; that they
stand to each other somewhat like soul and body, like power and function,
like substance and form. The objections which have been raised against
this view arise generally from a mere misunderstanding. If we speak of
language as the outward realization of thought, we do not mean language as
deposited in a dictionary, or sketched in a grammar; we mean language as
an act, language as being spoken, language as living and dying with every
word that is uttered. We might perhaps call this speech, as distinguished
from language.

Secondly, though if we speak of language, we mean chiefly phonetic
articulate language, we do not exclude the less perfect symbols of
thought, such as gestures, signs, or pictures. They, too, are language in
a certain sense, and they must be included in language before we are
justified in saying that discursive thought can be realized in language
only. One instance will make this clear. We hold that we cannot think
without language. But can we not count without language? We certainly can.
We can form the conception of _three_ without any spoken word, by simply
holding up three fingers. In the same manner, the hand might stand for
five, both hands for ten, hands and feet for twenty.(25) This is how
people who possessed no organs of speech would speak; this is how the deaf
and dumb _do_ speak. Three fingers are as good as three strokes, three
strokes are as good as three clicks of the tongue, three clicks of the
tongue are as good as the sound _three_, or _trois_, or _drei_, or
_shalosh_ in Hebrew, or _san_ in Chinese. All these are signs, more or
less perfect, but being signs, they fall under the category of language;
and all we maintain is, that without some kind of sign, discursive thought
is impossible, and that in that sense, language, or {~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, is the only
possible realization of human thought.

Another very common misunderstanding is this: people imagine that, if it
be impossible to think, except in language, language and thought must be
one and the same thing. But a true philosophy of language leads to the
very opposite result. Every philosopher would say that matter cannot exist
without form, nor form without matter, but no philosopher would say that
therefore it is impossible to distinguish between form and matter. In the
same way,