as s, t, o, n, e do to ourselves.  And why? because that is the covenant that has been struck between those who speak and those who are spoken to.  Our “stone” conveys no idea to a Frenchman, nor his “pierre” to us, unless we have done what is commonly called acquiring one another’s language.  To acquire a foreign language is only to learn and adhere to the covenants in respect of symbols which the nation in question has adopted and adheres to.  Till we have done this we neither of us know the rules, so to speak, of the game that the other is playing, and cannot, therefore, play together; but the convention being once known and consented to, it does not matter whether we raise the idea of a stone by the words “lapis,” or by “lithos,” “pietra,” “pierre,” “stein,” “stane” or “stone”; we may choose what symbols written or spoken we choose, and one set, unless they are of unwieldy length, will do as well as another, if we can get other people to choose the same and stick to them; it is the accepting and sticking to them that matters, not the symbols.  The whole power of spoken language is vested in the invariableness with which certain symbols are associated with certain ideas.  If we are strict in always connecting the same symbols with the same ideas, we speak well, keep our meaning clear to ourselves, and convey it readily and accurately to anyone who is also fairly strict.  If, on the other hand, we use the same combination of symbols for one thing one day and for another the next, we abuse our symbols instead of using them, and those who indulge in slovenly habits in this respect ere long lose the power alike of thinking and of expressing themselves correctly.  The symbols, however, in the first instance, may be anything in the wide world that we have a fancy for.  They have no more to do with the ideas they serve to convey than money has with the things that it serves to buy.

The principle of association, as everyone knows, involves that whenever two things have been associated sufficiently together, the suggestion of one of them to the mind shall immediately raise a suggestion of the other.  It is in virtue of this principle that language, as we so call it, exists at all, for the essence of language consists, as I have said perhaps already too often, in the fixity with which certain ideas are invariably connected with certain symbols.  But this being so, it is hard to see how we can deny that the lower animals possess the germs of a highly rude and unspecialized, but still true language, unless we also deny that they have any ideas at all; and this I gather is what Professor Max Muller in a quiet way rather wishes to do.  Thus he says, “It is easy enough to show that animals communicate, but this is a fact which has never been doubted.  Dogs who growl and bark leave no doubt in the minds of other dogs or cats, or even of man, of what they mean, but growling and barking are not language, nor do they even contain the elements of language.” {230}