MAN 275 



words. Abstract ideas, then, can exist without such 

 words, but there is no evidence that they can continue 

 to exist without some embodiment, some form of lan- 

 guage, some corporeal expression, either by voice or by 

 gesture. Language therefore is a consequence of 

 thought, and abstract ideas are indispensable pre- 

 liminaries to language. We see this in our common 

 experience. When in the cultivation of any science or 

 art, newly observed facts, or newly devised processes, 

 give rise to new conceptions, new terms are invented to 

 give expression to such conceptions. Thus new words 

 arise as a consequent * and not as an antecedent, of such 

 intellectual actions. New terms are always fitted to 

 fresh ideas, and not fresh ideas to new terms. That 

 language is dependent on thought, not thought on 

 language, is demonstrated for us by the lightning-like 

 rapidity a rapidity far too great for words with 

 which our minds may detect a fallacy in an argument. 

 This instantaneousness is not the mere mental ejacula- 

 tion of the word " no," but is due to our having appre- 

 hended the relations existing between different portions 

 of the argument. The most rapid cry or gesture of 

 negation, is often the sign of intellectual perceptions 

 which would require more than one sentence fully to 

 express, but which are perceived too rapidly for even the 

 mental repetition of the words of such sentences. 

 Nevertheless, these intellectual perceptions show them- 

 selves by bodily signs sounds or gestures and even all 

 our silent thought is carried on by the aid of some 

 imagined bodily signs, without which, as we before 

 observed, we cannot think. Human language seems 



* See a correspondence with Professor Max-Muller, cited in 

 " Origin of Human Reason," pp. 99-117. 



