REASON AND LANGUAGE. 165 



^^ previous to education^ supposed the Bible to have been 

 printed by a printing-press in the sky, which was 

 worked by printers of enormous strength — this being 

 the only interpretation the deaf-mute could assign to 

 the gestures whereby his parents had sought to make 

 him understand that they believed the Bible to contain 

 a revelation from a God of power who lives in heaven." 

 But, surely, here we have, " previous to education," 

 a manifest intellectual faculty, and a power of abstrac- 

 tion of a most unequivocal kind. The deaf-mute had 

 formed concepts of " a Bible," " printers," a " printing- 

 press," " superterrestrial existence," " power," " beings of 

 superhuman power," and a "descent from the sky to 

 earth following upon their activity." Also, of course, 

 in this concept there were implicitly contained ideas 

 of time, space, reality, truth, and existence. This is 

 something considerably above the "logic of feelings," 

 and rather different from the psychical state of " any of 

 the lower animals." Moreover, we should never forget 

 the constant necessity under which all men labour (from 

 the lowest to the highest) to make use of analogy, and 

 to express by analogy in terms of sensitivity, thoughts 

 which are altogether beyond sense. We must also 

 recollect that all such expressions are inadequate, and 

 that we are constantly tempted to despise expressions 

 which we do not use, and fancy that our own terms 

 (though really as sensuous, fundamentally) must be a 

 great deal better. The image of a printing-press 

 worked in the sky by beings of superhuman strength 

 is for us grotesque. But it might, none the less, serve to 

 image forth in some minds, that same conception of 



