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This truth, that thought and language are inseparable, that thought without language is as impossible as language without thought has only recently been affirmed by comparative philologists. Many learned writers are still unwilling to admit that ideas without words are impossible though at the same time they are quite willing to concede that words are impossible without concepts.[32]

We possess an immense number of books on logic, yet we are met everywhere by the same vagueness on this subject. John Stuart Mill speaks of language as one of the principal elements or helps of thought, but he never mentions any other instruments. This lack is probably owing to the unfortunate influence of modern languages which have two words, the one for language, the other for thought; this gives the impression that there is a substantial instead of an apparent difference between the two; it is also owing to the dislike of philosophers to allow that all which is most lofty, most spiritual in us should be dependent on such miserable crutches as words are supposed to be. Yet it is evident that we cannot advance one step towards philosophy without acknowledging the fact that we think in words and words only. This thought would be less difficult to grasp if we defined clearly what are thoughts. Sensation, pain, pleasure, dreaming, or willing cannot be called true thought, but variations of inward activity; in the same way as shrieks, howls, or even the sounds of real words, taken from a foreign language, are no more language than our emotions are thoughts. The word Logos expresses this, since it had originally the two meanings of gathering and combining, and so became the proper name of all that we call reason; but as it also means language, it tells us that the process of gathering and combining, which begins with sensation and passes on to perception and conception, reaches its full perfection only when the inward activity takes form in the Logos or speech.