Using Tools and Symbols 139 



different in nature from the circumstances elucidating them. The 

 word tree does not in any way resemble a tree; nor does the muscular 

 effort required to produce this sound have any obvious connection. 

 The significant thing is that the association of the word with the ob- 

 ject is effected with great ease. 



Language thus began as an association of sounds and of related 

 muscular acts with certain elements of the sense picture. The human 

 brain, as it has developed, provides an enormous extension of this 

 type of connection. 



The consequences have been remarkable and have led to the de- 

 velopment of a kind of living which is quite different to anything 

 found in the rest of the animal kingdom. 



In the first place the association of different sounds with different 

 kinds of objects leads to descriptive language. The sense impressions 

 are replaced by something quite different, i.e. words. The words then 

 offer an alternative representation of the world — a representation 

 which is clearly not the same as the original sense picture, but one 

 which can take its place. The prime characteristic of the human brain 

 is the great ease and precision with which this transition from direct 

 sense impressions to words, used as symbols, can take place. 



Let us think, very briefly, of the consequences of the translation of 

 the actual world into a substitute world of words. In the first place it 

 provides the possibility of communication between one human being 

 and another — which is only possible to a very limited extent in 

 animals. 



When I see a tree, the mental picture I have belongs to me alone. I 

 cannot communicate what I see to any other person directly, but only 

 by using symbols like tree, green, tall, elm, which call up similar im- 

 pressions from his own experience. In this way, the actual world is 

 replaced by a world of symbols, i.e. words which take the place of the 

 actual world. This has had the most profound consequences for 

 human life. It helps the discovery of the nature of the actual world, 

 since words are themselves an analysis of the world, and putting to- 

 gether v/ords is to perform operations, not in the actual world, but in 

 the substitute mental world of symbols. The exploration of the actual 

 world has been enormously assisted by making use of the symbolic 

 substitute world — and in fact it would be impossible to get very far 

 in any other way. 



Secondly, words are clearly useless unless they are heard and under- 

 stood by somebody, so that the new world of words is not a private 

 world, but is essentially shared with other people. In this way human 

 knowledge came into existence as something in which individuals 

 can share, but which they cannot possess exclusively by themselves. 



