MENTAL STATES AND PROCESSES. in 



thought is rendered possible." But a manual sign for a 

 horse is no more a picture of a horse than is the written 



ancient annals of language, than why the same object should 

 have had several names, and why several objects should have had 

 the same name. But this proves by no means that therefore the 

 name is one thing and the concept another. We can distinguish 

 name and concept as we distinguish between the concave and con- 

 vex sides of a lens, but we cannot separate them, and in that sense 

 we may call them inseparable, and, in one sense, identical. 



" Lastly, Prof. Mivart starts the same objection to my system of 

 psychological analysis which was raised some time ago in these 

 columns with so much learning and eloquence by Mr. Francis 

 Galton. He appeals to his own experience, and maintains that 

 certain intellectual processes take place without language. This 

 is generally supposed to put an end to any further argument, and 

 we are even told that it is a mistake to imagine that all men are 

 alike, so far as their psychological processes are concerned, and 

 that psychologists should study the peculiarities of individuals 

 rather than the general character of the human intellect. Now, 

 it seems to me that run n!empeche pas P autre, but that in the end 

 the object of all scientific inquiry is the general, and not the 

 individual. The true life of language is in the dialects, yet the 

 grammarian aims at a general grammar. In the same way the 

 psychologist may pay any amount of attention to mere individual 

 peculiarities and idiosyncrasies ; only he ought never to forget 

 that in the end man is man. 



" But it does not even seem to me that intellectual processes 

 without language, as described by Mr. Galton and Prof. Mivart, 

 are at all peculiar and exceptional. I have described similar 

 cases, and tried to account for them, in different parts of my book. 

 If Prof. Mivart says that * a slight movement of a finger may give 

 expression to a meaning which could only be thought in words 

 by a much slower process,' I went much further by saying that 

 * silence might be more eloquent than words.' 



" Mr. Galton asked me to read a book by Alfred Binet, ' La 

 Psychologie du Raisonnement,' as showing by experiments how 

 many intellectual acts could take place without language. I read 

 the book with deep interest, but great was my surprise when I 

 found that M. Binet's observations confirmed in the very strongest 

 way my own position. I had shown how percepts — that is, images 

 — could exist with a mere shadow of language, and that nothing 



