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THREE INTRODUCTORY LECTURES 
 
 The Science of Thought, 
 
 DELITEHED AT THB 
 
 ROYAL INSTITUTION, LONDON, 
 
 DURING THE MONTH OF MARCH, 1887. 
 
 FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE OPEN COtJKT OF JUNE, JULY AND AUGUST, 1887 
 
 By f Max moller. 
 
 WITH All APPENDIX WHICH CONTAINS A CORRESPONDENCE ON " THOUGHT WITHOUT WORDS,' 
 
 BETWEEN f, «AX KllJUER AND FRANCIS GALTON, THE DUKE OF ARGYLL 
 
 GEORGE J. ROMANES AND OTHERS. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 The Open Court Publishing Company, 
 169-175 la salle street. 
 
W4«^f-^?7^ 
 
 copyright by 
 The Open Court Publishing Co. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Though the three lectures on the "Science of 
 Thought," which I delivered in March, 1887, at the 
 Royal Institution in London, and which were afterwards 
 published in The Open Court, hardly require a preface, 
 being themselves a kind of preface or introduction to a 
 larger work on the same subject,* yet as I had just been 
 writing to a friend of mine in answei* to several ques- 
 tions which he had addressed to me on the principal 
 purpose of my book, I gladly give here a few extracts 
 from that letter, which may serve to prepare the reader 
 for what he has to expect in this small volume. 
 
 You tell me that my book on the Science of Thought is thor- 
 oughly revolutionary, and that I have all recognized authorities in 
 philosophy against me. I doubt it. My book is, if you like, evo- 
 lutionary, but not revolutionary. I mean it is the natural outcome 
 of that philosophical and historical study of language, which 
 began with Leibniz, and which during our century has so widely 
 spread and ramified as to overshadow nearly all sciences, not- 
 excepting what I call the Science of Thought. If you mean by 
 revolutionary a violent breaking with the past, I hold on the con- 
 trary that a full appreciation of the true nature of language and a 
 recognition of its inseparableness from thought will prove the best 
 means of recovering that unbroken thread, which binds our 
 modem schools of thought most closely together with those of the 
 Middle Ages and of ancient Greece. It alone will help us to 
 
 * The Science of Thought, by F. Max Miiller. Locdon: Long;nians, Green & 
 Co., 1887. 
 
ii PREFACE. 
 
 reconcile systems of philosophy hitherto supposed to be entirely 
 antagonistic. If I am right — and I must confess that with regard 
 to the fundamental principle of the identity of reason and lan- 
 guage I share the common weakness of all philosophers that I 
 cannot doubt its truth — then what we call the history of philosophy 
 will assume a totally new aspect. It will reveal itself before our- 
 eyes as the natural growth of language, though at the same time ^ 
 as a constant struggle of old against new language, in fact, as a 
 dialectic process, in the true sense of the word. 
 
 The very tenet that language is identical with thought, what is 
 it but a correction of language, a repentance, a return of language 
 upon itself? We have two words, and therefore it requires with 
 us a strong effort to perceive that behind these two words there is\ 
 but one essence. To a Greek this effort would be comparatively 
 easy, because the word Logos continued to mean the undivided 
 essence of language and thought. In our modern languages we 
 shall find it difficult to coin a word that could take the place of 
 Logos. Neither discours in French, nor Rede in German, which 
 meant originally the same as ratio, will help us. We shall have 
 to be satisfied with such compounds as thought-word or word- 
 thought. At least I can think of no better expedient. 
 
 You strongly object to my saying that there is no such thing as 
 reason. But let us see whether we came honestly by that word. 
 Because we reason, that is, because we reckon, because we add 
 and subtract, therefore we say that we have reason, and thus it 
 happened that reason was raised into something which we have 
 or possess, into a faculty, or power, or something, whatever it may 
 be, that deserves to be written with a capital R. And yet we have 
 only to look into the workshop of language in order to see that 
 (there is nothing substantial corresponding to this substantive, and 
 that neither the heart nor the brain, neither the breath nor the 
 spirit of man discloses its original whereabouts. It may sound 
 violent and revolutionary to you when I say that there is no such 
 thing as reason, and yet no philosopher, not even Kant, has ever 
 in his definition of reason told us what it is really made of. But 
 remember, I am far from saying that Reason is a mere word. 
 That expression, " a mere word," seems to me the most objection- 
 able expression in the whole of our philosophical dictionary. 
 
 Reason is something, namely language, not simply as we now 
 hear it and use it, but as it has been slowly elaborated by man 
 through all the ages of his existence on earth. Reason is the 
 
PREFACE. Hi 
 
 growth of centuries, it is the work of man, and at the same time an 
 instrument brought to higher and higher perfection by the leading 
 thinkers and speakers of the world. No reason without language, 
 no language without reason. Try to reckon without numbers, 
 whether spoken, written, or otherwise marked, and if you succeed 
 in that, I shall admit that it is possible to reason or reckon without 
 words, and that there is in us such a thing, or such a power or 
 faculty, as reason, apart from words. 
 
 You say I shall never live to see it admitted that man cannot 
 reason without words. This does not discourage me. Through 
 the whole of my life I have cared for truth, not for success. And 
 truth is not our own. We may seek truth, serve truth, love truth; 
 but truth takes care of herself, and she inspires her true lovers 
 with the same feeling of perfect trust. Those who cannot believe 
 in themselves, unless they are believed in by others, have never 
 known what truth is. Those who have found truth, know best 
 how little it is their work, and how small the merit which they can 
 claim for themselves. They were blind before, and now they can 
 see. That is all. 
 
 But even if I thought that truth depended on majorities, I 
 believe I might boldly say that the majority of philosophers of all 
 ages and countries is really on my side,* though few only have 
 asserted the identity of reason and language without some timor- 
 ous reserve, still fewer have seen all the consequences that flow 
 from it. 
 
 Some people seem to resent it almost as a personal insult that 
 what we call our divine reason should be no more than human 
 language, and that the whole of this human language should have 
 been derived from no more than 800 roots, which can be reduced 
 to about 120 concepts. But if I had wished to startle my readers, 
 I could easily have shown that out of these 800 roots, one-half 
 could really have been dispensed with, and has been dispensed 
 with in modem languages,! while among the 120 concepts not a 
 few are clearly secondary, and owe their place in my list % merely 
 to the fact that in Sanskrit they cannot be reduced to any more 
 primitive concepts. To dance, for instance, cannot be called a 
 primitive concept; perhaps not even to hunger, to thirst, to cook,. 
 
 • See Science of Thought, p. 31 seq. 
 t Ibid., p. 417. 
 X Ibid., p. 619. 
 
iv PREFA CE. 
 
 to roast, etc. Only it so happens that in Sanskrit, to which my 
 statistical remarks were restricted, we cannot go behind such roots 
 as N^T, KSHUDH, TyRSH, VPJC, etc. It is in that limited 
 sense only that such roots and such concepts can be called primi- 
 tive. The number of really primitive concepts would be so alarm- 
 ingly small that for the present it seemed wiser to say nothing 
 about it. But so far from being ashamed of our modest begin- 
 nings, we ought really to glory rather in having raised our small 
 patrimony to the immense wealth now hoarded in our dictionaries. 
 When we once know what our small original patrimony con- 
 sisted in, the question how we came in possession of it, may seem 
 of less importance. Yet it is well to remember that the theory of 
 the origin of roots and concepts, as propounded by Noire, difiEers, 
 not by degrees, but toto ccelo from the old attempts to derive roots 
 from interjections and imitations of natural sounds. That a cer- 
 tain number of words in every language has been derived from 
 interjections and imitations, no one has ever denied. But such 
 words are not conceptual words, and they become possible only 
 after language had become possible, that is, after man had reached 
 his power of forming concepts. No man who has not himself grap- 
 pled with that problem, can appreciate the complete change that 
 has come over it by the recognition of the fact that roots are the 
 phonetic expressions of the consciousness of our own acts. Nothing 
 but this our consciousness of our own repeated acts could possibly 
 have given us our first concepts. Nothing else answers the neces- 
 sary requirement of a concept that it should be the consciousness 
 of something manifold, yet necessarily realized as one. After the 
 genesis of the first concept, everything else becomes intelligible. 
 The results of our acts become the first objects of our conceptual 
 thought, and with conceptual thought language, which is nothing 
 if not conceptual, begins. Roots are afterwards localized and 
 made the signs of our objects by means of local exponents, whether 
 suffixes, prefixes, or infixes. What has been scraped and shaped 
 again and again becomes as it were "shape-here," i. e. a shaft; 
 what has been dug and hollowed out by repeated blows, becomes 
 "dig-here," i. e. a hole. And from the concept of a hole dug, or of 
 an empty cave there is an uninterrupted progress to the most 
 abstract concepts such as empty space or even nothing. No 
 doubt, when we hear the sound of cuckoo, we may by one jump 
 arrive at the word cuckoo. This may be called a word, but it is 
 not a conceptual word, and we deal with conceptual words only. 
 
PREFA CE. V 
 
 Before we can get at a single conceptual word, we have to pass 
 through at least five stages: 
 
 (1) Consciousness of our own repeated acts; 
 
 (2) Clamor concomitans of these acts; 
 
 (3) Consciousness of that clamor as concomitant of the act; 
 
 (4) Repetition of that clamor to recall the act; 
 
 (5) Clamor (root) defined by prefixes, suffixes, etc., to recall the 
 act as localized in its results, its instruments, its agents, etc. 
 
 You can see from my preface to The Science of Thought, that I 
 was quite prepared for fierce attacks, whether they came from 
 theologians, from philosophers, or from a certain class of scholars. 
 So far from being discouraged, I am really delighted by the oppo- 
 sition which my book has roused, though you would be surprised 
 to hear what strong support also I have received from quarters 
 where I least expected it. I have never felt called upon to write 
 a book to which everybody should say Am,en. When I write a 
 book, I expect the world to say tamen, as I have said tam.en to the 
 world. I have been called very audacious for daring to interfere 
 with philosophy, as if the study of language, to which I have 
 devoted the whole of my life, could be separated from a study of 
 philosophy. Professors of philosophy are happily not the only 
 philosophers in the world. I have listened very patiently for many 
 years to the old story that grammar is one thing and logic another; 
 that the former deals with such laws of thought as are observed, 
 the latter with such as ought to be observed. No, no. True phi- 
 losophy teaches us another lesson, namely that nothing is except 
 what ought to be, and that in the evolution of the mind as well as 
 in that of nature, natural selection is in reality rational selection. 
 We must learn to recognize in language the true evolution of 
 reason. In that evolution nothing is real and remains real except 
 what is rational, and even the apparently irrational and anoma- 
 lous has its reason and justification. Towards the end of the last 
 century what used Jo be called Gramm.aire Generale formed a 
 ver^ favorite subject for academic discussions; it has now been 
 replaced by what may be called Grammaire Historique. In the 
 same manner Form.al Logic, or the study of the general laws of 
 thought, will have to make room for Historical Logic, or a study of 
 the historical growth of thought. Delbriick's essays on compara- 
 tive syntax show what can be done in this direction. For practical 
 purposes, for teaching the art of reasoning, Formal Logic will 
 always retain its separate existence; but the best study of the real 
 
VI PREFA CE. 
 
 laws of thought will be hereafter the study of real laws of lan- 
 guage. If it was indeed so very audacious to make the identity of 
 language and reason the foundation of a new system of philosophy, 
 may I make the modest request that some philosopher by profes- 
 sion should give us a definition of what language is without reason, 
 or reason without language. 
 
 In writing thus unreservedly to a friend 1 have per- 
 haps spoken of myself and my work with greater free- 
 dom than I should have done in addressing the public 
 at large. But as the public, and more especially the 
 American public, has been a friend to me for many 
 years, I hope I may be forgiven for having addressed 
 it as a friend, and having counted on its sympathy and 
 forbearance. 
 
 F. Max Muller. 
 
 Oxford, September 2, 1887. 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 It is more than a quarter of a century since I 
 ventured for the first time (June, 1861 ) to address 
 the members of the Royal Institution, and I well 
 remember the feeHng of fear and trembling that 
 came over me when in this very place I began to 
 deliver my first lecture on the Science of Language 
 as one of the physical sciences. I was young then, 
 and to find myself face to face with such an audi- 
 ence as this Institution always attracts, was indeed 
 a severe trial. As I looked round to see who was 
 present, I met in one place the keen dark eyes of 
 Faraday, in another the massive face of the Bishop 
 of St. David's, in another the kind and thoughtful 
 features of Frederick Maurice, while I was 
 cheered with a look of recognition and encourage- 
 ment from dear Stanley. I could mention several 
 more names, " men, take them all in all, we shall 
 not look upon their like again." To address 
 such an audience on a subject that could never be 
 popular, and without any of those charming ex- 
 periments which enliven the discourses of most 
 lecturers in this room, was an ordeal indeed. But 
 painful as the ordeal was, I do not regret having 
 
4 THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 passed through it. Many of my most valued 
 friendships date from that time, and though in ad- 
 vocating a new cause and running full tilt against 
 many time-honored prejudices, one cannot always 
 avoid making enemies also, yet I feel that I owe 
 a large debt of gratitude to this Institution, and 
 not to my kind friends only, but likewise to my 
 honest opponents. 
 
 It is hardly remembered now that before the 
 time when I boldly claimed a place among the 
 physical sciences for what I called the Science of 
 Language, Comparative Philology was treated 
 only as a kind of appendix to classical scholarship, 
 and that even that place was grudged to it by 
 some of the most eminent students of Greek and 
 Latin. No doubt, the works of Bopp, Grimm, 
 Pott, Benfey, Curtius, Schleicher, had at that time 
 attracted attention in England, and the labors of 
 such scholars as Donaldson, Latham, Garret and 
 others, could well claim a place by their side for 
 •originality, honesty of purpose and clearness of 
 sight. But there is a difference between Com- 
 parative Philology and what I meant by the Sci- 
 ence of Language. Comparative Philology is the 
 means, the Science of Language is the end. 
 
 We must begin with a careful analytical and 
 comparative study of languages; we must serve 
 our apprenticeship as phoneticians, etymologists 
 and grammarians, before we can venture to go 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANG UA GE. 5 
 
 beyond. In this respect I am as great a pedant 
 as ever, and shall rather continue to be taunted as 
 such than abate one iota from my implicit faith in 
 phonetic laws. What I said years ago in my lec- 
 tures on the Science of Language, that phonetics 
 must form the foundation of Comparative Philol- 
 ogy, and that the laws which determine the 
 changes of vowels and consonants are as unchange- 
 able as the laws which regulate the circulation of 
 our blood, may have been a little exaggerated, 
 but in this respect exaggeration is decidedly bet- 
 ter than the smallest concession. I also hold still 
 to another heresy of mine, for which I have been 
 much abused, namely that a knowledge of San- 
 skrit is a sine qua non for every comparative phi- 
 lologist, whether his special subject be Aryan, 
 Semitic, or Turanian philology. I know it has 
 been the fashion of late to cry down the impor- 
 tance of Sanskrit, because it does not supply the 
 key to all secrets, and because in some, nay, in 
 many cases, Sanskrit is less primitive than Greek, 
 or Irish, or Gothic. This is a capital lesson to 
 learn, and may, I hope, put an end at last to the 
 false position which Sanskrit still occupies in the 
 eyes of certain scholars, as the fountain head of all 
 Aryan speech. But with all this, Sanskrit will 
 always maintain its pre-eminence, as affording the 
 best discipline to the student of language; and we 
 have only to compare the works of those who 
 
« THE • SIMPLICITY OF LANG UA GE. 
 
 have mastered Sanskrit, and of those who have 
 not, whether they treat of Greek, or Latin, or 
 Armenian, or Albanian, in order to perceive the 
 imraense difference between the scholar who sails 
 with a safe compass and the bold adventurer who 
 trusts to the stars. 
 
 Comparative Philology is a delightful subject, 
 and the more it is cultivated the more fascinating 
 it becomes, by the very minuteness of the laws 
 and rules which govern its proceedings. There 
 is enough in it to absorb a man's whole mind, 
 enough to occupy a whole life. But for all that, 
 we must not forget that the study of languages 
 has an object beyond itself, a wider purpose, a 
 higher aim. 
 
 And what is that higher purpose which the Sci- 
 ence of Language is meant to serve.? It is to dis- 
 cover the secrets of thought in the labyrinth of 
 language, after the dark chambers of that laby- 
 rinth have first been lighted up by the torch of 
 Comparative Philology. If there are any here 
 present who attended my former courses on the 
 Science of Language, delivered in this Institution, 
 they will remember how often I appealed to the 
 philosophers, whether logicians, physiologists, or 
 metaphysicians, inviting them to a study of lan- 
 guage which, like the thread of Ariadne, would 
 lead them safely through the intricate passages of 
 the human mind, through which they had been 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 7 
 
 groping their way for so many centuries, without 
 ever meeting the monster which they meant to 
 slay. In my lectures on Comparative Mythology, 
 in particular, I tried to show the, irresistible influ- 
 ence which language, in its growth and decay, has 
 exercised on thought, not only in what is commonly 
 called mythology, the stories of gods and heroes, 
 but in every sphere of knowledge, call it religion, 
 philosophy, science, or anything else. We may 
 do what we like, our thoughts are always hide- 
 bound in language, and it is this inevitable phase 
 of thought and language, inevitable in every branch 
 of knowledge, which I meant by mythology, using 
 that word in a far wider sense than had ever be- 
 fore been assigned to it. In order to make my 
 meaning quite clear, and to provoke, if possible, 
 contradiction, that is independent thought, I called 
 mythology a disease of language, though adding 
 at the same time that it was to be considered as 
 an infantine disease, as a natural crisis through 
 which our intellectual constitution must pass in 
 order to maintain its health and vigor. Now it is 
 curious that those who expressed their agreement 
 with me that mythology, including metaphysics, 
 might indeed be considered as a disease of lan- 
 guage, did not ask themselves what in that case 
 the health of language would mean. Right lan- 
 guage is right thought, and right thought is right 
 language ; and if we want to understand, not only 
 
8 THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 the disease, but the health also of our thought, 
 that is to say, the whole life of our thought, 
 we can study it nowhere more efficiently than in 
 the pathology of language. 
 
 The Science of Language, therefore, was to me 
 at all time but a means to an end — a telescope to 
 watch the heavenly movements of our thoughts, 
 a microscope to discover the primary cells of our 
 concepts. I have waited for many years, hoping 
 that some one better qualified than myself might 
 lay hold of the materials collected by the compar- 
 ative philologists, and build with them a new sys- 
 tem of philosophy. Everything was ready — the 
 ore was there, it had only to be coined. But 
 whether philosophers mistrusted the ore, or 
 whether they preferred to speculate with their 
 time-honored tokens rather than with the genuine 
 metal, certain it is that, with few exceptions, no 
 philosopher by profession has as yet utilized the 
 new facts which the Science of Language has 
 placed at his free disposal. 
 
 I know the answer that will be made. The re- 
 sults of the Science of Language, it has often been 
 said, are as yet so unsettled. They vary from 
 year to year, and the best authorities in Germany, 
 France and England, to say nothing of America, 
 differ toto ccelo from each other on some of the 
 most fundamental principles. Some hold that, 
 like the law of gravitation, the laws which govern 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANG UA GE. > 
 
 the growth and decay of language admit of no 
 exceptions; others hold, on the contrary, that 
 disturbances in the regular courses of words 
 may here, lead tO'the discovery of an unsuspected 
 Neptune. Dialects, according to -some, are the 
 descendants of one uniform language; according 
 to others they are the feeders of the classical lan- 
 guages, and exist not only before a common liter- 
 ary language can be framed, but continue to 
 influence its later development by constant inter- 
 communion. Dialect, in fact, has become the 
 general name for the centrifugal tendencies of 
 language, whether originating in individuals, fam- 
 ilies, villages, towns, or provinces, as opposed to 
 the centripetal power of analogy, represented by 
 the sway which, whether for good or for evil, ma- 
 jorities always exercise over minorities. But even 
 on minor points there have been -most sanguinary 
 battles between hostile camps of comparative phi- 
 lologists. Whether the original Aryan language 
 possessed one short a only, like Sanskrit, or 
 whether the a w^as already, before the separation 
 of the Aryan family, differentiated into a, e, o, has 
 been treated as a matter of life and death; and I 
 do not deny that in the eyes of the true scholar it 
 is a matter of life and death. But it does not fol- 
 low that because Curtius hesitated on this point 
 he therefore deserves all the ignominious epithets 
 that have been showered upon his head. Among 
 
10 THE SIMPLICITY OF LANG UA GE. 
 
 scholars by profession all this is understood. 
 Curtius holds, and will hold, his place of honor in 
 the history of Comparative Philology in spite of 
 all that has of late been written against him, and 
 no one will be.more ready to admit this, I believe, 
 than Brugmann, Osthoff and others, who have at- 
 tacked him so fiercely. I am sorry for rude and 
 ungracious language at all times, but I do not 
 mind an honest fight. What I object to is, if 
 critics, who are too lazy to form an opinion for 
 themselves, amuse themselves, and think they can 
 amuse others, by collecting a number of passages 
 from the writings of these philological champions, 
 in which they not only contradict each other flatly, 
 but bandy epithets with which they seem but too 
 familiar, whether from the study of slang diction- 
 aries or from their partiality for the customs of 
 primitive savages. Let every man judge for him- 
 self, and give his opinion and his reasons for it; 
 but simply to point out that Bopp has been called 
 an ignoramus by somebody — it may be even by 
 some one who is somebody — that Sir William Jones 
 has been dubbed a mere pretender, or Darwin a 
 fool, may no doubt serve to raise a smile, and to 
 bring a whole subject into discredit, but it can do 
 no possible good. What province is there in the 
 whole realm of human knowledge in which there 
 is no difference of opinion.? None, I should say, 
 except where there is for a time neither life, nor 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 11 
 
 progress, nor discovery. It is because there is at 
 present intense vitality in the comparative study 
 of ancient languages, traditions, customs, mythol- 
 ogies, and religions that there is in it that con- 
 stant, friction, that frequent scintillation, but also 
 that constant increase of new light. Do you think 
 we shall ever have infallibility and immutability in 
 the republic of learning? I hope not, for to my 
 mind that would mean nothing but sluggishness, 
 languor and death. Scholars welcome everybody 
 who in the open tournament of science will take 
 his chance, dealing blows and receiving or parry- 
 ing blows; but the man who does not fight him- 
 self, but simply stands by to jeer and sneer when 
 two good knights have been unseated in breaking 
 a lance in the cause of truth, does nothing but mis- 
 chief, and might, indeed, find better and worthier 
 employment. 
 
 To say, therefore, that the results of Compara- 
 tive Philology, ^thnology and Mythology are still 
 too uncertain to make it safe for a philosopher to 
 take them into consideration, is mere laziness. 
 The river of knowledge, like all other rivers, will 
 never stop flowing for timid men to pass through 
 with dry feet; it will flow on in omne volubilis 
 aevum, and we must take our header into it, and 
 swim or drown. 
 
 There is one advantage at least in getting old. 
 To a young man, or I should rather say to a man 
 
12 THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 of middle age, to see the pendulum swinging from 
 one extreme to the other, to see the views which 
 he learnt with implicit faith from his teacher de- 
 molished by men it may be far inferior in knowl- 
 edge, judgment and character, is often dishearten- 
 ing. But if one is allowed to watch the clock of 
 knowledge for a longer time than is commonly 
 allotted to hardworking students, one feels com- 
 forted on seeing the pendulum returning once 
 more to the opposite side, and one finds out that 
 after all there was more to be said for the ex- 
 ploded errors than we imagined thirty years ago. 
 
 I say one feels comforted, though others would 
 probably say, "Is, then, our knowledge nothing 
 but a perpetual swing-swang .? Must we be con- 
 tent with always oscillating between truth and 
 untruth, and does the flux and reflux of scientific 
 opinion always leave us exactly where we were 
 before.?" No; I certainly do not take so despond- 
 ing a view of our human destiny. On the con- 
 trary, I feel convinced that while the pendulum 
 vibrates regularly backward and forward, the 
 finger on the dial — to keep to our metaphor — 
 moves onward, slowly but steadily — unless there 
 is something wrong in the wheels within wheels 
 which represent the incessant toil' of honest and 
 unselfish workers. 
 
 You niay of late years have heard a good deal 
 about new views in Comparative Philology. I 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANG UA GE. 13 
 
 highly appreciate every one of these new views, 
 but I do not therefore entirely surrender the old 
 views. There has not been a cataclysm, a com- 
 plete break between the old and the new, as some 
 giddy people want to make out. There has been, 
 as there ought to be, a constant reform, but there 
 has never been a couf d'etat. Some of the very 
 foundations of our science have had to be re- 
 examined, and have been strengthened by new 
 supports. Some important additions have been 
 made with regard to phonetic laws, and on the 
 whole it has been found that many things which 
 were accepted as beyond doubt, were after all not 
 quite so certain as they seemed at first. 
 
 Let us only take one instance. You have prob- 
 ably all heard of what I called Grimni's JLatv, and 
 what, as I fully admit, would more correctly have 
 been called Grimni's Rule. However, it may be 
 called at least an Empirical Law, for it contains 
 the observation of a uniformity in the changes of 
 consonants in Low German and High German, as 
 compared with all the other languages of the 
 Aryan family. We find the observation of that 
 uniformity in its crudest form in Rask. It was 
 afterward generalized and more firmly established 
 by Grimm. Still, a number of exceptions re- 
 mained, and these were gradually diminished by 
 the discovery of new rules by LOttner, Grassmann, 
 Verner. But even now, much remains to be done. 
 
