Sounds are simply token-values. When I say, “That is green,” the
statement conveys no definite positive content of knowledge; in making
it I only say, “That is not red, yellow, blue, and so forth.” And if I
say, “That is red,” by such a statement I only say, “That is not green,
yellow, blue, and so forth.” Thus, just as in an algebraical equation,
one sign repeatedly serves as the fellow-determinant of another, and
none possesses any positive content of its own. Each merely announces
that I react, _i.e._ that I burn. I do not recognize a cherry tree in
itself, but only to the extent that it is not a plum or an apple or
a pear tree, and so forth. And I recognize a plum tree just in so far
as it is not a cherry or an apple or a pear tree, and so forth. It is
a General Reciprocity Company, each member of which gives the other
credit without a single member in the whole company possessing a penny
of solid capital; in fine, a fraudulent concern which the honest,
upright thinker must keep a sharp eye on if he would not be swindled.
“But whence comes language at all then?”
To this question the reply is: Thence whence I myself am come, whence
thou thyself art come--out of beginninglessness.
The miracle of language is as little to be explained as the miracle of
the _I_-process. There is present a given beginningless something--the
world. And this thing given represents not only a mere _possibility_,
as science would have us believe--whereby she lands herself in the
predicament of being obliged to explain how all our faculties could
have come to be--but it represents a _power_ in itself, in which the
power of speech is just as much implied, as a beginningless faculty, as
the power to see, to hear, to think, and so forth.