158 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



for instance, have a language, the signs which compose 

 it must be very limited in number, and each of them, once 

 the species is formed, must remain invariably attached to a 

 certain object or a certain operation: the sign is adherent 

 to the thing signified. In human society, on the contrary, 

 fabrication and action are of variable form, and, moreover, 

 each individual must learn his part, because he is not 

 preordained to it by his structure. So a language is re- 

 quired which makes it possible to be always passing from 

 what is known to what is yet to be known. There must 

 be a language whose signs — which cannot be infinite in 

 number — are extensible to an infinity of things. This 

 tendency of the sign to transfer itself from one object to 

 another is characteristic of human language. It is ob- 

 servable in the little child as soon as he begins to speak. 

 Immediately and naturally he extends the meaning of 

 the words he learns, availing himself of the most accidental 

 connection or the most distant analogy to detach and 

 transfer elsewhere the sign that had been associated in 

 his hearing with a particular object. "Anything can 

 designate anything;" 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 in- 

 telligence entirely externalized and incapable of turn- 



