However, in confidence, I may whisper that they want to conjure up the thought of a dog.

Now the word dog is determinately suppressed; hound, cur, and all the rest, too, are strictly excluded. Then begins the work. Rise up, thou quadruped with ears and a wagging tail!' But alas! the charm is broken already. Quadruped, ears, tail, wagging, all are words which cannot be admitted.

Silence is restored, and a new effort begins. This time there is to be nothing about quadruped, or animal, or hairy brute. The inner consciousness sinks lower, and at the last there rises a being to be developed gradually and insensibly into a dog. But alas! 'being' too is a word, and as soon as it is whispered, all the nameless dogs vanish into nothing.

A last appeal, however, remains. No animal, no being is to be talked of; complete silence is restored; no breath is drawn. There is something coming near, the ghost appears, when suddenly he is greeted by the recognising self with Bow-wow, bow-wow! Then, at last, the effort is given up as hopeless, the eyes are opened, the ears unstopped, the breath is allowed to rise again, and as soon as the word dog is uttered, the ghost appears, the concept is there, we know what we mean, we think and say Dog. Let any one try to think without words, and, if he is honest, he will confess that the process which he has gone through is somewhat like the one I have just tried to describe.

But even thus the contest is not given up. If neither arguments nor experiments avail, Multiplicity are there not facts, it has been said, to of languages. show that thought must be independent of language?

Does not the fact that there are different languages prove at once that language must be something different from thought? This sounds indeed very plausible, and the same fact was appealed to by Locke, though for a different purpose, namely in order to prove that words must have been chosen arbitrarily as marks of thoughts, because otherwise there would have been but one language on earth. The same answer which was given to Locke will also serve as an answer to those who imagine that the variety of languages proves that language is something different from thought.

It has been shown that words, though not being what they are by necessity (pure), are neither what they are by mere chance (0ére), but that every one can give account of itself why it is what it is. There is perfect freedom in the formation of words, but that freedom is determined by reason. There is freedom, as we shall see, even in the formation of roots (concepts), and still greater freedom in the formation of words, and it is that very freedom which not only explains, but really necessitates the diversity of languages, or the dialectic growth of words.

Different families, tribes, and nations are perfectly free to form different concepts, such as digging, rowing, striking, and the phonetic types which convey these concepts may likewise vary ad infinitum. Still greater is the freedom with which from these phonetic types or roots new names for new concepts may be derived, so that in course of time a confusion of tongues, so far from being miraculous, becomes inevitable. If in one family the father was called nourisher or protector, pa-ter, in another begetter, TÓKEUS, if the father called the moon the brilliant

Luna, but the son called it Mênê, the measurer, we should have the beginning of that dialectic growth which would end in a confusion of tongues, or in the constitution of various national languages. If we can have synonyms in one and the same language, nothing is more natural than that we should have dialects, and, if we can once account for different dialects, we have accounted for the multiplicity of languages likewise. We can watch the same process in modern languages. If we suppose that in Latin words and thoughts were identical, does it prove that they are so no longer, and that language is something different from thought, because Latin has been modified dialectically till it became Italian, French, and Spanish? In some cases Italian, French, and Spanish words have the same meaning as their Latin prototypes. In other cases their meaning has been either extended or restricted, but the continuity in the growth of thought and in the growth of language has never been broken, and we find as little in Italian as in Latin any word which cannot give a full account both of its sound and of its meaning. If we had but one language for all mankind, that language would probably contain various words for the same concept, and various concepts for the same word. It would contain what all languages contain, Homonyma and Polyonyma1. But Homonyma and Polyonyma do not prove that concepts and words are different things, but on the contrary that every shade of meaning can be embodied in language. Day and night, for instance, may be called by twenty different names according to the twenty different ways in

1 See Lect. on the Science of Language, vol. ii. p. 390.

which they may be conceived either as bright or dark, as warm or cold, as rousing or calming, as good or evil, as sisters or brothers, as friends or enemies. The same mountain in Switzerland is called by the people on the South side Blackhorn, by the people on the North side Whitehorn, because it is covered with snow on the North, and free from snow on the South. Here we have a polyonymous mountain, while all the mountains in Switzerland which, because they are never free from snow, are called Whitehorn, are synonymous mountains. This, so far from proving that words are independent of concepts, shows that everything is named in exactly as many ways as it is conceived. In Ich denke, also bin ich, we have exactly as many acts of thought as in Cogito, ergo sum; their different phonetic form is nothing but the result of an historical, and generally perfectly intelligible evolution. The multiplicity of languages therefore, so far from proving the independent existence of thought and language, proves on the contrary their close connection, because it shows that the slightest variation in our conception of things brings about a variation in language. Luna, no doubt, is intended as a name for the same object as Mênê, but if we conceive that object as brilliant, it becomes to us Luna, if we conceive it as measurer of time, it becomes Mênê. In later times the speakers of Greek and Latin were not always aware of the conceptual meaning of these words. Words had then become traditional and almost algebraic signs. But the people who framed these words were aware of their conceptual purpose,

1 Berlepsch, Schweizerkunde, p. 16.

and could have told us what we now have to discover with great effort for ourselves, that the variety of words and the multiplicity of languages are the best proof of the conceptual origin of language, and of the identity of thought and speech.

A final fact adduced against the theory that it is impossible to think without language, Deaf and which was formerly very popular, is that Dumb People. deaf and dumb people cannot speak, and yet can think. At present, however, it is well known that, if they can think and reason, they have learnt it from those who use words, only substituting other signs for their words and concepts; while if they are not so taught, they never rise beyond what we may call thinking even in animals, nay, often remain entirely imbecile. I may cite the authoritative words of Professor Huxley: A man born dumb, notwithstanding his great cerebral mass and his inheritance of strong intellectual 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.' And again: A race of dumb men, deprived of all communication with those who could speak, would be little indeed removed from the brutes. The moral and intellectual difference between them and ourselves would be practically infinite, though the naturalist should not be able to find a single shadow even of specific structural difference'.'

I hope I have thus answered everything that has been or that can possibly be adduced against what I call the fundamental tenet of the Science of Lan

See Horatio Hale, The Origin of Languages, 1886, pp. 36, 42; Kant, Anthropologie, § 16.