oncepts. Thus, _primitive thinking is not bound up with verbal
language_. It demands, however, a certain development of the cerebrum,
probably a certain very considerable number of ganglionic cells in the
cerebral cortex, that stand in firm organic connection with one another.
The difference between an uninstructed young deaf-mute and a cretin is
immense. The former can learn a great deal through instruction in
speaking, the latter can not. This very ability to learn, in the child
born deaf, is greater than in the normal child, in respect to pantomime
and gesture. If a child with his hearing had to grow up among
deaf-mutes, he would undoubtedly learn their language, and would in
addition enjoy his own voice without being able to make use of it; but
he would probably be discovered, further on, without testing his
hearing, by the fact that he was not quite so complete a master of this
gesture-language as the deaf-mutes, on account of the diversion of his
attention by sound.

The total result of the foregoing observations concerning the capacity
of accomplishment on the part of uneducated deaf-mutes in regard to the
natural language of gesture and feature, demonstrates more plainly than
any other fact whatever that, without words and without signs for words,
thought-activity exists--that thinking takes place when both words and
signs for words are wanting. Wherefore, then, should the logical
combination of ideas in the human being born perfect begin only with the
speaking of words or the learning to speak? Because the adult supposes
that he no longer thinks without words, he easily draws the erroneous
conclusion that no one, that not even he himself, could think before the
knowledge of verbal language. In truth, however, it was _not language
that generated the intellect; it is the intellect that formerly invented
language: and even now the new-born human being brings with him into the
world far more intellect than talent for language_.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] Empfindungsvorstellungen.

CHAPTER XVII.

LEARNING TO SPEAK.

No human being remembers how he learned his mother-tongue in early
youth, and the whole human race has forgotten the origin of its
articulate speech as well as of its gestures; but every individual
passes perceptibly through the stage of learning to speak, so that a
patient observer recognizes much as conformable to law.

The acquisition of speech belongs to those physiological problems which
can