And when once the Logos had entered into the mind of man, and made him man, it slowly but surely permeated his whole mental being. Hence language is not only involved in our concepts, but also in our percepts, in so far as they are ours. Professor Max Müller goes so far as to question whether an unnamed percept is possible. And adult intellectual man is so permeated by the Logos that I am not prepared to disagree with him when he says that he has no unnamed perceptions. Nevertheless, the actions of the speechless child and our dumb companions show that they (children and animals) are capable of forming mental products of the perceptual order. But here, once more, we must not forget that it is in terms of these adult human percepts that we interpret the percepts of children and animals; that in doing so we cannot divest ourselves of the garment of our conceptual thought, that we cannot banish the Logos, and that, therefore, these percepts other than ours cannot be identical with ours, though they are of the same order, saving their conceptual element. We may put the matter thus—
| (1) x × dog-mind | } = { | Percepts to be interpreted in termsof (4), being analogous thereto butnot identical therewith. |
| (2) x × cat-mind | ||
| (3) x × infant-mind | ||
| (4) x × adult human mind | = | the percepts of psychologists,named or namable. |
If the views that I have thus very briefly sketched (for I have no right to offer an opinion on a question of linguistic science) be correct, language has made analysis, isolation, and conceptual thought possible. But there may have been a transitory stage when the word-signs stood for predominants, not yet for isolates. Granting the possibility or probability of this, I am prepared to follow Professor Max Müller in his contention that language and thought, from the close of that stage onward, are practically inseparable, and have advanced hand-in-hand. It is true that I can now think out a chemical or physical problem without the use of words—the stages of the experimental work being visualized, just as a chess-player may think out a game in pictures of the successive moves. But, historically, I believe the power to do this has been acquired through language; and if I am able temporarily to isolate and analyze without language, thought being at times a little ahead of naming, yet the fact remains that language is absolutely necessary to make such advances good, if not for me, at any rate for man.
And here I would make one more suggestion. Professor Max Müller, as the result of analysis of the Aryan language, finds a comparatively small number of roots which he says are in all cases symbolic of concepts. Yes, for us now they symbolize concepts. But in their inception may they not have been symbolic of predominants? Have we not in them the signs for predominants not yet converted for the primitive utterers into isolates? May not these have been the stepping-stones from the perceptual predominants of animal man, to the conceptual isolates of rational man? Or, to modify the analogy, may they not have been the embryonic wings by which the human race were floated off from the things of sense into the free but tenuous air of abstract thought?
Lastly, before taking leave of the subject of this chapter, I am most anxious that it should not be thought that, in contending that intelligence is not reason, I wish in any way to disparage intelligence. Nine-tenths at least of the actions of average men are intelligent and not rational. Do we not all of us know hundreds of practical men who are in the highest degree intelligent, but in whom the rational, analytic faculty is but little developed? Is it any injustice to the brutes to contend that their inferences are of the same order as those of these excellent practical folk? In any case, no such injustice is intended; and if I deny them self-consciousness and reason, I grant to the higher animals perceptions of marvellous acuteness and intelligent inferences of wonderful accuracy and precision—intelligent inferences in some cases, no doubt, more perfect even than those of man, who is often distracted by many thoughts.
CHAPTER X.
THE FEELINGS OF ANIMALS: THEIR APPETENCES AND EMOTIONS.
There is one aspect of the mental processes of men and animals that we have so far left unnoticed—the aspect of feeling, the aspect of pleasure and pain. Quite distinct from, and yet intimately associated with, our perception of a beautiful scene, is the pleasure we derive therefrom; and quite distinct from, and yet inseparably bound up with, our perception of a discordant clang, is the painful effect that it produces.
We have, however, no separate organs for the appreciation of pleasure and pain. These feelings arise out of, and are bound up with, our sensations, our perceptions, and especially with the conscious exercise of our bodily activities. There may be, at any rate in some cases, separate nerves for the appreciation of the pleasurable and the painful; but even if this be so, these shades of feeling are so closely associated with our other activities, mental and bodily, that we may for the present regard them simply as the accompaniments of these activities.
The question has been raised and much discussed whether all our activities are accompanied by some shade or colouring of feeling, pleasurable on the one hand, or painful on the other; or whether some of these activities may not be indifferent in this respect, affording us neither pleasure nor pain. Put in this way, I think we may say that there may be activities which are thus indifferent. But if it be asked whether, in addition to the pleasurable and painful feelings, there is a third class of feelings, which we may call indifferent or neutral, I am inclined to answer it in the negative. I hold that every feeling, as such, must belong either to the painful or pleasurable class, and that if the pleasurable and painful, so to speak, exactly balance each other, then feeling, as such, does not emerge into consciousness at all. For, as Lotze says, "We apply the name 'feelings' exclusively to states of pleasure and pain, in contrast with sensations as [the elements of] indifferent perceptions of a certain content."