NEW FRONTIERS 295the form and spelling of the word whether the object to which
it referred was a plant, a mineral, a tool, a machine, or to what other
category it might belong.
Weitling's psychology of language was based on the simple
theory that impressions as they reach the brain from the outside
are sound and accurate and true, but what reissues from the mind
in words, writing, or gestures may be something quite different,
even false. In part, he traced this difficulty to a wrong kind of
training in morals, with inadequate emphasis on the obligation
always to speak the truth but, in large measure, he accounted for
the problem by the lack of accurate language tools. To prove
the confusion that resulted from a lack of precise expressions, he
cited the conflict of philosophers, like Descartes and Hegel, over
such concepts as Geist (spirit), and blamed the whole field of
"speculative philosophy" for much of the existing confusion. He
contended that no truth ever was finally established until no other
word or phrase or sentence could be found to express it more pre
cisely, and he advised disputants in every argument or controversy
to insist on a definition of terms before proceeding with their dis
cussion. Existing dictionaries, he believed, contained both too
much and too little; in any case, none was satisfactory. He would
rebuild language on the basis of the best possible classification of
all the phenomena of the universe as recorded by the senses, and
thus he believed he was dealing with a process that was funda
mentally physiological.
When one tries to fathom the meaning of Weitling's "physio
logical observations," one becomes lost in hopeless confusion.
Weitling's discussion of man begins with the assertion that he is
first of all a chemical compound which is affected by the reaction
of other bodies and substances from the outside, and which de
velops and deteriorates according to fixed chemical laws of "at
traction" and "repulsion." These "attractive" and "repulsive"
chemical reactions center in the nervous system and finally in the
brain, and it is from the reflection on the impressions caused by
these impulses that perception and consciousness result. Without