dial reciprocity,
implying "the will to be influenced."

That it does so tally with this is proved by the existence of language.

This medium of expression between living things does not seem to
be confined to the human race. Some reciprocal harmony of energy,
corresponding to our complex vision, seems to have created
many mysterious modes of communication by which myriads of
sub-human beings, and probably also myriads of super-human beings,
act and react on one another.

But the existence of language, though it excludes the possibility of
absolute difference, does not, except by an act of faith, necessitate
that any sensation we name by the same name is really identical
with the sensation which another person feels. And this difficulty is
much further complicated by the fact that words themselves tend in
the process to harden and petrify, and in their hardening to form, as
it were, solid blocks of accretion which resist and materially distort
the subtle and evasive play of the human psychology behind them.

So that not only are we aware that the word which we use does not
necessarily represent to another what it represents to ourself, but we
are also aware that it does not, except in a hard and inflexible
manner, represent what we ourselves feel. Words tend all too
quickly to become symbolic; and it is often the chief importance of
what we call "genius" that it takes these inflexible symbols into its
hands and breaks them up into pieces and dips them in the wavering
waters of experience and sensation.

Every philosopher should be at pains to avoid as far as possible the
use of technical terms, whether ancient or modern, and should
endeavour to evade and slip behind these terms. He should
endeavour to indicate his vision of the world by means of words
which have acquired no thick accretion of traditional crust but are
fresh and supple and organic. He should use such words, in fact, as
might be said to have the flexibility of life, and like living plants
to possess leaves and sap. He should avoid as far as he can such
metaphors and images as already carry with them the accumulated
associations of traditional usage, and he should select his
expressions so that they shall give the reader the definite impact and
vivid shock of thoughts that leap up from immediate contact with
sensation, like fish from the surface of a river.

Just because words, in their passage from generation to generation,
tend to become so hard