14 THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 There are still exceptions to be accounted for, 
 such as Gothicy^t/?', which as Sanskrit has the ac- 
 cent on the first, ought to be fathi; or Gothic 
 hvathar, whether, which as Sanskrit katard has 
 the accent on the last, should be hvadar. Nay, I 
 believe that a higher law has yet to be discovered 
 to account for the influence which, according to 
 Verner, the accent immediately before Sanskrit 
 tenues is supposed to exercise. If the accent is 
 on the vowel immediately preceding the tenuis in 
 Sanskrit, the tenuis becomes aspirate in Low Ger- 
 man; if not, the Sanskrit tenuis appears in I^ow 
 German as the corresponding media. Thus San- 
 skrit bhrdlar becomes in Gothic broihar, t being 
 replaced by th; but Sanskrit -pitdr hecoraesfadar / 
 Sanskrit mdidr, Anglo - Saxon modor. Why .? 
 Simply because the accent in Sanskrit was imme- 
 diately before the t in bhrdl^tar^ but not so in ■pitdr 
 and mdtdr. This shows how closely languages 
 are held together, a change of accent in Sanskrit 
 being sufficient to explain the change of th and d 
 in Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and other Low German 
 dialects. 
 
 But we have, as yet, the facts only. Why 
 the accent should exercise this influence we 
 do not know, unless we suppose that the accent 
 before the tenuis draws the tenuis toward the 
 preceding vowel, makes it, as it were, the final 
 of a syllable, and secures to it that aspiration 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANG UA GE. 15 
 
 which a tenuis would claim, if the final of a 
 word.* 
 
 I wish I could give you to-day a fuller account 
 of the excellent work that has been done during 
 the last twenty years by such men as Lottner, 
 Grassmann, Verner, Ascoli, Kick, Ludwig, 
 Schmidt, CoUitz, Brugmann, OsthofF, de Saussure, 
 Schrader, and many others. You would be sur- 
 prised at the perfection which has been attained 
 in the elaboration of phonetic rules, in the obser- 
 vations on the working of analogy, in the more 
 exact definition of technical terms, and in the his- 
 torical conclusions to be drawn from the facts 
 supplied by a comparison of cognate languages. 
 
 But my object to-day is a different one. I wish 
 to call your attention to the progress that has been 
 made in our comprehension of language itself. 
 Now, whatever views were formerly held about 
 language, everybody was agreed that language 
 was a most wonderful thing, so wonderful, in fact, 
 that perhaps the wisest thing that could be said 
 about it was that it must have been of superhu- 
 man or divine origin. It was quite clear that, 
 though men might frame new out of old words, 
 no man could ever frame at his own pleasure a 
 word entirely new. Nor did natuje seem to have 
 supplied primitive humanity with a vocabulary, 
 
 *See Heyne, Laut und Flexionslekre, p. 98; also Sweet, History oj 
 English Sounds, p. 9. 
 
16 THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE 
 
 for all vocabularies differed, and every person 
 capable of speaking had to learn his language from 
 his parents. Whence, therefore, could language, 
 with its millions of words, come to us except from 
 a superhuman and supernatural source ? We won- 
 der at the infinite number of stars, and we well 
 may. One look at that silent eternal procession 
 is worth all the miracles of all religions put to- 
 gether. But if the stars on high and the still small 
 voice within seemed to the greatest philosopher 
 the two greatest miracles, might he not have add- 
 ed the galaxy of words as the third great miracle 
 that passes all understanding, though it passes 
 every day before our very eyes ? If you consider 
 that the great English dictionary, now being pub- 
 lished by the University press at Oxford, is to 
 contain two hundred and fifty thousand words, 
 that is, a quarter of a million, and that on a low 
 average every word admits of at least ten changes 
 by means of declension, conjugation, or degrees of 
 comparison,* you have before you, in English 
 alone, two millions and a half of words, every one 
 a bright star of human thought. I wonder what 
 the number of the stars in Heaven may be. 
 Struve, I am told, formed a guess that their num- 
 ber might amount to two millions! But the visi- 
 ble stars, up to stars of the fifth magnitude, amount 
 
 *A Greek verb, according to Curtius, admits of 807 modifications; 
 a Sanskrit verb of 891. 
 
• THE SIMPLICITY OF LANG UA GE. 17 
 
 to one thousand three hundred and eighty-two 
 only, and I doubt whether anybody here present 
 has ever seen more than twice that number, as I 
 doubt whether many people have ever used more 
 than twice that number of words. At Oxford, as 
 Professor Pritchard informs me, the stars which 
 we see with the naked eye are about two thou- 
 sand eight hundred — about the same as the num- 
 ber of the members of the University in their 
 various degrees of light and magnitude. 
 
 No doubt English is one of the richest lan- 
 guages, and much of its wealth is kept only in 
 reserve. A poet is very eloquent who uses more 
 than ten thousand words. It is all the more amaz- 
 ing, therefore, to see the intellectual wealth of 
 languages spoken by the lowest savages. Owing 
 chiefly to Darwin's reports, it has been the fashion 
 to represent the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego 
 as standing on the very lowest rung of the ladder 
 which represents the ascent or descent of man. 
 You remember what Darwin said of them. They 
 seemed to him like the devils which come on the 
 stage in such plays as the Freischutz. " Viewing 
 such men," he says, "one can hardly believe that 
 they are fellow creatures, and inhabitants of the 
 same world. Their language, according to our 
 notions," he adds, "scarcely deserves to be called 
 articulate. Captain Cook has compared it to a 
 man clearing his throat ; but certainly no European 
 
18 THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 ever cleared his throat with so many hoarse, gut- 
 tural and clicking sounds!" These Fuegians, as 
 they appeared to Darwin, may be responsible for 
 much that is now called Darwinism. But even 
 with regard to the physical features of these 
 Fuegians, Darwin must either have been very 
 unlucky in the specimens he met, or he cannot 
 have kept himself quite free from prejudice. Cap- 
 tain Parker Snow, in his Two Tears'' Cruise off 
 Tierra del Fuego^ speaks of the same race as 
 without the least exaggeration really beautiful 
 representatives of the human race. Professor 
 Virchow, who exhibited a number of Fuegians at 
 Berlin, strongly protested against the supposition 
 that they were by nature an inferior race, or that 
 they might be considered as a connecting link 
 between ape and man. Captain Parker Snow sent 
 me, in 1885, the following interesting letter: "I 
 am now over sixty-seven years old " — that makes 
 him now seventy — " but I would gladly voyage 
 again among those so-called savages, and my wife 
 — same age — coincides. Indeed, we have both 
 lived among wild tribes in various parts of the 
 globe, and never once received aught but kind- 
 ness and love from them, whether in the Pacific, 
 or Australia, or Tierra del Fuego. Nor from the 
 days when, as a boy in 1834—35, 1 was much among 
 them, and often since, have I once lifted a weapon 
 to harm them. No occasion. I and mine found 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 19 
 
 them honest, and above the ordinary ' civilized ' 
 lower strata of life, ' Cannibals ' (when from neces- 
 sity, or revenge, or policy — 'to imbibe the white 
 man's powers') though they were." 
 
 But what shall we say of their language? The 
 same language which to Darwin's ears seemed 
 hardly articulate is described by Giacomo Bovi, 
 who learnt their language, as consisting of -parole 
 dolci, -piacevoli^ -piene di vocali. The Yahgan 
 dialect, which has lately been more carefully 
 studied by missionaries, has a dictionary of 32,430 
 w^ords. Now let us remember that Shakespeare, 
 in the enormous variety of his plays, achieved all 
 he wished to achieve, expressed all he wished to 
 express, with 15,000 words, not quite half the 
 wealth of the language spoken by those devils of 
 the Freischutz, whom Darwin could hardly believe 
 to be fellow creatures. Every one of these words 
 represents an intellectual effort, and every one of 
 them can be either declined, conjugated and com- 
 pounded, according to the strict laws of a most 
 complicated grammar. 
 
 I have always had the fullest belief in Darwin's 
 devotion to truth, and I had expressed my convic- 
 tion that, if the real facts about the language and 
 the general character of the Fuegians were placed 
 before him, he would withdraw the strong lan- 
 guage which he had used, after but a short stay 
 among them. And so it was. In a letter, dated 
 
20 THE SIMPLICITY OF LA NG UA GE. 
 
 Down, Kent, November 22, 1881, Darwin wrote 
 to Captain Parker Snow : 
 
 " Dear Sir — I hope that you may succeed in 
 pubHshing a new edition of your Cruise to Tierra 
 del Fuego. You saw so much more of the natives 
 than I did, that, wherever we differ, you probably 
 are in the right. Indeed, the success of the mis- 
 sionary establishment there proves that I took a 
 very erroneous view of the nature and capabilities 
 of the Fuegians." 
 
 That is what I call real Darwinism — love of 
 truth, not of self or system. It is the heart that 
 makes the true man of science, not the brain only. 
 
 What then has the science of language done for 
 us in explaining that stupendous wealth of words 
 and forms, whether in English, or in Sanskrit, or 
 in Hebrew, or in Turkish, or even in the language 
 of the so-called devils of Tierra del Fuego.? It 
 has completely changed the aspect of the miracle, 
 and instead of exhibiting language as something 
 incomprehensible, bewildering and supernatural, it 
 has shown us, that the process by which this sup- 
 posed miracle of language has been wrought is 
 perfectly simple, natural and intelligible. We no 
 longer stare at language in utter bewilderment, 
 but we understand it. Give us the materials, and 
 we can build up a language, perhaps more perfect, 
 though, it may be, less beautiful, than English, 
 Sanskrit or Fuegian. 
 
 But what are these materials.? 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 21 
 
 Whatever language we take, we find that it can 
 be analyzed, and as the result of our analysis, we 
 find everywhere material and formal elements. 
 In giver and gift^ for instance, the material ele- 
 ment is give., the formal elements are er and t. In 
 to Tvit, in Tvitness, and in wittingly., we easily see 
 the permanent material element, ivit, used in the 
 sense of knowing, and followed by such formal 
 elements as ness and ing. These material ele- 
 ments are generally called roots, and it stands to 
 reason that in modern languages it is often very 
 difficult to discover the true roots. There have 
 been so many phonetic changes that in order to 
 discover the most primitive form of a root, we 
 must always go back to the more primitive lan- 
 guages. The same root, -wit, for instance, exists 
 in English in such words also as history, but no 
 one who did not know that this word came to us 
 from Rome and Greece, would be able to discover 
 the presence of the root wit in history. In Greek 
 we know it, because we know that, according to, 
 fixed phonetic rules initial v is dropt, d before t 
 is changed to 5, thus giving us istor instead of 
 vid-tar, the Sanskrit vet-tar. 
 
 Now this is one thing which the Science of 
 Language has achieved. It has discovered the 
 material elements or roots in all the Indo-European 
 languages. But while this achievement belongs 
 to the nineteenth century with us, it belonged to 
 
22 THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 the fifth century b. c. in India. In India the ear- 
 liest gramqiarians asked the question, which we 
 have asked but lately, namely, What is language 
 made of? and they found, as we have found, that 
 it consisted of those material elements or roots, 
 and of a certain number of formal elements, called 
 suffixes, prefixes and infixes. This was a wonder- 
 ful achievement, particularly for men whom cer- 
 tain people even now would call savages or nig- 
 gers. The result of this analysis or taking to 
 pieces of the Sanskrit language is now before us, 
 in a list of about two thousand roots, which is 
 ascribed to the great grammarian Pacini, who 
 lived about the same time as ^schylus. Given 
 that number of roots and there is no word in 
 Sanskrit which Hindu grammarians do not under- 
 take to build up. That is to say, the whole flora 
 of the Sanskrit dictionary has been traced back by 
 them to about two thousand seeds. Wonderful 
 as this achievement is, we must not exaggerate. 
 Many of the etymologies of the native Indian 
 scholars are fanciful. The idea that it should be 
 impossible to trace any word back to a root 
 never entered their heads. If there is no root, a 
 root is invented for any special word, for accord- 
 ing to their views, the only object of a root is to 
 account for the existence of .a word. Hence many 
 of these roots which we find collected b)' Pamni 
 may be safely set aside. From our point of view, 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 23 
 
 we are quite prepared to admit that Sanskrit, like 
 other languages, may possess words of which the 
 roots can no longer be discovered. We could not 
 discover, for instance, the root of such a word as 
 history^ if Latin and Greek had been swept away 
 out of existence; nor should we know that the 
 root of age was /, to go, unless we could follow 
 up historically the traces of that word from age to 
 eage^ edage, cetaticum, cetas, (Bviias, cevum., and 
 Sanskrit eva., which comes from the root /, to go. 
 
 If we sift the list of roots in Sanskrit, retaining 
 such roots only as can be traced in the actual liter- 
 ature, the number of 2,000 dwindles down to 
 about 800. That is to say, with about 800 mate- 
 rial elements we can account for the whole verbal 
 harvest of India. Now that harvest is as rich as 
 that of any other of the Aryan languages, and 
 what applies therefore to Sanskrit, applies mutatis 
 mutandis., to Greek, Latin and all the other Aryan 
 languages. Their stock in trade is no more than 
 about 800 roots. I should even say, it is consider- 
 ably less, because as languages grow they drop 
 a number of scarce and isolated words, and sup- 
 ply their wants by new derivatives, or by new 
 metaphorical expressions. I see that Professor 
 Skeat, in his list of the principal Aryan roots 
 occurring in English, brings their number to no 
 more than 461. 
 
 Imagine, then, what a difference this makes in 
 
24 THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 our view of language. We may feel bewildered 
 by a quarter of a million of descendants, but we 
 can manage eight hundred ancestors; and if we 
 can once manage these eight hundred ancestors, 
 their descendants, whatever their number, need no 
 longer perplex and frighten us. 
 
 In this respect the Science of Language has 
 brought daylight where all before seemed dark 
 and confused. Whatever in language is not mate- 
 rial is formal. These formal elements are in 
 many cases material elements in a metamorphic 
 state. Thus hood in child-hood., which is now 
 a formal element, used to form collective and 
 abstract nouns, was still not many centuries back, 
 a living word, the Anglo-Saxon hAd., meaning state 
 or rank. This had again is related to the Gothic 
 haidus, meaning manner, way; and this haidus 
 exists in Sanskrit as hetu., a sign. When we have 
 come so far, we ask what is this kehi, and we find 
 that its root is kzi, to observe, to see, while « is a 
 purely formal element, used to form nominal and 
 verbal bases in Sanskrit. 
 
 Besides these metamorphic words — the soil, as 
 it were, left by a former vegetation — the Aryan 
 languages make use of a number of demonstrative 
 elements, with which to form nouns, adjectives 
 and verbs from roots. These were at first in- 
 tended to point to whatever was meant to be the 
 subject of a predicative root. If there was a root 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 25 
 
 meaning to strike, then '■'■strike-here'''' might be a 
 striker, a fighter; "strike-there" might be 
 "wound;" "strike it" might be "sword." After 
 a time these demonstrative elements became dif- 
 ferentiated and speciaHzed, and they stand now 
 before us as suffixes, and terminations of nouns 
 and verbs. 
 
 What has so far been estabHshed by the Science 
 of Language is this, that, if we have, say, eight 
 hundred material or predicative roots and a small 
 number of demonstrative elements given us, then, 
 roughly speaking, the riddle of language is solved. 
 We know what language is, what it is made of, and 
 we are thus enabled to admire, not so much its 
 complexity as its translucent simplicity. 
 
 There remains, however, the old question, 
 " Whence these roots.''" We have found them by 
 careful digging, we have pulled them out of the 
 ground, and there can be no doubt about their 
 reality. There they are, but people want to know 
 how they came to be there; nay, they seem more 
 eager on that point than on the whole subsequent 
 growth of language. 
 
 There was a time when the existence of roots 
 was denied altogether, and words were derived 
 straight, either from imitations of the sounds of 
 nature, particularly the cries of birds and the 
 shouts of animals, or from interjections, such as we 
 utter ourselves, whether we like it or not, when 
 
20 THE SIMPLICITY OF LA NG UA GE. 
 
 under the sway of pleasure or pain, or any other 
 powerful passion. Nothing could sound more 
 plausible. Could the name of the cuckoo be any- 
 thing but the imitation of a bird's note.^" Could 
 tolderollol be anything but a shout of joy.? Do we 
 not hear in to chuckle the sound of suppressed 
 laughter, and in to chuck the clucking of the hen.'' 
 Now to chuckle means also to fondle, so that we 
 can clearly see how so abstract an idea as to caress 
 or to love may be expressed by a sound imitated 
 straight from the cackling of a hen. 
 
 And why should not a complete language have 
 been formed by the same process.? If bow-bcrw 
 was used for barking, why should it not be used 
 also in the sense of persecuting.? If -pooh-fooh 
 was an expression of disgust, why should it not be 
 accepted as the name of a critical review.? And 
 if those who generally bow-bow and -pooh'-pooh 
 moderate occasionally the breath of their indigna- 
 tion, or change it into a more or less loud breeze 
 of mutual love and admiration, why should that 
 not be called a -pujf^ from which -puffer, puffery, 
 puffness, and all the rest. 
 
 All this goes on swimmingly for a short time, but 
 then comes a sudden precipice. There are ono- 
 matopoeic elements in every language, but they end 
 where real language begins. They are like vol- 
 canic rocks breaking here and there through the 
 superincumbent stratified layers of speech. We 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 27 
 
 know perfectly well what they are; they require 
 no explanation whatever; but they are certainly 
 not what we mean by speech, by discourse, or 
 Logos. I had to fight these two theories when I 
 delivered my lectures on language five-and-twenty 
 years ago. In order to describe them by short 
 and clear names I called them the Bow-bow and 
 Pooh-pooh theories. Description was taken for 
 irony; but whether these names contained truth 
 or irony, certain it is that both these theories are 
 now dead, never to rise again, I hope. 
 
 But though so much is gained, and we are not 
 likely to be troubled again with derivations of 
 words direct from the crude sounds of nature, 
 there remains the question to be answered, namely, 
 "What is the origin of those roots which stand 
 like a rampart between the chaos of sounds ex- 
 pressive of mere feelings and the kosmos of words 
 expressive of concepts.^" 
 
 It is perfectly right to ask that question, but it 
 is also right to see that such a question can admit 
 of an hypothetical answer only. Think of what 
 times we are speaking! — times when no Aryan 
 language did exist, when no verb or noun had yet 
 been formed, when man, in fact, was hardly yet 
 man in the full sense of that word, but only the 
 embryo of a man, without speech, and therefore 
 without reason. We can enter into all the secret 
 workings of the human mind, building up for itself 
 
28 THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 the shell of language, after the materials were once 
 given. But a state of mind without language and 
 without reason is more than we can fully realize. 
 All we can do is to guess, and to guess cautiously. 
 
 There are three things that have to be explained 
 in roots, such as we find them: 
 
 (i) Their being intelligible not only to the 
 speaker but to all who listen to him; 
 
 (2) Their having a definite body of consonants 
 and vowels; 
 
 (3) Their expressing general concepts. 
 
 In my former lectures I called attention to the 
 fact that everything in nature that is struck vibrates 
 and rings. This is the widest generalization under 
 which the vocal utterances of man can be classed. 
 Under the influence of certain emotions the human 
 body finds relief in more or less musical sounds, 
 produced by the breath passing either slowly or 
 violently from the lungs to the larynx and from 
 the larynx to the mouth. 
 
 This is perfectly true; but these sounds which 
 naturally accompany our emotions, though they 
 may supply the material, are very far as yet from 
 being roots. It was Professor Noir€ who first 
 pointed out that roots, in order to be intelligible to 
 others, must have been from the very first social 
 sounds — sounds uttered by several people together. 
 They must have been what he calls the clafnor 
 concomitans, uttered almost involuntarily by a 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANG UA GE. 29 
 
 whole gang engaged in a common work. Such 
 sounds are uttered even at present by sailors row- 
 ing together, by peasants digging together, by 
 women spinning or sewing together. They are 
 uttered and they are understood. And not only 
 would this clamor concomitans be understood by 
 all the members of a community, but on account 
 of its frequent repetition, it would soon assume a 
 more definite form than belongs to the shouts of 
 individuals, which constantly vary, according to 
 circumstances and individual tendencies. 
 
 But the most difficult problem still remains. 
 How did these sounds become the signs, not simply 
 of emotions but of concepts.'' for we must not for- 
 get all roots are expressive of concepts. To us 
 nothing seems more natural than a concept. We 
 live in concepts. Everything we name, everything 
 we reason about is conceptual. But how was the 
 first conceptformed .f* that is the question which the 
 Science of Thought has to solve. At present we 
 simply take a number of sensuous intuitions, and 
 after descrying something which they share in 
 common, we assign a name to it, and thus get a 
 concept. For instance, seeing the samfe color in 
 coal, ink and in a negro, we form the concept of 
 black; or seeing white in milk, snow and chalk, 
 we form the concept of white. In some cases a 
 concept is a mere shadow of a number of percepts, 
 as when we speak of oaks, beeches and firs, as trees. 
 
30 THE SIMPLICITY OF LA NG UA GE. 
 
 But suppose we had no such names as black and 
 white, and tree, where would our concept be? 
 
 We are speaking, however, of a period in the 
 growth of the human mind when there existed as 
 yet neither names nor concepts, and the question 
 which we have to answer is, how the roots which 
 we have discovered as the elements of language 
 came to have a conceptual meaning. Now the 
 fact is the majority of roots express acts, and 
 mostly acts which men in a primitive state of 
 society are called upon to perform; I mean acts 
 such as digging, plaiting, weaving, striking, throw- 
 ing, binding, etc. All of these are acts of which 
 those who perform them are ipso facto conscious; 
 and as most of these acts were continuous or con- 
 stantly repeated, we see in the consciousness of 
 these repeated acts the first glimmer of conceptual 
 thought, the first attempt to comprehend many 
 things as one.. Without any effort of their own 
 the earliest fraraers of language found the con- 
 sciousness of their own repeated acts raised into 
 conceptual consciousness, while the sounds by 
 which these acts were accompanied became spon- 
 taneously what we now call conceptual roots in 
 every language. 
 
 In this manner all the requirements which roots 
 have to fulfill are satisfied. They are necessarily 
 intelligible to a whole community, because they 
 refer to acts performed in common. They have a 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. 31 
 
 definite or articulate sound, because they have 
 been repeated so often that all individual or dia- 
 lectic variety has been eliminated; and they have 
 become conceptual, because they express not a 
 single accidental act, but repeated acts from which 
 all that is purely accidental, temporal or local, has 
 been slowly removed or abstracted. 
 
 Professor Noire, who has most carefully analyzed 
 this primitive process in the formation of concept- 
 ual thought, thinks that true conceptual conscious- 
 ness begins only from the time when men became 
 conscious of results, of facts and not only of acts. 
 The mere consciousness of the acts of digging, 
 striking., binding, does not satisfy him. Only when 
 men perceive the results of their acts — ^for instance, 
 in the hole dug, in the tree struck down, in the 
 reeds tied together as a mat — did they, according 
 to him, arrive at conceptual thought in language. 
 I do not dispute this, but even if we admitted that 
 the concepts embodied in our roots did not arrive 
 at their full maturity till the acts which they 
 expressed had become realized objectively by their 
 results, we must not forget that every language 
 retains the power of predicating these roots, and 
 that only by that power is it able to produce its 
 wealth of nouns and verbs. 
 
 In Sanskrit the number of these roots has been 
 estimated at about -eight hundred, and the great 
 bulk of the Sanskrit dictionary has been traced 
 
32 THE SIMPLICITY OF LA NG UA GE. 
 
 back to these eight hundred living germs. But 
 this is not all. If we examine these eight hundred 
 roots more carefully, we find that they do not 
 represent an equal number of concepts. There 
 are, for instance, about seventeen roots, all mean- 
 ing to plait, to weave, to sow, to bind, to unite; 
 about thirty roots, all meaning to crush, to pound, 
 to destroy, to waste, to rub, to smooth; about 
 seventeen meaning to cut, to divide, and so on. I 
 believe the original meaning of roots was always 
 special, but became generalized by usage, though, 
 on the other side, certain roots of a general mean- 
 ing became specialized also. But the important 
 fact which has been established and can no longer 
 be doubted is, that the eight hundred roots which 
 supply our dictionary can be reduced to about one 
 hundred and twenty concepts. These one hundred 
 and twenty concepts are really the rivers that feed 
 the whole ocean of thought and speech. There is 
 no thought that passes through our mind, or that 
 has passed through the minds of the greatest poets 
 and prophets of old, that cannot directly or indi- 
 rectly be derived from one of these fundamental 
 concepts. This may seem to lower us very much. 
 We thought ourselves so rich, and now we find 
 that our intellectual capital is so small; not more 
 than one hundred and twenty concepts. But does 
 that prove that we are poor.? I believe not. 
 Nature has not become poor because we know 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OK LANGUAGE. 83 
 
 that the infinite wealth which it displays before 
 our eyes consists of no more than about seventy- 
 two elements, nor is our mind poor because the 
 elements of thought have been reduced to one 
 , hundred and twenty, and might, with some effort, 
 be reduced to a smaller number still. What 
 remains to us is the power of combination, of 
 composition and decomposition; and if that power 
 has enabled us to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, 
 to determine the metals in the sun, to discover the 
 seventy-two elements of nature, and to elicit the 
 one hundred and twenty elements of thought, we 
 need not be ashamed. Nature produces the great- 
 est effects by the smallest means, and man ought 
 to be proud to follow her example. 
 
THE IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND 
 THOUGHT. 
 
