[110] On the nature of such speechless thought see Venn, Empirical Logic, p. 147.
If now we turn from the developed to the undeveloped mind, and ask whether children think apart from the use of language, we find the question exceedingly difficult. It has been alleged that a born mute reached prior to his mastery of a deaf-mute language the highly abstract idea of maker or creator and applied this to the world or sum of objects about him.[111] It must be borne in mind however, that born mutes make a certain spontaneous use of articulate sounds or signs, and such articulations, though unintelligible to others, and not even heard by themselves, may be of great assistance in carrying out the process of Abstraction. It must be further remembered that a child understands others' words and may probably make some internal use of them as signs before he proceeds to imitatively articulate them.
[111] See a very interesting account of the experience of a born mute by Prof. S. Porter, in an article "Is Thought Possible without Language?" in the Princeton Review, January, 1881.
Lastly with respect to the lower animals, while it must be admitted that they display something closely resembling the germ of general thinking, it is manifest that we cannot in their case, be certain of the degree of clear consciousness of generality attained. The actions of a fox caught in a difficulty and inventing a way of escape seem indistinguishable from those of a man thinking by help of general ideas and general rules: yet the mental process may after all be non-ceptual, and pictorial. It seems safe therefore to conclude that apart from verbal or other general signs the full consciousness of generality does not arise.[112]
[112] It must be remembered that some of the most intelligent of the lower animals, e. g. ants, have a system of tactual signs analogous to our language. On the whole subject of the germ of linguistic and conceptional power in animals, see Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, Chap. v and following.
Psychological Function of General Names.—A name is commonly defined as a mark or sign by the help of which the idea of a thing may be called up in our own mind or in the mind of another. Signs are either self-explaining, as in the case of a drawing, or an imitative gesture, or conventionally attached to objects as the larger number of linguistic signs or names, the symbols used in music, etc.[113] Language signs consist either of articulated sounds or other percept-producing movements, as the finger movements[114] used by the deaf and dumb.
[113] Articulate sounds so far as imitative (onomatopoetic) words, are of course to be classed with self-explaining signs.
[114] On the general function and the possible varieties of language-signs, tone-language, gesture-language, etc., see Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, Chap. v and following. Cf. Venn, Empirical Logic, Chap. vi.
A name may be given to one thing (proper name) or to a general class (common or general name). In either case, as explained above, the name psychologically considered is the expression or indication of a similarity among our percepts. To name a thing is thus the outward manifestation of a process of assimilation.
The name (articulation-sound complex) becomes attached to the idea it stands for by a process of contiguous integration. Looking at it as accompanying and perfecting the process of assimilation, we may say that a name, whether as employed by ourselves or as heard used by others, becomes specially associated with, and so expressive of, some similar feature or features of our perceptual experience. Thus the name 'home' specially emphasises the recurring or constant features of the child's surroundings, the name 'horse' the common features of structure in the objects so named. The name thus becomes specially attached to, and so a mark of the effects of superposition of common presentative elements in our experience.