An Introduction to a Biology 



lips at any attempt to deal in a parenthesis with 

 so vast a subject as the relation between language 

 and thought. But if I may explain, I think I can 

 turn the smile from one of contempt to one of at 

 least indulgence. I, too, am appalled by the task 

 of understanding clearly the relation between thought 

 and language. It is because I am thus appalled 

 that I realise that anyone to whose mind the prob- 

 lem of this relation has not yet even presented itself 

 is in grave danger of thinking there are no diffi- 

 culties because he does not see them. A word and 

 its meaning, especially in the case of ideas (with 

 which, in this book, we have to deal), are united 

 together by a slender, elastic bond which is now 

 contracted, now stretched to its uttermost. The 

 word, if we consider its whole life since its dim 

 origin, has been perpetually changing ; so too has 

 its meaning ; little in the case of things, much in 

 the case of ideas. So we see the word and its mean- 

 ing dancing to each other in an airy medium, like 

 a pair of gnats in the lee of a gorse-bush. This, 

 alas ! is the simplest case. The more complicated 

 and much more common cases are those in which 

 one word has more than one meaning, or where 

 one meaning has more than one word to express 

 it ; these are the cases which, in verbal life, are 

 productive of trouble. I have attempted to con- 

 dense into one simple picture the relation between 

 words and their meaning. I have tried to convey 

 my conception by a picture because it is a picture 

 of a thing which is far less liable to change than 

 the relation between an idea and the word by means 

 of which it is handed from mind to mind. It may 



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