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.