MENTAL STATES AND PROCESSES. 53 



body — the two being most intimately united so as to 

 form a true unity — as reflection upon our own experi- 

 ence will suffice to show us.* He cannot, therefore, 

 exercise his intellectual power without some mode of 

 accompanying bodily activity. This may be a nervous 

 activity, producing the utterance or imagination of 

 words or other sounds, or the making of some gesture, 

 or the imagination of such, or of some other visible or 

 tactile sign. Such signs are necessary to serve as a 

 material basis for every intellectual act — every concep- 

 tion, however abstract it may be.f We shall, later on, 

 give various examples of distinct intellectual abstrac- 

 tions and true general conceptions, existing fully deve- 

 loped in the entire absence not only of the power of 

 speech, but of sight and hearing also. How widely 

 divergent from the truth, how profoundly mistaken, 

 must, then, be the views of the Nominalists ! Such 

 views, as expressed by M. Taine, are quoted by Mr. 

 Romanes J in the most uncompromising manner, as 

 follows : "Names are our abstract ideas, and the forma- 

 tion of our abstract ideas is nothing, more than the 

 formation of names." Now, a name can only be a 

 certain sound, or, if written, a certain sight, and there- 

 fore is and must be a definite individual entity. But 

 the concept it serves is different indeed. The latter can 

 neither be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, or felt, nor can it 

 consist of any combination of our sensations. It can 

 only be thought, and it can be thought and recognized 

 to be absolutely one and of the some kind, by the aid 



* See '' On Truth," pp. 386-392. 



t Ibid., pp. 88, 224. X p. 32. 



