172 



NA rURE 



{June 23, 1887 



a different view — namely, that when a definite structure of con- 

 ceptual ideation has been built up by the aid of words, it may 

 afterwards persist independently of such aid ; the scaffolding 

 was required for the original construction of the edifice, but not 

 for its subsequent stability. That these two views are widely 

 different may be shown by taking any one of the illustrations 

 from the Nature corresponience. In answer to Mr. Galton, 

 Prof. Max Miiller says, "It is quite possible that you may icach 

 deaf-and-dumb people dominoes ; but deaf-and-dumb people, 

 left to themselves, do not invent dominoes, and that makes a 

 great difference. Even so simple a game as dominoes would be 

 impossible without names and their underlying concepts." Now, 

 assuredly it does "make a great difference" whether we are 

 supporting the view that dominoes could not be played without 

 names underlying concepts, or the view that without such means 

 dominoes could not have been invented. That there cannot 

 be concepts without names is a well-recognized doctrine of 

 psychology, and that dominoes could not have been invented in 

 the absence of certain simple concepts relating to number no one 

 could well dispute. But when the game has been invented, 

 there is no need to fall back upon names and concepts as a pre- 

 liminary to each move, or for the player to predicate to himself 

 before each move that the number he lays down corresponds 

 with the number to whichhe joins it. The late Dr. Carpenter 

 assured me that he had personally investigated the case of a per- 

 forming dog which was exhibited many years ago as a domino- 

 player, and had fully satisfied himself that the animal's skill in 

 this respect was genuine — i.e. not dependent on any code of 

 signals from the showman. This, therefore, is a better case than 

 that of the deaf-mute, in order to show that dominoes can be 

 played by means of sensuous association alone. But my point 

 now is that two distinct questions have been raised in your 

 columns, and that the ambiguity to which I have referred 

 appears to have arisen from a failure to distinguish between 

 them. Every living psychologist will doubtless agree with Prof. 

 Max Miiller where he appears to say nothing more than that if 

 there had never been any names there could never have been 

 any concepts ; but this is a widely different thing from saying 

 what he elsewhere appears to say, i.e. that without the mental 

 rehearsal of words there cannot be performed in any case a 

 process of distinctively human thought. The first of these 

 two widely different questions may be dismissed, as one 

 concerning which no difference of opinion is likely to arise. 

 Touching the second, if the Professor does not mean what I have 

 said he appears in some places to say, it is a pity that he should 

 attempt to defend such a position as that chess, for instance, 

 cannot be played unless the player "deals all the time with 

 thought- words and word-thoughts." For the original learning 

 of the game it was necessary that the powers of the various 

 pieces should have been explained to him by means of words ; 

 but when this knowledge was thus gained, it was no longer 

 needful that before making any particular move he should men- 

 tally state the powers of all the pieces concerned, or predicate 

 to himself the various possibilities which the move might in- 

 volve. All these things he does by his specially-formed associa- 

 tions alone, just as does a draught-player, who is concerned with 

 a much simpler order of relations : in neither case is any demand 

 made upon the verbum mentaJe. 



Again, if the Professor does not mean to uphold the view 

 that in no case can there be distinctively human thought without 

 the immediate and direct assistance of words, it is a mistake in 

 him to represent "the dependence of thought on language" as 

 absolute.^ The full powers of conceptual ideation which 

 belong to any individual man may or may not all have been 

 due to words as used by his ancestors, his contemporaries, and 

 "himself. But, however this may be, that these powers, when 

 once attained, may afterwards continue operative without the 

 use of words is n )t a matter of mere opinion based on one's 

 own personal introspection, which no opponent can verify : it is 

 a matter of objectively demonstrable fact, which no opponent 

 can gainsay. For when a man is suddenly afflicted with aphasia 

 he does not forthwith become as the thoughtless brute : he has 

 lost all trace of words, but his reason may remain unimpaired. 



June 4. George J. Romanes. 



' e.z- " I hope I have thus answered everything that has been or that can 

 possibly be adduced against vi'hat I call the fundamental tenet that the 

 science of language, and what ought to becone the fundamental tenet of the 

 science of th lught. namely that language and thought, though distinguish- 

 able, are inseparable, that no one truly thinks who does not speak, and that 

 no one truly speaks who does not think." — " Science of Thought," pp. 

