not utter a word, though able partially to comprehend what was said to him, as he afterwards declared. Here indeed is a most instructive instance of impaired intellect, occurring as it did in a man whose brain was usually in a very active state, and whose mind was highly cultivated. Does it not strongly confirm the belief that, even while the organic instrument of thought was unimpaired, its functions were temporarily suspended?
Another case is that of a man of good literary attainments, who pretended that he could still understand what he read, but who could not discover the mistake when the book was presented to him reversed. There can be no doubt, then, that aphasia unerringly points to a most intimate dependence between language and thought, and that, as Max Müller says, without language there can be no thought.
But why is it that in regard to objects possessing sensible qualities aphasic individuals exhibit no impairment of intellectual power? We will answer, Because with regard to such objects these are their own language, and the functions of the perceptive and ideational centres are as active in their regard as though the faculty of speech were intact. A tree is known by its branches and leaves to the deaf mute as well as it is by its name to those possessing all their faculties. Whatever circumscribes and differentiates an object of thought is its language. For, after all, is not language conventional and arbitrary, the outer symbol of a subjective phenomenon? The symbol may be of any sort whatsoever, but the thought cannot be known without a symbol of some sort. Now, the qualities of sensible objects, in so far as they serve to circumscribe
the objects and to discriminate them from all others, become their language. This is rendered more evident when we reflect that Locke’s theory, according to which sensible objects are but an aggregate of sensible qualities, is generally rejected, and the opinion admitted that under these qualities there resides a true substance impervious to the senses and known to us only as inference from the former. Therefore the sensible qualities are the symbol of the substance identified with it; of course in so far these are but the substance modified in such or such a manner. This is why aphasics find no trouble in forming ideas of material things, though they may forget their names. But why is aphasia ataxic—that is, incapable of co-ordinating words? Because co-ordination expresses the relation between the objects co-ordinated, and relation is not represented, and cannot be represented, by anything in the sensible order. They belong to the purely intellectual order, and the only symbol that existed by which they were known being lost, there remains no longer any means of circumscribing and differentiating them. Paul and Peter may be well known to the aphasic—Paul as such, and Peter as such—because the sensible qualities of both render them recognizable; and not only that, but the different qualities pertaining to both enable him clearly to distinguish the one from the other. But if he is told that Peter is taller than Paul, he understands nothing. And why? Because the proposition implies the relation of comparison, in which there is nothing sensible. Indeed, he perceives Peter to be tall and Paul to be diminutive, but he does not perform the intellectual process called judgment, which is interpreted in
the proposition, Peter is taller than Paul. In like manner, when there is question of purely intellectual conceptions which can be symbolized by nothing sensible except names, the aphasic are incapable of reaching them. Virtue, power, and malice are meaningless sounds in their ears, and equally unintelligible is what these words represent. The reason is because the symbols by which these ideas were conveyed to the mind are lost, and there is nothing left by which virtue can be known or discriminated from power and malice. Whatever circumscribes and differentiates a thought is its language, and this can be done only by a symbol. Now, if we consult our own consciousness, we will find that it is impossible for us to conceive of what is purely intellectual—i.e., possessing no sensible traits—if we lose sight of the word which represents it. Affirmation and negation are of this sort, and it is entirely impossible to disconnect the idea of either from some word or series of words. The idea, indeed, is not the spoken word, but is painted by it as it were on the canvas of the mind, and hence was called by Aristotle the word of the mind. All this is attested in the case of aphasics. The language-mechanism of the brain is disarranged; there is forgetfulness of words, accompanied by inability to arrange them in proper order so as to be remembered; the ideational centre remains intact, but is inoperative with regard to such thoughts as have their sole symbol in words.
It is true that some aphasic individuals retain for a time certain impressions which belong to the purely intellectual order; but this can be accounted for only by supposing that the brain centres of ideation are endowed with certain registering
powers capable of retaining impressions for a short while after their active operation is suspended. But when the disease is of long continuance those impressions gradually fade, and the patient is reduced to the condition of an untaught deaf mute. He has lost the formulæ of thought, and therefore cannot think. Trousseau says: “A great thinker, as well as a great mathematician, cannot devote himself to transcendental speculations unless he uses formulæ and a thousand material accessories which aid his mind, relieve his memory, and impart greater strength to thought by giving it greater precision.” But where the sole “material accessory,” as Trousseau calls it, is absent, how can a person think? We use the word in a higher sense; for children incapable of speech, and animals, exercise a certain amount of thought in respect to surrounding objects; but thinking, in the sense of reasoning, abstracting, and comparing, outlies their capacity, just as it does that of aphasic individuals. “Without language,” says Schelling, “it is impossible to conceive philosophical, nay, even any human, consciousness; and hence the foundations of language could not have been laid consciously. Nevertheless, the more we analyze language, the more clearly we see that it surpasses in depth the most conscious workings of the mind.” And Hegel says: “It is in names that we think.” This exactly explains what occurs in the case of aphasics. The principles of science, the sequence of ideas, the links of an argument, are not understood by them; for they are, as children and animals, capable merely of receiving the impressions which material objects make on their sensory organs. It is true that a few aphasics have been known to be expert
chess-players; and though this is as hard to account for as the apparent feats of reasoning accomplished by animals of the lower order, still we would no more rank expertness at such a game among the higher attributes of reason than we would the sagacity of a dog or of an elephant.
This point is well touched upon by Trousseau, who says: “I believe that the same thing obtains in metaphysics as in geometry. In the latter case a man may vaguely conceive space and infinity without any precision or measure; but if he wishes to think of the properties of space, and more particularly of the special properties of the figures which bound space—as, say, conic sections—it is impossible that his mind does not immediately see the curves proper to a parabola, a hyperbola, and an ellipse. In metaphysics, on the other hand, I believe that a man cannot think of the special properties of beauty, justice, and truth, for instance, without immediately giving a material form, as it were, to his thoughts, by using concrete examples, and without associating words together—words which represent concrete ideas, and which then stand in the same relation to particular metaphysical ideas as figures do to determinate geometric ideas.”
The same may be said of universal ideas. These are, subjectively viewed, mere concepts of the mind; objectively they have a foundation in the object. Now, that object is present to the aphasic, and he recognizes it by its sensible properties; but when there is question of viewing one or two properties as possessed in common by a number of objects, he finds himself unequal to the task. In a word, he cannot generalize, and this is one of the highest acts of reason.