n speech; they persist that they can
speak without thinking,--and that is often quite true,--and that they can
also think without speaking, which must first be proved. Consider only
what is necessary to form so simple a word as "white." The idea of white
must be formed at the same time, and this can only be done by dropping
everything but the colour from the sense-perceptions of such things as
snow, snowdrop, cloud, chalk, or sugar, then marking this colour, and, by
means of a sign (in this case a vocal one), elevating it to a
comprehensible idea, and at the same time to a word. How this vocal token
originates it is often difficult, often quite impossible, to say. The
simplest mode is, for example, if there be a word for snow, to take this
and to generalise it, and then to call sugar, for instance, snow, or
snowy, or snow-white. But the prior question, how snow was named, only
recedes for a while, and must of course be answered for itself. Given a
word for snow, it can easily be generalised. But how did we name snow? I
believe that snow, which forms into balls in melting and coheres, was
named _nix nivis_, from a root _snigh_ or _snu_, denoting everything which
melted and yet stuck together or cohered. But these are mere possibilities
that may be true or false; yet their truth or falsity leave undisturbed
the fundamental truth, that each individual perception, as, for example,
this snow or this ice, first had to be brought under a general conception,
before it could be clearly marked, or elevated to a word. In such a case
men formed, by living and working together, a general conception and a
root, for an oft-repeated action, such as forming into balls; and under
this general concept they then conceived an individual impression like
snow; that is, that which is formed into a ball, so that they had the
sign, and with the sign the concept of snow, both inseparable in reality,
distinguishable as they are in their origin. Having this, they could
extend the concept in the vocal sign for snow, and speak of snowy things,
just as they spoke of rosy cheeks. Only we must not imagine that it will
ever be possible to make the origin of root sounds perfectly clear. This
goes back to times that are entirely withdrawn from our observation. It
goes back to times in which the first general ideas were formed, and
thereby the first steps were taken in the development of the human mind.
How is it possible that any recollection should have rema