 63-64. 



I HAVE postponed offering you any remarks on Prof. Max 

 Miiller's "Science of Thought," until I had read the book 

 through. 



I think Prof. Miiller is on the whole right, that language is neces- 

 sary to thought, and is related to thought very much as organization 

 to life. The question discussed by some of your correspondents, 

 whether it is possil)le in particular cases to think without lan- 

 guage, appears to me of little importance. I can believe that it is 

 possible to think without words when the subjects of thought are 

 visible things and their combinations, as in inventing machinery ; 

 but the intellectual power that invents machinery has been 

 matured by the use of language. 



But Prof. Miiller has not answered, nor has he asked, the 

 question, on what property or power of thought the production of 

 language depends. He has shown most clearly the important truth 

 that all names are abstract — that to invent a name which denotes 

 an indefinite number of objects is a result of abstraction. But on 

 what does the power of abstraction depend ? I believe it depends 

 on the power of directing thought _at will. Prof. Miiller lays 

 stress on the distinction between percepts and concepts, though 

 he thinks they are inseparable. I am inclined to differ from him, 

 and to think that animals perceive as vividly as we do, but have 

 only a rudimentary power of conception and thought. I think the 

 power of directing thought at will is the distinctively human 

 power, on which the powei of forming concepts and language 

 depends. Joseph Joh.\ Murphy. 



Belfast, June 19. 



After reading the correspondence published in Nature 

 [yo\. xxxvi. pp. 28, 52, and 100) on this subject, it has occurred 

 to me that the difficulties anthropologists find in Prof. Max 

 Miiller's theory are connected chiefly with his peculiar defini- 

 tions. 



In his letters to Mr. Galton, Prof. Miiller narrows the domain 

 of his theory to a considerable extent. By defining thought as 

 the faculty of " addition and subtraction," and by taking language 

 as composed of "word-thoughts" or " thought- words," Prof. 

 Miiller excludes from his theory all those processes which are 

 preliminary to the formation of concepts. Thus narrowed, I do 

 not see that his doctrine in any way touches the wider question, 

 whether reasoning, as generally understood, is independent of 

 language. If we keep to the terms of this theory, thoughts and 

 words are undoubtedly inseparable. But this does not in the 

 least imply that all thought is impossible \\ ithout words. 



When we enlarge the scope of our terms, it is at once evident 

 that thoughts and words are not inseparable. It is all very well 

 to join together "thought-word" and "word-thought." Yet 

 the thought is something quite distinct from the mere sound 

 which stands as a word for it. A concept is formed from sensa- 

 tions. Our thoughts are occupied with what we see, and feel, 

 and hear, and this primarily. Thus it is that, in the wider sense 

 of thinking, we can think in pictures. This is the mental ex- 

 perience which Prof. Tyndall so highly prizes. He likes to 

 picture an imaginary process, not in words, not even by keeping 

 words in the background, but in a mental pre.sentation of the 

 things themselves as they would affect his senses. Surely, then, 

 if the mind can attend to its own reproduction of former sensa- 

 tions, and even form new arrangements of sensations for itself 

 quite irrespective of word-signs, as Mr. Galton and most other 

 thinkers have experienced, it is evident that thought and language 

 are not inseparable. 



All this is, of course, somewhat apart from Prof. Miiller's 

 restricted theory. But the question follows, how from these 

 wider thoughts do we become possessed of the faculty of abstrac- 

 tion. Does not the one shade imperceptibly into the other? 

 Prof. Miiller answers no, and here I think he is at fault. It is at 

 this point that anthropologists part company with him. If he 

 be right, how do people learn ? According to his theory, new 

 thoughts when they arise, start into being under some general 

 concept. I do not deny that they are placed under some general 

 concept, but it seems to me that something entirely independent 

 of the general concept has, for convenience, been placed under 

 it, and this something must be called a thought. No doubt the 

 thought is at first vague and indefinite, and only when it becomes 

 definite does it require a name. But here one can plainly trace 

 the genesis of a thought, and the adapation of a word as a 

 symbol for it. The new concept and its sign do not arise., 

 simultaneously. There are two distinct growths, not one only, 

 as Prof. Miiller's theory presupposes. The connexion may be 



