Not that they
may not be more than names (_flatus vocis_), but that they are nothing
less than names. Language is that which gives us reality, and not as a
mere vehicle of reality, but as its true flesh, of which all the rest,
dumb or inarticulate representation, is merely the skeleton. And thus
logic operates upon esthetics, the concept upon the expression, upon the
word, and not upon the brute perception.
And this is true even in the matter of love. Love does not discover that
it is love until it speaks, until it says, I love thee! In Stendhal's
novel, _La Chartreuse de Parme_, it is with a very profound intuition
that Count Mosca, furious with jealousy because of the love which he
believes unites the Duchess of Sanseverina with his nephew Fabrice, is
made to say, "I must be calm; if my manner is violent the duchess,
simply because her vanity is piqued, is capable of following Belgirate,
and then, during the journey, chance may lead to a word which will give
a name to the feelings they bear towards each other, and thereupon in a
moment all the consequences will follow."
Even so--all things were made by the word, and the word was in the
beginning.
Thought, reason--that is, living language--is an inheritance, and the
solitary thinker of Aben Tofail, the Arab philosopher of Guadix, is as
absurd as the ego of Descartes. The real and concrete truth, not the
methodical and ideal, is: _homo sum, ergo cogito_.
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