ch even an inarticulate yearning would not have lacked, becomes in
language an overt phenomenon, linked observably with all other objects
and processes.

Language is accordingly an overflow of the physical basis of thought. It
is an audible gesture, more refined than the visible, but in the same
sense an automatic extension of nervous and muscular processes. Words
underlie the thought they are said to express--in truth it is the
thought that is the flower and expression of the language--much as the
body underlies the mind.

[Sidenote: Intent starts from a datum.]

Language contains, side by side two distinct elements. One is the
meaning or sense of the words--a logical projection given to sensuous
terms. The other is the sensuous vehicle of that meaning--the sound,
sign, or gesture. This sensuous term is a fulcrum for the lever of
signification, a _point d'appui_ which may be indefinitely attenuated in
rapid discourse, but not altogether discarded. Intent though it vaults
high must have something to spring from, or it would lend meaning to
nothing. The minimal sensuous term that subsists serves as a clue to a
whole system of possible assertions radiating from it. It becomes the
sign for an essence or idea, a logical hypostasis corresponding in
discourse to that material hypostasis of perceptions which is called an
external thing.

The hypostasised total of rational and just discourse is the truth. Like
the physical world, the truth is external and in the main potential. Its
ideal consistency and permanence serve to make it a standard and
background for fleeting assertions, just as the material hypostasis
called nature is the standard and background for all momentary
perceptions. What exists of truth in direct experience is at any moment
infinitesimal, as what exists of nature is, but all that either contains
might be represented in experience at one time or another.[G]

[Sidenote: and is carried by a feeling.]

The tensions and relations of words which make grammar or make poetry
are immediate in essence, the force of language being just as empirical
as the reality of things. To ask a thinker what he means by meaning is
as futile as to ask a carpenter what he means by wood; to discover it
you must emulate them and repeat their experience--which indeed you will
hardly be able to do if some sophist has so entangled your reason that
you can neither understand what you see nor assert what you mean. But as
the carpent