ite
of a gnat; the more we scratch the more we want to scratch; the more we
define the more we shall have to go on defining the words we have used in
our definitions, and shall end by setting up a serious mental raw in the
place of a small uneasiness that was after all quite endurable. We know
too well what thought is, to be able to know that we know it, and I am
persuaded there is no one in this room but understands what is meant by
thought and thinking well enough for all the purposes of this discussion.
Whoever does not know this without words will not learn it for all the
words and definitions that are laid before him. The more, indeed, he
hears, the more confused he will become. I shall, therefore, merely
premise that I use the word "thought" in the same sense as that in which
it is generally used by people who say that they think this or that. At
any rate, it will be enough if I take Professor Max Muller's own
definition, and say that its essence consists in a bringing together of
mental images and ideas with deductions therefrom, and with a
corresponding power of detaching them from one another. Hobbes, the
Professor tells us, maintained this long ago, when he said that all our
thinking consists of addition and subtraction--that is to say, in
bringing ideas together, and in detaching them from one another.

Turning from thought to language, we observe that the word is derived
from the French _langue_, or _tongue_. Strictly, therefore, it means
_tonguage_. This, however, takes account of but a very small part of the
ideas that underlie the word. It does, indeed, seize a familiar and
important detail of everyday speech, though it may be doubted whether the
tongue has more to do with speaking than lips, teeth and throat have, but
it makes no attempt at grasping and expressing the essential
characteristic of speech. Anything done with the tongue, even though it
involve no speaking at all, is _tonguage_; eating oranges is as much
tonguage as speech is. The word, therefore, though it tells us in part
how speech is effected, reveals nothing of that ulterior meaning which is
nevertheless inseparable from any right use of the words either "speech"
or "language." It presents us with what is indeed a very frequent
adjunct of conversation, but the use of written characters, or the finger-
speech of deaf mutes, is enough to show that the word "language" omits
all reference to the most essential characteristics of th