322 Animal Life and Intelligence. 



analysis. We may call the process by which we select a 

 certain quality, and consider it by itself to the neglect of 

 other qualities, isolation, and the products of the process 

 we may term isolates.* 



This process could not be initiated till a large body of 

 constructive and reconstructive experience had been gained. 

 But once initiated, there is no end to the process. We 

 pick to pieces all the phenomena of nature, all the qualities 

 and relationships of objects, the activities and functions of 

 animals, the mental phenomena of which we are conscious 

 in ourselves. We isolate the qualities, relationships, feel- 

 ings ; and we name the isolates we obtain. Hence arises 

 all our science, all our higher thought. In the terms 

 which we apply to our isolates consists the richness of our 

 language. 



We 7iame the isolates ; that is, we apply to each an 

 arbitrary symbol to stand for the isolated quality or rela- 

 tion. All words (except the obviously onomatopoetic, such 

 as "bow-wow," "cuckoo," etc.) are arbitrary symbols 

 associated with objects, or qualities, or relations, or other 

 phenomena. And abstract names of isolates are, so to 

 speak, the pegs on which we hang the qualities we have 

 separated by analysis and isolation, while class-names are 

 pegs upon which we can hang a group of similars reached 

 by the process of isolation ; for all classing and grouping 

 of objects, or qualities, or relations involves, so far as the 

 process is a conscious one, the principle of analysis. In 

 classing objects, we group them in reference to certain 

 characters which they have in common, disregarding 

 certain other characters in which they differ. We group 

 together, for example, sights, or sounds, or smells, and 

 distinguish them from each other and from tastes and 

 touches. And then we go further, and class all these 

 together as sensations having certain characteristics in 

 common whereby they are distinguished from perceptions 

 of relation and so forth. 



* I avoid, for the present, the use of the terms " abstraction " and " abstract 

 idea " because they are employed in different senses by different authors. 



