CHAP. XXIL] TO HUMAN INTELLIGENCE. 419 



signs. " A word or sign," he says,* " is necessary to 

 give stability to our intellectual progress, to establish 

 each step in our advance as a new starting-point for our 

 advance to another beyond. A country may be overrun 

 by an armed host, but it is only conquered by the 

 establishment of fortresses. Words are fortresses of 

 thought. They enable us to realize our dominion over 

 what we have already overrun in thought ; to make every 

 intellectual conquest the basis of operations for others 

 still beyond .... Though, therefore, we allow that 

 every movement forward in language must be determined 

 by an antecedent movement forward in thought ; still, 

 unless thought be accompanied at each point of its 

 evolution, by a corresponding evolution of language, its 

 further development is arrested." On a previous page he 

 had said : " The concept thus formed by an abstraction 

 of the resembling from the non-resembling qualities of 

 objects, would again fall back into the confusion and 

 infinitude from which it has been called out, were it not 

 rendered permanent for consciousness, by being fixed and 

 ratified in a verbal sign." 



While there seems to be good reason for believing 

 with Mansel, that General Notions or Concepts cannot be 

 formed without the aid of Signs, this doctrine must be 

 received with a certain reservation, which tends, however, 

 to support the opinion of Sir W T illiam Hamilton. Signs 

 are necessary ; but, for the formation of simple General 

 Notions, * Visual Images ' may take the place of Words. 



On this subject J. S. Mill says : " The signs need not be arti- 

 ficial; there are such things as natural signs. The only reality 

 there is in the Concept is, that we are somehow enabled and led, 

 not once or accidentally, but in the common course of our thoughts, 

 to attend specially, and more or less exclusively, to certain parts 



* " Lectures," vol. iii. pp. 138-140. 



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