, t, o, n, e do to
ourselves. And why? because that is the covenant that has been struck
between those who speak and those who are spoken to. Our "stone" conveys
no idea to a Frenchman, nor his "pierre" to us, unless we have done what
is commonly called acquiring one another's language. To acquire a
foreign language is only to learn and adhere to the covenants in respect
of symbols which the nation in question has adopted and adheres to.

Till we have done this we neither of us know the rules, so to speak, of
the game that the other is playing, and cannot, therefore, play together;
but the convention being once known and assented to, it does not matter
whether we raise the idea of a stone by the word "lapis," or by "lithos,"
"pietra," "pierre," "stein," "stane" or "stone"; we may choose what
symbols written or spoken we choose, and one set, unless they are of
unwieldy length will do as well as another, if we can get other people to
choose the same and stick to them; it is the accepting and sticking to
them that matters, not the symbols. The whole power of spoken language
is vested in the invariableness with which certain symbols are associated
with certain ideas. If we are strict in always connecting the same
symbols with the same ideas, we speak well, keep our meaning clear to
ourselves, and convey it readily and accurately to any one who is also
fairly strict. If, on the other hand, we use the same combination of
symbols for one thing one day and for another the next, we abuse our
symbols instead of using them, and those who indulge in slovenly habits
in this respect ere long lose the power alike of thinking and of
expressing themselves correctly. The symbols, however, in the first
instance, may be anything in the wide world that we have a fancy for.
They have no more to do with the ideas they serve to convey than money
has with the things that it serves to buy.

The principle of association, as every one knows, involves that whenever
two things have been associated sufficiently together, the suggestion of
one of them to the mind shall immediately raise a suggestion of the
other. It is in virtue of this principle that language, as we so call
it, exists at all, for the essence of language consists, as I have said
perhaps already too often, in the fixity with which certain ideas are
invariably connected with certain symbols. But this being so, it is hard
to see how we can deny that the lower animals possess the