Language marks the arrival at the stage of thought--at the
stage of the perception of universals--hence at the
possibility of education; language fixes the general types
which the productive memory forms; each one of these
types, indicated by a word, stands for a possible infinite
of sense-perceptions or recollections; the word _tree_
stands for all the trees that exist, and for all that have
existed or will exist. Animals do not create for
themselves a new world of general types, but deal only
with the first world of particular objects; hence they are
lost in the variety and multiplicity of continuous
succession and difference. Man's sense-perception is with
memory; hence always a recognition of the object as not
wholly new, but only as an example of what he is mostly
familiar with. Intellectual education has for its object
the cultivation of reflection; reflection is the Platonic
"Reminiscence," which retraces the unconscious processes
of thought
Language is the means of distinguishing between the brute and the
human--between the animal soul, which has continuity only in the species
(which pervades its being in the form of _instinct_), and the _human_,
soul, which is immortal, and possessed of a capacity to be educated.
There is no language until the mind can perceive general types of
existence; mere proper names nor mere exclamations or cries do not
constitute language. All words that belong to language are
significative--they "_express_" or "_mean_" something--hence they are
conventional symbols, and not mere individual designations. Language
arises only through common consent, and is not an invention of one
individual. It is a product of individuals acting together as a
community, 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 rather with the objects which
are indicated by words--_i.e._, general objects.
Some writers would have us suppose that we do not arrive at general
notions except by the process of classification and abstraction, in the
mechanical manner that they lay down for this purpose. The fact is that
the mind has arrived at these general ideas in the process of learning
language. In infancy, most children have learned such words as _is_,
_existence_, _being_, _nothing_, _motion_, _cause_, _change_, _I_,
_you_, _he_, etc., etc.
But the point is not the mere arrival at these ideas. Education does
not concern itself with that; it does not concern itself with children
who have not yet learned to talk--that is left for the nursery.
It is the process of becoming conscious of these ideas by reflection,
with which we have to concern ourselves in education. Reflection is
everywhere the object of education. Even when the school undertakes to
teach pupils the correct method of observation--how to use the senses,
as in "object-lessons"--it all means _reflective_ observation,
_conscious_ use of the senses; it would put this in the place of the
_naïve_ spontaneity which characterizes the first stages of
sense-perception.
We must not underrate these precepts of pedagogy because we find that
they are not what it claims for them--_i.e._, they are not methods of
first discovery, and of arrival at principles, but only methods of
reflection, and of recognizing what we have already learned. We see that
Plato's "Reminiscence" was a true form of statement for the perception
of truths of reflection. The first knowing is utterly unconscious of its
own method; the second or scientific form of knowing, which education
develops, is a knowing in which the mind knows its method. Hence it is a
knowing which knows its own necessity and universality.