262 PSYCHOLOGY. 



we communicate our knowledge and discoveries to others, and through 

 which the knowledge and discoveries of others are communicated to us. 

 By reiterated recourse to this medium, it necessarily happens that 

 when things are related to each other, the words signifying those 

 things are more commpnly brought together in discourse. Hence the 

 words and names by themselves, by customary vicinity, contract in the 

 fancy a relation additional to that which they derive purely from being 

 the symbols of related things. Farther, this tendency is strengthened 

 by the structure of language. All languages whatever, even the most 

 barbai'ous, as far as hath yet appeared, are of a regular and analogical 

 make. The consequence is that similar relations in things will be ex- 

 pressed similarly ; that is, by similar inflections, derivations, composi- 

 tions, arrangement of words, or juxtaposition of particles, according to 

 the genius or grammatical form of the particular tongue. Now as, by 

 the habitual use of a language (even though it were quite irregular), 

 the signs would insensibly become connected in the imagination wher- 

 ever the things signified are connected in nature, so, by the regular 

 structure of a language, this connection among the signs is conceived 

 as analogous to that which subsisteth among their archetypes." 



If we kuow English and French and begin a sentence in 

 French, all the later words that come are French ; we hardly 

 ever drop into English. And this affinity of the French 

 w^ords for each other is not something merely ojierating me- 

 chanically as a brain-law, it is something -we feel at the time. 

 Our understanding of a French sentence heard never falls 

 to so low an ebb that we are not aware that the words lin- 

 guistically belong together. Our attention can hardly so 

 wander that if an English word be suddenly introduced we 

 shall not start at the change. Such a vague sense as this 

 of the words belonging together is the very minimum of 

 fringe that can accompany them, if 'thought' at all. 

 Usually the vague perception tliat all the words we hear 

 belong to the same language and to the same special vocab- 

 ulary in that language, and that the grammatical sequence 

 is familiar, is practically equivalent to an admission that 

 what we hear is sense. But if an unusual foreign word 

 be introduced, if the grammar trip, or if a term from an 

 incongruous vocabulary suddenly appear, such as ' rat- 

 trap ' or ' plumber's bill ' in a philosophical discourse, the 

 sentence detonates, as it were, we receive a shock from the 

 incongruity, and the droAvsy assent is gone. The feeling of 

 rationality in these cases seems rather a negative than a 



