24 INTRODUCTION. 



of Max Mliller, who would absorb philosophy in the 

 science of Language ^ in the same way as Astronomy has 

 to many become merely " une question cl'analyse." In a 

 certain sense we can agree with both of these thinkers. 

 Without discussing the vexed question of the origin of 

 Language and Thought, to us as individuals, born in a 

 civilised and intellectual age, words certainly came earlier 

 than clear and conscious thought. The easy manner also in 

 which, through the use of our parents' tongue, we became 

 introdviced into a complex and bewildering labyrinth of 

 highly abstract reasoning is little short of a miraculous 

 revelation. But, as I mentioned above, it is not my 

 intention to study the development of European thought 

 during this century by means of a close analysis of the 

 changes and growth of the three principal languages. 

 Such an enterprise would demand an amount of lexico- 

 graphical knowledge possessed only by the authors of 

 dictionaries like those of Grimm, Littre, and Murray. 

 But though I am not qualified for such a task, there is one 

 special point on which I cannot avoid being drawn into 

 a grammatical discussion. It refers to the word Thought 



44. itself. How is the meaning which I and my readers con- 

 Thought, . . 

 how ex- j;iect with this word to be expressed in French and Ger- 



pressed m -- 



German^"*^^ man ? How are we to translate the word ? The subject we 

 deal with does not belong to England alone, but as much 

 to France and to Germany : it must thus have a name in 

 each of their languages. ISTow I believe that the word 

 'pensSe expresses in French very nearly the same thing 

 which we mean in English by thought. It is some- 



^ See his ' Science of Thought,' London, 1887, especially pp. 292 and 

 550. 



