2o6 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 



refrain altogether from noticing here some instances 

 quoted from Mr. Sully, as follows : — 



" When a child of eighteen months on seeing a dog 

 exclaims, * Bow-wow,' or on taking his food exclaims, 

 *0t' (Hot), or on letting fall his toy says, * Dow ' 

 (Down), he may be said to be implicitly framing a 

 judgment: 'That is a dog,' 'This milk is hot,' 'My 

 plaything is down.' . . . The boy ... we will call C, was 

 first observed to form a distinct judgment when nineteen 

 months old, by saying, ' Dit ki ' (Sister is crying)." 



But we deny that any distinction as to explicitness 

 or implicitness is conveyed by the distinction between 

 the utterances of these children of eighteen months and 

 nineteen months respectively. Indeed, we regard the 

 attempt to draw such a distinction as a most absurd 

 attempt. '' Dit ki " is admitted to be the expression of 

 a distinct judgment. Now, in what respect does the 

 utterence of the monosyllable " Ot " differ from " Dit 

 ki " } It merely differs in the emission of two sounds 

 instead of one, but the one sound, "Ot," means as 

 much as do the two sounds " Dit ki." The sound " Ot " 

 was understood by those present to predicate heat of the 

 food, and no one, out of Bedlg^, can question that the 

 child meant to convey the notion that its food was hot. 

 But, as Mr. Romanes has most truly observed,* it is 

 what is meant, not what is said, which is the really 

 important matter.f It comes to this, then — that a 

 sentence is conveyed in the one instance by two sounds, 



* p. 164. 



t Even adults often express a full judgment by a single word. 

 Suppose two men are watching birds not distinctly to be seen, and 

 trying to make out what they are. When one man, having made 



