MENTAL STATES AND PROCESSES. 47 



prior to the terms which denote them. Rational con- 

 ceptions can exist without words, but rational words 

 cannot exist without conceptions or abstract ideas, and 

 new terms are continually invented to denote ideas 

 which have been freshly conceived. We may suddenly 

 come to apprehend not only an idea, but a whole 

 argument, far too rapidly for oral expression, and it may 

 cost us very perceptible efforts and an appreciable period 

 of time to put it even into mental words. These 

 relations between thought and speech will come before 

 us again and again in our examination of Mr. Romanes's 

 work, so that it does not seem needful to say more at 

 present on the subject. 



Having thus referred to the leading distinctions 

 between ideas and feelings,* and having cautioned our 

 readers against the implications of Mr. Romanes as to 

 the "generation" of ideas, we will next proceed to 

 notice some of his remarks about "abstraction."! He 

 says, truly enough, that our power of forming " general 

 ideas," or " universals," depends upon this faculty as 

 a sine qua non. But the nature of this faculty he, in our 

 judgment, misapprehends and misrepresents, while in 

 connection therewith he introduces some very mislead- 

 ing implications. He tells us,t " I desire only to 

 remark two things in connection with it. The first is 



* In our work " On Truth," p. 203, we have, we may again 

 remind the reader, specially called attention to the great import- 

 ance of the distinction between our higher and our lower mental 

 faculties. It is a distinction which has been strangely ignored, 

 while it is probably the most important one in the whole range of 

 psychology. 



t See " On Truth," pp. 12, 211, 213, 214, 345, 409. % p. 25. 



