REASON AND DIVERS TONGUES. 243 



(4) The simplest element of language must, there- 

 fore, also be the external expression of an implicit 

 judgment, i.e. a term. 



Thus, that in primitive speech every word should be 

 an implicit judgment, is most natural, and what might 

 be expected. But much more follows from these pre- 

 misses. 



If Mr. Romanes's assertion could be proved true, it 

 would but make yet more glaring the distinction be- 

 tween the intellect of man and the highest psychical 

 power possessed by any brute. All language and all 

 ratiocination are but consequences of the peculiarity of 

 our nature, which consists of an intellect coexisting 

 with a material organism in one essential unity. It is 

 the less perfect, material side of our dual being which 

 alone necessitates either language or ratiocination. An 

 intelligence of a higher order than ours, capable of 

 energizing without an organism — which, as we expe- 

 rience it, is thus an impediment — could dispense with 

 both signs and ratiocinations, and would see latent and 

 implicit truths at once. Therefore, the less of either 

 may be needed for the perception of truth or for the 

 making it known, by so much the more is a higher 

 intellectual condition approximated to. Thus it is that 

 specially gifted intellects can attain, at a glance, truths, 

 to reach which less gifted natures need a long course of 

 demonstration. Thus, also, it is that some exceptionally 

 endowed minds can, with a few pregnant words, bring 

 to the minds of others perceptions which could be con- 

 veyed by inferior natures only by long and laboured 

 discourses. Therefore the minimum of language and 



