102 Chapter VI. 



a judgment of the intellect which combines the concepts 

 "leaf" and "green" and affirms the latter as a property 

 or condition of the former. Otherwise the sentence 

 "The leaves are green," would be an inane and mean- 

 ingless assertion. 



Consequently it is clear that the verbum pris (the 

 oral or phonetic, and graphic expression of our con- 

 cepts and ideas) presupposes the verbum mentis (the 

 concept of the intellect and the idea itself), and does not 

 produce it. As a concept of the intellect, the idea "leaf" 

 is, prior to its oral utterance, a real general concept; 

 it is a genuine abstraction which was originally gathered 

 from the sense perceptions and sense phantasms of in- 

 numerable single leaves. Likewise the concept "green" 

 is a real general and intellectual concept, a real ab- 

 straction, before it is used in oral discourse; it was 

 abstracted by the intellect from different green objects 

 with their variegated shades of that color, and then 

 raised to a general concept. Therefore it is wrong to 

 say with Emery that general concepts of the intellect 

 "grow into real abstractions only through oral utter- 

 ance" 



The doctrine of Aristotelian philosophy, that the 

 verbum mentis precedes the verbum oris, is therefore 

 in full harmony with common sense. There must first 

 be a concept in the mind, before it can be expressed by 

 the mouth. And, if this priority is not observed, the 

 saying of a German poet holds good, that words come 

 to the rescue where ideas are wanting. The Tradi- 

 tionalism of de Bonald and of his school, during the 

 first half of the nineteenth century, has in vain tried 

 to shake this fundamental truth of the old theory of 



