Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/431

XI.] phrases, as to how much and what is expressed in the words signifying the three radical ideas, of fish, liking, and water, as to how much is expressed besides those ideas, and as to how it is expressed; and, at the same time, a total discordance between the sounds used to indicate the various elements. And yet, so far as we can judge, the thought expressed is in every instance the very same: certainly, there is no difference of thought corresponding to or measured by the difference of expression. Each speaker's intent, were he called upon to explain it fully, would be found to agree with that of the rest; only his uttered words directly signify a part, and leave the rest to be filled in by the mind of the hearer. How, now, can any one possibly maintain that thought and speech are one and the same, when identity of thought can consist with so much diversity of speech?

Look, once more, at the nature of the tie which, as repeatedly pointed out, connects any one of the spoken signs we use with the conception it represents. I learned the word fish at an early period of my life from my instructors, and associated it so intimately with a certain idea that the two are in my mind well-nigh inseparable: I cannot hear fish without having the corresponding thing called up in my imagination, nor utter it without calling up the same in the imagination of every person who has been taught as I was; nor, again, does any one of us ordinarily form the conception of a fish without at the same time having the audible complex of sounds, fish, uttered to the mind's ear. In later life, I have learned and associated with the same conception other words, as piscis, poisson, ichthūs (Greek), and so forth; any one of these I can call up at will, and employ in place of fish, when circumstances make it desirable. That I here use fish is simply for the reason that I am addressing myself to those who have mastered this sign, understand it readily, and are accustomed to employ it; the conventional usage of the community to which I belong, not anything in the character of my thought, imposes the necessity upon me: if I went to France, I should substitute the sign poisson for precisely the same reason. And I might stay so long in France, and say