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Man has the faculty of interpretation, or of using words for signs, as completely as he has the faculties of sight and hearing; and words are the means he employs for the exercise of the former faculty, just as the eye and the ear are employed as the organs of the latter.

The power of speech depends on the power of abstraction, i.e., of transforming intuitions into ideas.[72] Let us explain. At the sight of a horse galloping, or of a plain white with snow, the primitive man formed, at first, one undivided image; the motion and the horse, the field and the snow, were unseparated. But, by language, the act of running was distinguished from the creature that ran, and the colour separated from the thing coloured. Each of these two elements became fixed in an isolated word, and so the word dismembered the complete perception. But, from another point of view, the word is more extended than the presentation; e.g., the word “white” expresses not only an attribute of snow, but of all white objects; its meaning, then, is more abstract and indeterminate than that of “white snow.” Instead of only embracing an existence, or an object in an accidental state, a word represents the thing without its accidental characters, which are removed by abstraction, and indicates it under all the circumstances in which it may be placed.