were presented in an extrinsic form by phonetic signs,
and became images which in some sort represented one particular state of
consciousness with respect to the two things compared. Galton, speaking
of the Damaras, tells us that they find great difficulty in counting
more than five, since they have not another hand with which to grasp the
fingers which represent the units. When they lose any of their cattle,
they do not discover the loss by the diminution of the number, but by
missing a familiar object. If two packets of tobacco are given to them
as the regulation price of a sheep, they will be altogether at a loss to
understand the receipt of four packets in exchange for two sheep. Such
examples might be multiplied to any extent.

We repeat that when not endowed with speech, or some analogous means,
animals and man think in images, and the relations between these images
are observed in the simultaneousness and succession of their real
differences; these images are combined, associated, and compared by the
development of reflex power, and hence arises the estimate of their
concrete relations. Of this we have another proof, observed by Romanes
in a lecture on the intelligence of animals, and confirmed by myself, in
the condition of deaf-mutes before they are educated, in whose case the
extrinsic sign and figure takes the place of the phonetic and articulate
sign. Where speech is wanting, it is still possible to follow a
conscious and imaginative process of reasoning, but not to rise to the
higher abstract ideas which may be generated by such reasoning. The
thought of deaf-mutes always assumes the most concrete form, and one who
was educated late in life informed Romanes that he had always before
thought in images. I know no instance of a deaf-mute who has
independently attained to an advanced intellectual stage, or who has
been able without education to form any conception of a supernatural
world. R.S. Smith asserts that one of his deaf-mute pupils believed,
before his education, that the Bible had been printed in the heavens by
a printing press of enormous power; and Graham Bell speaks of a
deaf-mute who supposed that people went to church to do honour to the
clergyman. In short, the intellectual condition of uneducated deaf-mutes
is on a level with that of animals, as far as the possibility of
forming abstract ideas is concerned, and they think in images. There is
a well-known instance in the deplorable condition of La