LOGIC AND KINDRED SCIENCES. 35 



binations of written (or printed) signs (or by phonographic records 

 in more recent times). The other function fulfilled by language, 

 that of supplying a natural aid to thought, or instrument of 

 thought, is, however, one of great and distinct importance. 



A sign or mark of a thing is anything which arouses a knowledge of that 

 thing in a being capable of knowledge. A sign is either formal when it 

 reminds us of the thing by virtue of its likeness to the thing, as in the case of 

 all images, or instrumental when its connexion with the thing is other 

 than a connexion of resemblance. Such other connexion may be either 

 natural, in which case we have a natural instrumental sign, as smoke is of 

 fire ; or it may be established by common agreement, in which case we have 

 an arbitrary, artificial, conventional instrumental sign, as, for example, in 

 the case of military and naval signals. The various auditory signs (voces} 

 which constitute the so-called &quot; language &quot; of animals are natural signs. The 

 articulate sounds called words (vocabula) which constitute human language, 

 are largely, though not at all exclusively, arbitrary signs. Not exclusively ; 

 for human languages are in a true sense spontaneous, natural growths, even 

 though the great mass of their details may be settled by convention. 



Leaving to its proper place in psychology the whole question 

 of the origin of language, its natural connexion with thought, 

 and the possibility or impossibility of thinking without words or 

 language of any sort, we will here simply emphasize the fact that 

 all our thinking processes are much more dependent on words 

 and much more intimately assisted by language than we might, 

 without reflection, be inclined to imagine : (a) In our analysis of 

 sense experience into its component elements we are enormously 

 aided by our power of giving names to each of these elements. 

 (b] In the formation and retention of the abstract, general concept 

 including, as it may, quite a large group of attributes the term 

 by which we express the concept serves powerfully to hold 

 the contents of the latter together, (c) And terms not only tend 

 to make our concepts definite but also to fix and concentrate those 

 processes of judgment and reasoning by which we establish rela 

 tions between our concepts. Hence it is that language is regarded 

 as a practically indispensable instrument to even moderately 

 developed thought. 



Logic, therefore, must needs deal with language. Yet, even in 

 so far as it does, it differs from grammar. The latter deals solely 

 with the expression of thought in speech, with the mutual relations 

 of the words which make up language and which are called parts 

 of speech. Logic deals with language only as an instrument and 

 vehicle of thought, and therefore analyses it only up to the 



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