 Language, under the microscope of the com- 
 parative philologist, has turned out to be a very 
 simple thing. With about one hundred and twenty 
 radical concepts and twenty demonstrative ele- 
 ments we could build up a dictionary and a gram- 
 mar rich enough to supply all the demands of 
 Shakespeare; and surely more than that, no lan- 
 guage can fairly be called upon to supply. I stated 
 in my last lecture that, after a careful analysis, 
 I had succeeded in reducing all actual roots of 
 Sanskrit, about eight hundred in number, to one 
 hundred and twenty-one concepts, but I added 
 that the number of concepts might easily have 
 been reduced still further. The fecundity of these 
 roots and the pliancy of our fundamental concepts 
 are perfectly astounding. If you take the concept 
 of uniting, or putting two and two together, you 
 find it expressed by seventeen different roots. No 
 doubt, every one of these roots had originally a 
 more special meaning. Some meant to plait, others 
 to sow, to weave, to bunch, to roll, to tie. But 
 every one of them might have been generalized 
 
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 35 
 
 and afterward again specialized to such an extent 
 that it could have supplied every verb, noun, 
 adjective or adverb expressive of some kind of 
 union; that is to say, one root might, if necessary, 
 have done the work of seventeen. 
 
 Now, if I were to take one only of these seven- 
 teen roots, all meaning to unite, I am afraid I 
 should spend the whole of my lecture, if I attempted 
 to give you all its derivatives in Sanskrit, Greek, 
 Latin and English. What, however, I wish to make 
 quite clear to you is, that words and concepts, 
 which seem to us quite modern, belong nevertheless 
 to what we should call the very granite of our 
 thoughts. The growth of our thoughts has been 
 historical and continuous. Many of the interme- 
 diate links may have been forgotten or lost, but 
 they were there, and it is the object of the Science 
 of Language to restore them, and thus to furnish 
 a safe foundation for the Science of Thought. 
 
 We should probably considiex fashionable a very 
 modern word, and so it is; still it is closely con- 
 nected with 'L.a.tmJ'actw ,' and meant originally the 
 make or cut of a, garment, whether of a raw skin, 
 as worn by a primitive hunter, or of the most 
 stylish sealskin dolmanette of the present season. 
 We do not imagine that anything could have 
 seemed what we call queer to the primitive and 
 sober ancestors of our race. Still, queer is only 
 the German quer., what runs across, and out of 
 
36 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 this a name for every kind of oddity or extrava- 
 gance has been formed. What we call righteous 
 was originally conceived as right and straight, 
 straightforward; and the root of right is AR(?, 
 which means to lead, to steer. From it comes 
 also rex., a ruler, a king, royal and all the rest. 
 Gay is the German gdhe^ literally going, or, as we 
 now say, going it. Vapid is like smoke; rapturous^ 
 from rapio^ means what carries us away. Noble., 
 Latin nobilis., from the root GNA, to know, meant 
 originally worth knowing, which gives us a high 
 idea of the Roman nobility, at least in its first 
 beginnings. In Kingsley's expression, "one of 
 nature's own noblemen," the original meaning is 
 still faintly perceptible. 
 
 What I wish you to see is, that there never was 
 any break in language, that all that is new in it is 
 old, and all that is old in it is new, and that if we 
 take any of the eight hundred primitive roots, or 
 any of the one hundred and twenty simple con- 
 cepts, we can derive from it any quantity of words 
 to satisfy every fancy of our mind. Take, for 
 instance, the root PA6", which in a primitive state 
 of society expressed the act of tethering or snaring. 
 
 In Sanskrit this root helps us to express cattle, 
 pa5u, which is the Latin peczis, Gothicyaihu, Ger- 
 man viek, cattle; also pecunia and pecus^ our 
 lawyer's fee. It supplies, besides, pa^-a, fetter, and 
 similar words. Now, when we have a word for 
 
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 37 
 
 animal, such as -pecus^ we have also the material 
 for expressing such concepts as -peculiar., the 
 transition of meaning being clear enough from 
 peculium, one's private property, to peculiarts, 
 anything that is one's own, — anything that is 
 proper, singular, individual, and, it may be, odd. 
 It is difficult to resist the siren songs of language, 
 and not to follow her into all her flights of 
 imagination. Every word, as soon as we hear 
 it, carries us off to near and distant memories. 
 They float about us like thin gossamer filaments 
 in autumn. But we must for the present resist 
 the temptation of catching at them, and confine 
 our attention to a few only of the principal con- 
 cepts, expressed by means of our root PAtS. 
 In Greek, then, this root does not only supply 
 the concept of fastening, but also that of standing 
 fast. YiiTrrr/a mcans "I stand fast," and this is a 
 great step beyond "I make fast." We have 
 here the constantly-recurring process of a root, 
 expressive of an act, becoming a root, expressive 
 of a state. Again, what is "made fast" means not 
 only what is compact and solid, but also what 
 is curdled and frozen. Rime, frost, hoar-frost, all 
 are expressed by this root ; besides this, the ice, 
 or the scum on the surface of milk, — any raised 
 surface, in fact, — comes to be called wdytK, to which 
 the dictionaries assign the meanings of a mound, 
 a hill, as, for instance, in Areopagus., the hill of 
 
38 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 Ares at Athens, and the great council held there. 
 What is thick is called from the same root, Tzax'n^, 
 from which pachy-dermatous, or thick-skinned. 
 Lastly, as we say, twofold, from folding, the 
 Greeks said oTraf, once, literally "one stick;" Ger- 
 man Ein-fach. 
 
 If we look to Latin we find an equally large 
 harvest. Here such concepts as settling, agree- 
 ing, making peace, are expressed by the root 
 PA^*, in paciscor, -pactus sum, in pdx, peace, 
 pacare, to pacify. This pacare helps us to express 
 the idea of payment, for to pay was originally 
 conceived as to pacify, just as a quittance was a 
 quieting. It is so difficult, as I said just now, to 
 resist the temptation of following language through 
 all her vagaries. But when one speaks of quietus 
 and giving the quietus, and all that, one cannot 
 help thinking of the different shades of meaning 
 which so simple and harmless a word as quietus 
 is able to reflect, ^ietus in English is not only 
 quiet, but also quite, entirely, as in quyte and dene, 
 i. e. quietly and cleanly, that is, altogether; while 
 the same word, after passing through French, 
 appears once more as coy and coyish, a word of a 
 very peculiar flavor, which can only be approxi- 
 mately rendered by quiet, modest, bashful or 
 retired. 
 
 But to return to pdx and peace. We find in 
 Latin a large number of words and derivatives, all 
 
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 39 
 
 springing from the same root. There is -pignus^ 
 a pledge, there is -pAgina^ a page, there is propdgv, 
 a layer, then offspring in general; there is also 
 pdgus, a settlement, a village, and from it paganus, 
 a pagan, a heathen. 
 
 In German this root is bifurcated, being either 
 fak ox fang. Thnsfahen in modern German is to 
 catch, but alsofangen, from which gefangen, cap- 
 tured, Gefangniss, prison. Fdhig means able to 
 clutch, but afterwards capable, clever; and Fdhig- 
 heit is the name for talent. Fair also has been 
 traced to Anglo Saxonyae^er, Gothicy^^r-^, lit- 
 erally fit, then beautiful, then kind. On the other 
 \vandi, finger seems originally to have meant taker, 
 just as fang in English is a tusk or a claw. All 
 these words are only like peaks standing out by 
 themselves, but if we had time we should find 
 every one of them surrounded by greater or 
 smaller heights all leading up to the same summit. 
 The one verb fangen enables us to express an 
 infinity of thoughts in German. A nfangen means 
 to begin, Umfangen means to embrace, ver- 
 fangen means to catch, from which vefdnglich, 
 literally perplexing, as eine verfdngliche Frage, 
 an awkward question. Empfangen means to 
 receive, empfdnglich may express receptive, but 
 also sympathetic, sentimental, and all that. Unter- 
 fangen is to undertake, but it now has the by-sense 
 of a bold undertaking. 
 
40 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 All this is only meant to give you an idea of the 
 enormous variety of thought that can be traced 
 back, and, as a matter of fact, took its rise from 
 one single root such as PA^S, to tether. Whether 
 we speak of -peculiar people or of -peace of mind, 
 oi -pagans or of the propagation of the Gospel, of 
 a page of writing or of the A reopagus, of Gefang- 
 nissj prison, or of ein empfdngliches Herz., a sus- 
 ceptible heart, we do it all by means of one and 
 the same primary concept, — PA^S, to tether. 
 
 Multiply that power eight hundred times, — -that. 
 is to say, take any one of the eight hundred roots 
 and draw from them as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin 
 and German have drawn from that one root 
 PA6', — and you will see that a language with 
 such a capital might be as rich as Croesus. 
 
 This may give you a faint idea of what lan- 
 guage is and what it is made of, and we are, I 
 think, justified in saying that it represents the sim- 
 plest miracle in the world. 
 
 Let us now turn our eyes on thought. Is thought 
 a very perplexing thing.? Is it very complicated, 
 wayward like the wind, tortuous like the convo- 
 lutions of the brain, inscrutable like the sidereal 
 nebulae? It seems so. If anything is mysterious, 
 it has often been said, it is our mind; if anything 
 is wonderful, it is our understanding; if anything 
 lifts us above, the whole of creation, it is our rea- 
 son. Even those who use sober and subdued Ian- 
 
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 41 
 
 guage about everything else, break out into rapt- 
 urous strains when they speak about the intellect 
 and all that has been achieved by that old wizard. 
 
 I shall try to show you that nothing is so easy 
 to be understood as our understanding, nothing so 
 perfectly reasonable as our reason, and that the 
 whole of our intellect, all the tricks of the wizard 
 in our brain, consist in nothing but — addition and 
 subtraction. 
 
 This is no new discovery, but it is a discovery 
 that is very apt to be forgotten ! One of the clev- 
 erest and most consecutive thinkers whom this 
 country or the world has produced — I quote the 
 words of Stuart Mill — declared, more than two 
 hundred years ago, that thinking consisted simply 
 in addition and subtraction. 
 
 This may sound very discouraging; but you 
 have only to try the experiment, and you will find 
 that Hobbes was perfectly right. And not only 
 Hobbes, but much more ancient philosophers too. 
 Whoever it was that invented the word cop-iio, 
 knew that to think was to combine, for cogito 
 stands for co-agito and means to co-agitate, to bring 
 together, to combine; and it is clear that we can- 
 not combine two or many things without at the 
 same time separating them from all the rest. 
 
 Whoever found out the word intellect.^ had learnt 
 the same lesson. Intellect stands for inter-lect^ and 
 inter-lego meant originally to interlace, to bind 
 
42 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 together, to combine; — and that is all that the 
 intellect is meant and is able to achieve. 
 
 Any book on logic will teach you the same les- 
 son, namely that all our propositions are either 
 affirmative or negative., that we can do no more 
 than to say A is B, or A is not B. Now in say- 
 ing A is B, we simply add A to the sum already 
 comprehended under B, while in saying A is not 
 B, we subtract A from the sum that can be com- 
 prehended under B. 
 
 But why should it be considered as lowering our 
 high status, if what we call thinking turns out to 
 be no more than adding and subtracting? Mathe- 
 matics in the end consist of nothing but addition 
 and subtraction, and think of the wonderful 
 achievements of a Newton or a Gauss, achieve- 
 ments before which ordinary mortals like myself 
 stand simply aghast. To my mind nothing is more 
 delightful than to see the greatest results achieved 
 by the smallest means, and if our race has com- 
 pleted the work which we most admire, the temple 
 of our intellect, by such natural processes as com- 
 bining and separating, surely we may be as proud 
 to belong to it as if we belonged to a race of giants. 
 
 There is nothing new in all this, it is one of 
 those open secrets which are not often mentioned, 
 but which everybody knows as soon as they are 
 mentioned, though it may be that some people do 
 not like to be reminded of them. 
 
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 43 
 
 But though the process of thinking, that is of 
 adding and subtracting, is so simple, much depends 
 of course on what we combine or separate. Now 
 what is it that we combine and separate? Most 
 people would answer, we combine and separate 
 what is given us by our senses, and they might 
 say again that nothing can be simpler than what 
 we see or hear, or smell or touch. Whole systems 
 of philosophy have been built upon what is called 
 sensuous experience, and this so-called experience 
 is supposed to be so obvious, so natural, so intelli- 
 gible, that nothing need be said about it. True 
 philosoph}^, on the contrary, knows of nothing 
 more difficult, more perplexing, more beyond the 
 reach of all our reasoning powers than what is 
 called experience. Kant's whole philosophy may 
 be said to be founded on the question: " How is 
 experience possible.?" Here, too, the stone which 
 other builders refused, is become the head-stone of 
 the corner. 
 
 It is curious to see how the senses and what they 
 give us are treated with undisguised contempt by 
 many so-called philosophers. Do we not share 
 our senses with the animals — ^they seem to say, and 
 is it not, therefore, the lowest kind of knowledge 
 which man possesses ? Why trouble about what 
 we can handle and see and hear.? Any one can 
 understand that, and there is much higher game 
 for real philosophers. To me it seems, on the 
 
44 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 contrary, that there is nothing more mysterious 
 than what the senses give us. We can understand 
 our understanding, we can reason out our reason, 
 but we can as little understand what we see and 
 hear, as we can see and hear what we understand. 
 Our sensuous knowledge, so far as its material is 
 concerned, will always remain the standing miracle 
 of our life on earth. So far from despising it as 
 obvious, palpable and plain, we should rather fall 
 down on our knees before it as the unknown, the 
 unknowable, the beyond. 
 
 But though this beyond — what Kant calls das 
 Ding an sich, must forever remain unknown, we 
 know at least what we have made of it — that is, 
 we know what it has become when we know it. 
 I need not dwell in this place on the well-worn 
 argument that we never can know a thing as it is 
 by itself. To know a thing by itself would mean 
 to know it, not as we know it, but as we do not 
 know it, and that is clearly self-contradictory. 
 Then what do we know.? We never know things 
 but we are conscious of our sensations only. We 
 first of all feel pain and pleasure, hot and cold, 
 sweet and bitter, but that is feeling, and not yet 
 knowing. In order to change feeling into knowl- 
 edge, we must first of all look upon our feelings 
 as caused by something. There is no reason why 
 we should do so, except what we choose to call 
 reason, or what Schopenhauer calls the category 
 
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 45 
 
 of causality. A tabula rasa^ a wax tablet, simply 
 receives an impression, it does not change it into 
 something that may have caused the impression. 
 The best proof that we are not a tabula rasa., as 
 Locke and all sensualistic philosophers imagine, is 
 that we, as soon as we receive an impression, are 
 driven to say, " Something has impressed us." 
 That something, however, is our postulate, it is 
 our doing; it is simply what tve create out of the 
 sensations of which alone we are conscious. 
 
 But not only do we create this objective world 
 of ours, the things, but we place them, not within 
 us, where the sensations are, but without us, that 
 is, in space. And secondly, we place them without 
 us, not in a lump, but one after another, in suc- 
 cession, or, as we call it, in time. Space and time 
 are necessities of that objective world which we 
 have created, and Kant calls them, therefore, 
 rightly the necessary forms of sensuous intuition. 
 
 This may sound very learned, but it is really as 
 simple as child's play. What can we be conscious 
 oi} Not anything outside us — for how should we 
 get outside ourselves.'' but something within us, 
 something that we feel, our sensations. And if 
 we transform what is within us, into something 
 without us, pf course it must be somewhere — and 
 that is what we call space, and it must be some- 
 Tvhen, if we may say so, that is, it must be in 
 time. What is nowhere and nowhen, is, as far as 
 
46 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 we are concerned, as if it were not. But when we 
 have got so far, when we have changed our sensa- 
 tions into things that are supposed to cause our 
 sensations, and when we have placed them one by 
 the side of another, and one after another, that is 
 in space and time, can we say then that we know 
 them? Let us try the experiment. 
 
 I say once more, how sensations arise, how 
 sethereal vibrations produce in us consciousness of 
 something, how neurosis becomes sesthesis, we 
 do not know and never shall know. But having 
 the sensations of light or darkness within us, what 
 do we know of any cause of darkness or any cause 
 of light.? Nothing. We simply suffer darkness, 
 or enjoy light, but what makes us suffer and what 
 makes us rejoice, we do not know — till we can 
 express it. 
 
 And how do we express it } We may try what 
 we like, we can express it in language only. We 
 may feel dark, but till we have a narrie for dark 
 and are able to distinguish darkness as what is not 
 light, or light as what is not darkness, we are not 
 in a state of knowledge, we are only in a state of 
 passive stupor. 
 
 We often imagine that we can possess and 
 retain, even without language, certain pictures or 
 phantasmata; that, for instance, when lightning 
 has passed before our eyes, the impression remains 
 for some time actually visible, then vanishes more 
 
IDENTIl V OF LANGUA GE AND THOUGHT. 47 
 
 and more, when we shut our eyes, but can be 
 called back by the memory, whenever we please. 
 Yes, we can call it back, but not till we can call^ 
 that is, till we can name it. In all our mental acts, 
 even in that of mere memory, we must be able to 
 give an account to ourselves of what we do, and 
 how can we do that except in language.? Even 
 in a dream we do not know what we see, except 
 we name it, that is, make it knowable to ourselves. 
 Everything else passes by and vanishes unheeded. 
 We either are simply suffering, and in that case 
 we require no language, or we act and react, and 
 in that case we can react on what is given us, by 
 language only. This is reallj- a matter of fact and 
 not of argument. Let any one try the experiment 
 and he will see that we can as little think without 
 words as we can breathe without lungs. 
 
 We may say, for instance, that we know the 
 blue sky, or we know that the sky is blue. 
 But how do we know it.'' Nothing can be blue 
 without us. Outside there may be millions of 
 vibrations of luminous ether, but what we call blue 
 ■ is ours, just as what we call sweet is ours. Sugar 
 is not sweet, TJoe are sweet; the sky is not blue, we 
 are blue. And who tells us anything about the 
 sky.'' How do we know that there is a sky and 
 that it is blue.? Should we know of a sky if we 
 had no name for it .? We have only to try to think 
 of sky without naming it, and we shall find that 
 
48 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 sky and all that it conveys to us is gone. And so 
 with everything else. If a language has no name 
 for father-in-law, the people who speak it do not 
 know what father-in-law is. They know a person 
 who is the father of their wife, supposing they have 
 names for wife and father, but they do not know 
 any father-in-law. Try to teach a savage what a 
 circle is; — you can only do it by giving him a 
 name. You may point to a wheel; — that will 
 give him the percept or presentation of a wheel. 
 You may give him a rope, fastened to a pole, and 
 making him go round will give him the per- 
 cept of running round. But the concept of a 
 circle, and more particularly of a perfect circle, 
 cannot be produced or fixed in the mind, except 
 through a name and its definition. It may be said 
 that a geometrician can define a circle without a 
 name, but how does he define it.? Again, by 
 means of names. If he calls a circle a figure, he 
 uses a name; if he calls it plane figure, compre- 
 hended by a single curve line, he is dealing in 
 names; and even if he called it a mere something, 
 he would still be within the spell of names. We 
 may try what we like, if we want to think, if we 
 want to add and to subtract, we can do it in one 
 way only, namel}', by names. 
 
 How is it, I have been asked, that people go 
 through the most complicated combinations while 
 playing chess and all this without uttering a single 
 
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 49 
 
 word ? Does not that show that thought is possible 
 without words, and, as it were, by mere intuition? 
 It may seem so, if we imagine that speech must 
 always be audible, but we have only to watch 
 ourselves while writing a letter, that is,, while 
 speaking to a friend, in order to see that a loud 
 voice is not essential to speech. Besides, by long 
 usage speech has become so abbreviated that, as 
 with mathematical formulas, one sign or letter 
 may comprehend long trains of reasoning. And 
 how can we imagine that we could play chess 
 without language, however silent, however abbre- 
 viated, however algebraic .f" What are king, queen, 
 bishops, knights, castles and pawns, if not names .^ 
 What are the squares on the chessboard to us, 
 unless they had been conceived and named as 
 being square and neither round nor oblong.? 
 
 I do not say, however, that king and queen and 
 bishops are mere names. 
 
 There is no such a thing as a mere name. A 
 name is nothing if it is not a nomen, that is, what 
 is known, or that by which we know. Nomen 
 was originally gnomen, from gnosco to know, and 
 was almost the same word as notio, a notion.* 
 A mere name is therefore self-contradictory. It 
 means a name which is not a name; but something 
 quite different, namely, a sound, a flatus vocis. We 
 
 *See note on the etymolog/ of nomen at the end of second 
 lecture. 
 
50 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 do not call an empty egg-shell a mere egg, nor a 
 corpse a mere man; then why should we call a 
 name without its true meaning, a mere name? 
 
 But if there is no such thing as a mere name, 
 neither is there such a thing as a mere thought or 
 a mere concept. The two are one and inseparable. 
 We may distinguish them as we distinguish the 
 obverse from the reverse of a coin; but to try to 
 separate them would *be like trying to separate the 
 convex from the concave surface of a lens. We 
 think in names and in names only. 
 
 It is very strange to see how some philosophers 
 are perfectly unable to see the identity of thought 
 and language, while others never doubt it; and 
 still more strange to observe how even those who 
 clearly see that thought is realized and can be 
 realized in language only, yet shrink from draw- 
 ing the inevitable conclusion, that all philosophy 
 has to deal in the first instance, and in the last 
 instance too, with words, with thought-words, or 
 word-thoughts. It may be both useful and inter- 
 esting, therefore, to examine some of the leading 
 philosophers as to the opinion which they held and 
 expressed on this subject. Their answers in many 
 cases will turn out to be very different from what 
 one is led to expect from the general tenor of their 
 philosophy. 
 
 There is a curious break between the so-called 
 scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages, and 
 
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 51 
 
 that stream of philosophic thought which, begin- 
 ning with Descartes, (i 596-1650), has rolled on 
 without interruption till it has reached the very 
 threshold of this Institution.* That break has had 
 its advantages, but there have been losses also, 
 particularly in the want of precise language and 
 terse argument on the part of our modern philoso- 
 phers. Hence while scholastic philosophers sel- 
 dom leave us in doubt as to their views of 
 language and its relation to thought, modern phi- 
 losophers seem to imagine that they can either 
 neglect altogether that fundamental question of 
 all philosophy, or express themselves in ambig- 
 uous terms about it. If we ask, for instance, what 
 Abelard (1079-1142), the disciple of Roscelinus, 
 taught on the relation between language and 
 intellect, he leaves us in no doubt, but states plainly 
 in his own quaint words that "Language is gen- 
 erated by the intellect and generates intellect,^' 
 thus showing that he had clearly apprehended the 
 interdependence and essential identity of the two. 
 Hobbes (i 588-1679), who among modern phi- 
 losophers is still most in sympathy with the tradi- 
 tions of Mediaeval scholasticism, declares without 
 any hesitation that man has reason because he has 
 language; and he adds, "It is evident that truth 
 and falsity have no place but among such Hving 
 creatures as use speech." 
 
 * These lectures were delivered at the Royal Institution, London. 
 
52 IDENTITY OF LANGUA GE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 Locke (1632-1704), though fully aware of the 
 importance of language in all philosophical discus- 
 sions, could not bring himself to say that thought 
 is either impossible or possible without language. 
 "Most men," he says, "^ not all, in their think- 
 ing and reasoning within themselves, make use of 
 words instead of ideas, at least when the subject 
 of their meditation contains in it complex ideas." 
 This half-hearted opinion we find again and again 
 in philosophers who shrink from the effort of reso- 
 lute thought. They are ready to admit that it is 
 almost impossible to think without words, but 
 where this almost begins or where it ends, they 
 never tell us. 
 
 Even Leibniz (1646-17 16), who may truly be 
 called the founder of the Science of Language, 
 seems rather an unwilling witness to the insepar- 
 ableness of language and thought. In his "Dia- 
 logue on the connexion between things and 
 words," he says, "It troubles me greatly to find 
 that I can never acknowledge, discover or prove 
 any truth except by using in my mind words or 
 other signs." To which his friend answers: " Nay, 
 if these characters were absent, we should never 
 think or reason distinctly." 
 
 While Locke and Leibniz were thus constrained, 
 almost against their will, to admit the impossi- 
 bility of thought without language, Berkeley, their 
 worthy contemporary and rival, "was convinced 
 
IDENTITY 01 LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 53 
 
 that words were the greatest impediment to 
 thought. He became so angry with language, 
 that in one passage he declared he would in his 
 future inquiries make as little use of language as 
 possible — an Irish bull which was omitted, how- 
 ever, in later editions of his work. 
 
 Hume (1711-1776) agrees with Berkeley that 
 we possess nO* general ideas, but particular ones 
 only, to which a certain term has been annexed 
 which gives thenj a more extensive signification. 
 But whether these terms had any existence before 
 they were thus annexed, and, what is still more 
 important, whether it is possible to think without 
 these terms, Hume, so far as I can see, never 
 declares in any decisive passage of his works. 
 
 It is curious that even Kant (i 724-1804) should 
 have said so little on this vital question of all phi- 
 losophy. He calls language the greatest, but not 
 the only instrument of thought; he admits that 
 without expressions accurately corresponding to 
 their concepts, we cannot become quite intelligible 
 either to ourselves or to others. He declares in 
 one passage that to think is to speak with one's 
 self. But from the very cursory nature of these 
 remarks, we may safely conclude that the prob- 
 lem which occupies us at present, did not excite 
 his special interest, but took its place as part 
 and parcel of the more general problems of his 
 philosophy. 
 
54 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 But while Kant thus disappoints us, his towns- 
 man, Hamann (i 730-1788), a man of wonderful 
 genius, though Httle known outside Germany, 
 utters no uncertain sound. " Language," he says, 
 " is not only the foundation for the whole faculty 
 of thinking, but the central point also from which 
 proceeds the misunderstanding of reason by her- 
 self." And again, "With me the qoiestion is not, 
 What is reason.? but, What is language.? What 
 we want is a Grammar of Reason." 
 
