THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 167 



nection or the most distant analogy to detach and 

 transfer elsewhere the sign that had been associated in 

 his hearing with a particular object. &quot;Anything can 

 designate anything &quot; : such is the latent principle of 

 infantine language. This tendency has been wrongly 

 confused with the faculty of generalizing. The animals 

 themselves generalize ; and, moreover, a sign even 

 an instinctive sign always to some degree represents 

 a genus. But what characterizes the signs of human 

 language is not so much their generality as their 

 mobility. The instinctive sign is adherent, the intelligent 

 sign is mobile. 



Now, this mobility of words, that makes them able 

 to pass from one thing to another, has enabled them to 

 be extended from things to ideas. Certainly, language 

 would not have given the faculty of reflecting to an 

 intelligence entirely externalized and incapable of turn 

 ing homeward. An intelligence which reflects is one 

 that originally had a surplus of energy to spend, over 

 and above practically useful efforts. It is a conscious 

 ness that has virtually reconquered itself. But still the 

 virtual has to become actual. Without language, in 

 telligence would probably have remained riveted to the 

 material objects which it was interested in considering. 

 It would have lived in a state of somnambulism, outside 

 itself, hypnotized on its own work. Language has 

 greatly contributed to its liberation. The word, made 

 to pass from one thing to another, is, in fact, by nature 

 transferable and free. It can therefore be extended, not 

 only from one perceived thing to another, but even from 

 a perceived thing to a recollection of that thing, from 

 the precise recollection to a more fleeting image, and 

 finally from an image fleeting, though still pictured, 

 to the picturing of the act by which the image is 



