I02 The Influence of Language and Environment upon the 



odour or savour of a particular dish, the remembrance of a 

 repast, the name of a fruit, suffice to produce in man the 

 group of affective impressions called hunger, or to recall the 

 very flavour of a once tasted dainty. It is the same with other 

 instinctive appeals ; and this explains why men are capable of 

 excesses to which the brutes are strangers. Man during life is 

 not merely impressed by the objects and events which come 

 into contact with his sensorial organs, but also by objects 

 and events beyond the range of his senses, in time and space. 

 He has the faculty of being informed of the existence of acts, 

 although separated by immense intervals, so that desires are 

 generated, and consequently emotions, which bear the charac- 

 ter of anticipation and memory. By this means subjects of the 

 highest interest to our welfare are brought before our mental 

 view. Such is death, the thought of which moves us most 

 profoundly, and which inspires us with acute anxieties, for 

 both our friends and ourselves. Animals, for aught we know, 

 are exempt from these prepossessions, because they have not 

 the ideas which we believe man alone can have. Still further, 

 our moral and intellectual activity grasps not only the objects 

 and ends which are without our sensorial sphere on the globe 

 we inhabit ; it stretches far away beyond into the regions of 

 the infinite, thus becoming at once a source and a support of 

 religious thought through the psycho-cerebral excitants. Thus, 

 in the cerebral operations of man are blended the traditions of 

 the past, the social relations of the present, and the anticipation 

 of that which is to come, uniting heaven and earth in the vast 

 domain of human thought. 



The next point that we have to consider under this head is the 

 intervention of language in the acts of consciousness. By the 

 knowledge of the result of our moral and intellectual activity, 

 and also of our nervous impressionability, we appreciate the 

 morality of our acts and sentiments, as also the effect of our 

 emotions. Man is as conscious of pity and love as he is of 

 lassitude and indifference. Now, to have consciousness of 

 different affective states, it is necessary to have a previous idea, 



