Sounds are simply token-values. When I say, “That is green,” the statement conveys no definite positive content of knowledge; in making it I only say, “That is not red, yellow, blue, and so forth.” And if I say, “That is red,” by such a statement I only say, “That is not green, yellow, blue, and so forth.” Thus, just as in an algebraical equation, one sign repeatedly serves as the fellow-determinant of another, and none possesses any positive content of its own. Each merely announces that I react, _i.e._ that I burn. I do not recognize a cherry tree in itself, but only to the extent that it is not a plum or an apple or a pear tree, and so forth. And I recognize a plum tree just in so far as it is not a cherry or an apple or a pear tree, and so forth. It is a General Reciprocity Company, each member of which gives the other credit without a single member in the whole company possessing a penny of solid capital; in fine, a fraudulent concern which the honest, upright thinker must keep a sharp eye on if he would not be swindled. “But whence comes language at all then?” To this question the reply is: Thence whence I myself am come, whence thou thyself art come--out of beginninglessness. The miracle of language is as little to be explained as the miracle of the _I_-process. There is present a given beginningless something--the world. And this thing given represents not only a mere _possibility_, as science would have us believe--whereby she lands herself in the predicament of being obliged to explain how all our faculties could have come to be--but it represents a _power_ in itself, in which the power of speech is just as much implied, as a beginningless faculty, as the power to see, to hear, to think, and so forth. I turn back to our main subject. All the seeming explanations furnished by science are nothing else but more or less ingenious and special forms of description founded solely upon skilful adaptation. They assume the semblance of explanations from the fact that an impression of continuity is produced by an ever more closely packed accumulation of momentary forms. Such continuity, however, resembles the continuity of a circumference made up of a number of the smallest possible single parts: the greater the appearance of continuity, all the greater in reality, the discontinuity. The impulsion which furnishes the actual connection between events--the energies at work in occurrences, the real laws of formation--are thus never touched on at all, nay, they are deliberately ignored. These eternally repeated attempts at adaptation on the part of science may very well be likened to the voyage of a vessel up stream through locks. When one has come to a stand-still in a lock--that is, when one has completed one act of adaptation--one waits until sufficient water--that is, sufficient new material in the shape of facts--has accumulated to enable one to reach a new lock--that is, a new act of adaptation.