onceived
if we insist upon finding images that may be supposed to represent them.
The word is always concrete and sensible, however abstract its
meaning may be, and thus by the help of words we are able to dwell on
abstractions in a way which would otherwise be impossible. In the third
place, two instances of the same word are so similar that neither has
associations not capable of being shared by the other. Two instances of
the word "dog" are much more alike than (say) a pug and a great dane;
hence the word "dog" makes it much easier to think about dogs in
general. When a number of objects have a common property which is
important but not obvious, the invention of a name for the common
property helps us to remember it and to think of the whole set of
objects that possess it. But it is unnecessary to prolong the catalogue
of the uses of language in thought.

At the same time, it is possible to conduct rudimentary thought by
means of images, and it is important, sometimes, to check purely verbal
thought by reference to what it means. In philosophy especially the
tyranny of traditional words is dangerous, and we have to be on our
guard against assuming that grammar is the key to metaphysics, or that
the structure of a sentence corresponds at all accurately with the
structure of the fact that it asserts. Sayce maintained that all
European philosophy since Aristotle has been dominated by the fact that
the philosophers spoke Indo-European languages, and therefore supposed
the world, like the sentences they were used to, necessarily divisible
into subjects and predicates. When we come to the consideration of truth
and falsehood, we shall see how necessary it is to avoid assuming too
close a parallelism between facts and the sentences which assert them.
Against such errors, the only safeguard is to be able, once in a way, to
discard words for a moment and contemplate facts more directly through
images. Most serious advances in philosophic thought result from some
such comparatively direct contemplation of facts. But the outcome has
to be expressed in words if it is to be communicable. Those who have
a relatively direct vision of facts are often incapable of translating
their vision into words, while those who possess the words have
usually lost the vision. It is partly for this reason that the highest
philosophical capacity is so rare: it requires a combination of vision
with abstract words which is hard to achieve, and too qu