of the two in colour; and, as we went on to meet with other substances of like hue, we should call them "snowy" also; and at length—particularly, if we had left the zone of snow behind us—snowy would come to mean in our use what white does now, and snowiness would signify 'whiteness.' We should have supplied the deficiency of our vocabulary in this regard, not because we could not form a conception of the colour without the name, but because we had found it practically convenient to give a name to the conception we had formed. The example is a typical one; it illustrates the universal process of names-giving, in all its forms and in all ages. Our primitive ancestors were not unable to apprehend the existence and office of the earth's satellite until they had devised for her the appellation of 'measurer;' and, if she had a yet earlier title, it was given her in like manner, for some quality distinctly perceived in her. We always make a new word, or bestow upon an old word a new meaning, because we have an idea that wants a sign. To maintain that the idea waits for its generation until the sign is ready, or that the generation of the idea and of the sign is a simple and indivisible process, is much the same thing as to hold, since infants cannot thrive in this climate without clothing and shelter, that no child is or can be born until a layette and a nursery are ready for its use, or that along with each child are born its swaddling-clothes and a cradle!
It must be farther conceded, then, that the operations of mind are at least so far independent of language that thought is able to reach out in every direction a step beyond the border of speech; to conquer, bit by bit, new territory for speech to occupy and hold in possession. But our earlier reasonings and examples have shown that there is no small degree of incommensurability between the two in other respects also, that we do not and cannot always precisely communicate what we are conscious of having in our minds, and that, of what we call our expression, a part consists merely in so disposing a framework of words that those who hear us are enabled to infer much more than we really express, and much more definitely than we express it. That we ordinarily think with words may be true; but I imagine that the ex-
