sheer philosophical polytheism to speak of sense, mind, reason, intellect, understanding, as so many independent powers, with limits not very sharply defined; and however orthodox that polytheism has become, it is never too late to protest against it. In religious mythology too, names which were at first intended as cognomina only, have been changed into nomina, and at last into independent Numina. A man is not, however, to be called an heretic because he does not believe in Hekatebolos as a being different from Apollo, or in Charis as a goddess different from Aphrodite, nor an Atheist because he believes in one God only. Nor is a philosopher to be called hard names because he does not believe in mind, reason, understanding, or intellect, as so many independent substances, powers, faculties, or goddesses, or because he sees in all of these but the different manifestations of one and the same being, the conscious Monon.

Let it not be supposed that I am so bigoted Monist as to wish to see all these names banished from our philosophical dictionaries. I do not wish to see them banished, I only wish to see them purified, or restored to their original meaning. I myself use sense, when speaking of the Monon, so far as it may be conceived as simply receiving; I use imagination, for want of a better name, when I speak of the Monon, so far as it can be conceived as forming percepts; I use intellect rather than reason, when I speak of the Monon, so far as it can be conceived as simply conceiving; and I use language, when I speak of the Monon, so far as it can be conceived as simply speaking.

I do not object to the use of the word memory,

if we want to speak of the permanence of the work done by sensation, perception, conception and naming, and if some philosophers prefer to speak of the faculty of memory, I cannot consider it as high treason. It seems to me mere pedantry to rave against such a word as faculty, a term which is extremely useful and perfectly harmless, if only we bear in mind that facultas, the opposite of difficultas, is no more than facilitas, a modus faciendi, as agility is a modus agendi, and in that sense quite as good a word as function, which has found more favour of late in the eyes of philosophical purists. We may safely enjoy the wealth of language, accumulated by our fathers, if only we take care not to accept a coin for more or less than it is really worth. We must weigh our words as the ancients often weighed their coins, and not be deceived by their current value.

It is very easy to coin new terms, but they often make confusion but worse confounded. Philosophers now speak of different forms of realisation, different aspects and different modalities of psychic force, but all these terms will require the protection of a definition, and will no more escape abuse than the old faculties of the mind. As rain and sunshine were changed into gods and demons, the faculties of the mind also have sometimes been treated like greeneyed monsters seated in the dark recesses of our Self. But they only frighten those who do not know what names are made of. To the true etymologist they are no more than what they are meant to be.

There is one word which I should like to see reintroduced into our philosophical phrase- Logos. ology, and that is Logos. It meant originally gathering and combining, and so became the proper

name of all that we call reason. But it has th immense advantage of also meaning language, and thus telling us that the process of gathering which begins with sensation and passes on to perception and conception reaches its full perfection only when it has become incarnate in the Logos or the word.

CHAPTER II.

THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE.

IF our analysis of the human mind is right, if all that we call thought finds its last consummation in language, the next question, namely how the growth of the human mind can be studied, is easily answered: it must be studied in the history of language.

Words the

signs of

concepts.

This conclusion, which after the discoveries of the Science of Language seems inevitable, might have been arrived at long ago. It has always been considered as one of the glories of Locke's philosophy that he established the fact that names are not the signs of things, but in their origin always the signs of concepts. It is true that Hobbes1 had already enunciated the same important truth, namely that words are signs of concepts and not of things. But that would in no way detract from Locke's merit, for truth is common property, and it is chiefly the use which a philosopher makes of any given truth which secures him his position in the history of philosophy. I know quite well that Mill considered this distinction between words as the signs of concepts,

1 Computation or Logic, chap. ii. See Mill's Logic, book i chap. ii.

and words as the signs of things as of little consequence, but this must depend altogether on the use which can be made of it. To my mind Locke's insistance on words being the signs of concepts, and not of things, is of the greatest importance for everything that is called philosophy. And even Mill, though he argues against this theory, frequently adopts it unawares. When Mill says1 that a word ought to be considered as the name of that which we intend to be understood,' this is clearly our concept, and not the thing apart from our concept. Mill admits that we know nothing of the inmost nature of fire and water, that heat is not like the steam of boiling water nor the feeling of cold like the east wind. But it is of these subjective sensations that our concepts are made up. Why then should Mill call it a capital error that the investigation of truth consists in contemplating and handling our ideas' or conceptions of things, instead of the things themselves? he who in the same chapter declares that a previous mental conception of facts is an indispensable condition' of all thought and belief? In another place Mill says, 'that in using a proper name we put a mark, not indeed upon the object itself, but, so to speak, upon the idea of the object.' But why 'so to speak,' considering that we can do nothing else? If we use a general name, if we say Dog, do we mean the thing, or our concept of it? Is there anything corresponding to Dog? Is not Dog, like every other name, the name of a thing that cannot possibly exist? Who ever saw a dog? We may see a

4

Ib. i. 3. 7.

4 Ib. i. 2. 5.