Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/322

 administrative district, in science it (and in every civilised language a corresponding word) signifies the concept of a thing which is completely possible in no experience, of a closed line, of which every point is equally distant from a central point; and here again the terms line and point have just such a specific, scientific significance. This again we sometimes call a scientific “way of speaking” (Sprachgebrauch)—in our customary language. But here we are distinguishing and defining, and take therefore no account of customary language; thus affording, ourselves, an instance of scientific freedom in forming and classifying concepts; a freedom limited only by criticism of its conduciveness to the end in view. (It is in this way that we expect to justify our ideas in the course of the treatise.)

41. But if we investigate social habit, usage, more closely, we find that something of the kind always arises where the living together of men rests upon the bases most natural to it. Just as the habits of individuals develop most easily and frequently from original and strong inclinations (tastes, needs), so also social habits develop from mutual and common inclination. All inclination reveals itself, and still more completes itself, in activity, for it is the beginning of such activity. From the strength and frequent renewal of the inclination follows a frequent renewal of the corresponding activity; subjectively this becomes a habit, when the inclination becomes strengthened or even exclusively conditioned through its frequency, since the repeated action may also proceed from less voluntary sources. Habit is always a disposition to certain activities distinct from inclination, and more binding and regulative. The freedom of the will is determined by it in a particular way, it is felt as constraining, even as compelling; “man” is the “slave” of his habits, and yet they are essentially only more fixed forms of impulses which are fluid, but not on that account less necessary and constraining. Just so usage acts in social life and is related to the social instinct, or whatever we may call the elementary constraining force, which is also regulative for the meaning of signs.

42. The understanding of natural signs, e.g., of gestures and cries, is conditioned by similarity of organs, and facilitated by social feelings and habitual living together; and where these advantages are present artificial signs differ from them hardly at all. Where the impulse to help—whether reciprocal or not—is strong, there the attempt to indicate a certain danger by a sound (even when the sound is no longer, or not primarily, imitative or expressive) is