mmunity, and hence implies the ascent of the individual into the
species. Unless an individual could ascend into the species he could not
_understand_ language. To know words and their meaning is an activity of
divine significance; it denotes the formation of universals in the
mind--the ascent above the here and now of the senses, and above the
representation of mere images, to the activity which grasps together the
general conception of objects, and thus reaches beyond what is transient
and variable.

Doubtless the nobler species of animals possess not only
sense-perception, but a considerable degree of the power of
representation. They are not only able to recollect, but to imagine or
fancy to some extent, as is evidenced by their dreams. But that animals
do not generalize sufficiently to form for themselves a new objective
world of types and general concepts, we have a sufficient evidence in
the fact that they do not use words, or invent conventional symbols.
With the activity of the symbol-making form of representation, which we
have named Memory, and whose evidence is the invention and use of
language, the true form of individuality is attained, and each
individual human being, as mind, may be said to be the entire species.
Inasmuch as he can form universals in his mind, he can realize the most
abstract thought; and he is conscious. Consciousness begins when one can
seize the pure universal in the presence of immediate objects here and
now.

The sense-perception of the mere animal, therefore, differs from that of
the human being in this:--

The human being knows himself as subject that sees the object, while the
animal sees the object, but does not separate himself, as universal,
from the special act of seeing. To know that I am I, is to know the most
general of objects, and to carry out abstraction to its very last
degree; and yet this is what all human beings do, young or old, savage
or civilized. The savage invents and uses language--an act of the
species, but which the species cannot do without the participation of
the individual.

It should be carefully noted that this activity of generalization which
produces language, and characterizes the human from the brute, is not
the generalization of the activity of thought, so-called.

It is the preparation for thought. These general types of things are the
things which thought deals with. Thought does not deal with mere
immediate objects of the senses; it deals