INTRODUCTORY. 1 5 



was already expressed in the above-quoted passage of 

 Burke, who divided words not into two but into three 

 classes. Language thus forms a common ground where 10. 



, . Distinction, 



our images or conceptions or the outer and the inner meet however, 



L not hard 



and have mutually to be accommodated to each other, and fast. 

 There is another common meeting-ground between the 

 outer and the inner worlds, and that is to be found in 

 our bodily sensations. Many of these, though by no 

 means all, have as it were two sides, and can be referred 

 to either as things outside of us or as perceptions of 

 ourselves. Such is notably the case with the sensations 

 of colour or other visual and tactile sensations. Our 

 bodies are for each of us just as much the meeting- 

 ground of the outer and the inner world as are the 

 language and the words we make use of. 



I might in fact have introduced nav readers to the n. 



Either 



great difference which exists between the outer and the language 



or bodily 



inner worlds of thought iust as easily by starting with a sensation 



' can furnish 



psychological analysis of our bodily sensations, of that unw' n ntof 

 physical envelope which encloses the inner and shuts out 

 the outer world. This is usually done in treatises on 

 psychology. The reason why I have preferred to start 

 with language is mainly this, that I am writing a history 

 of thought, and that the great body of human thought is 

 to be found in the written literatures of the different 

 nations. The other means which we possess for express- 

 ing our thoughts, such as the various processes employed 

 in the fine arts or in music, can, as we may have occasion 

 to see later on, only be introduced into a history of 

 thought to the extent that we are able to find an 



