418 FROM BRUTE 



"To the child learning to speak, words are not the signs of 

 thoughts, but of intuitions ['Presentations of Sense']: the words 

 man and horse do not represent a collection of attributes, but are 

 only the name of the individual now before him. It is not until 

 the name has been successively appropriated to various individuals, 

 that reflection begins to inquire into the common features of the 

 class. Language, therefore, as taught to the infant, is chrono- 

 logically prior to thought and posterior to sensation .... All 

 concepts are formed by means of signs which have previously been 

 representative of individual objects only .... Similarities are 

 noticed earlier than differences ; and our first abstractions may be 

 said to be performed for us, as we learn to give the same name to 

 individuals presented to us under slight, and at first unnoticed, 

 circumstances of distinction. The same name is thus applied to 

 different objects, long before we learn to analyze the growing 

 powers of speech and thought, to ask what we mean by each 

 several instance of its application, to correct and fix the significa- 

 tion of words used at first vaguely and obscurely. To point out 

 each successive stage of the process by which signs of intuition 

 become gradually signs of thought, is as impossible as to point out 

 the several moments at which the growing child receives each 

 successive increase of its stature." 



This important opinion of Mansel, that without * signs ' 

 or Names we could not form Concepts at all, is in opposi- 

 tion to a commonly entertained view, that " we must 

 have had the concept before we could have given it a 

 name," but it is one which, as J. S. Mill * puts it, 

 Mansel justly enough bases upon the view that " names 

 when first used are names only of individual objects, but 

 being extended from one object to another under the law 

 of Association by Kesemblance, they become specially 

 associated with the points of resemblance, and thus 

 generate the Concept." Sir William Hamilton thinks, 

 however, that we may be able to ' form ' simple concepts, 

 though scarcely to ' preserve ' them without the aid of 



* "Exam, of Sir Win. Hamilton's Philosophy," p. 324- 