 The greatest minds of Germany were all at that 
 time approaching nearer and nearer to the truth, 
 I mean to a perception of the absolute identity of 
 language and reason. Herder (i 744-1803) declares 
 his conviction that "without language man could 
 never have come to his reason," and I do not hes- 
 itate to add, that, without language man could 
 never have come even to his senses. 
 
 William von Humboldt (i 767-1835), the greater 
 of a -par nobile fratrinn^i wrote: "If we separate 
 intellect and language, such a separation does not 
 exist in reality." 
 
 Schleiermacher (1768-1834), the translator of 
 Plato, and at that time the most powerful among 
 liberal-minded German theologians, chimes in with 
 a still clearer note: "Thinking and speaking," he 
 says, "are so entirely one that we can only dis- 
 tinguish them as internal and external, nay even 
 as internal every thought is already a word." 
 
IDENTITY OF LA NG UA GE A ND THO UGHT. 55 
 
 The two most prominent leaders of philosophical 
 thought in the beginning of our century, Schelling 
 and Hegel, divided as they were on many other 
 points, are quite at one on the identity of reason 
 andlanguage. Schelling (i 775-1854) says: "With- 
 out language it is impossible to conceive philo- 
 sophical, nay, even any human consciousness." 
 Hegel (1770-1831) proclaims his conviction still 
 more boldly and tersely: "We think in names," 
 he says, as if no one could ever have doubted it. 
 
 It may seem a rather violent transition from 
 Hegel to Alphonse Daudet, but in some cases the 
 man of the world, and, we must add, the minute 
 observer of the world, may catch glimpses of 
 truth which either escape the metaphysician alto- 
 gether, or are at all events not apprehended 
 by him in their realistic fullness. When Daudet 
 wrote his Roumestan, it is well known that Gam- 
 betta imagined it was aimed at him. He recog- 
 nized some traits of character in Roumestan 
 which he had discovered in himself, though he 
 imagined that nobody else suspected them. One 
 of them was that Roumestan was unable to think 
 unless he could speak. After a time Gambetta 
 and Daudet met at a dinner given by Hebrard. 
 They sat silent for" a time, till at last Gambetta 
 burst out " Where did you get the words which 
 you make Roumestan say, 'if I do not speak, 
 I cannot think.'" Daudet replied, "I invented 
 
56 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 them." "That is strange," Gambetta replied. 
 The same evening Gambetta and Daudet became 
 reconciled. They seemed to know each other 
 better, and, perhaps, to know themselves better — 
 than many philosophers do. 
 
 Of course we must make a distinction. Gam- 
 betta felt that he really could not think without 
 speaking, that is to say, without speaking in a 
 loud voice. That was his peculiarity, and it may 
 be a peculiarity common among the people of the 
 South. What Schelling and Hegel meant was not 
 that we cannot think without uttering words, but 
 that we cannot think, even silently, without words. 
 Savages call that kind of thinking, speaking in the 
 stomach, and it would be difficult to find a better 
 name for it. ^ 
 
 To return, then, to Schelling and Hegel and 
 their illustrious predecessor, I confess that to 
 myself also it has always seemed incredible that 
 language should ever have been conceived as 
 something that could exist by itself, apart from 
 our whole intelleotual nature, or that thought, on 
 ^the other hand, should have been considered as 
 possible without language. We have only to try 
 the simplest experiment and we shall find that 
 thought, divorced from language, is an utter impos- 
 sibility. We may see a dog, but if we ask our- 
 selves what it is, if we want to know what we see, 
 we can answer by the name "dog" only. Even 
 
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 57 
 
 if we had never seen a dog before, we should still 
 answer by a name only. We should say, it is a 
 quadruped, an animal, or a living thing, a some- 
 thing, but we could do all this by names only, by 
 what the ancients called Nomina^ i. e. gnomina, 
 means of knowledge. 
 
 We know, however, what philosophers can 
 achieve, nay, I believe it would not be difficult to 
 show that the sway of philosophical mythology is 
 more powerful even than that of religious myth- 
 ology. Because we have a name for thought and 
 another for language, therefore, it is argued, there 
 must be thought without language and language 
 without thought. We might argue in the same 
 way that, because we have a name for the outside 
 and another for the inside of a thing, therefore 
 there must be an outside without an inside, and an 
 inside without an outside. We were told at school 
 that the Greeks must have been very strange 
 people, because they had but one word for lan- 
 guage and thought, namely, Logos^ but that they 
 afterward perceived the folly of their ways and 
 distinguished between the Logos ivdid-^tro^, thought, 
 and the Logos Trpofop^rff, language; as if the ancient 
 Greek conception of language and thought as one, 
 did not show a far greater insight, a far more 
 powerful grasp than the later distinction, useful as 
 it is, between the outside and inside of thought. 
 
 However, I can with some effort enter into the 
 
58 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 mind of those who, hke Berkeley, look upon 
 thought as one thing and on the sounds which we 
 call words as quite another. It is a kind of phil- 
 osophical hallucination, but there is at all events 
 some method in it. What I cannot understand is, 
 how philosophers can halt between these two 
 opinions, how they can admit that most of our 
 thoughts are carried on in language, but not quite 
 all; that most people think in words, but not all; 
 that complex arguments may require words, but 
 not simple propositions. What should we say of 
 a mathematician who maintained that for simple 
 addition and subtraction he did not require num- 
 bers, but that they were indispensable for higher 
 mathematics. I need hardly say that when I 
 speak of words, I include other signs likewise, 
 such as figures, for instance, or hieroglyphics, or 
 Chinese and Accadian symbols. All I maintain 
 is, that thought cannot exist without signs, and 
 that our most important signs are words. 
 
 Among modern English logicians there is a 
 curious lack of courage on this point. The only 
 one who has what is now called the courag-e of 
 his opinions, is Archbishop Whately. He declares 
 without any reservation that logic is entirely con- 
 versant with language. All the rest shake their 
 heads from one horn of the dilemma to the other. 
 Sir William Hamilton deems Whately's opinion 
 too absurd to be imputed to an archbishop. John 
 
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 59 
 
 Stuart Mill, though in this case less bold than the 
 archbishop, stands up for him so far at least as to 
 try to convince Sir William Hamilton that the 
 formation of concepts and the subsequent process 
 of combining them as arguments, must be con- 
 sidered as a process of language. But Mill him- 
 self, in his great work on logic, cannot muster the 
 same courage as Whately. " Reasoning," he says, 
 " the principal subject of logic, takes place usually 
 by means of words, and in all complicated cases 
 can take place in no other way." But in what 
 other way it can ever take place, he never shows. 
 He calls language one of the principal elements or 
 helps of thought, but he never mentions any other 
 helps or instruments. He speaks of the reasoning 
 of brutes, but forgets that this is but a metaphor- 
 ical expression, and that we know nothing of the 
 inside of brutes, except by analogy. He mistakes 
 the abbreviated or silent reasoning of man for 
 reasoning without words, though he would easily 
 have seen that in substituting algebraic or logarith- 
 mic signs for the ordinary figures, the mathema- 
 tician is dealing indirectly with numbers and with 
 numbers only. 
 
 The same uncertainty pervades nearly all our 
 hand-books of logic. Archbishop Thomson fol- 
 lows indeed the good example of Archbishop 
 Whately, when he says that we get entangled in 
 absurdities by any theory which assumes that 
 
60 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 either thought or language existed in a separate 
 state, but he shrinks from drawing the conclusion, 
 that logic deals with language and with language 
 only. 
 
 Mr. Jevons cannot bring himself to say that we 
 never think without words, but, as a cautious rea- 
 soner, he adds, '■'•Hardly ever do we think, without 
 the proper words coming into the mind." 
 
 Professor Fowler seems inclined to follow Arch- 
 bishop Whately. '■'■Practically,'''' he says, "we 
 always think by means of language;" yet, he 
 adds, "a logician need not come to a decision on 
 this point." Can there be a more vital question 
 for a logician than this.? Would any writer on 
 Optics venture to say: "Practically we see with 
 our eyes, but the optician need not make up his 
 mind on this point." Professor Green, a very 
 honest and straightforward thinker, is affected by 
 the same hesitation. " It is hard," he writes," some 
 say it is impossible, to think without expressing 
 thought in language." 
 
 To me it seems inconceivable how any philos- 
 opher, that is to say, a student of thought, can 
 leave such a question undecided. I can under- 
 stand, as I said before, certain minds being so 
 completely under the spell of philosophical mythol- 
 ogy as to find it impossible to conceive that 
 thought, which has a name of its own, should not 
 have a separate existence, apart from language. 
 
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 61 
 
 The ancient nations, because they had called the 
 Unknown by many names, became polytheists, 
 and powerful thinkers only, such as ^schylus, 
 cojild perceive behind the many names, the one 
 God. But what I cannot understand is how people 
 could be half polytheists and half monotheists, or, 
 as applied to thought, how they could bring them- 
 selves to believe that thought, though generally 
 embodied in language, could from time to time 
 walk about as a disembodied ghost. I have my- 
 self not the slightest doubt that the time will come 
 when this belief in disembodied thought will be 
 looked upon as one of the strangest hallucinations 
 of the nineteenth century. People do no longer 
 believe in witches, nor in ghosts. But the belief 
 in disembodied thought will die very hard, nay 
 history teaches us that though it was scotched by 
 some of our most powerful thinkers, it always 
 raises its head again and again. If anything can 
 give it its coup de g'rdce, it is the Science of Lan- 
 guage, though, strange to say, some of the most 
 popular representatives of that science are against 
 us. Here, as elsewhere, we must have the cour- 
 age of our opinions. We must make no conces- 
 sions. We must say "Never," not "Hardly ever," 
 and this "Never," I feel convinced, will mark a 
 new departure in the history of philosophy, nay it 
 will supply a new foundation for every system of 
 philosophy which the world has ever known. 
 
NOTE ON THE ETYMOLOGY OF NOMEN. 
 
 Several comparisons of words in Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, 
 which at first seemed so evident as to require hardly any proof, have 
 at a later time become the most perplexing and troublesome. Who 
 would have doubted, fifty years ago, the identity of deus, iJeiif, and 
 Sanskrit diva, of HSlios and Sanskrit Svarya, of nSmen, 5vo/xa and 
 Sanskrit ndmanP But these are the very comparisons which lately 
 have called forth the largest amount of angry controversy, and to 
 believe in them has almost become a reproach among critical scholars. 
 What my own opinion on the origin and growth of the names for 
 god and sun is, I have stated elsewhere. But, as in my last work on 
 the Science of Thought, I have returned to the old and despised ety- 
 mology of nomen, as originally gyiomen, I gladly state why I consider 
 the arguments advanced against it as non-conclusive. 
 
 We must distinguish two classes of objectors — those who deny 
 that any words for name in the Aryan languages have anything to 
 do with the root GNA, " to know," and those who are more careful 
 and deny this only with regard to Sanskrit, Greek, German, Slavonic 
 and Celtic, but not with regard to Latin, and would therefore admit 
 two independent words for " name," as they admit two independent 
 words for "god," deus and i9-c(5f. 
 
 The first who pointed out the phonetic difficulties which seem to 
 bar the identification of Sanskrit ndman, Latin ndmen, Greek bvofta, 
 Old Slavonic ime, Irish ainm (i. e. enmin), Gothic riamo, was Jacob 
 Grimm. In his German Grammar, ii. 30, in his Geschichte der 
 Deutschen Sfrache, p. 153, and again in his German Dictionary (1854'), 
 he dwells on this subject, and writes : 
 
 " It is the custom to trace with great plausibility ndmen back to 
 the root dschnA, noscere, so that ndmen would be gndmen, 'token, 
 mark,' because we know others by their names. Agnomen and cog- 
 nomen, agnosco, cognosce and gnarus speak in favor of it, and instead 
 of ^ we should have prosthetic o in 6vo/j.a, Albanian emeni, Irish ainm. 
 Yet it is a heavy demand to derive even Sanskrit ndman from dschnd, 
 6vo/ia from yviivat, Slavonic imia from znati, our own namo, namo from 
 
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 63 
 
 chnikan, particularly as the two last named words have the root 
 niman and imjati, capere, accipere, prehendere, habere, by their side, 
 and namo may be conceived as what has been received, attributed, or 
 accepted, while niman, Greek ve/xeiv, signifies capere, fossidere, Jiabitare. 
 Either niman would have to be derived from dsclmiman; or better 
 even, in ndman, a transition from the root dschnA to the root nam., 
 meaning, in Sanskrit, inclinare, Jleciere, would have to be admitted. 
 For such a change of form and meaning there are sufficient analogies." 
 
 These protests of Grimm, however, remained unheeded — at all 
 events, so far as Sanskrit, Greek and Latin were concerned. Curtius 
 and Fick retained Bopp's comparison ; and I myself pointed out that, 
 at all events, we could not admit two mothers for one child, and that 
 we must decide in favor either of the root NAM or of the root GN A. 
 
 In 1873 Windisch, in an article on Fick's Worterbuck, published 
 in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, could not repress certain qualms of conscience. 
 " I doubt," lie writes, "whether all the words for name can be traced 
 back to the root gna, and have lost their initial g in prehistoric times. 
 In Old Slavonic ime, we should have to admit loss of gn, and Irish 
 ainm (for eninin) protests by its initial vowel against this etymology, 
 unless we choose to ignore in this case all individual phonetic laws. 
 On the other hand, Latin tidmen cannot very well be separated from 
 co-gndmen. If we are guided by phonetic laws, we must separate at 
 least Latin ndmen from Old Slavonic ime and Irish ainm. The Indo- 
 Germanic loss of an initial g is likewise a very bold admission, par- 
 ticularly if, in spite of it, the initial g is to be made responsible for 
 Greek ovvofia. I therefore suspect the true root of these words to have 
 been am. This occurs without any strengthening in Old Slavonic ira-e. 
 O'-vo-jUa shows full nasal insertion. The radical form a-n-m would be 
 preserved in Irish ainm, nom. pi. anm-ann, and the radical form nam 
 in Gothic namo, Sanskrit ndman. It would not be impossible that in 
 Latin a g should have been intentionally added to ndmen, as g was 
 dropt in nosco, but retained in co-gnosco, a-gnosco. The Latin n6men 
 has no nearer relation to a postulated fundamental meaning of token." 
 
 In 1877 J. Schmidt, in his article on "Metathesis of Nasals" in 
 Kuhn's Zeitschrift (xxiii. p. 266), stated the same arguments more 
 fully, and arrived at the four fundamental forms : anman, anam^n, 
 naman, ndman, without, however, being able to refer them to any 
 root. The first explains, according to him, Irish ainm, Armenian 
 an-wan (for anman), Old Slavonic ittK (from jenmen). Old Prussian 
 nom. emnes, emmens, ace. emnan (base emmna-), from *enmn-a-, i. e. 
 fundamental form anman, increased be suffix -a, like Old Norse namn, 
 nafn. The second form is meant to explain 6vo/ia; the third, Gothic 
 
64 IDENTirV OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 namo, from anaman- ; the fourth, Sanskrit n&man, Zend ndman, Latin 
 nornen. 
 
 It is curious, however, that after all that can be said on the sub- 
 ject had been said, Grimm's own Dictionary, when it comes to 
 " Name," should give up the derivation from nemen, " to take," 
 because, as the editors (1882) say, the German "Name" cannot be 
 separated from Latin nSmen, which, again, cannot be separated from 
 gnosco and root GNA. Grimm himself is not responsible for this, 
 nor do the editors of his Dictionary give us any reason to suppose that 
 he changed his opinion — an opinion approved of by Wackernagel 
 also. But Curtius, in the last edition of his Grundziige (1879), is 
 evidently somewhat shaken by the phonetic difficulties pointed out 
 by Grimm, Pott, Windisch and Schmidt; and he leaves it undecided 
 whether we should admit two words for name — one from the root 
 NAM, the other from the root GNA, or whether, after all, we may 
 suppose that there were two original dialectic forms of the same 
 word — one gndjnein^ another naman. 
 
 As to myself, I fully admit that the loss of an initial g, or g before 
 II, is totally uncalled for in Sanskrit. If Sanskrit ever possessed the 
 form g-nAman^ it would have retained it as it retained ^«d, _^?zatas, etc. 
 But the same applies to Greek, which has no objection to an initial 
 yv, and yet possesses by the side of yiyvuaau other formations, such 
 as vdoc and voeu, which presuppose a' root nil or nu {Science of Thought, 
 p. 621). From such a root ««, Sanskrit might have formed nd-man, 
 Gothic nam£, Greek ovo-/2a. We find in Greek a-yvoia, " ignorance," 
 by the side of SLa-voia. Whether Irish ainm (nom. plur. anmanii) and 
 Old Slavonic i-me could be accounted for in this way, I leave to 
 others to determine. But with regard to Latin, I hold that nomen 
 was originally gndmen, and that the initial g was dropt, as in notus, 
 gnotus, notio, while it is always preserved, if medial, as in i-gnotus, 
 co-gnomeriy co-gnitus, a-gnomen, i-gnominia, ignohilis, etc. We find the 
 same disappearance of initial g in natus, gnatus, natura, natio, etc. 
 We must distinguish, therefore, between the Aryan dialectic variety, 
 which would account for a root nA and nu by the side of GNA, and 
 the peculiar Latin tendency which leads to the dropping ofag before 
 «, as in notus, natus, nodus, nixus, and even before vowels, unless we 
 are prepared to separate anser from hamsa and x'T"' I" the Teutonic 
 languages this tendency is very strong at a later time, as we see in 
 to kno-w, knight, and likewise in nut, neck, etc. 
 
 Unless, therefore, another root can be pointed out from which to 
 derive such fundamental forms as Schmidt imagines — anman, anaman. 
 
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. « 
 
 naman — I hold that Latin ndmen stands for g-n6men, and that it meant 
 "name" for the same reason for which Sanskrit s&m-gek means 
 "name." I hold that Sanskrit ndman may come from a secondary 
 root NA or NU, from which we have Greek vovq. We ought not to 
 appeal to Pali fia»am, " knowledge " for this belongs to a difBerent 
 sphere altogether. If we can thus explain ndman, we could also 
 account for Gothic nmno, and Greek bvofia. As to Old Slavonic zme 
 and Irish ainm, I am quite prepared to wait and see what the most 
 competent students of Slavonic and Celtic phonetics will have to say 
 on the subject. If these words can be traced back to another root, 
 well and good (Siammbaum theories fortunately stand no longer in 
 the way); but, if not, this will in no way affect our opinion as to the 
 probable origin of Latin ndmen, and possibly Sanskrit niman, Greek 
 bvofia, and Gothic namo. That phonetic difficulties remain, no one 
 would deny. But true scholarship consists in recognizing difficulties, 
 not in trying to suppress them by magisterial assertions, and by 
 dwelling exclusively either on the immutability of phonetic laws or 
 on the absolute necessity of a certain development of meaning. We 
 must weight the one against the other; and in Latin, at all events, 
 nSmen seems to me, after careful weighing, to incline in the scale 
 towards gnimen and root GNA, "to know." 
 
 F. Max Muller. 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 If the conclusions at which we arrived in our 
 last lecture are correct — if thought and language 
 are identical, or at all events, inseparable — it would 
 seem to follow that all our knowledge is "merely 
 verbal" or "merely nominal." To most people 
 this will seem a sufficient condemnation of any 
 argument that could lead to so preposterous a con- 
 clusion. If we want to express our most supreme 
 contempt for any proposition, we say it consists of 
 mere words. What in our days we are most 
 proud of is that in all our pursuits we deal with 
 facts and not with words. Words, we are told, 
 are the daughters of the earth, things the sons of 
 heaven. A philosophy, therefore, which would 
 attempt to change all our knowledge into mere 
 words, could hardly expect a patient hearing; 
 certainly not in the country of Bacon. 
 
 It is difficult to deal with such an objection, 
 because it really conveys no meaning whatever. 
 There must be sense in every word we use in 
 argument, and, as I pointed out before, there is 
 no sense whatever in such an expression as mere 
 words. There are no such things as mere words, 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 67 
 
 unless we look for them in those vast cemeteries 
 which we call lexicons or dictionaries. There we 
 find, indeed, mere words, dead words, unmeaning 
 words. The German language, as if to warn us 
 against taking such corpses for living words, calls 
 them tuorter., and distinguishes them from worte. 
 It calls a dictionary a -wbrterbuch., not a tvori-buch. 
 
 Outside a dictionary, however, and outside a 
 madhouse, there are no such things as mere words; 
 nor is there, on the other side, any such thing as 
 mere thought. 
 
 Things, it has been well said, are thinks, and 
 thinks are words. Can we know anything except 
 by means of a word.? Is it possible to become 
 conscious of any thought except by means of a 
 name.'' We may distinguish, no doubt, between 
 names, and concepts, and percepts. But percepts 
 (a term which I use for image or presentation, the 
 German Vorstellung) , percepts by themselves are 
 nothing, concepts by themselves are nothing, while 
 it is only the three together — percept, concept and 
 name — that constitute what we mean by real 
 knowledge. 
 
 Let us try an experiment. It is possible to 
 imagine that people, say some primitive savages, 
 had never seen or heard of gold. How would they 
 become acquainted with it } In digging they might 
 receive the impression of something glittering, but 
 even that impression would be of no consequence 
 
68 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 to them, unless they were startled by it, unless 
 their attention was directed to it; and thus the 
 mere sensation of glittering became changed by 
 them into something that glitters. That change 
 of the subjective sensation into an object of sense 
 is our work — it is the first manifestation of the 
 law of causality within us. 
 
 But that glittering object is even then nothing 
 to an intelligent observer, unless he can lay hold of 
 it by some concept; that is unless he can name 
 it, unless he can call it glittering. We, at our 
 time of life, find no difficulty in calling a thing 
 glittering, or bright, or shining. We have 
 names and concepts ready-made for everything. 
 But all these names and concepts had first to 
 be made. A number of single percepts of glit- 
 tering, glimmering, flickering, sparkling, flash- 
 ing, flaming, gleaming things had first to be com- 
 prehended under one general aspect, while at 
 the same time a root had to be found to express 
 it. How these roots were formed I explained in 
 my first lecture. They all owe their origin to the 
 clamor concoinitans of social acts. Thus glittering 
 goes back to a root GHAR, which meant at first 
 to melt, to fuse by heat. From it ghrzta, liqui- 
 fied butter, or ghee. What was melted and 
 liquified by heat was generally not only warm but 
 also shining, so that the same root, in its objective 
 application, came to mean to melt — that is to say, 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 69 
 
 to be in a state of melting, to glitter, to shine. 
 From that root, used in that meaning, we have in 
 English such variously differentiated forms as to 
 glint, to glitter, to glisten, to gleam, to glimmer. 
 
 With such a root, then, which was at the same 
 time a concept, it was possible to conceive and 
 name that glittering thing which had been dug up 
 with many other things, and which excited our 
 attention chiefly by this distinguishing feature of 
 being bright. But by being called glitter this dug 
 up thing ^was not yet gold. Far from it. Its old 
 name in Sanskrit, hira?^ya, said no more than 
 that it glittered, and not everything that glitters 
 is gold. Still, even that first name marks an 
 enormous advance beyond the mere fright excited 
 in an animal by the sight of a flaring object, or 
 beyond the mere human stare, or even the phan- 
 tasma in our memor}'. It is knowledge — not 
 much, as yet, but it is knowledge; it is the work 
 of intellect, not the mere passive stupor of the 
 senses. 
 
 The same object might be called and conceived 
 by many new names, and with every new name 
 new^ knowledge would be added. What ever new 
 qualit ies a^rniner discovered as- distinguishing this 
 glitter from other kinds of glitter, would be added 
 by means of new names, or new adjectives. By 
 this process what we call the intension of the first 
 name would grow fuller and fuller. But we must 
 
70 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 remember, every one of these new qualities could 
 be known again by the same process only by which 
 the first quality of glittering was known, namely, 
 by being named. Suppose our primitive savages 
 wanted small stones for building purposes. If 
 among the stones they were breaking they met 
 with some that would not break, they would throw 
 them away, and thus gold might be called rubbish 
 or refuse. If, on the contrary, they looked out 
 for material that would bend and not break on 
 being struck, they would pick out the old glitter 
 which they had thrown away as rubbish, and now 
 call it pliant, flexible, ductile, malleable. All these 
 properties were attended to, known and named at 
 the same moment. Gold was now not only bright, 
 but malleable, and ductile, and by a constant 
 repetition of the process of naming and conceiving, 
 and conceiving and naming, people arrived at last 
 at what we call true knowledge of gold, including 
 its specific gravity, and its power of resisting 
 nitro-muriatic acid, and all the rest. That true 
 knowledge may be more full, more accurate, more 
 concerned with essential qualities than our first 
 knowledge of mere glitter. But there is no differ- 
 ence in kind. Our perfect knowledge is as much 
 nominal or verbal as our imperfect knowledge 
 jWas, nor can it ever be anything else. 
 
 It may be said by those who think it right to 
 despise what they call verbal knowledge, that such 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 71 
 
 knowledge would not help us to distinguish a gold 
 sovereign from a brass penny. But they forget 
 that without a name we should not know either a 
 gold sovereign or a brass penny, much less be able 
 to distinguish them. We may do what we like, 
 we cannot jump out of our skin, and the skin of' 
 all our thoughts is language. We begin, no doubt, 
 with sensuous irritation and intuition, but intui- 
 tion by itself is not knowledge, it is blind; con- 
 ception by itself is not knowledge, it is empty; a 
 name by itself is not knowledge, it is mere sound. 
 Only the three together represent what we mean 
 by knowledge, and the final embodiment of that 
 knowledge is the word. 
 
