hink, then, that Professor Max Muller's contention that thought
and language are identical--and he has repeatedly affirmed this--will
ever be generally accepted. Thought is no more identical with language
than feeling is identical with the nervous system. True, we can no more
feel without a nervous system than we can discern certain minute
organisms without a microscope. Destroy the nervous system, and we
destroy feeling. Destroy the microscope, and we can no longer see the
animalcules; but our sight of the animalcules is not the microscope,
though it is effectuated by means of the microscope, and our feeling is
not the nervous system, though the nervous system is the instrument that
enables us to feel.

The nervous system is a device which living beings have gradually
perfected--I believe I may say quite truly--through the will and power
which they have derived from a fountain-head, the existence of which we
can infer, but which we can never apprehend. By the help of this device,
and in proportion as they have perfected it, living beings feel ever with
greater definiteness, and hence formulate their feelings in thought with
more and more precision. The higher evolution of thought has reacted on
the nervous system, and the consequent higher evolution of the nervous
system has again reacted upon thought. These things are as power and
desire, or supply and demand, each one of which is continually
outstripping, and being in turn outstripped by the other; but, in spite
of their close connection and interaction, power is not desire, nor
demand supply. Language is a device evolved sometimes by leaps and
bounds, and sometimes exceedingly slowly, whereby we help ourselves alike
to greater ease, precision, and complexity of thought, and also to more
convenient interchange of thought among ourselves. Thought found rude
expression, which gradually among other forms assumed that of words.
These reacted upon thought, and thought again on them, but thought is no
more identical with words than words are with the separate letters of
which they are composed.

To sum up, then, and to conclude. I would ask you to see the connection
between words and ideas, as in the first instance arbitrary. No doubt in
some cases an imitation of the cry of some bird or wild beast would
suggest the name that should be attached to it; occasionally the sound of
an operation such as grinding may have influenced the choice of the
letters g, r, as