Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 265 



confess that physiology is far from being in a position to say 

 precisely to what mode of nerve-vibration a given mode of 

 thought answers. Yet we think that there is one fact which 

 settles the question that we cannot think without words. To 

 think is to form a judgment ; to judge is to abstract or generalize, 

 and these operations cannot be performed without signs. The 

 sign is a kind of image the substitute for an image and it 

 depends on the brain, as is proved in aphasia, and all disorders 

 of the memory which prevent our using signs. The most abstract- 

 reflections, therefore, in so far as they are connected with signs, 

 presuppose a corresponding cerebral state. 1 



In support of these general considerations, which are based on 

 experience, we may cite, as in the case of the sentiments, some 

 curious facts. 



Thus Dr. Dumont, a physician of the Hospital des Quinze- 

 Vingts, has inquired into the influence of blindness on the intel- 

 lectual faculties. Of two hundred and twenty blind persons 

 with whose lives he was perfectly familiar, twenty-seven showed 

 intellectual disorders not including among these those affected 

 with any appreciable cerebral lesion. 



Dr. Renaudin has observed the highly instructive case of an 

 intermittent cutaneous anaesthesia that influenced the character 



and the intellect of the patient 'A youth, Arthur , had 



always given perfect satisfaction to his parents. Gifted with or- 

 dinary understanding, he had begun his elementary studies with 

 some success. Suddenly his faculties lost their energy, and he 

 became so unruly that he was expelled the school. He might 

 have been considered an ordinary bad boy,' says M. Renaudin, 

 * but as I continued my investigation I found in him a complete 

 insensibility of the skin, and I concluded that this was the patho- 

 logical .explanation of the fact Nor was I mistaken, Arthur 

 has since been sent to MareVille, and from direct observation I 

 have become still more confirmed in this opinion, because the 

 cutaneous anaesthesia being somewhat intermittent, it has been 



1 We can fhink without language, but not without some mode or other of 

 physical expression. The famous Laura Bridgman was always moving her 

 fingers in her dreams and during her waking reflections. (Maudsley, p. 417.) 



