tions out of comparatively few words, just as its thousands of words are constructed out of some twenty or thirty elementary sounds or letters.

Language, then, deals only with groups or classes of things; and the process of classification necessarily precedes the formation of language. This theory explains at once the most striking deficiency of the lower animals, — their incapacity of using language. As they have only Intuitions, the only names which they can apply or understand are Proper Names, — the appellations of this or that particular thing. These they can understand. A dog can easily be taught to know the name of his master, even when pronounced by another person. They can even be taught to know the names of particular places and buildings, so that they can understand and obey, when they are told to go to the barn, the river, or the house.* But it is always the particular barn, or other object, with which they have been taught to associate this sound or significant gesture as its Proper Name. Carry the animal to a distant place, near which may be a set of corresponding objects, and then tell him to go to the barn or the river, and he will not understand the order as applying to the new set of objects, but will set off immediately for the old building or place, with whose Proper Name alone he is familiar. As Kant remarks, a dog knows (kennt) his master, but does not recognize him through his peculiar Marks or Attributes (erkennt), and thereby properly discriminate him from other persons.

These Intuitions, which are common to man and the

* In Mr. Lockhart's amusing account of Sir Walter Scott's first favorite dog, "Camp," he says: "As the servant was laying the cloth for dinner, he would address the dog lying on his mat by the fire, and say, 'Camp, my good fellow, the Sheriff's coming home by the ford [or by the hill],' and the sick animal would immediately bestir himself to welcome his master, going out at the back door or the front door, according to the direction given, and advancing as far as he was able."

brute, and which are mere impressions passively received by the mind, may be stored up in the memory, but out of consciousness, as fruits of experience; they may be subsequently recalled to consciousness, or reproduced, either by casual association or voluntary reminiscence; and, when so recalled, they may be re-presented, or pictured forth to the mind, by an act of that faculty which we usually call Imagination. Brutes, as well as men, are capable of all these acts of Memory, Reproduction, and Imagination, when exercised upon Intuitions alone; for they are all implied in dreaming, and a dog asleep upon a rug before the fire often shows, by his barking and growling, that he has vivid dreams. Man can remember and reproduce Concepts or Thoughts, as well as Intuitions. Imagination, whether in man or the brute, is concerned only with Intuitions, as it pictures forth nothing but definite images of this or that particular object or event. Thoughts properly so called are conceived or understood, but cannot be imagined.*

Agreeably to what has been said, the mental process of forming Concepts may be reduced to three steps, viz.: 1. Comparison, whereby, among many attributes or objects, we determine which are similar and which are different or unlike.

2. Combination or Reduction to Unity, whereby, for instance, this, that, and the other color are recognized and identified as what is usually called "one and the same shade or hue of red; or several quadrupeds are recognized as all belonging to one class called horse.

3. Abstraction, whereby we separate and throw aside

*If this simple distinction had been made, the old dispute between the Nominalists and the Realists could never have arisen. The former clearly perceived that Concepts could not be imagined; the Realists knew very well that, in thinking, our thoughts were concerned with something more than mere words. Both were right.

This word, according to its etymology (abs-traho, to draw off from), is

-i. e. put out of Thought-the dissimilar or incongruous attributes which, if retained, would prevent the other elements from flowing together into unity.

Each of these steps evidently involves an act of Judgment,—that is, of that function of the Understanding or Thinking Faculty whereby we affirm or deny one Intuition or Concept of another. Hence, we may either consider Judgments as the elements of Concepts, or Concepts as the elements of Judgments. Logicians generally have treated of the functions of Conception or Simple Apprehension first, and those of Judgment afterwards; and, as this arrangement is in some respects more convenient, I shall follow their example, though strict method would perhaps require this order to be reversed.

All men are capable of comparison, and of discerning those similarities on which the formation of Concepts depends. But it does not so readily appear how many different persons are naturally led to form the same Concepts, according as circumstances render them familiar with similar classes of things. This is well explained by Dressler. Before the elements which are common to the constituent Intuitions can be really united into Concepts, they must be excited in consciousness simultaneously, or in immediate succession; if they arose only separately, and at intervals, like disjoined fragments, there would be no mutual attraction to draw them together. But when thus brought before the mind at the same time, the synthesis of their common elements into one Concept is a perfectly natural process, in which we need no guidance, "as they flow together by a sort of spontaneous attraction for each other,

properly applied to the dissimilar elements which are put aside or abandoned, though, until recently, logicians used it to designate the process of retaining and combining the similar elements. Sir W. Hamilton would say that we prescind the similar which is retained, and abstract the different which is thrown off.

any

each of them being the object of a livelier and clearer consciousness than of the dissimilar elements. For example; if I see at once, or in quick succession, six different trees, I perceive their similar properties-i. e. root, trunk, branches, etc.-six times over, being once for each tree, and thus have a livelier or stronger consciousness of them than I have of those which, as dissimilar or peculiar to one tree, I perceive only once. Moreover, for the very reason that these common elements are similar. that is, as they have fewer points of divergence or contrast- they more easily coalesce and melt into one Concept." As Hamilton remarks, “the qualities which by comparison are judged similar are already, by this process, identified in consciousness; for they are only judged similar inasmuch as they produce in us indiscernible effects."

But this is not all. "The Concept thus formed by an abstraction of the resembling from the non-resembling qualities of objects would again fall back into the confusion and infinitude from which it has been called out, were it not rendered permanent for consciousness by being fixed and ratified in a verbal sign. Hence, Language is necessary, not only that we may communicate our Thoughts to others, but that we may permanently retain and readily use these Thoughts for our own purposes. Concepts are factitious units, and the particular attributes which constitute them are somewhat arbitrarily selected, being more or less numerous, and having greater or less resemblance, according to circumstances. A Concept, as we have already remarked, cannot be pictured in Imagination; and the presence of one of the real objects included under it does not necessarily suggest the particular attributes out of which it was formed, to the exclusion of others perhaps equally prominent to the eye. Hence, a Name must be given to it, which will be, of course, a Common Name for all the individuals contained under it; or the factitious

aggregate will be dissolved and lost to memory almost as soon as formed. The name preserves the unity of the aggregate just as it was originally constituted, precisely as a cord holds a bundle of things together, and enables us to handle many objects as if they were but one. The Memory is then burdened with the retention only of one word, which, when recalled, by the law of association will suggest its meaning, instead of being urged to remember a considerable number of attributes, which can neither be separately or collectively pictured in the Imagination. An Intuition, on the other hand, needs not to be designated by a Name, as the presence of the object immediately excites it anew in its original perfection, and Imagination can re-present it almost as adequately and vividly as the reality. But the Concept can neither be retained in mind, nor, so to speak, readily manipulated in Thought, without the aid of a verbal sign.

This mutual dependence of Thought and Language, each bearing all the imperfections and perfections of the other, has been admirably illustrated by Hamilton.

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Though, in general, we must hold that language, as the product and correlative of thought, must be viewed as posterior to the act of thinking itself, on the other hand, it must be admitted, that we could never have risen above the very lowest degrees in the scale of thought without the aid of signs. A sign is necessary to give stability to our intellectual progress, to establish each step in our advance as a new starting-point for our advance to another beyond.

"A country may be overrun by an armed host, but it is only conquered by the establishment of fortresses. Words are the fortresses of thought. They enable us to realize our dominion over what we have already overrun in thought, to make every intellectual conquest the basis of operations for others still beyond. Or another illustra