 If that is so with the names of things which we 
 can touch and handle, it is far more so with the 
 names of objects which we cannot reach with our 
 senses at all. Let us take, for instance, the word 
 species. No one has ever seen or handled a spe- 
 cies. Even if we should see what used to be meant 
 by species, we should not know it for a species, 
 unless we had first called it so. The first ques- 
 tion, therefore, is. How did we ever come into the 
 possession of such a name as species.'' This is a 
 mere matter of historical research. We know 
 from history that species was a Latin rendering of 
 the Greek ei6os, and this ddos has been adopted in 
 Greek philosophy as a convenient term for distin- 
 guishing a lower from a higher class. Thus bull- 
 
72 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 dogs, greyhounds, spaniels, terriers would be called 
 species, that is lower classes or sub-classes, while 
 dog would be considered as a higher class or 
 genus, till we ascend still further and comprehend 
 all dogs, pigs, cows, and horses as a higher genus 
 animal, of which dogs are then a species only. 
 
 This, however, was clearly a technical employ- 
 ment of the terms species and genus., and these 
 names must have existed before, when they had a 
 meaning very different from that assigned to them 
 by the founders of logic. A genus meant orig- 
 inally a breed, and was used for any living 
 beings, whether animals or plants, which could be 
 traced back to common ancestors. Eidos or spe- 
 cies, on the contrary, meant originally no more 
 than what is seen, the aspect or appearance or 
 shape of things. These two words were found 
 convenient even during a very primitive phase of 
 thought. Stones that were black or gray or yel- 
 low, were considered as different sets or sorts or 
 species. They appeared like each other, but no 
 more. Dogs, on the contrary, that were black or 
 gray or yellow, though if their color alone were 
 considered, they might be treated as sets or sorts 
 or species., were conceived as a genus or breed, if 
 it could be shown that they belonged to one and 
 the same litter. Thus the two kinds of classifica- 
 tion, which seem to us the result of the latest 
 scientific thought, the genealogical and the mor- 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 73 
 
 phological., were foreshadowed in the earhest 
 words of our language. In Sanskrit also we have 
 ^ati , kith, used in the logical sense of genus, while 
 species is expressed by akrzti, which means 
 form. 
 
 Even for logical purposes these two words genus 
 and species were by no means very appropriate. 
 What was a genus from one point of view, became 
 a species from another, what was a species for one 
 purpose, became a genus for another. Genus and 
 sub-genus, class and sub-class would therefore have 
 answered the purpose far better. 
 
 The very fact, however, that what we from one 
 point of view call a species, may from another 
 point of view be called by us a genus, shows at 
 all events that logical genus and species are of 
 our own making, that we name and conceive them, 
 and that there is no such thing as genus or species, 
 in the logical acceptation of these words, inde- 
 pendent of ourselves. 
 
 The confusion, however, became greater still 
 when these two terms were transferred from logic 
 to physical science. What a genus was in nature 
 was easy to understand. Individuals descended 
 from common ancestors formed a genus or a 
 breed. In some cases the descent from common 
 ancestors might be doubtful, but the definition of 
 genus would not be affected by such scientific 
 doubts. 
 
74 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 But what was a specie^? If people had asked 
 that question before they introduced that word 
 into the technical language of physiology, we 
 should have been saved much trouble and vexa- 
 tion of spirit. If difTerent species had, or may have 
 had, common ancestors, they would form together 
 one genus ; if not, they would form different gen- 
 era, A third is not given, and there is no room 
 therefore for species in nature. 
 
 We must never forget that what we really have 
 to deal with, what is given us to digest in language 
 and thought, are individuals and nothing else. 
 These individuals either have common ancestors 
 or they have not, at least so far as our knowledge 
 goes. If they have common ancestors, they form 
 one breed; if they have not, they form different 
 breeds. And again I say, where is there room 
 for species ? 
 
 There may be individuals such as man and 
 monkey, of which it may still be doubtful whether 
 they had common ancestors or not. But in that 
 case we have simply to suspend our judgment, 
 and we know that in the end the result can only 
 be, either that they belong to the same breed and 
 in the distant past had common ancestors, or that 
 they had not. There is no room for a third pos- 
 sibility, for which we want the name species. 
 
 We may speak, no doubt, of more or less per- 
 manent varieties, and if we like, we may call them 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 75 
 
 Species. But varieties are always varieties of one 
 and the same original breed, while species are sup- 
 posed to be something very different. 
 
 If there ever was an Augean stable, it was the 
 stable of species, and to have cleared that stable 
 with their powerful brooms will always be the 
 glory of Darwin and his fellow laborers. 
 
 But why did not Darwin go a step further, and 
 with one stroke kill that hydra which unless en- 
 tirely scotched and annihilated, is sure to put forth 
 fresh heads again and again ? 
 
 Species is a mere chimera, a myth, that is to 
 say a word made for one purpose and afterward 
 used for another. No one has ever seen a species, 
 and even if such a thing as a species existed, we 
 should not know of it till -we had conceived and 
 named it as such. If we want to discover the real 
 origin of species, we could only do so by tracing 
 the history of that name and concept from stage 
 to stage back to its first beginnings. That would 
 be a most interesting undertaking, and it would 
 teach us at least this one lesson, that no one has, 
 any right to say that species means this and does 
 not mean that. Species means neither more nor 
 less than what different philosophers define it to 
 mean. We often hear disputants laying down the 
 law with great emphasis that such a word means 
 this and nothing else. Who has given them a 
 right to say this? Every word has no doubt a 
 
76 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 traditional meaning, but traditional meanings, like 
 everything that is traditional, are constantly chang- 
 ing. There is no more in a word than what we 
 put into it, nor can we take more out than we have 
 put into it. Darwin himself often complains of this ! 
 "No one," he writes, "has drawn any clear dis- 
 tinction between individual differences and slight 
 varieties, or between more plainly marked varie- 
 ties and sub-species and species." But why should 
 he not himself have tried to do this.'' The end- 
 less disputes whether or not there are some fifty 
 species of British brambles will no doubt cease 
 after Darwin's researches; but so long as the name 
 of species remains in natural history by the side 
 of genus, individual, and variety, we shall never 
 get out of the real brambles of our language, that 
 is, our thought. 
 
 Darwin is evidently under the sway of the old 
 definition that all species were produced by special 
 acts of creation. I have not been able to trace 
 that definition to its responsible author, but surely 
 there is no authority whatever for it. The term 
 species was formed quite independently of any 
 such theological ideas. 
 
 The Greeks, when they used eidos., or species, 
 never thought of Zeus as their originator. Nor 
 do I think that in Germany or France or Italy 
 species ever had that theological odor. Some 
 people seem to imagine that Darwin's great merit 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 7T 
 
 consisted in having proved that species were not 
 the result of special acts of creation. I doubt, 
 however, whether Darwin himself would have 
 cared either to prove or to disprove this. What 
 he has proved is, " that the only distinction 
 between species and well-marked varieties is, that 
 the latter are known or believed to be connected 
 at the present day by intermediate gradations, 
 whereas species -were formerly thus connected." 
 Where, then, is the ground of difference between 
 variety and species, even from Darwin's own point 
 of view, except in our momentary ignorance.'' 
 What used to be called species, will have to be 
 called either genus, or sub-genus, permanent 
 variety. But there will in future be no room for 
 species in the vocabulary of natural history. 
 
 Does not this show how entirely we think in 
 names, and how even the strongest minds are 
 under their spell? If Darwin had asked himself 
 what the true meaning of species was, if he had 
 studied the history of the word, which is after all 
 its best definition, he would have seen that the 
 word has no right to exist in natural history, and 
 his work on the Origin of Species would really 
 have marked the end of all species, at least within 
 the realm of nature. A belief in species in natural 
 history is nothing but scientific mythology, and 
 what Darwin calls the search after the undiscov- 
 ered and undiscoverable essence of the term 
 
78 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 species, is to my mind no more than the search 
 after the hidden essence of Titans and Centaurs. 
 As soon as we relegate the term species to that 
 sphere of thought to which it properly belongs, 
 the air becomes perfectly clear. We have in 
 nature individuals and genera or breeds ; for what 
 we call varieties are no more than the necessary 
 consequence of the accumulated effects of indi- 
 vidualization. The slight and almost impercepti- 
 ble differences which keep individuals apart from 
 each other, which, in fact, enable them to be indi- 
 viduals, may by inheritance become stored and 
 strengthened till they constitute what we call a 
 variety in nature. But these centrifugal forces 
 are always controlled by the centripetal force of 
 nature, and in the end the genus always prevails 
 over all individualizing tendencies. 
 
 All difficulties which visit us in the various 
 spheres of thought, whether scientific, historical, 
 philosophical, or religious, vanish as soon as we 
 carefully examine the words in which we think. 
 Let us see clearly what we have put into every 
 word, its so-called intension, and let us never try 
 to take more out of it than we or others have put 
 into it. My wonder is, not that we so often mis- 
 understand ourselves and others, but rather that 
 we ever understand ourselves and others correctly. 
 From our earliest childhood we accept our words 
 on trust. We fill them at random, and when we 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 79 
 
 come to compare and to exchange them, we are 
 surprised if they do not always produce on others 
 the same effect which they produce on ourselves. 
 
 And if that is so in treating of the common 
 affairs of life, how much more mischief must lan- 
 guage produce, when we deal with philosophical' 
 problems ? To my mind true philosophy is a con- 
 stant katharsis of our words, and the more thor- 
 oughly this process of purification is carried out, 
 the more rapidly the clouds will vanish which now' 
 obscure Logic, Physiology, Metaphysics and 
 Ethics. How could there be contradictions in the 
 world, if we ourselves had not produced them.'' 
 The world itself is clear and simple and right; we 
 ourselves only derange and huddle and muddle it. 
 Hamann said many years ago: "Language is not 
 only the foundation of the whole faculty of think- 
 ing, but the central point also from which proceeds 
 the misunderstanding of reason herself." There 
 is, therefore, no help or hope for philosophy 
 except what may come from the science of thought, 
 founded as it is on the science of language. 
 
 I can only give a few illustrations, but every one 
 will be able to carry out the g^ame experiment for 
 himself. 
 
 How often do we hear it said: "I am not a 
 materialist; still, there is a great deal to be said 
 for materialism." What is the meaning of that.' 
 It simply means that we are playing with words, 
 
80 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 or rather that words are playing with us. If we 
 want to know what materiaUsm is we must first 
 of all study the meaning of the word matter. 
 The history of a word, if only we could get at 
 it in all its completeness, is always its best 
 definition. It has been the fashion to laugh at 
 etymologies, but in laughing at etymologies we 
 are onl}? laughing at ourselves. Every word is an 
 historical fact, as much as a pyramid. Now a 
 pyramid may seem a very foolish and ridiculous 
 building, but for all that it represents a real primi- 
 tive thought executed in stone, just as every word 
 represents a real primitive thought executed in 
 sound. The builders of the pyramids and the 
 architects of our language are so far removed 
 from us that in trying to interpret what they 
 meant by their pyramids or by their words 
 we are apt to go wrong. But the very fact 
 that we are able to tell when our interpretation 
 has been wrong shows that we are competent 
 also to judge when our interpretation is right. 
 The etymological meaning of every word shows 
 us the first intention with which that word 
 was framed, and allows us an insight into the 
 thoughts of those palaeozoic people whose language 
 we are still speaking at the present moment. 
 Moment., for instance, is not a very ancient word, 
 but how does it come to mean present time? 
 Momentum stands for movimentum,., and, being- 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 81 
 
 derived from movere, it meant motion, and, applied 
 to time, the motion of time. " At the present 
 moment " was therefore intended originally for 
 "at this motion of time," or, it may be, "at this 
 motion of the shadow on the dial." But moment 
 had also another meaning. It meant anything that 
 makes move, therefore weight, importance, value. 
 Now if we tried to derive the second meaning 
 from the first, we should go wrong; but we should 
 at once be set right by any one who knew that 
 7nom,entum, in Latin was used also for the weight 
 which made the scales of a balance move, which 
 was therefore a matter of importance, something 
 decisive, something momentous. 
 
 If, then, in the same manner we ask for the 
 original meaning of matter., we find that it comes 
 to us through French from Latin matertes. 
 Materies in Latin meant the solid wood of a tree, 
 then timber for building; and it had that meaning 
 because it was derived from the root MA, to meas- 
 ure, to make. Wood became and was called 
 materies only when it had been measured and 
 properly shaped for building purposes. From 
 meaning the wood with which a house was built 
 it came to mean anything substantial out of which 
 something else had been shaped and fashioned. If 
 people made a wooden idol, they distinguished 
 between the material, the wood, and the form. 
 When statues were made of metal or marble, 
 
82 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 these also were called the matter or material ; and 
 at last, whenever the question came to be asked 
 w-hat anything — what, in fact, the whole world — ■ 
 was made of, the same word was used again and 
 'again, till it came to mean what it means with us 
 now, matter, as distinguished from form. This 
 matter, then, which ma}' be wood, or metal, or 
 stone, or at last anything of which something else 
 is supposed to consist, is clearly beyond the reach 
 of the senses. The senses can never give us any 
 information about matter in general, because, as 
 we saw, matter may be either wood, or stone, or 
 metal, or anything else, and such a protean thing 
 escapes entirely the grasp of the senses. We 
 know matter as a name only, but as a name which 
 conveys exactly what we have put into it, neither 
 more nor less. 
 
 If that name had been used by philosophers by 
 profession only they might no doubt have differed 
 about the right meaning of the word, but they 
 would have felt bound to give us an exact defini- 
 tion of it. But, unfortunately, philosophy cannot 
 reserve a language for its own purposes. What- 
 ever terms philosophers coin soon enter into the 
 general currency; they are clipped and defaced 
 and recast in the most perplexing way. People 
 now speak of decaying matter, and matters of 
 importance. " What is the matter.? " people say, 
 and they answer, " It does not matter." 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 83 
 
 Such is the injury which words suffer by wear 
 and tear that true philosophers feel it all the more 
 incumbent on themselves to call in, from time to 
 time, the most important words, to weigh and 
 assay them once more, and then to fix once for all 
 the exact meaning which they mean to attach to 
 them. Locke* defined matter as an extended 
 solid substance. I doubt whether we gain much 
 by that definition, for substance comprises no more 
 than matter, while extended and solid means 
 hardl}' more than that matter exists in space and 
 time. At all events if matter escapes the grasp 
 of our senses, so does substance. To speak of 
 matter and substance as something existing by 
 itself and presented to the senses, is again mere 
 mythology. 
 
 Mill evidently felt that substance was nothing 
 substantial but a mere abstraction, that is, a word ; 
 and he therefore defined matter as the " perma- 
 nent possibility of sensation." But that is a mere 
 playing with words. We cannot say matter is 
 possibility, for in doing so we stray from one 
 category into another. We can only say matter 
 is what renders sensation possible, or, more cor- 
 rectly still, matter is what can be perceived, pro- 
 vided that it possesses perceptible qualities. The 
 important feature in Mill's definition of matter is 
 the contrast which he establishes between matter 
 
 ^OnJhe Understanding, IV. 3; p. 420. (Ed. London, 1830.) 
 
84 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 and mind, the former being, according to him, the 
 permanent possibility of sensation, i. e., of being 
 perceived; the latter the permanent possibility of 
 feeling, i. e., of perceiving. 
 
 If, then, we once define matter as what by its 
 qualities can permanently be felt, in opposition to 
 mind or what can permanently feel, it is clear that 
 in all our reasonings about matter we ought to 
 abide by this definition. What, then, shall we 
 say of a declaration such as we find in Mill's 
 Logic, that it is a mere fallacy to say that matter 
 cannot think. He cannot mean a fallacy of the 
 senses, for, as I explained before, matter, as such 
 — that is, matter without its qualities — can never 
 fall under the cognizance of the senses. Matter 
 is a word and concept of our own making, and it 
 contains neither more nor less than we have put 
 into it. But whatever we may put into this 
 thought-word, we must not put into it what is 
 contradictory. 
 
 Now I ask, is it not self-contradictory first to 
 define matter as what can be perceived, in oppo- 
 sition to mind, or what perceives, and then to turn 
 round and say that after all matter also may not 
 only perceive, but think.? Mill would not venture 
 to say that thought was possible without percep- 
 tion, and therefore his argument that it is a fallacy 
 to say that matter cannot think seems to me a 
 contradiction in terms. I do not say that we 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 85 
 
 could not conceive thought to be annexed to any 
 arrangements of material particles. On the con- 
 trary, I should say that our experience never 
 shows us thought except as annexed to some 
 arrangement of material particles. But when we 
 have once separated matter from thought, when 
 we have called matter what is perceived, in oppo- 
 sition to thought or what perceives, we must not 
 eat our own words or swallow our own thoughts 
 by saying that, for all we know, matter may think 
 or mind may be touched and handled. 
 
 From this point of view I call materialism no 
 more than a gramm.atical blunder. It is the sub- 
 stitution of a nominative for an accusative, or of 
 an active for a passive verb. At first we mean 
 by matter what is perceived, not, indeed, by 
 itself, but by its qualities; but in the end it 
 is made to mean the very opposite, namely, 
 what perceives, and is thus supposed to lay hold 
 of and strangle itself. What causes the irrita- 
 tions of our senses is confounded with what receives 
 these irritations ; what is perceived with what per- 
 ceives, what is conceived with what conceives, 
 what is named with the namer. It is admitted 
 on all sides that there never could be such a 
 thing as an object or as matter except when 
 it has been perceived by a subject or a mind. 
 And yet we are asked by materialists to believe 
 that the perceiving subject, or the mind, is really 
 
86 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 the result of a long continued development of 
 the object or of matter. This is a logical somer- 
 sault which it seems almost impossible to per- 
 form, and yet it has been performed again and 
 again in the history of philosophy. 
 
 And do not suppose that I have any prejudice 
 against materialism. To my mind spiritualism 
 commits exactly the same grammatical blunder 
 as materialism. We cannot compare matter and 
 spirit, and say, like the old Gnostics, that one is 
 of the devil and the other of God. Matter is the 
 temple of the spirit. It is immense, it is incom- 
 prehensible, it is marvelous. Matter is all that is 
 given us to know, and the whole wisdom of the 
 human race constitutes but a very small portion 
 of what matter is meant to teach us. Why then 
 should we despise matter instead of falling on our 
 knees before it, or at all events listening with the 
 reverential awe to the lessons which the Highest 
 Wisdom has designed to teach us from behind its 
 vail } 
 
 There is nothing morally wrong in materialism 
 as a philosophical system. Its weakness arises 
 from the fundamental grammatical blunder on 
 which it is based, the change of it into T 
 
 And the same blunder underlies spiritualism. 
 Spirit was one of the many names by which human 
 ignorance tried to lay hold of the perceiver as 
 distinguished from the perceived. It is a poor 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 87 
 
 name, if you like; it meant originally no more 
 than a pufF or whiff, a breeze, a breath. It is 
 an old metaphor, and all metaphors are danger- 
 ous things. Still, as long as we know what we 
 mean by it, it can do no harm. Now, whatever 
 definition may be given of spirit by different phi- 
 losophers, they all agree in this : that spirit is sub- 
 jective, perceiving, knowing; and if, therefore, 
 spiritualism tried to account for what is objective, 
 perceived or known as spirit, it commits exactly 
 the same grammatical blunder as materialism, it 
 changes I into it. 
 
 Matter and spirit arc correlative, but they are 
 not interchangeable terms. In the true sense, 
 spirit is a name for the universal subject, matter 
 for the universal object. And as there can be no 
 subject without an object, nor an object without a 
 subject, neither can there be, within a narrower 
 sphere, spirit without matter, nor matter without 
 spirit. Matter is determined by us quite as much 
 as we are determined by matter. As we have 
 made and defined the two words and concepts, 
 matter and spirit, they are now inseparable; and 
 the two systems of philosophy, materialism and 
 spiritualism, have no sense by themselves but will 
 have to be merged in the higher system of ideal- 
 ism. The science of language teaches us what 
 such words as matter and spirit meant in the be- 
 ginning, and what they came to mean in course of 
 
86 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 time in different schools of philosophy. The sci- 
 ence of thought has to teach us what such words 
 shall or shall not mean in future; nay, it has some- 
 times to relegate them altogether from the dic- 
 tionary of philosophy. 
 
 These few illustrations must suffice to show 
 you what work the science of thought has to do. 
 It has to carry out a complete reformation of all 
 philosophy, and it has to do this by examining 
 the foundations on which philosophy stands, by 
 analyzing every brick with which its walls have 
 been built, by testing all the arches on which its 
 cupola is made to rest. If we think in words we 
 must never take words on trust, but must be 
 ready to give an account of every term with which 
 our thinking and speaking is carried on. 
 
 I showed how in natural history the one term 
 species., which was introduced at random we hardly 
 know by whom, has caused endless confusion of 
 thought. As there was the terra species, it was 
 taken for granted that there must be something 
 corresponding to it in nature. Now I have noth- 
 ing to say against species in the Aristotelian sense 
 of the word. It is a useful word for many pur- 
 poses, as when we have to speak of swords, or 
 knives, or books, or any other sort of things as 
 so many species. But in nature there is no need 
 and no room for species, and to try to find the 
 origin of species in nature is like trying to find the 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 89 
 
 origin of ghosts and goblins. The science of 
 thought is meant to break the spell of words, but 
 that spell is far more powerful than we imagine. 
 
 One of the richest sources of philosophical my- 
 thology springs from the transition of nouns of 
 quality into nouns of substance. We are quite 
 correct, for instance, in saying I feel hungry, or, I 
 am hungry and thirsty, and we may safely speak 
 of our hunger or thirst if we restrict these words 
 to the expression of qualities or states. But when 
 language leads us on to say, I have hunger, I have 
 thirst, hunger and thirst are apt to become entities. 
 We then go on to say that we are driven by hunger 
 or thirst, or that we have lost our hunger and thirst, 
 that is, our appetite. And then the question 
 arises, What is hunger and thirst, or what are our 
 appetites, our desires, our passions.^ We imagine 
 that we possess something which we may call 
 our passions. We ask for their seat, for their 
 origin, for their nature, and then the psychologist 
 steps in and dissects these passions, and describes 
 them as if they were things or entities by them- 
 selves, like corpses on a dissecting table. 
 
 In this case, however, a little reflection suffices 
 to show us that to speak of passions and appetites 
 by themselves is only a convenient way of speak- 
 ing, and no one would think that he was being 
 robbed if passions are shown to be no more than 
 states of feeling. 
 
,90 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 It is different, however, when the science of 
 thought proceeds to show by exactly the same 
 analysis that there is no such thing as intellect, 
 understanding and reason. " I reason " meant, as 
 we saw, " I add and subtract." If, then, we pro- 
 ceed to say that we possess reason, that means no 
 more than that we possess addition and subtrac- 
 tion. No one, however, would say that, because 
 we can combine, or add and subtract, therefore 
 there is some entity, or faculty, or power, or force 
 within us called combination, which enlightens us, 
 which lifts us above_ the animal creation, which 
 rules our thoughts — nay, which governs the whole 
 world. I do not deny that we reason; on the con- 
 trary, I hold that we do nothing else. But as lit- 
 tle as we possess a thing called hunger because 
 we are hungry, or a thing called patience because 
 we are patient, do we possess a thing called rea- 
 son because we are rational. Why, then, should 
 philosophers trouble their heads about the true seat 
 of reason, whether it is in the brain or in the heart 
 or in the stomach.? Why should they write it 
 with a capital R, and make a goddess of Reason 
 and worship her, as she was actually worshiped 
 in the streets of Paris } What would the French 
 mob have said if they had been told that in wor- 
 shiping this goddess of Reason they were worship- 
 ing addition and subtraction? Yet so it was; and 
 possibly addition and subtraction were something 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 91 
 
 far more perfect and wonderful than the goddess 
 of Reason before whom they knelt and burnt 
 incense. 
 
 This is, of course, an extreme case of philosoph- 
 ical mythology and idolatry, but the number of 
 these psychological gods and goddesses, heroes, 
 fairies and hobgoblins is very large. Our mind is 
 swarming with them, and every one of them counts 
 a number of worshipers who are deeply offended 
 if we doubt their existence. The protests are 
 already beginning, as I fully anticipated, against 
 my philosophical heresy in having denied the 
 existence of reason, intellect and understanding. 
 As the Ephesians cried out with one voice about 
 the space of two hours, " Great is Diana of the 
 Ephesians!" I know I shall have to hear for the 
 space of more than two hours, the shout of my 
 critics, " Great is the Reason, great is the Intellect, 
 great is the Understanding of the Reviewers! " 
 Yet I am not a blasphemer of the great goddess 
 of Reason; all I have tried to show is that to rea- 
 son — that is, to add and to subtract — is simply an 
 act which we perform, and that the goddess, if 
 goddess there must be, is not an image which fell 
 down from Jupiter, but the voice within us which 
 makes us keep a true account of all we think and 
 speak and dol 
 
 It is difficult — nay, it is impossible — to give in a 
 course of three lectures an adequate idea of what 
 
92 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 I mean by the science of thought, still more to 
 answer all the more or less obvious objections that 
 may be raised against the fundamental principle 
 of that science, namely, the identity of thought 
 and language. I must ask you to look upon these 
 three lectures as a kind of a preface only ; and if you 
 think the subject worthy of a fuller consideration, 
 this large volume on the Science of Thought which 
 I have just published will give you all the neces- 
 sary material, and will supply the answers to 
 many of the questions which have been addressed 
 to me by some of those who have done me the 
 honor of attending these lectures. One of the ques- 
 tions which I have been asked most frequently 
 is: If thought is identical with language, what 
 about deaf and dumb people ? Are they unable to 
 think because they are unable to speak } 
 
 My answer is, first of all, that deaf and dumb 
 people are exceptions, and we must not allow our 
 general arguments to be influenced by a few 
 anomalies. Secondly, I have the authority of the 
 best judges, such as Professor Huxley, for stating 
 that a man born dumb, notwithstanding his great 
 cerebral mass and his inheritance of strong in- 
 tellectual instincts, would be capable of few higher 
 intellectual manifestations than an orang or a 
 chimpanzee if he were confined to the society of 
 dumb associates. Thirdly, we must remember 
 that words are not the only embodiment of 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 93 
 
 thought. Holding up three fingers is as good a 
 sign for the addition of one, one, one, as the sound 
 of three. Shaking the fist in the face is as ex- 
 pressive as saying "Don't." Hieroglyphic writ- 
 ing shows us how our thoughts may be embodied 
 in signs without any reference to the sound of 
 spoken words, and Chinese is read and under- 
 stood perfectly by people who, when they pro- 
 nounce and speak it, are quite unintelligible to 
 each other. 
 
