Thought without Words

Abstract

THERE appears to be some ambiguity about this matter as discussed in the correspondence which has recently taken place in your columns. In the first instance Mr. Galton understood Prof. Max Muller to have argued that in no individual human mind can any process of thought be ever conducted without the mental rehearsal of words, or the verbum mentale of the Schoolmen. Now, although this is the view which certainly appears to pervade the Professor's work on “The Science of Thought,” there is one passage in that work, and several passages in his subsequent correspondence with Mr. Galton, which express quite a different view—namely, that when a definite structure of conceptual ideation has been built up by the aid of words, it may afterwards persist independently of such aid; the scaffolding was required for the original construction of the edifice, but not for its subsequent stability. That these two views are widely different may be shown by taking any one of the illustrations from the NATURE correspondence. In answer to Mr. Galton, Prof. Max Muller says, “It is quite possible that you may teach deaf-and-dumb people dominoes; but deaf-and-dumb people, left to themselves, do not invent dominoes, and that makes a great difference. Even so simple a game as dominoes would be impossible without names and their underlying concepts.” Now, assuredly it does “make a great difference” whether we are supporting the view that dominoes could not be played without names underlying concepts, or the view that without such means dominoes could not have been invented. That there cannot be concepts without names is a well-recognized doctrine of psychology, and that dominoes could not have been invented in the absence of certain simple concepts relating to number no one could well dispute. But when the game has been invented, there is no need to fall back upon names and concepts as a preliminary to each move, or for the player to predicate to himself before each move that the number he lays down corresponds with the number to which he joins it. The late Dr. Carpenter assured me that he had personally investigated the case of a performing dog which was exhibited many years ago as a domino-player, and had fully satisfied himself that the animal's skill in this respect was genuine—i.e. not dependent on any code of signals from the showman. This, therefore, is a better case than that of the deaf-mute, in order to show that dominoes can be played by means of sensuous association alone. But my point now is that two distinct questions have been raised in your columns, and that the ambiguity to which I have referred appears to have arisen from a failure to distinguish between them. Every living psychologist will doubtless agree with Prof. Max Muller where he appears to say nothing more than that if there had never been any names there could never have been any concepts; but this is a widely different thing from saying what he elsewhere appears to say, i.e. that without the mental rehearsal of words there cannot be performed in any case a process of distinctively human thought. The first of these two widely different questions may be dismissed, as one concerning which no difference of opinion is likely to arise. Touching the second, if the Professor does not mean what I have said he appears in some places to say, it is a pity that he should attempt to defend such a position as that chess, for instance, cannot be played unless the player “deals all the time with thought-words and word-thoughts.” For the original learning of the game it was necessary that the powers of the various pieces should have been explained to him by means of words; but when this knowledge was thus gained, it was no longer needful that before making any particular move he should mentally state the powers of all the pieces concerned, or predicate to himself the various possibilities which the move might involve. All these things he does by his specially-formed associations alone, just as does a draught-player, who is concerned with a much simpler order of relations: in neither case is any demand made upon the verbum mentale.