The Origin of Thought and Speech

by M. Moncalm

It is to be regretted that our modern languages have nothing to replace the word “mind,” such as there is in the Sanscrit language, meaning “working within.” As soon as we speak of mind we cannot help thinking of an independent something dwelling in our body, whereas by mind I mean nothing but that working which is going on within, embracing sensation, perception, conception, and naming, and the worker who accomplishes this is the Ego.

Thus the Ego means nothing but consciousness of itself.

There is one word which it would be desirable to reintroduce into our philosophical phraseology and that is Logos; it means the word and the thought combined. Logos is a single intellectual act under two aspects; it is an untranslatable word. We were told at school that it was strange that the Greeks should not have distinguished between Logos Speech and Logos Reason, and it was represented as a progress toward clearer thought that later writers should have distinguished between Logos the spoken word and Logos the inner thought.

But the Greeks were right: no doubt it may be an advantage to be able to distinguish between two sides of the same thing, but that advantage is more than neutralised if such distinction leads us to suppose that these two sides are two different things. Let us avoid the very common error that things which can be distinguished can therefore claim an independent existence; we can distinguish between an orange and its peel, but no orange can grow without peel, nor peel without the fruit.

Let it not be supposed that I am such a bigoted upholder of the unity of the Ego as to wish to see all these names banished from our philosophical dictionaries. Let us use the word Sense when speaking of the Ego as perceiving. Let us use Intellect when the Ego is simply conceiving; and the word language when it is speaking; let us even use the word memory when we wish to speak of the partial permanence of the work done by sensation, perception, and conception; and let us use Reason or Reasoning for the process which produces what the logicians call propositions and syllogisms; but let us never forget that neither to remember nor to reason implies the possession of a thing called reason or memory. All our mental life will remain just the same though we deny the existence of the terms which obscure our vision; let us hold fast to the existence of the Ego, it exists in its entity, it only is the worker, and it receives its highest expression in the Logos.

This truth, that thought and language are inseparable, that thought without language is as impossible as language without thought has only recently been affirmed by comparative philologists. Many learned writers are still unwilling to admit that ideas without words are impossible though at the same time they are quite willing to concede that words are impossible without concepts.[32]

We possess an immense number of books on logic, yet we are met everywhere by the same vagueness on this subject. John Stuart Mill speaks of language as one of the principal elements or helps of thought, but he never mentions any other instruments. This lack is probably owing to the unfortunate influence of modern languages which have two words, the one for language, the other for thought; this gives the impression that there is a substantial instead of an apparent difference between the two; it is also owing to the dislike of philosophers to allow that all which is most lofty, most spiritual in us should be dependent on such miserable crutches as words are supposed to be. Yet it is evident that we cannot advance one step towards philosophy without acknowledging the fact that we think in words and words only. This thought would be less difficult to grasp if we defined clearly what are thoughts. Sensation, pain, pleasure, dreaming, or willing cannot be called true thought, but variations of inward activity; in the same way as shrieks, howls, or even the sounds of real words, taken from a foreign language, are no more language than our emotions are thoughts. The word Logos expresses this, since it had originally the two meanings of gathering and combining, and so became the proper name of all that we call reason; but as it also means language, it tells us that the process of gathering and combining, which begins with sensation and passes on to perception and conception, reaches its full perfection only when the inward activity takes form in the Logos or speech.

Language therefore is not as has been often imagined, thought plus sound; but thought is really language minus sound; words are the external symbols of thought, sounding symbols when we articulate in a loud voice, but mute when we confine ourselves to merely thinking them, since it is a fact that we think in words, and it is not possible to think otherwise. The possession of a language is shown even in the tracing of whole sentences by ideographic signs, which need not be pronounced at all, or as in the astronomical signs in our almanacks which may be pronounced differently in different languages: or we may substitute algebraic signs for words; we could as well calculate without numbers as apply our reason without words I have freely and fully admitted that thoughts may exist without words, because other signs may take the place of words between persons speaking different languages possibly between deaf and dumb people. Five fingers held up are quite sufficient to convey the concept of five, thus the hand may become the sign for five, both hands for ten, hands and feet for twenty. In America and Australia where many dialects are spoken this method has attained a great degree of perfection, but we notice that in all cases under review each one thinks in his own language and then translates his thought into pantomime.

A final fact adduced against the theory that it is impossible to think without language, which was very popular, is that deaf and dumb people cannot speak, and yet can think; this argument has no great value, as it is now averred that “a man born dumb who had always lived among deaf and dumb people, and had not been taught to express thoughts by signs would be capable of few higher intellectual manifestations than a monkey or an elephant; and this in spite of the fact that no naturalist could distinguish any difference between the size of their brains and those belonging to men who could speak.” For deaf mutes to be able to think and reason, they must have learned from those who use words, then only can they substitute other signs for their words and concepts. Still Professor Huxley accords to these unfortunate men certain intellectual heritages derived from their parents.

These are some of the chief points in the science of language. The fundamental law which this science lays down of the unity of thought and speech is a torch which may throw light on the origin of man.