 It is by means of signs appealing to the sense of 
 sight, and not at first to the sense of hearing, that 
 deaf and dumb people are educated and thus 
 become what they were meant to be, rational 
 beings. 
 
 Again, as to animals, I have been asked whether 
 they, because they are dumb, must be declared to 
 be incapable of thought. Here the science of 
 thought steps in at once and s^ys: "Before you 
 ask whether animals think, define what you mean 
 by thinking." Descartes, in his famous aphorism 
 which is supposed to form the foundation of all 
 modern philosophy, Cogiio, ergo sum^ explains 
 cogiio, I think, as comprising every kind of mental 
 action. If, therefore, we mean by thinking, per- 
 ceiving, enjoying, remembering, fearing, loving, 
 and all the rest, we have no grounds for denying 
 animals, particularly the higher animals, the 
 possession of these qualities. Their enjoyments, 
 
94 THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 their fears and hopes, their loves and disappoint- 
 ments may be different from ours, still, with the 
 usual discount, animals may claim for the troubles 
 of their souls the same words which we use for 
 our own. Every philosopher, however, knows 
 that what we seem to know of the inner workings 
 of the mind of animals we cannot know directly, 
 but by analogy only. We judge by signs. If, 
 then, we mean by thought that mental function 
 which has its outward sign and embodiment in 
 language, we must say that animals do not think 
 as we think, namely, in words. They may think 
 in their own way. Their way of thinking may 
 be, for all we know, more perfect than our own. 
 I am inclined to believe all the good that can 
 possibly be said of animals, but I cannot allow 
 that they think, if we define thinking by speaking. 
 Definition, here as elsewhere, is the only salva- 
 tion of philosophy." If we wish to fight and con- 
 quer we must look to our swords; if we wish to 
 argue and to conquer we must look to our words. 
 " Looking to our words " is the fundamental 
 lesson of the science of thought. Do not let us 
 despise words. They are the most wonderful 
 things in the world. Their histor}^ or, as we now 
 call it, their evolution, is more surprising than 
 evolution in any other sphere of nature. The be- 
 ginnings are so few and so small, their final out- 
 come so magnificent and overwhelming. To 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT. 95 
 
 some minds, I know, nothing seems grand or 
 worthy of admiration except what is intricate, 
 complex and almost unintelligible; to others there 
 is nothing more fascinating than what is simple, 
 regular and almost transparent. The science of 
 thought appeals to the latter class. And as Kant, 
 when in his Critique of Reason he had disen- 
 tangled the skein of mediaeval philosophy, ex- 
 claimed in the words of Persius: " Tecum Jiabita 
 et nor is quam sit tibi curta supellex! ''"' we 
 may sum up the result of the science of thought 
 in the same words: "Dwell with thyself and 
 you will know how small thy household is ! " 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 THOUGHT WITHOUT WORDS. 
 
 The following correspondence between Mr. F. Galton, 
 Mr. George Romanes, the Duke of Argyll, etc., and Pro- 
 fessor Max Mijller on "Thought Without Words," is 
 reprinted from Nature after careful revision : 
 
 I. LETTER FROM MR. F. GALTON, F.R.S. 
 
 May 12, 1887. 
 
 The recent work of Prof. Max Miiller contains theories on the 
 descent of man which are entirely based on the assertion that not 
 even the most rudimentary processes of true thought can be carried 
 on without words. From this he argues that as man is the only 
 truly speaking animal the constitution of his mind is separated from 
 that of brutes by a wide gulf, which no process of evolution that 
 advanced by small steps could possibly stride over. Now, if a single 
 instance can be substantiated of a man thinking without words, all 
 this anthropological theory, which includes the more ambitious part 
 of his work, will necessarily collapse. 
 
 I maintain that such instances exist, and the first that I shall 
 mention, and which I will describe, at length, is my own. Let me 
 say that I am accustomed to introspection, and have practised it seri- 
 ously, and that what I state now is not random talk but the result of 
 frequent observation. It happens that I take pleasure in mechanical 
 contrivances ; the simpler of these are thought out by me absolutely 
 without the use of any mental words. Suppose something does not 
 fit; I examine it, go to my tools, pick out the right ones, and set to 
 work and repair the defect, of;en without a single word crossing my 
 mind. I can easily go through such a process in imagination, and 
 inhibit any mental word from presenting itself. It is well known at 
 billiards that some persons play much more "with their heads" 
 than others. I am but an indifferent player; still, when I do play, I 
 think out the best stroke as well as I can, but not in words. I hold 
 
2 APPENDIX. 
 
 the cue with nascent and anticipatory gesture, and follow the proba- 
 ble course of the ball from cushion to cushion with my eye before I 
 make the stroke, but I say nothing whatever to myself. At chess, 
 which I also play indifferently, I usually calculate my moves, but 
 not more than one or two stages ahead, by eye alone. 
 
 Formerly, I practised fencing, in which, as in billiards, the " head " 
 counts for much. Though I do not fence now, I can mentally place 
 myself in a fencing position, and then I am intent and mentally mute. 
 I do not see how I could have used mental words, because they take 
 me as long to form as it does to speak or to hear them, and much 
 longer than it takes to read them by eye (which I never do in 
 imagination). There is no time in fencing for such a process. 
 Again, I have many recollections of scrambles in wild places, one of 
 which is still vivid, of crossing a broad torrent from stone to stone, 
 over some of which the angry-looking water was washing. I was 
 intellectually wearied when I got to the other side, from the constant 
 care and intentness with which it had been necessary to exercise the 
 judgment. During the crossing, I am sure, for similar reasons to 
 those already given, that I was mentally mute. It may be objected 
 that no true thought is exercised in the act of picking one's way, 
 as a goat could do that, and much better than a man. I grant this 
 as regards the goat, but deny the inference, because picking the way 
 under difficult conditions does, I am convinced, greatly strain the 
 attention and judgment. In simple algebra, I never used mental 
 words. Latterly, for example, I had some common arithmetic series 
 to sum, and worked them out not by the use of the formula, but by 
 the process through which the formula is calculated, and that with- 
 out the necessity of any mental word. Let us suppose the question 
 was, how many strokes were struck by a clock in twelve hours (not 
 counting the half-hours), then I should have written i, 2 . . .; and 
 below it, 12, II, . . .; then 2 .... 13 X 12, then 13 X 6 = 78. 
 Addition, as De Morgan somewhere insisted, is far more swiftly done 
 by the eye alone ; the tendency to use mental words should be with- 
 stood. In simple geometry I always work with actual or mental 
 lines; in fact, I fail to arrive at the full conviction that a problem is 
 fairly taken in by me, unless I have contrived somehow to disem- 
 barrass it of words. 
 
 Prof. Max Miiller says that no one can think of a dog without 
 mentally using the word dog, or its equivalent in some other lan- 
 guage, and he offers this as a crucial test of the truth of his theory. 
 It utterly fails with me. On thinking of a dog, the name at once- 
 
APPENDIX. 3 
 
 disappears, and I find myself mentally in that same expectant attitude 
 in which I should be if I were told that a dog was in an obscure part 
 of the room or just coming round the corner. I have no clear 
 visual image of a dog, but the sense of an ill-defined spot that might 
 shape Itself into any specified form of dog, and that might jump, 
 fawn, snarl, bark, or do anything else that a dog might do, but 
 nothing else. I address myself in preparation for any act of the sort, 
 just as when standing before an antagonist in fencing I am ready to 
 meet any thrust or feint, but exclude from my anticipation every 
 movement that falls without the province of fair fencing. 
 
 He gives another test of a more advanced mental process, 
 namely, that of thinking of the phrase " cogiio, ergo sum" without 
 words. I addressed myself to the task at a time when I was not in 
 a mood for introspection, and was bungling over it when I insensi- 
 bly lapsed into thinking, not for the first time, whether the state- 
 ment was true. After a little, I surprised myself hard at thought 
 in my usual way — that is, without a word passing through my 
 mind. I was alternately placing myself mentally in the attitude 
 of thinking, and then in that of being, and of watching how much 
 was common to the two processes. 
 
 It is a serious drawback to me in writing, and still more in 
 explaining myself, that I do not so easily think in words as otherwise. 
 It often happens that after being hard at work, and having arrived 
 at results that are perfectly clear and satisfactory to*myself, when I 
 try to express them in language I feel that I must begin by putting 
 myself upon quite another intellectual plane. I have to translate 
 my thoughts into a language that does not run very evenly with 
 them. I therefore waste a vast deal of time in seeking for appro- 
 priate words and phrases, and am conscious, when required to speak 
 on a sudden, of being often very obscure through mere verbal 
 maladroitness, and not through want of clearness of perception. 
 This is one of the small annoyances of my life. I may add that 
 often while engaged in thinking out something I catch an accom- 
 paniment of nonsense words, just as the notes of a song might 
 accompany thought. Also, that after I have made a mental step, the 
 appropriate word frequently follows as an echo ; as a rule, it does not 
 accompany it. 
 
 Lastly, I frequently employ nonsense words as temporary sym- 
 bols, as the logical x and y of ordinary thought, which is a practice 
 that, as may well be conceived, does not conduce to clearness of 
 exposition. So much for my own experiences, which I hold to be 
 
4 APPENDIX. 
 
 fatal to that claim of an invariable dependence between thoughts and 
 words which Prof. Max Miiller postulates as the ground of his 
 anthopological theories. 
 
 As regards the habits of others, at the time when I was inquir- 
 ing into the statistics of mental imagery, I obtained some answers 
 to the following effect: " I depend so much upon mental pictures that 
 I think if I were to lose the power of seeing them I should not be 
 able to think at all." There is an admirable little book published 
 last year or the year before by Binet, Sur le Raiscmnement., which is 
 clear and solid, and deserves careful reading two or three times over. 
 It contains pathological cases in which the very contingency of 
 losing the power of seeing mental pictures just alluded to has taken 
 place. The book shows the important part played by visual and 
 motile as well as audile, imaginations in the act of reasoning. 
 This and much recent literature on the subject seems wholly un- 
 known by Prof. Max Miiller, who has fallen into the common error 
 of writers not long since, but which I hoped had now become obso- 
 lete, of believing that the minds ot every one else are like one's 
 own. His aptitudes and linguistic pursuits are likely to render him 
 peculiarly dependent on words, and the other literary philosophers 
 whom he quotes in partial confirmation of his extreme views are 
 likely for the same cause, but in a less degree, to have been simi- 
 larly dependent. Before a just knowledge can be attained concern- 
 ing any faculty»of the human race we must inquire into its distri- 
 bution among all sorts and conditions of men, and on a large scale, 
 and not among those persons alone who belong to a highly specialized 
 literary class. 
 
 I have inquired myself so far as opportunities admitted, and 
 arrived at a result that contradicts the fundamental proposition in 
 the book before us, having ascertained, to my own satisfaction at 
 least, that in a relatively small number of persons true thought is 
 habitually carried on without the use of mental or spoken words. 
 
 Francis Galton. 
 
 ii. letter from the duke of argyll. 
 
 Argyll Lodge, Kensington, May 12, 1887. 
 
 I do not see that Prof. Max MUUer's theory of the inseparability 
 
 of thought from language, whether true or erroneous, has any 
 
 important bearing on the origin of man, whether by evolution or 
 
 otherwise. It is a question at all events to be studied by itself, and 
 
APPENDIX. 5 
 
 to be tested by such experiments as we can make by introspection, 
 or by such facts as can be ascertained by outward observation. 
 
 My own opinion is strongly in favor of the conclusion urged by 
 Mr. F. Galton. It seems to me quite certain that we can and do 
 constantly think of things without thinking of any sound, or word, 
 as designating them. Language seems to me to be necessary to the 
 frogress of thought, but not at all necessary to the mere act of thinking. 
 It is a product of thought; an expression of it; a vehicle for the 
 communication of it; a channel for the conveyance of it; and an 
 embodiment which is essential to its growth and continuity. But it 
 seems to me to be altogether erroneous to represent it as any insepa- 
 rable part of cogitation. Monkeys and dogs are without true 
 thought not because they are speechless; but they are speechless 
 because they have no abstract ideas, and no true reasoning powers. 
 In parrots the power of mere articulation exists sometimes in won- 
 derful perfection. But parrots are no cleverer than many other 
 birds which have no such power. 
 
 Man's vocal organs are correlated with his brain. Both are 
 equally mysterious because they are co-operative, and yet separable, 
 parts of one " plan." Argyll. 
 
 III. LETTER FROM MR. HYDE CLARKE. 
 
 32 St. George's Square, S. W., May 12, 1887. 
 
 Having much of the same experience as Mr. Galton, I neverthe- 
 less prefer dealing with a larger group of facts. I have often referred 
 to the mutes of the seraglio at Constantinople, who cannot be 
 charged with thinking in words. They have their own sign 
 conversation among themselves, and which has no necessary refer- 
 ence to words. Even the names of individuals are suppressed among 
 themselves, though they sometimes use lip reading to an outsider to 
 make him understand a name. Any one having a knowledge of 
 sign language is aware that it is independent of words. The tenses 
 of verbs, etc., are supplied by gestures. 
 
 The mutes are not deficient in intelligence. They take a great 
 interest in politics, and have the earliest news. It is true this is 
 obtained by hearing, though they are supposed to be deaf-mutes, but 
 among themselves everything is transmitted by signs. 
 
 Hyde Clarke. 
 
6 APPENDIX. 
 
 IV. LETTER FROM MR. T. MELLARD READE. 
 
 I think that all who are engaged in nnechanical work and plan- 
 ning ■will fully indorse what Mr. Francis Galton says as to thought 
 being unaccompanied by words in the mental processes gone 
 through. Having been all my life since school-days engaged in 
 the practice of architecture and civil engineering, I can assure Prof. 
 Max Miiller that designing and invention are done entirely by 
 mental pictures. It is, I find, the same with original geological 
 thought — words are only an incumbrance. For the conveyance and 
 accumulation of knowledge some sort of symbols is required, but 
 it appears to me that spoken language or written words are not 
 absolutely necessary, as other means of representing ideas could be 
 contrived. In fact, words are in many cases so cumbersome that 
 other methods have been devised for imparting knowledge. In 
 mechanics the graphic method, for instance. 
 
 T. Mellard Reade. 
 
 V. LETTER FROM S. F. M. Q. 
 
 On reading Mr. Gallon's letter, I cannot help asking how Prof. 
 Max Miiller would account for early processes of thought in a deaf- 
 mute: does he deny them.' S. F. M. Q. 
 
 VI. LETTER FROM PROF. MAX MtjLLER. 
 
 All Souls' College, Oxford, May 15, 1887. 
 
 Dear Mr. Galton — I have to thank you for sending me the 
 letter which you published in Nature^ and in whiclj you discuss the 
 fundamental principle of my recent book on the Science of Thought, 
 the identity of language and reason. Yours is the kind of criticism 
 I like — honest, straightforward, to the point. I shall try to answer 
 your criticism in the same spirit. 
 
 You say, and you say rightly, that if a single instance could be 
 produced of a man reasoning without words, my whole system of 
 philosophy would collapse; and you go on to say that you yourself 
 are such an instance — that you can reason without words. 
 
 So can I, and I have said so in several passages of my book. 
 But what I call reasoning without words is no more than reasoning 
 without pronouncing words. With you it seems to mean reasoning 
 without possessing words. What I call, with Leibniz, symbolic, 
 
APPENDIX. 7 
 
 abbreviated, or hushed language, what savages call "speaking in 
 the stomach," presupposes the former existence of words. What 
 you call thinking without words seems to be intended for the 
 thinking of beings, whether men or animals, that possess as yet no 
 words for what they are thinking. 
 
 Now let us try to understand one another — that is to say, let us 
 define the words we are using. We both use thinking in the sense 
 of reasoning. But thinking has been used by Descartes and other 
 philosophers in a much wider sense also, so as to include sensation, 
 passions and intuitive judgments, which clearly require no words for 
 their realization. It is necessary, therefore, to define what we mean 
 by thinking before we try to find out whether we can think without 
 words. In my book on the Science of Thought I define thinking as 
 addition and subtraction. That definition may be right or wrong, 
 but every writer has the right — nay, the duty, I should say — to 
 explain in what sense he intends to use certain technical terms. 
 Though nowadays this is considered rather pedantic, I performed 
 that duty on the very first page of my book, and it seems somewhat 
 strange that a reviewer in the Academy should accuse me of not 
 having defined what I mean by thinking, for most reviewers look at 
 least at the first page of a work which is given them to review. 
 
 Now, the cases which you mention of wordless thought are not 
 thought at all in my sense of the word. I grant that animals do a 
 great deal of work by intuition, and that we do the same — nay, that 
 we often do that kind of work far more quickly and far more 
 perfectly than by reasoning. You say, for instance, that you take 
 pleasure in mechanical contrivances, and if something does not fit 
 you examine it, go to your tools, pick out the right one, set to work 
 and repair the defect often without a single word crossing your mind. 
 No doubt you can do that. So can the beaver and the bee. But 
 neither the beaver nor the bee would say what you say, namely, 
 that in doing this '■'■you inhibit any mental -word from presenting itself." 
 What does that mean if not that the mental words are there, the 
 most complicated thought- words, such as tool, defect, fit, axe there? 
 only you do not pronounce them, as little as you pronounce " two 
 shillings and sixpence " when you pay a cabman half-a-crown. 
 
 The same applies to what you say about billiards and fencing. 
 Neither cannoning nor fencing is thinking. The serpent coiling 
 itself and springing forward and shooting out its fangs does neither 
 think nor speak. It sees, it feels, it acts ; and, as I stated on p. 8 of 
 my book, that kind of instantaneous and thoughtless action is often 
 
8 APPENDIX. 
 
 far more successful than the slow results of reasoning. Well do I 
 remember when I was passing through my drill as a volunteer, and 
 sometimes had to think what was right and what was left, being 
 told by our sergeant, "Them gentlemen as thinks will never do any 
 good." I am not sure that what we call genius may not often be a 
 manifestation of our purely animal nature — a sudden tiger's spring 
 rather than une longue f alienee. 
 
 It is different, however, with chess. A chess-player may be very 
 silent, but he deals all the time with thought- words or word-thoughts. 
 How could it be otherwise.' What would be the use of all his 
 foresight, of all his intuitive combination, if he did not manipulate 
 with king, queen, knights and castles.' and what are all these but 
 names, most artificial names, too, real agglomerates of ever so many 
 carefully embedded facts or observations.' 
 
 An animal may build like the beaver, shoot like the serpent, 
 fence like the cat, climb like the goat; but no a:nimal can play chess, 
 and why.' Because it has no words, and therefore no thoughts for 
 what we call king, queen and knights, names and concepts which 
 we combine and separate according to their contents — that is, accord- 
 ing to what we ourselves or our ancestors have put into them. 
 
 You say, again, that in algebra, the most complicated phase of 
 thought, we do not use words. Nay, you go on to say that in algebra 
 " the tendency to use mental ■words should be ■withstood." No doubt it 
 should. The player on the pianoforte should likewise withstand the 
 tendency of saying, now comes C, now comes D, now comes E, 
 before touching the keys. But how could there be a tendency to use 
 words, or, as you say in another place, " to disembarrass ourselves of 
 ■words" if the words were not there.' In algebra we are dealing not 
 only with words but with words of words, and it is the highest 
 excellence of language if it can thus abbreviate itself more and 
 more. If we had to pronounce every word we are thinking our 
 progress would be extremely slow. As it is, we can go through a 
 whole train of thought without uttering a single word, because we 
 have signs not only for single thoughts but for whole chains of 
 thought. And yet, if we watch ourselves, it is very curious that we 
 can often feel the vocal chords and the muscles of the mouth 
 moving as if we were speaking ; nay, we know that during efforts of 
 intense thought a word will sometimes break out against our will ; 
 it may be, as you say, a nonsense word, yet a word which for some 
 reason or other could not be inhibited from presenting itself. 
 
 You say you have sometimes great difficulty in finding appro- 
 
APPENDIX. 9 
 
 priate words for your thoughts. Who has not? But does that prove 
 that thoughts can exist without words? Quite the contrary. 
 Thoughts for which we cannot find appropriate words are thoughts 
 expressed as yet by inappropriate, very often by very general, words. 
 You see a thing and you do not know what it is, and therefore are 
 at a loss how to call it. There are people who call everything " that 
 thing'' — in French ^^ chose" — because they are lazy thinkers and, 
 therefore, clumsy speakers. But even "thing" and "ckose" are 
 names. The more we distinguish, the better we can name. A good 
 speaker and thinker will not say "that thing," "that person," "that 
 man," " that soldier," " that officer," but he will say at once " that 
 lieutenant-general of fusiliers." He can name appropriately because 
 he knows correctly, but he knows nothing correctly or vaguely 
 except in a string of names from officer down to thing. Embryonic 
 thought which never comes to the birth is not thought at all, but 
 only the material out of which thought may spring. Nor can infant 
 thought, which cannot speak as yet, be called living thought, though 
 the promise of thought is in it. The true life of thought begins 
 when it is named, and has been received by baptism into the 
 congregation of living words. 
 
 You say that "after you have made a mental step the appropriate 
 word frequently follows as an echo; as a rule, it does not accompany 
 it." I know very well what you mean. But only ask yourself what 
 mental step you have made and you will see you stand on words; 
 more or less perfect and appropriate, true ; but nevertheless, always 
 words. You blame me for having ignored your labors, which were 
 intended to show that the minds of every one are not like one's own. 
 You know that I took a great deal of interest in your researches. 
 They represented to me what I should venture to call the dialec- 
 tology of thought. But dialects of thought do not affect the funda- 
 mental principles of thinking; and the identity of language and 
 reason can hardly be treated as a matter of idiosyncrasy. 
 
 You als6 blame me for not having read a recent book by 
 Monsieur Binet. Dear Mr. Galton, as I grow older I find it the 
 most difficult problem in the world what new books we may safely 
 leave unread. Think of the number of old books which it is not 
 safe to leave unread; and yet, when I tell my friends that in order to 
 speak the lingua franca of philosophy they ought, at least, to read 
 Kant, they shrug their shoulders and say they have no time, or, hor- 
 ribile dictu, that Kant is obsolete. I have, however, ordered Binet, 
 and shall hereafter quote him as an authority. But who is an 
 
10 APPENDIX. 
 
 authority in these days of anarchy? I quoted the two greatest 
 authorities in Germany and England in support of my statement 
 that the genealogical descent of man from any other known animal 
 was as yet unfroven, and I am told by my reviewer in the Academy 
 that such statements "deserve to be passed over in respectful 
 silence." If such descent were proved it would make no difference 
 whatever to the science of thought. Man would remain to me 
 what he always has been, the perfect animal; the animal would 
 remain the stunted man. But why waste our thoughts on things 
 that may be or may not be .' One fact remains, animals have no lan- 
 guage. If, then, man cannot think — or, better, cannot reason — with- 
 out language, I think we are right in contending that animals do not 
 reason as man reasons, though for all we know they may be all the 
 better for it. Yours very truly, 
 
 Francis Gallon, Esq., F.R.S. F. Max Muller. 
 
 VII. LETTER FROM MR. F. GALTON, F.R.S. 
 
 42 Rutland Gate, S. W., May 18, 1887. 
 
 Dear Professor — Thank you much for your full letter. I 
 have not yet sent it on to Nature because it would have been too 
 late for this week's issue, and more especially because I thought 
 you might like to reserve your reply, not only until you had seen 
 my own answer to what you have said in it, but also until others 
 should have written, and possibly also until you had looked at Binet, 
 and some of the writers he quotes. So I send you very briefly my 
 answer, but the letter shall go to Nature if you send me a post-card 
 to send it. 
 
 In my reply, or in any future amplification of what is already 
 written, I should emphasize what was said about fencing, etc., ■with 
 the head, distinguishing it from intuitive actions (due, as I and others 
 hold, to inherited or personal habit). 
 
 The inhibition of words in the cases mentioned was, I should 
 explain, analogous to this ; — There are streets improvements in pro- 
 gress hereabouts. I set myself to think, by mental picture only, 
 whether the pulling down of a certain tobacconist's shop (i. e. its 
 subtraction from the row of houses in which it stands) would afford 
 a good opening for a needed thoroughfare. Now, on first perceiving 
 the image, it was associated with a mental perception of the smell 
 of the shop. I inhibited that mental smell because it had nothing 
 to do with what I wanted to think out. So words often arise in my 
 
APPENDIX. 11 
 
 own mind merely through association with what I am thinking 
 about ; they are not the things that my mind is dealing with ; they 
 are superfluous and they are embarrassments, so I inhibit them. 
 
