Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/149

 or historical dictionary : that is to say, it enumerates what is separated either by Time or by Space ; for, as my readers know, Time and Space are the principium individuationis. It is only because animals are limited to intuitive representations and incapable of any abstraction—incapable therefore of forming conceptions—that they are without language, even when they are able to articulate words ; whereas they understand proper names. That it is this same defect which excludes them from laughter, I have shown in my theory of the ridiculous.

On analyzing a long, continuous speech made by a man of no education, we find in it an abundance of logical forms, clauses, turns of phrase, distinctions, and subtleties of all sorts, correctly expressed by means of grammatical forms with their inflections and constructions, and even with a frequent use of the sermo obliquus, of the different moods, &c. &c., all in conformity with rule, which astonishes us, and in which we are forced to recognise an extensive and perfectly coherent knowledge. Still this knowledge has been acquired on the basis of the perceptible world, the reduction of whose whole essence to abstract conceptions is the fundamental business of the Reason, and can only take place by means of language. In learning the use of language therefore, the whole mechanism of Reason—that is, all that is essential in Logic—is brought to our consciousness. Now this can evidently not take place without considerable mental effort and fixed attention, for which the desire to learn gives children the requisite strength. So long as that desire has before it what is really available and necessary, it is vigorous, and it only appears weak when we try to force upon children that which is not suited to their comprehension. Thus even a coarsely educated child, in learning all the turns and subtleties of language, as well