Classical literature; Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
Thus far we have been speaking of men, rather in the points in which
they resemble animals than in the points in which they differ from
them. The animal too has memory in various degrees, and the elements
of imagination, if, as appears to be the case, he dreams. How far their
powers or instincts are educated by the circumstances of their lives
or by intercourse with one another or with mankind, we cannot precisely
tell. They, like ourselves, have the physical inheritance of form,
scent, hearing, sight, and other qualities or instincts. But they
have not the mental inheritance of thoughts and ideas handed down by
tradition, 'the slow additions that build up the mind' of the human
race. And language, which is the great educator of mankind, is wanting
in them; whereas in us language is ever present--even in the infant the
latent power of naming is almost immediately observable. And therefore
the description which has been already given of the nascent power of
the faculties is in reality an anticipation. For simultaneous with their
growth in man a growth of language must be supposed. The child of two
years old sees the fire once and again, and the feeble observation of
the same recurring object is associated with the feeble utterance of the
name by which he is taught to call it. Soon he learns to utter the name
when the object is no longer there, but the desire or imagination of it
is present to him. At first in every use of the word there is a colour
of sense, an indistinct picture of the object which accompanies it. But
in later years he sees in the name only the universal or class word, and
the more abstract the notion becomes, the more vacant is the image
which is presented to him. Henceforward all the operations of his mind,
including the perceptions of sense, are a synthesis of sensations,
words, conceptions. In seeing or hearing or looking or listening the
sensible impression prevails over the conception and the word. In
reflection the process is reversed--the outward object fades away into
nothingness, the name or the conception or both together are everything.
Language, like number, is intermediate between the two, partaking of the
definiteness of the outer and of the universality of the inner world.
For logic teaches us that every word is really a universal, and only
condescends by the help of position or circumlocution to become the
expression of individuals or particulars. And sometimes by using words
as symbols we are able to give a 'local habitation and a name' to the
infinite and inconceivable.
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