 I have not yet inquired, but will do so, whether deaf-mutes who 
 had never learnt words or any symbols for them, had ever been 
 taught dominoes, or possibly even chess. I myself cannot conceive 
 that the names — king, queen, etc. — are of any help in calculating a 
 single move in advance. For the effect of many moves I use them 
 mentally to record the steps gained, but for nothing else. I have 
 reason to believe that not a few first-rate chess-players calculate by 
 their mental eye only. 
 
 In speaking of modern mental literature, pray do not think me 
 so conceited as to refer to my own writings only. I value modern 
 above ancient literature on this subject, even if the modern writers 
 are far smaller men than the older ones, because they have two 
 engines of research which the others wanted : — 
 
 (i) Inductive inquiry, ethnological and other. The older author- 
 ities had no vivid conception of the diiferent qualities of men's 
 minds. They thought that a careful examination of their own minds 
 sufficed for laying down laws that were generally applicable to 
 humanity. 
 
 (2) They had no adequate notion of the importance of mental 
 pathology. When by a blow, or by a disease, or, as they now say, 
 by hypnotism, a. whole province of mental faculties can be abol- 
 ished, and the working of what remains can be carefully studiedi 
 it is now found that as good a clue to the anatomy of the mind may 
 be obtained as men who study mangled limbs, or who systematically 
 dissect, may obtain of the anatomy of the body. 
 
 I add nothing about the advantage to modern inquirers due to 
 their possession of Darwinian facts and theories, because we do not 
 rate them in the same way. Very truly yours. 
 
 Professor Max Miiller. Francis Galton. 
 
 • 
 
 VIII. LETTER FROM PROF. MAX MULLER. 
 
 Oxford, May 19, 1887. 
 
 My Dear Mr. Galton — If you think my letter worth publish- 
 ing in Nature, I have no objection, though it contains no more than 
 what anybody may read in my Science of Thought. 
 
 Nothing proves to my mind the dependence of thought on lan- 
 guage so much as the difficulty we have in making others under- 
 stand our thoughts by means of words. Take the instance you 
 
12 APPENDIX. 
 
 mention of a shop being pulled down in your street, and suggest- 
 ing to you the desirability of opening a new street. There are races, 
 or, at all events, there have been, who had no name or concept of 
 shop. Still, if they saw your shop, they would call it a house, a 
 building, a cave, a hole, or, as you suggest, a chamber of smells and 
 horrors, but at all events a thing. Now, all these are names. Even 
 thing is a name. Take away these names, and all definite thought 
 goes; take away the name thing, and thought goes altogether. 
 When I say word, I do not mean flatus vocis, I always mean word as 
 inseparable from concept, thought-word or word-thought. 
 
 It is quite possible that you may teach deaf-and-dumb people 
 dominoes ; but deaf-and-dumb people, left to themselves, do not invent 
 dominoes, and that makes a great difference. Even so simple a 
 game as dominoes would be impossible without names and their 
 underlying concepts. Dominoes are not mere blocks of wood ; they 
 signify something. This becomes much clearer in chess. You 
 cannot move king, or queen, or knight as mere dolls. In chess, each 
 one of these figures can be moved according to its name and concept 
 only. Otherwise chess would be a chaotic scramble, not an intel- 
 ligent game. If you once see what I mean by names, namely that 
 by which a thing becomes notum or known, I expect you will say, 
 " Of course we all admit that without a name we cannot really know 
 anything.'' 
 
 I wonder you do not see that in all ray writings I have been an 
 evolutionist or Darwinian fur sang. What is language but a con- 
 stant becoming.' What is thought but an Emiges Werden? 
 
 Everything in language begins by a personal habit, and then 
 becomes inherited ; but what we students of language try to discover 
 is the first beginning of each personal habit, the origin of every 
 thought, and the origin of every word. For that purpose ethnolog- 
 ical researches are of the highest importance to us, and you will 
 find that Kant, the cleverest dissector of abstract thought, wa&.at the 
 same time the most careful student of ethnology, the most accurate 
 observer of concrete thought in its endless variety. With all my 
 admiration for modern writers, I am in tiiis sense also a Darwinian 
 that I prefer the rudimentary stages of philosophic thought to its 
 later developments, not to say its decadence. I have learnt more 
 from Plato than from Comte. But I have ordered Binet all the 
 same, and when I have read him I shall tell you what I think of him. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 F. Max Mullkr. 
 
APPENDIX. 18 
 
 tX. LETTER FROM MR. GEORGE J. ROMANES, F.R.S. 
 
 June 4, 1887. 
 There appears to be some ambiguity about this matter as dis- 
 cussed in the correspondence which has recently taken place in your 
 columns. In the first instance Mr. Galton understood Professor 
 Max Miiller to have argued that in no individual human mind can 
 any process of thought be ever conducted without the mental 
 rehearsal of words, or the verbum mentale of the Schoolmen. Now, 
 although this is the view which certainly appears to pervade the 
 Professor's work on The Science of Thought., there is one passage 
 in that work, and several passages in his subsequent correspondence 
 with Mr. Galton, which express quite a different view — namely, that 
 when a definite structure of conceptual ideation has been built up by 
 the aid of words, it may afterward persist independently of such aid ; 
 the scaffolding was required for the original construction of the 
 edifice, but not for its subsequent stability. That these two views 
 are widely different may be shown by taking any one of the illus- 
 trations from the Nature correspondence. In answer to Mr. Galton, 
 Professor Max Miiller says: "It is quite possible that you may teach 
 deaf-and-dumb people dominoes; but deaf-and-dumb people, left to 
 themselves, do not invent dominoes, and that makes a great differ- 
 ence. Even so simple a game as dominoes would be impossible 
 without names and their underlying concepts." Now, assuredly it 
 does " make a great difference " whether we are supporting the view 
 that dominoes could not be iplayed without names underlying con- 
 cepts, or the view that without such means dominoes could not have 
 been invented. That there cannot be concepts without names is a 
 well-recognized doctrine of psychology, and that dominoes could not 
 have been invented in the absence of certain simple concepts relating 
 to number no one could well dispute. But when the game has 
 been invented, there is no need to fall back upon names and concepts 
 as a preliminary to each move, or for the player to predidate to him- 
 self before each move that the number he lays down corresponds 
 with the number to which he joins it. The late Dr. Carpenter 
 assured me that he had personally investigated the case of a perform- 
 ing dog which was exhibited many years ago as a domino-player, 
 and had fully satisfied himself that the animal's skill in this respect 
 was genuine; i. e. not dependent on any code of signals from the 
 showman. This, therefore, is a better case than that of the deaf- 
 mute, in order to show that dominoes can be played by means of 
 
U APPENDIX. 
 
 ■ensuous association alone. But my point now is that two distinct 
 questions have been raised in your columns, and that the ambiguity 
 to which I have referred appears to have arisen from a failure to dis- 
 tinguish between them. Every living psychologist will doubtless 
 agree with Professor Max Miiller where he appears to say nothing 
 more tl^an that if there had never been any names there could never 
 have been any concepts; but this is a widely different thing from 
 saying what he elsewhere appears to say; — i. c. that without the 
 mental rehearsal of words there cannot be performed in any case 
 a process of distinctively human thought. The first of these two 
 widely different questions may be dismissed as one concerning which 
 no difference of opinion is likely to arise. Touching the second, if 
 the Professor does not mean what I have said he appears in some 
 places to say, it is' a pity that he should attempt to defend such a 
 position as that chess, for instance, cannot be played unless the player 
 "deals all the time with thought- words and word-thoughts." For 
 the original learning of the game it was necessary that the powers 
 of the various pieces should have been explained to him by means 
 of words; but when this knowledge was thus gained it was no longer 
 needful that before making any particular move he should mentally 
 state the powers of all the pieces concerned, or predicate to himself 
 the various possibilities which the move might involve. All these 
 things he does by his specially-formed associations alone, just as does 
 a draught-player, who is concerned with a much simpler order of 
 relations; in neither case is any demand made upon the verbum 
 mentale. 
 
 Again, if the Professor does not mean to uphold the view that 
 in no case can there be distinctively human thought without the 
 immediate and direct assistance of words, it is a mistake in him to rep- 
 resent "the dependence of thought on language" as absolute.* The 
 full powers of conceptual ideation which belong to any individual 
 man may or may not all have been due to words as used by his 
 ancestors, his contemporaries and himself. But, however thi^ may 
 be, that these powers, when once attained, may afterward continue 
 operative without the use of words is not a matter of mere opinion 
 
 *E. g. — "I hope I have thus answered everything that has been or that can 
 possibly be adduced against what I call the fundamental tenet that the science of 
 language, and what ought to become the fundamental tenet of the science of 
 thought, namely, that language and thought, though distinguishable, are insepara- 
 ble, that no one truly thinks who does not speak, and that no one truly speaks 
 who does not think." — Scienct of Thmight^ pp. 63, 64. 
 
APPENDIX. 15 
 
 based on one's own personal introspection, which no opponent can 
 verify; it is a matter of objectively demonstrable fact, which no 
 opponent can gainsay. For when a man is suddenly afflicted with 
 aphasia he does not forthwith become as the thoughtless brute; he 
 has lost all trace of words, but his reason may remain unimpaired. 
 
 George J. Romanes. 
 
 A. LETTER FROM MR. J. J. MURPHY. 
 
 Belfast, June 19, 1887. 
 
 I have postponed offering you any remarks on Professor Max 
 Miiller's Science of Thought until I had read the book through. 
 
 I think Prof. Max MiuUer is on the whole right, that language is 
 necessary to thought, and is related to thought very much as organ- 
 ization to life. The question discussed by some of your correspon- 
 dents, whether it is possible in particular cases to think without 
 language, appears to me of little importance. I tan believe that 
 it is possible to think without words when the subjects of thought are 
 visible things and their combinations, as in inventing machinery; 
 but the intellectual power that invents machinery has been matured 
 by the use of language. 
 
 But Prof. MaxMiiller has not answered, nor has he asked, the 
 question, on what property or power of thought the production of 
 language depends. He has shown most clearly the important truth 
 that all names are abstract — that to invent a. name which denotes 
 an indefinite number of objects is a result of abstraction. But on 
 what does the power of abstraction depend.' I believe it depends on 
 the power of directing thought at will. Prof. Max Miiller lays stress 
 on the distinction between percepts and concepts, though he thinks 
 they are inseparable. I am inclined to differ from him, and to think 
 that animals perceive as vividly ais we do, but have only a rudi- 
 mentary power of conception and thought. I think the power of 
 directing thought at will is the distinctively human power, on which 
 the power of forming concepts and language depends. 
 
 Joseph JoH>f Murphy. 
 
 XI. LETTER FROM MR. ARTHUR EBBELS. 
 
 Chaphan, June 6, 1887. 
 After reading the correspondence published in Nature (Vol. 
 XXXVI. pp. 28, 52 and 100) on this subject, it has occurred to me 
 
16 APPENDIX. 
 
 that the difficulties anthropologists find in Professor Max Miiller's 
 theory are connected chiefly with his peculiar definitions. 
 
 In his letters to Mr. Gallon, Prof. MaxMiiller narrows the domain 
 of his theory to a considerable extent. By defining thought as the 
 faculty of "addition and subtraction,", and by taking language as 
 composed of" word-thoughts " or " thought- words," Prof MaxMiiller 
 excludes from his theory all those processes which are preliminary 
 to the formation of concepts. Thus narrowed, I do not see that his 
 doctrine in any way touches the wider question, whether reasoning, 
 as generally understood, is independent of language. If we keep to 
 the terms of this theory, thoughts and words are un4oubtedly insep- 
 arable. But this does not in the least imply that all tliought is impos- 
 sible without words. ^ 
 
 When we enlarge the scope of our terms it is at once evident 
 that thoughts and words are not inseparable. It is all very well 
 to join together " thought- word " and " word-thought." Yet the 
 thought is something quite distinct from the mere sound which stands 
 as a word for it. A concept is formed from sensations. Our thoughts 
 are occupied with what we see, and feel, and hear, and this primarily. 
 Thus it is that, in the wider sense of thinking, we can think in 
 pictures. This is the mental experience which Professor Tyndall so 
 highly prizes. He likes to picture an imaginary process, not in 
 words, not even by keeping words in the background, but in a mental 
 presentation of the things themselves as they would aifect his senses. 
 Surely, then, if the mind can attend to its own reproduction of former 
 sensations, and even form new arrangements of sensations for itself 
 quite irrespective of word-signs, as Mr. Gallon and most other think- 
 ers have experienced, it is evident that thought and language are not 
 inseparable. 
 
 All this is, of course,somewhat apart from Prof. Max Miiller's 
 restricted theory. But the question follows, how from these wider 
 thoughts do we become possessed of the faculty o£ abstraction.? 
 Does not the one shade imperceptibly into the other.' Prof.Max 
 Miiller answers no, and here I think he is at fault. It is at this point 
 that anthropologists part company with him. If he be right, how do 
 people learn.' According to his theory new thoughts when they 
 arise start into being under some general concept. I do not deny 
 that they are placed under some general concept, but it seems to me 
 that something entirely independent of the general concept has, for 
 convenience, been placed under it, and this something must be called 
 a thought. No doubt the thought is at first vague and indefinite, and 
 
APPENDIX. n 
 
 only when it becomes definite does it require a name. But here one 
 can plainly trace the genesis of a thought, and the adaptation of a 
 word as a symbol for it. The new concept and its sign do not arise 
 simultaneously. There are two distinct growths, not one only, as 
 Prof. Max MuUer's theory presupposes. The connection may be 
 subtle and close, but the two elements can be easily separated. It 
 avails nothing to say that until the thought is placed under a concept 
 it is not a thought. This is a mere question of definition, not of 
 actual fact. 
 
 I would point out one other consideration. If Prof. MaxMiiller's 
 theory were true for all kinds of thinking, development would be 
 impossible. If man could not think without language, and could not 
 have language without thinking, he would never have had either, 
 except by a miracle. And scientific men will not accept the alterna- 
 tive. We can conceive shadowy thoughts gradually shaping to 
 themselves a language for expression, and we can understand how 
 each would improve the other, until by constant interaction a higher 
 process of thought was introduced. But we cannot conceive the 
 sudden appearance of the faculty of abstraction together with its 
 ready-made signs or words. 
 
 I have often wished that Prof. MaxMuUer would state distinctly 
 how his theory accounts for the very first beginnings of language. 
 I have not been able to discover any explanation of this point in his 
 " Lectures on the Science of Language." Arthur Ebbels. 
 
 XII. LETTER FROM MRS. A GRENFELL. 
 
 As poets have extraordinary inklings and afergus on the most 
 abstruse scientific questions, Wordsworth's opinion on this matter 
 (quoted by De Quincey) is worth considering : Language is not the 
 ^^ dress" of thought, it is the "incarnation." This is Shelley's afergu 
 of Darwinism. Man exists "but in the future and the past; being, 
 not what he is, but what he has been and shall be." How to "distil 
 working ideas from the obscurest poems" — to use Lord Acton's 
 words — is one of the secrets of genius. A. Grenfell. 
 
 XIII. LETTER from MR. ARTHUR NICOLS. 
 
 Watford, June 3, 1887. 
 
 The interesting discussion between Mr. Francis Galton and 
 
 Prof. Max Miiller on this subject will doubtless raise many questions 
 
 in the minds of those who have paid some attention to the habits of 
 
 animals. I have been asking myself whether, if Prof. Max Miiller 
 
IS APPENDIX. 
 
 is right in his conclusion — "Of course we all admit that without a 
 name we cannot really know anything " (an utterable name, I pre- 
 sume), and "one fact remains, animals have no language" — animals 
 must not, therefore, be held by him incapable of knowing anything. 
 This would bring us to the question whether animals know in the 
 same manner as men, or in some other manner which inen do not 
 understand. Now, I think — at least it is as strong a conviction as I 
 am capable of entertaining — that animals not only know, but deal 
 with the materials of knowledge — facts — in a manner quite indistin- 
 guishable from the manner in which I mentally handle them myself. 
 Thus, I place an animal in circumstances which are quite unfamiliar 
 to it, and from which it is urgently pressed to escape. There are 
 two, or perhaps three, courses open to it; one being, to my mind, 
 patently the most advantageous. It tries all of them, and selects 
 that which I should have chosen myself, though it is muck longer 
 in coming to its conclusion. Here the animal has the same facts as 
 the man to deal with, and, after consideration and examination, its 
 judgment precisely corresponds with the man's. I cannot, then, find 
 it possible to deny that the mental operations are identical in kind; 
 but that they are not so in degree can be demonstrated by my im- 
 porting into the situation an element foreign to the experience of the 
 animal, when its failure is certain. It makes no difference whether 
 the animal is under stress, or acting voluntarily. It may frequently 
 be found to choose the method which most recommends itself to 
 the man's judgment. Every student of animals is familiar with 
 numbers of such cases. Indeed they are constantly being recorded 
 in the columns of Nature, and abound in all accepted works on ani- 
 mal intelligence. I am quite prepared to admit that where there are 
 two or more courses open to it the animal will occasionally select 
 that which presents the greatest difficulties and labor most assidu- 
 ously to overcome them, sometimes trying the remaining courses 
 and returning to that which it first chose. Darwin gives a good 
 example of the honey-bee {Origin of Species, p. 225, edition 1872). 
 But no one will be surprised at imperfect judgment or vacillation 
 of will in an animal, when such are common among men. 
 
 Prof. Max Miiller lays down the very distinct proposition that 
 "animals have no language." I suppose utterable language is meant. 
 Is this so.' That their sign-language is both extensive and exact 
 (and even understood to some extent as between widely different 
 species) most naturalists, I apprehend, will entertain no doubt. But 
 has any species an utterable language? What is to be the test of 
 
APPENDIX. 19 
 
 this? First there is the whole gamut of vocal expressions — which 
 even we understand — conveying the ideas of fain, pleasure, anger, 
 ■warning. What sportsman who has stalked extremely shy animals 
 does not know the moment a bird or animal utters a certain note 
 that he is discovered? If Prof Max Miiller will not admit this to 
 be language, I for one, must ask him what it is. It conveys to 
 others a distinct idea, in general if not in special terms, and seems 
 to me quite equivalent to " Oh dear !" " This is nice " (expressed, I 
 believe, in some African language by the reduplicated form num-num, 
 the letter n having the same value as in the Spanish mafland), 
 " Leave off," " Look out," " Come here," etc. Those who have heard 
 animals' calling to one another, particularly at night, and have care- 
 fully noted the modulations of their voices (why should there be 
 modulations unless they have a definite value), will find it very hard 
 to accept Prof. Max Miiller's conclusion that "animals have no 
 language." Every female mammal endowed with any kind of voice 
 has the power of saying " Come here, my child," and it is an interest- 
 ing fact beyond question that the knowledge of this call is feebly or 
 not at all inherited, but must be impressed upon the young individual 
 by experience. Further, the young brought up by an alien foster- 
 mother pay no attention to the " Come here, my child," of the alien 
 species. The clucking of the hen meets with no response from the 
 ducklings she has reared, even when she paces frantically by the side 
 of the pond imploring them not to commit suicide. But let us creep 
 up under the banks of a sedgy pool at about this time of year. There 
 swims a wild duck surrounded by her brood, dashing here and there 
 at the rising Phryganidce. Now let the frightful face of man peer 
 through the sedges. A sharp " quack " from the duck, and her 
 brood dive like stones, or plunge into the reeds. She, at least, knows 
 what to say to them. 
 
 The already inordinate length of this letter precludes me from 
 offering any instances of the communication of sfecific intelligence 
 by means of the vocal organs of animals. I think it probable that we 
 far underrate the vocabulary of animals from deficient attention — 
 and, I speak for myself, stupidity. Possibly Prof. Max Miiller has 
 not yet examined " Sally," the black chimpanzee. If not, he would 
 surely be much interested. She is by no means garrulous, but in 
 spite of her poor vocal capacity, if he should still consider that she 
 " cannot really know anything "on that account, I must have com- 
 pletely misinterpreted his letter to Mr. Galton. 
 
 Arthur Nicols. 
 
ao APPENDIX. 
 
 XIV. LETTER FROM PROF. MAX MULLER. 
 
 The Molt, 'Salcombe, July 4, 1887. 
 As I found that you had already admitted no less than thirteen 
 letters on my recent work, Science of Thought^ I hesitated for some 
 time whether I ought to ask you to admit another communication on 
 a subject which can be of interest to a very limited number of the 
 readers of Nature only. I have, indeed, from the very beginning of 
 my philological labors, claimed for the science of language a place 
 among the physical sciences, and, in one sense, I do the same for 
 the science of thought. Nature that docs not include human nature 
 in all its various manifestations would seem to me like St. Peter's 
 without its cupola. But this plea of mine has not as yet been gener- 
 ally admitted. The visible material frame of man, his sense-organs 
 and their functions, his nerves and his brain, all this has been recog- 
 nized as the rightful domain of physical science. But beyond this 
 physical science was not to go. There was the old line of separation, 
 a line drawn by medizeval students between man, on one side, and his 
 works, on the other ; between the sense-organs and their perceptions ; 
 between the brain and its outcome, or, as it has sometimes been 
 called, its secretion — namely, thought. To attempt to obliterate that 
 line between physical science, on one side, and moral science, as it 
 used to be called, on the other, was represented as mere confusion of 
 thought. Still, here as elsewhere, a perception of higher unity does 
 not necessarily imply an ignoring of useful distinctions. To me, it 
 has always seemed that man's nature can never be fully understood 
 except as one and indivisible. His highest and most abstract thoughts 
 appear to me inseparable from the lowest material impacts made 
 upon his bodily frame. And " if nothing was ever in the intellect 
 except what was first in the senses," barring, of course, the intellect 
 itself, it follows that we shall never understand the working of the 
 intellect, unless we first try to understand the senses, their organs, 
 their functions, and in the end their products. For practical pur- 
 poses, no doubt, we may, nay we ought, to separate the two. Thus, 
 in my own special subject, it is well to separate the treatment of 
 phonetics and acoustics from higher linguistic researches. We may 
 call phonetics and acoustics the ground floor, linguistics the first 
 story. But as every building is one — the ground floor purposeless 
 without the first story, the first story a mere castle in the air without 
 the ground floor — the science of man also is one, and would accord- 
 ing to my opinion, be imperfect unless it included psychology in the 
 
APPENDIX. 31 
 
 widest meaning of that term, as well as physiology ; unless it claimed 
 the science of language and of thought, no less than the science of 
 the voice, the ear, the nerves, and the brain, as its obedient vassals. 
 It was, therefore, a real satisfaction to me that it should have been 
 Nature where the questions raised in my Science of Thought ^ excited 
 the first interest, provoking strong opposition', and eliciting distinct 
 approval, and I venture to crave your permission on that ground, 
 if on no other, for replying once more to the various arguments 
 which some of your most eminent contributors have brought forward 
 against the fundamental tenet of my work, the inseparableness of 
 language and reason. 
 
 Many of my critics write as if they had never heard before of 
 the identity of language and reason. They call such a theory a 
 paradox, unconscious, it would seem, of the fact that to the great 
 majority of mankind all philosophy is a paradox, and unaware like- 
 wise, that the same opinion has been held by some of the greatest 
 philosophers of antiquity, of the middle ages, and of modern times. 
 I have not invented that paradox. All I have done or attempted 
 to do is that, while other philosophers have derived their arguments 
 in support of it from mere theory, I have taken mine from facts, 
 namely the facts supplied by the science of language. 
 
 Some of my critics again seem to have sniffed something hetero- 
 dox in this identity of language and reason, forgetting that philosophy 
 was never meant to be either orthodox or heterodox in the theologi- 
 cal sense of those words, and unaware likewise, as it would seem, 
 that this opinion has been held and defended by some of the most 
 orthodox and some of the most heterodox of modern writers. I shall 
 mention two names only, Cardinal Newman and M. Taine. Cardinal 
 Newman in his Grammar of Assent (p. 8), where he tries to define 
 ratiocination or reasoning, begins by carefully separating from rati- 
 ocination, as I have done, all that is purely sensuous or emotional, 
 the promptings of experience, common sense, genius, and all the 
 rest, restricting " thought " to what can be or has been expressed in 
 words. He then proceeds: "Let then our symbols be words; let all 
 thought be arrested and embodied in words. Let language have a 
 monopoly of thought; and thought go for only so much as it can 
 show itself to be worth in language. Let every prompting of the 
 intellect be ignored, every momentum of argument be disowned 
 which is unprovided with an equivalent wording, as its ticket for 
 sharing in the common search after truth. Let the authority of 
 actions, common sense, experience, genius, go for nothing. Rati- 
 
22 APPENDIX. 
 
 ocination thus restricted and put into grooves, is what I have called 
 Inference., and the science which is its regulating principle, is 
 Logic^ 
 
 M. Taine pronounces quite as explicitly in favor of the theory 
 that reasoning, if properly restricted and defined, takes place by 
 means of words only, and cannot take place in any other way. In 
 his work, De V Intelligence (1870), after distinguishing between frofer 
 and common names, he shows that a common name is at the same 
 time general and abstract (Vol. I. p. 25), and that these general and 
 abstract names are really what we mean by general and abstract 
 ideas. " Partout ce que nous appelons une id^e g^n^rale n^e d'en 
 semble, n'est qu'un nom ; non pas le simple son qui vibre dans I'air 
 et ^branle notre oreille, ou I'assemblage de lettres qui noircisseut le 
 papier et frappent nos yeux, non pas mSme ces lettres aper^ues men- 
 talement, ou ce son mentalement prononcd, mais ce son ou ces 
 lettres dou^, lorsque nous les apercevons ou imaginons, d'une 
 propri^t^ double, la propri^t^ d'dveiller en nous les images des indi- 
 vidus qui appartiennent a une certaine classe de ces individus seule- 
 ment, et la propriety de renaitre toutes les fois qu'un individu de 
 cette mSme classe et seulement quand un individu de cette mfime 
 classe se prdsente a notre mdmoire ou a notre exp&ience." 
 
