Before concluding I should wish to deal a little more fully with
Professor Max Muller's contention that there can be no reason
without language, and no language without reason. Surely when two
practised pugilists are fighting, parrying each other's blows, and
watching keenly for an unguarded point, they are thinking and
reasoning very subtly the whole time, without doing so in words.
The machination of their thoughts, as well as its expression, is
actual--I mean, effectuated and expressed by action and deed, not
words. They are unaware of any logical sequence of thought that
they could follow in words as passing through their minds at all.
They may perhaps think consciously in words now and again, but such
thought will be intermittent, and the main part of the fighting will
be done without any internal concomitance of articulated phrases.
Yet we cannot doubt that their action, however much we may
disapprove of it, is guided by intelligence and reason; nor should
we doubt that a reasoning process of the same character goes on in
the minds of two dogs or fighting-cocks when they are striving to
master their opponents.
Do we think in words, again, when we wind up our watches, put on our
clothes, or eat our breakfasts? If we do, it is generally about
something else. We do these things almost as much without the help
of words as we wink or yawn, or perform any of those other actions
that we call reflex, as it would almost seem because they are done
without reflection.
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