602 SPEAKING, READING, WRITING : AS MENTAL 



" Language, in its most general acceptation, might be 

 described as a mode of expressing our thoughts by means 

 of motions of the body ; it would thus include spoken 

 words, cries, involuntary gestures that indicate the feel- 

 ings, even painting and sculpture, together with those 

 contrivances which replace speech in situations where it 

 cannot be employed." Articulate Speech, in one or other 

 of its modes, is, however, the process which (for ordinary 

 human beings) is found to be inseparably related with 

 their Thinking processes. Speech is, indeed, nothing 

 else than *'a system of articulate words adopted by con- 

 vention to represent outwardly the internal process of 

 Thinking." 



Taking the Human Race at the present stage of its 

 history, when most elaborate Languages have long ago 

 been acquired by different sections of it, w^e may now 

 briefly set forth the principal steps by which individual 

 children learn to understand one of these languages ; how 

 afterwards they learn to Speak, to Read, and to Write ; 

 and to what extent the symbols involved in these various 

 processes recur to the Mind as the framework of Thought. 



A brief sketch of the nature of the processes involved 

 in these acquisitions was attempted by the writer in 1869, 

 in an article* entitled the "Physiology of Thinking," 

 and from this a few quotations may now be made. 



*' The young infant first begins to distinguish natural 

 objects from one another by differences in shape, colour, 

 touch, odour, etc., which these may present to its different 

 senses ; it is then taught (slowly and with difficulty) to 

 associate some object possessing certain combined attributes 

 by which it is remembered, with a certain articulate sound 

 which has been often repeated whilst the object is pointed 

 at, till by dint of continual repetition this sound (or word) 

 * " Fortiiiglitly Review," January, 1869. 