 " Ce ne sout pas les objets dpais ni les objets id^aux que nous 
 pensons, — ^mais les caractferes abstraits qui sout leurs gdnerateurs ; ce 
 ne sout pas les caracteres abstraits que nous pensons, mais les noms 
 communs qui leur correspondent! " 
 
 I may divide the letters published hitherto in Nature into three 
 classes, unanswerable, answered and to be answered. 
 
 I class as unanswerable such letters as that of the Duke of 
 Argyll. His Grace simply expresses his opinion, without assigning 
 any reasons. I do not deny that to myself personally, and to many 
 of your readers, it is of great importance to know what position a 
 man of the Duke's wide experience and independence of thought 
 takes with regard to the fundamental principle of all philosophy, the 
 identity of language and thought, or even on a merely subsidiary 
 question, such as the genealogical descent of man from any known 
 or unknown kind of animal. But I must wait till the Duke contro- 
 verts either the linguistic facts, or the philosophical lessons which 
 I have read in them, before I can meet fact by fact, and argument 
 by argument. I only note, as a very significant admission, one sen- 
 tence of his letter, in which the Duke says : " Language seems to me 
 to be necessary to the progress of thought, but not at all necessary to 
 
APPENDIX. 83 
 
 the mere act of thinking." This sentence may possibly concede all 
 that I have been contending for, as we shall see by and by. 
 
 I class as letters that have been answered the very instructive 
 communications from Mr. F. Galton, to which I replied in Nature of 
 June 2 (p. loi), as well as several notes contributed by coirespondents 
 who evidently had read my book either very rapidly, or not at all. 
 
 Thus, Hyde Clarke tells us that the mutes at Constantinople, 
 and the deaf-mutes in general, communicate by signs, and not by 
 words — the very fact on which I had laid great stress in several parts 
 of my book. In the sign-language of the American Indians, in the 
 hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt, and in Chinese and other lan- 
 guages which were originally written ideographically, we have irre- 
 fragable evidence that other signs, besides vocal signs or vocables, 
 can be used for embodying thought. This, as I tried to show, con- 
 firms, and does not invalidate, my theory that we cannot think without 
 words, if only it is remembered that words are the most usual and 
 the most perfect, but by no means the only possible signs. 
 
 Another correspondent, " S. F. M. Q.", asks how I account for 
 the early processes of thought in a deaf-mute. If he had looked at 
 page 63 of my book, he would have found my answer. Following 
 Professor Huxley, I hold that deaf-mutes would be capable Df few 
 higher intellectual manifestations than an orang or chimpanzee, if 
 they were confined to the society of dumb associates. 
 
 But, though holding this opinion, I do not venture to say that 
 deaf-mutes, if left to themselves, may not act rationally, as little as I 
 should take upon myself to assert that animals may not act ration- 
 ally. I prefer indeed, as I have often said, to remain a perfect 
 agnostic with regard to the inner life of animals, and, for that, of deaf- 
 mutes also. But I should not contradict anybody who imagines 
 that he has discovered traces of the highest intellectual and moral 
 activity in deaf-mutes or animals. I read with the deepest interest 
 the letter which Mr. Arthur Nicols addressed to you. I accept all 
 he says about the sagacity of animals, and if I differ from him at all, 
 I do so because I have even greater faith in animals than he has. I 
 do not think, for instance, that animals, as he says, are much longer 
 in arriving at a conclusion than we are. Their conclusions, so far 
 as I have been able to watch them, seem to me far more rapid than 
 our own, and almost instantaneous. Nor should I quarrel with Mr. 
 Nicols if he likes to call the vocal expressions of pain, pleasure, 
 anger, or warning, uttered by animals, language. It is a perfectly 
 legitimate metaphor to call every kind of communication language. 
 
W APPENDIX. 
 
 We may speak of the language of the eyes, and even of the eloquence 
 of silence. But Mr. Nicols would probably be equally ready to admit 
 that there is a difference between shouting " Oh !" and saying " I am 
 surprised." An animal may say "Oh!" but it cannot say "I am 
 surprised;" and it seems to me necessary, for the purpose of accurate 
 reasoning, to be able to distinguish in our terminology between 
 these two kinds of communication. On this point, too, I have so 
 fully dwelt in my book that I ought not to encumber your pages 
 by mere extracts. 
 
 I now come to the letters-of Mr. Ebbels and Mr. Mellard Reade. 
 They both seem to imagine that, because I deny the possibility of 
 conceptual thought without language, I deny the possibility of every 
 kind of thought without words. This objection, too, they will find 
 so fully answered in my book, that I need not add anything here. I 
 warned my readers again and again against the promiscuous use of 
 the word " thought." I pointed out (p. 29) how, according to Des- 
 cartes, any kind of inward activity, whether sensation, pain, pleas- 
 ure, dreaming, or willing, may be called thought; but I stated on the 
 very first page that, like Hobbes, I use thinking in the restricted sense 
 of adding and subtracting. We do many things, perhaps our best 
 things, without addition or subtraction. We have, as I pointed out 
 on page 20, sensations and percepts, as well as concepts and names. 
 For ordinary purposes we should be perfectly correct in saying that 
 we can " think in pictures." This, however, is more accurately called 
 imagination, because we are then dealing with images, presentations 
 {yorstelltingen\ or, as I prefer to call them, percepts and not yet 
 with concepts and names. Whether in man and particularly in the 
 present stage of his intellectual life, imagination is possible without 
 a slight admixture of conceptual thought and language, is a moot 
 point; that it is possible in animals, more particularly in Sally, the 
 black chimpanzee at the Zoological Gardens, I should be reluctant 
 either to deny or to affirm. All I stand up for is that, if we use such 
 words as thought, we ought to define them. Definition is the only 
 panacea for all our philosophical misery, and I am utterly unable to 
 enter into Mr. Ebbels's state of mind when he says : " This is a mere 
 question of definition, not of actual fact." 
 
 When Mr. Ebbels adds that we cannot conceive the sudden 
 appearance of the faculty of abstraction together with its ready-made 
 signs or words, except by a miracle, he betrays at once that he has 
 not read my last book, the very object of which is to show that we 
 require no miracle at all, but that all which seemed miraculous in 
 
APPENDIX. 25 
 
 language is perfectly natural and intelligible. And if he adds that he 
 has not been able to discover in my earlier works any account of the 
 first beginnings of language, he has evidently overlooked the fact 
 that in my lectures on the science o£ language I distinctly declined 
 to commit myself to any theory on the origin of language, while the 
 whole of my last book is devoted to the solution of that problem. 
 My solution may be right or wrong, but it certainly does not appeal 
 to any miraculous interference for the explanation of language and 
 thought. 
 
 There now remain two letters only that have really to be 
 answered, because they touch on some very important points, points 
 which it is manifest I ought to have placed in a clearer light in 
 my book. One is by Mr. Murphy, the other by Mr. Romanes. 
 Both have evidently read my book and read it carefully ; and if they 
 have not quite clearly seen the drift of my argument, I am afraid 
 the fault is mine and not theirs. I am quite aware that my Science 
 of Tltought is not an easy book to read and to understand. I warned 
 my readers in the preface that they must not expect a popular book, 
 nor a work systematically built up and complete in all its parts. My 
 book was written, as I said, for myself and for a few friends who 
 knew beforehand the points which I wished to establish, and who 
 would not expect me, for the mere sake of completeness, to repeat 
 what was familiar to them and could easily be found elsewhere. I 
 felt certain that I should be understood by them, if I only indicated 
 what I meant ; nor did it ever enter into my mind to attempt to teach 
 them, or to convince them against their will. I wrote as if in har- 
 mony with my readers, and moving on with them on a road which 
 we had long recognized as the only safe one, and which I hoped 
 that others also would follow, if they could once be made to see 
 whence it started and whither it tended. 
 
 Mr. Murphy is one of those who agree with me that language 
 is necessary to thought, and that, though it may be possible to think 
 without words when the subjects of thought are visible things and 
 their combinations, as in inventing machinery, the intellectual power 
 that invents machinery has been matured by the use of language. 
 Here Mr. Murphy comes very near to the remark made by the Duke 
 of Argyll, that language seems necessary to the frogress of thought^ 
 but not at all necessary to the mere act of thinking, whatever that 
 may mean. But Mr. Murphy, while accepting my two positions — 
 that thought is impossible without words, and that all words were in 
 their origin abstract— blames me for not having explained more fully 
 
26 APPENDIX. 
 
 on what the power of abstraction really depends. So much has lately 
 been written on abstraction, that I did not think it necessary to do 
 more than indicate to which side I inclined. I quoted the opinions 
 of Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Berkeley and Mill, and as for myself I 
 stated in one short sentence that I should ascribe the power of 
 abstraction, not so much to an effort of our will, or to our intellectual 
 strength, but rather to our intellectual weakness. In forming 
 abstractions our weakness seems to me our strength. Even in our 
 first sensations it is impossible for us to take in the whole of every 
 impression, and in our first perceptions we cannot but drop a great 
 deal of what is contained in . our sensations. In this sense we learn 
 to abstract, whether we like it or not ; and though afterwards abstrac- 
 tion may proceed from an effort of the will, I still hold, as I said on 
 page 4, that though attention can be said to be at the root of all our 
 knowledge, the power of abstraction may in the beginning not be 
 very far removed from the weakness of distraction. If I had wished 
 to write a practical text-book of the science of thought, I ought no 
 doubt to have given more prominence to this view of the origin 
 of abstraction, but as often in my book, so here too, I thought 
 safienti sat. 
 
 I now come to Mr. Romanes, to whom I feel truly grateful for 
 the intrepid spirit with which he has waded through my book. One 
 has no right in these days to expect many such readers, but one feels 
 all the more grateful if one does find them. Mr. Romanes was 
 at home in the whole subject, and with him what I endeavored to 
 prove by linguistic evidence — namely, that concepts are altogether 
 impossible without names — formed part of the very A B C of his 
 psychological creed. He is indeed almost too sanguine when he says 
 that concerning this truth no difference of opinion is likely to arise. 
 The columns of Nature and the opinions quoted in my book tell a 
 different tale. But for all that I am as strongly convinced as he can 
 be that no one who has once understood the true nature of words 
 and concepts can possibly hold a different opinion from that which 
 he holds as well as I. 
 
 It seems, therefore, all the more strange to me that Mr. Romanes 
 should have suspected me of holding the opinion that we cannot 
 think without pronouncing or silently rehearsing our thought-words. 
 It is difficult to guard against misapprehensions which one can hardly 
 realize. Without appealing, as he does, to sudden aphasia, how 
 could I hold pronunciation necessary for thought when I am per- 
 fectly silent while I an writing and while I am reading.' How could 
 
APPENDIX. 11 
 
 I believe in the necessity of a silent rehearsing of words when one 
 such word as " therefore " may imply hundreds of words or pages 
 the rehearsing of which would require hours and days? Surely, as 
 our memory enables us to see without eyes and to hear without ears, 
 the same persistence of force allows us to speak without uttering 
 words. Only, as we cannot remember or imagine without having 
 first seen or heard something to remember, neither can we inwardly 
 speak without having first named something that we can remember. 
 There is an algebra of language far more wonderful than the algebra 
 of mathematics. Mr. Romanes calls that algebra " ideation," a dan- 
 gerous word, unless we first define its meaning and lay bare its 
 substance. I call the same process addition and subtraction of 
 half-vanished words, or, to use Hegel's terminology, aufgehobene 
 Worte; and I still hold, as I said in my book, that it would be difficult 
 to invent a better expression for thinking than that of the lowest 
 barbarians, "speaking in the stomach." Thinking is nothing but 
 speaking minus words. We do not begin with thinking or ideation, 
 and then proceed to speaking, but we begin with naming, and then 
 by a constant process of addition and subtraction, of widening and 
 abbreviating, we arrive at what I call thought. Everybody admits 
 that we cannot count — that is to say, add and subtract — unless we 
 have first framed our numerals. Why should people hesitate to 
 admit that we cannot possibly think, unless we have first formed our 
 words.' Did the Duke of Argyll mean this when he said that lan- 
 guage seemed to him necessary for tlie progress of thought, but not at 
 all for the mere act of thinking.' How words are framed, the science 
 of language has taught us ; how they are reduced to mere shadows, 
 to signs of signs, apparently to mere nothings, the science of thought 
 will have to explain far more fully than I have been able to do. Mr. 
 Romanes remarks that it is a pity th^t I should attempt to defend 
 such a position as that chess cannot be played unless the player 
 "deals all the time with thought-words and word-thoughts." I pity 
 myself indeed that my language should be liable to such misappre- 
 hension. I thought that to move a " castle " according to the char- 
 acter and the rules originally assigned to it was to deal with a 
 word-thought or thought- word. What is " castle " in chess, if not 
 a word-thought or thought- word .' I did not use the verb " to deal " in 
 the sense of pronouncing, or rehearsing, or defining, but of handling 
 or moving according to understood rules. That this dealing might 
 become a mere habit I pointed out myself, and tried to illustrate by the 
 even more wonderful playing of music. But however automatic and 
 
28 APPENDIX. 
 
 almost unconscious such habits may become, we have only to make a 
 ■wrong move v? ith the " castle " and at once our antagonist will appeal 
 to the original meaning of that thought-word and remind us that we 
 can move it in one direction only, but not in another. In the same 
 manner, when Mr. Romanes takes me to task because I said that " no 
 one truly thinks who does not speak, and that no one truly speaks 
 who does not think," he had only to lay the accent on truly, and he 
 would have understood what I meant — namely, that in the true 
 sense of these words, as defined by myself, no one thinks who does 
 not directly or indirectly speak, and that no one can be said to speak 
 who does not at the same time think. We cannot be too charitable 
 in the interpretation of language, and I often feel that I must claim 
 that charity more than most vwiters in English. Still, I am always 
 glad if such opponents as Mr. Romanes or Mr. F. Galton give me 
 an opportunity of explaining more fully what I mean. We shall 
 thus, I believe, arrive at the conviction that men who honestly care 
 for truth, and for the progress of truth, must in the end arrive at the 
 same conclusions, though they may express them each in his own 
 dialect. That is the true meaning of the old dialectic process, to 
 reason out things by words more and more adequate to their purpose. 
 In that sense it is true also that no truth is entirely new, and that all 
 we can aim at in philosophy is to find new and better expressions for 
 old truths. The poet, as Mrs. A. Grenfell has pointed out in her 
 letter to Nature (June 23, p. 173), often perceives and imagines what 
 others have not yet conceived or named. In that sense I gladly call 
 myself the interpreter of Wordsworth's prophecy, that " the word is 
 not the dress of thought, but its very incarnation." 
 
 F. Max Muller. 
 
THE OPEN COURT. 
 
 PuWlsliBd every TMrsaay tiy tlie Open Court FnMlsMnj Co, 
 
 (P. O. Drawer F.) 175 LaSalle St., CHICAGO, ILL. 
 
 EDWARD C. HEGELER, President. Dr. PAULCARUS, EDITOR. 
 
 The Open Court is devoted to the work of conciliating Relig-ion withi Science. 
 Tile founder and editor have found this conciliation in Monism — to present and 
 defend which is the main object of The Open Court. Efforts are made to 
 present the very best and most advanced thought bearing on scientific, religious, 
 social and economic questions. The Open Court has for contributors the leading 
 thinkers of the old and new world. Among those who contribute to its columns 
 are the following writers : 
 
 Prof. MAX MULLER, of Oxford, XENOS CLARK, GEORG VON GIZYCKI, 
 
 WM. M. SALTER, of Chicago. FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D., 
 
 CoL T. W. HIGGINSON, EDMUND MONTGOMERY, M.D., JAMES PARTON, 
 
 FREDERICK MAY HOLLAND, Prof. LESTER F. WARD, 
 
 Prof. HENRY C. ADAMS, RICHARD A. PROCTOR, Mrs. CELIA P. WOOLLEY, 
 E. P. POWELL, Prof. E. D. COPE, C. BILLUPS, 
 
 fien. M. M. TRUMBULL, Mrs. EDNA D. CHENEY, Prof. CALVIN THOMAS. 
 
 D. THEOPHILUS, GOWAN LEA. 
 
 Translations from the most prominent authors of Europe have been procured 
 with their sanction. Essays have been published or may be expected, in good 
 English translations, from ; 
 
 AREAT, BINET, L. BUCHNER, CARUS STERNE, HAECKEL, HERING, 
 
 L. NOIRE, W. PREYER, Th. RIBOT, STEINTHAL, 
 
 CARLVOGT, WILHELM WUNDT, G.H.SCHNEIDER, J. G. VOGT. 
 
 Contents of Recent 'Mumbers of The Open Court. 
 
 THE SIMPLICITY OF LANGUAGE. A'^ 
 
 THE IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. ^ 
 
 PERSONA. ^y* /J. 
 
 Max Muller, In Nos. 9-1 1, 12-14, and 19-20. 
 
 Max Muller's essays must not only be read, they must be stud- 
 ied; and we should be very grateful that the eminent philologist 
 uses so simple language. In spite of all the simplicity of Max 
 Muller's style, it takes much careful study to fathom the depths 
 of his thoughts. 
 
 ORIGIN OF REASON. 
 
 LuDWiG Noire, - - - In No. 33. 
 
 An essay of great importance; will greatly help to explain the 
 views of Max MUller. The same number contains an editorial 
 upon Monism and Philology, in which is discussed the Identity of 
 Language and Thought, the theories of Noir^ and Muller, and 
 the proof with which modern philology has corroborated the mon- 
 istic conception. 
 
Contents of Recent Numbers of The Open Court. 
 
 LANGUAGE. 
 
 E. P. Powell, ... In Nos. 24 and 26. 
 
 This essay of the American scholar should be compared with 
 the essays by Max Miiller. The study of language is of interest 
 to the lawyer as well as the clergyman, the scientist as well as the 
 teacher. 
 
 BODY AND MIND, OR THE DATA OF MORAL PHYSIOLOGY. 
 
 Felix L. Oswald, M. D. - In Nos. 27, 29, 31, 33 and 34. 
 Dr. Oswald treats this subject in the graphic manner so char- 
 acteristic of him. He emphasizes the moral effects of physical 
 causes, attaching to them an importance which by some is re- 
 stricted solely to ^t. physical effects of moral causes. 
 GUSTAV ROBERT KIRCHHOFF. 
 
 Robert VON Helmholtz, - - In No. 27. 
 
 A very instructive essay on the famous discoverer of spectrum 
 . analysis. The same number contains an editorial upon the 
 " Grammarian of the Celestial Language." 
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LOWER COURTS. 
 
 Joseph W. Errant, .... in No. 27. 
 
 The able author, Mr. Joseph W. Errant, points out the short- 
 comings of our lower tribunals, and suggests the means of better- 
 ment and reform. 
 
 GOETHE AND THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS. 
 
 Prof. Calvin Thomas, In Nos. 29 and 31. 
 
 Prof. Calvin Thomas, one of the foremost Goethe scholars of 
 our country, here presents the results of his research in this par- 
 ticular phase of Goethe's intellectual activity. He shows the won- 
 derful universality of the great German poet, who anticipated ideas 
 which have now become recognized axioms of scientific thought. 
 
 KARL THEODOR BAYRHOFFER AND HIS SYSTEM OF " NATU- 
 RALISTIC MONISM." 
 
 Edmund Montgomery, - In Nos. 30, 32, 35 and 36. 
 An exposition of the philosophy of a German scholar and 
 American citizen. 
 
 CONDITIONS OF LIFE. 
 
 Wm. Preyer, - In Nos. 32 and 35. 
 
 The subject is treated with great thoroughness and in a popu- 
 lar style. 
 
 TO ARMS. 
 
 THE POETS OF LIBERTY AND LABOR. 
 
 MAKING SCARCITY. 
 
 Wheelbarrow, - - In Nos. 22, 26 and 34. 
 Wheelbarrow has rapidly gained a well-deserved reputation 
 as an author. He treats the social question from the standpoint 
 of a laborer, and speaks from his own experience. He unites in 
 his writings Old Saxon simplicity, sincerity of heart, the truthful- 
 ness of honesty and warm sympathy for justice and right. 
 
Contents of Recent Numbers of The Open Court. 
 
 APHORISMS. 
 
 Henry Byron, - in No. 28. 
 
 Gems of thought in terse and fitting language. 
 
 UNDERSTANDING ONE'S NEIGHBOR. 
 AN ENGLISH MONIST. 
 
 Xenos Clark, In Nos. 27, 34 and 37. 
 
 The author is weU known as a writer for periodicals; his arti- 
 cles are full of zest and humor. In his contributions to The Open 
 Court we become acquainted with Xenos Clark as a writer in 
 the line of popular philosophy. 
 
 THE SPECIFIC ENERGIES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 
 
 Dr. Ewald Hering, - - - In Nos. 22 and 23. 
 Ewald Hering, Professor of Physiology at the University of 
 Prague— the same to whom the Encyc. Brit, under the heading 
 of Physiology, devotes several columns — presents in this essay, in 
 most popular language, the leading ideas of recent investigations 
 in Physiology. His essay on Memory is contained in Nos. 6 
 and 7. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF PARENTS BY THEIR CHILDREN. 
 THE ANIMAL SOUL AND THE HUMAN SOUL. 
 
 Carus Sterne, In Nos. 22, 23, 37 ff. 
 
 Essays full of fine thought and psychological depth. 
 
 THE FOOL IN THE DRAMA. 
 
 Franz Helbig, - In Nos. 22 and 23. 
 
 Franz Helbig, an able scholar, whose attainments as an author 
 on historical subjects, especially in the domain of the history of 
 civilization, are much appreciated, contrasts in this article folly 
 and wisdom, and shows the philosophical significance of the fool 
 as a character on the stage. 
 
 EVOLUTION AND IDEALISM. 
 
 Prof. E. D. Cope, In No. 23. 
 
 A very able statement of Positivism and scientific inquiry versus 
 the errors of a false Idealism. Prof. Cope treats this subject 
 with perspicuity and vigor. 
 
 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM AND THE CHURCH. 
 THE SCHOLAR AS REFORMER. 
 THE MASSES AS REFORMERS. 
 
 Morrison I. Swift, In Nos. 23 and 32. 
 
 The author of these articles seeks to improve the condition of 
 the laboring masses by asking the church to boldly face the 
 problem, by exhorting the scholar to enlighten them upon the true 
 nature of their situation, and by stimulating them to intelligent 
 efforts in bettering their own condition. 
 
 FOLK-LORE STUDIES. 
 
 L. J. Vance, - In Nos. 22 and 23. 
 
 An interesting treatise on a subject which is at present attract- 
 ing much and deserved attention. 
 
Contents of- Recent Numbers of The Open Court. 
 
 REFLEX MOTIONS. 
 
 G. H. Schneider, - - - In No. 24. 
 
 G. H. Schneider's book, Der Menschliche Wille, is one of the 
 foremost expositions of modern psychological research. The 
 essay on Reflex Motions contains the fundamental propositions 
 of physiological psychology. 
 
 THE VALUE OF DOUBT IN THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 Gen. M. M. Trumbull, - In No. 25. 
 
 It will be interesting to the veterans of 1861-65 to read the 
 article of their famous comrade. The essay of General Trumbull 
 may serve as an introduction to the many accounts and memoirs 
 of the war. Teachers may read the article with their students as 
 an instructive lesson in the methods of historical research. 
 
 Discussions on topics of vital importance have been carried on in the columns of 
 The Open Court. Prof. Georg von Gizycki wrote his essay, Determinism 
 versus Indeterminism, in answer to the views of Prof, W. James (Harvard", 
 Other contributions on this subject: Free ^Vill, a Mechanical Possibility, 
 by Xenos Clark, and The Last Ditch of Dualism, by E. P. Powell, will be 
 published in one of the May or June numbers of The Open Court. 
 
 MONISM AND RELIGION. A Criticism. 
 
 D. Theophilus, - - In No. 30. 
 
 Remarks on the same subject will be found in the editorial of 
 
 No. 38, Prof. L. Biichner on Religion. 
 
 FICTION. 
 
 Commencing with No. a2 is a philosophic novel by Gustav Freytag. In this 
 refined and interesting story the reader becomes acquainted with some strongly 
 marked personalities, and hears from them some rich and rare philosophy. "What 
 is the object of philosophy ? " asks Frau RoUmaus of the Professor. 
 
 "It endeavors to instruct men in the life of their own spirit, and thus to strengthen 
 and improve them." 
 
 In the actions, conversation, and adventures of the characters we see this phil- 
 osophy guiding, teaching and improving them and us. Here through the easy and 
 pleasant method of novel reading we learn the secret inspiration which produces 
 those wonderful phenomena, which hitherto have been considered the mysteries of 
 life; here we see destiny directed and controlled by law, and all the phenomena of 
 natural and physical life are comprehended as phases of one and the same. This 
 monism or conception of the oneness of all life and all nature pervades every page 
 of this wonderful work of fiction. 
 
 The Open Court's definition of Religion is found in a letter of Mr. E. C. 
 Hegeler's, published in No. 25, and in the editorials of No. 24, "Monism and Re- 
 ligion," and of No. 30, "Superstition in Religion and Science," and of No. 38, "Pro- 
 fessor Ludwig Buchner on Religion." 
 
 The editorial of No. 26, " Anarchism and Socialism," is an impartial and ob- 
 jective review of the social question. 
 
 The editorial of No, 25, " Evolution and Immortality," grapples with the prob- 
 lems of death and immortality in their mutual relation and proposes their solution by 
 the evolutionary doctrine, as viewed from the standpoint of Monism.