LANGUAGE 231 



of language, with its predecessors' knowledge. 

 Without language there could be no progression 

 of culture. And, unsharpened by words, the 

 reasoning instinct would have remained very 

 ineffective, since causal connections, other than the 

 very simplest, can hardly be conceived until the 

 links are defined by means of symbols. It is diffi- 

 cult to imagine how we could think of heat as ex- 

 panding a gas, or of 3 as the cube-root of 27, unless 

 we possessed symbols in words and in figures to 

 denote each of the conceptions involved in these 

 ideas. Language has then assisted conscious rea- 

 son. But conscious reason has created language. 

 Directive instinct might suggest some means of 

 communication by signs or sounds, and it certainly 

 appears that many animals can give practical 

 information to others of their kind. The use of 

 language, however, goes far beyond this : it 

 enables men to share abstract ideas, and, above all 

 things, to instruct one another as to causes. It 

 has progressed by the detection and isolation of 

 qualities or properties, and by the attribution 

 to each quality of its distinctive effects. A 

 developed is distinguished from a rudimentary 

 tongue by the provision of separate words to 

 express stages of becoming or acting which are 

 not detected by the uncultured mind. The 

 embryonic stage of language has already been 

 illustrated from South America, where tribes have 

 not isolated, for instance, the idea of " washing," 

 and use separate single words to express washing 

 their bodies and washing their clothes. 



Nor must we forget the effect of writing and 

 printing in spreading culture, and in securing it 

 against the accidents of time and human des- 

 tructiveness. In past ages how many buds have 

 been put forth by human aspiration only to be 

 frosted, overwhelmed, or deliberately cut back ! 



