if general biology, aided by physiology and incidentally by 

 philology, can direct us toward the probable beginnings of the 

 language-faculty in man. We have seen that emotional states in 

 lower life become visible and audible through corresponding sounds 

 and expressions. Professor Whitney remarks that man possesses a 

 natural desire to communicate with his fellows, and^that in such a 

 desire is to be found the chief condition which, in the development 

 of language, " works both unconsciously and consciously ; consciously 

 as regards the immediate end to be attained ; unconsciously as 

 regards the further consequences of the act." Max Miiller, in his 

 " Lectures on Mr. Darwin's Philosophy of Language," lays down the 

 axiom that "" there is no thought without words, as little as there 

 are words without thoughts " ; but the great philologist must surely 

 in such a case be using the term " words " as implying the mental 

 images or concepts which stand as the unexpressed result of thinking, 

 and which the act of speech enables us to convey to the hearers. 

 Otherwise the aphorism hinges on a very special and peculiar idea of 

 the term "thoughts," the nature and discussion of which term 

 fortunately lies beyond our present aim. Whitney, remarking Bleak's 

 views respecting the impossibility of the existence of thought without 

 speech, says : " Because on the grand scale language is the necessary 

 auxiliary of thought, indispensable to the development of the power 

 of thinking, to the distinctness and variety and complexity of 

 cognitions, to the full mastery of consciousness ; therefore he would 

 fain make thought absolutely impossible without speech, identifying 

 the faculty with its (human) instrument. He might just as reasonably 

 assert that the human hand cannot act without a tool. With such a 

 doctrine to start from," adds Professor Whitney, "he cannot stop 

 short of Miiller's worst paradoxes, that an infant (in fans, not speak- 

 ing) is not a human being, and that deaf mutes do not become 

 possessed by reason until they learn to twist their fingers into 

 imitations of spoken words." The truth of the idea that, without 

 words to think, thought becomes impossible, has been a little over- 

 strained. We do not deny the power of thought to a dog, but we 

 admit he does not possess language in which case we are simply 

 arguing concerning a true idea of language, which, the broader it is 

 made, will serve our purpose the better. It is not, however, a 

 rational idea that the necessity for the formation of word-concepts of 

 his thoughts forms the real foundation of speech. Would the thinking 



