nstinct, and consequently on certain actions or fabrications
that are more or less dependent on the form of the organs. So if the
ants, for instance, have a language, the signs which compose it must be
very limited in number, and each of them, once the species is formed,
must remain invariably attached to a certain object or a certain
operation: the sign is adherent to the thing signified. In human
society, on the contrary, fabrication and action are of variable form,
and, moreover, each individual must learn his part, because he is not
preordained to it by his structure. So a language is required which
makes it possible to be always passing from what is known to what is yet
to be known. There must be a language whose signs--which cannot be
infinite in number--are extensible to an infinity of things. This
tendency of the sign to transfer itself from one object to another is
characteristic of human language. It is observable in the little child
as soon as he begins to speak. Immediately and naturally he extends the
meaning of the words he learns, availing himself of the most accidental
connection or the most distant analogy to detach and transfer elsewhere
the sign that had been associated in his hearing with a particular
object. "Anything can designate anything;" such is the latent principle
of infantine language. This tendency has been wrongly confused with the
faculty of generalizing. The animals themselves generalize; and,
moreover, a sign--even an instinctive sign--always to some degree
represents a genus. But what characterizes the signs of human language
is not so much their generality as their mobility. _The instinctive sign
is_ adherent, _the intelligent sign is_ mobile.

Now, this mobility of words, that makes them able to pass from one thing
to another, has enabled them to be extended from things to ideas.
Certainly, language would not have given the faculty of reflecting to an
intelligence entirely externalized and incapable of turning homeward.
An intelligence which reflects is one that originally had a surplus of
energy to spend, over and above practically useful efforts. It is a
consciousness that has virtually reconquered itself. But still the
virtual has to become actual. Without language, intelligence would
probably have remained riveted to the material objects which it was
interested in considering. It would have lived in a state of
somnambulism, outside itself, hypnotized on its own work. Language has