8 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 



and motor activities. The sensor and motor terms are as 

 omnipresent in inquiry as are the two poles in an electric 

 current. Still more if possible is this true in .the use of 

 words, the most intimate and constant means of thought. 

 When the words of others direct us, they become sensor 

 impressions that call for careful attention. When we our- 

 selves guide our thoughts by words, they are either distinct 

 motor terms or quasi-motor terms. 



All acquisition commences with language and seeks its 

 constant aid, and as language has a definite cerebral term 

 involved in its use and expression, we find in this fact an 

 occasion for a consumption of nerve-tissue in all mental 

 action. Children, if circumstances admit the habit, prefer 

 to study aloud; that is, to aid the comprehending process by 

 a full use of its counters. If the habit is inconvenient, the 

 pupil will often move his lips without emitting any sound. 

 He still finds the incipient utterance of the accompanying 

 words a help to the mind. Some adults are aided in under- 

 standing a book by reading it aloud. All persons observe 

 the much greater clearness of thought which follows the 

 utterance of one's conclusions or the writing of them. 

 Even dreams frequently lead to talking in sleep. All these 

 things show that it requires considerable effort on the part of 

 the student to reduce the language which he employs in 

 thought to its lowest terms in nascent expression. 



A little attention to our mental processes will show us 

 that language never disappears in thought, but that our 

 most silent processes still go forward by its aid. This de- 

 pendence of thought on expression is also well illustrated 

 in the education of mutes. "Though the deaf-and-dumb 

 prove clearly to us that a man may have human thought 

 without being able to speak, they by no means prove that 

 he can think without any means of physical expression. 



. . . Herein lies the necessity of utterance, the repre- 

 sentation of thought. Thought is not even present to the 

 thinker till he has set it forth out of himself. . . . The 

 deaf-and-dumb gesticulate as they think. Laura Bridg- 

 man's fingers worked, making the initial movements for 

 letters of the finger-alphabet, not only during her waking 



