What a word should ‘mean,’ therefore, depended in the first instance upon the context and determination of the articulated sound. Just as any idea may serve as an abstract idea, so may any word whatever serve as an abstract verbal idea, as what is technically called a =concept=, provided only that its context and determination carry the meaning of abstractness. We saw, however, that the context of the abstract idea may drop away, and the mental correlates of its determination lapse, so that finally some conventional image, like the triangle, is taken as abstract, wears the very stamp of abstractness upon it. This is preeminently the case with words. Every generation, we must remember, inherits the speech of preceding generations; _language comes to us ready made_. We learn from the study of language itself that the abstract words were originally concrete; thus the Latin _sapio_, to taste, _sapor_, taste, are connected with _sapa_, must, _sapo_, soap, _sebum_, tallow,—with the names of substances that are readily diluted or liquefied; but the situations that made them abstract dropped out of mind long ago. The child finds language waiting for it, and finds that every word incorporates a meaning; and so it comes about, not only that the mental representation of honesty or pride may be the mere word, ‘honesty’ or ‘pride,’ as it occurs in internal speech, but also that the same internal speech embodies the meaning of abstractness; _the verbal image stands psychologically for an idea and logically for a meaning_.