"Why do you say that our language will not permit of clearer conceptions than you give?" "Because your education does not permit you to think outside of words; you are word-bound." "You astonish me by making such an arrogant assertion. Do you mean to assert that I can not think without using words?" "Yes. Every thought you indulge in is circumscribed. You presumably attempt to throw a thought-line forward, and yet you step backward and spin it in words that have been handed you from the past, and, struggle as you may, you can not liberate yourself from the dead incubus. Attempt to originate an idea, and see if you can escape your word-master?" "Go on; I am listening." "Men scientific think in language scientific. Men poetical think in language poetic. All educated men use words in thinking of their subjects, words that came to them from the past, and enslave their intellect. Thus it is that the novelist can not make fiction less real than is fact; that scientists can not commence at the outside, and build a theory back to phenomena understood. In each case the foundation of a thought is a word that in the very beginning carries to the mind a meaning, a something from the past. Each thought ramification is an offshoot from words that express ideas and govern ideas, yes, create ideas, even dominating the mind. Men speak of ideas when they intend to refer to an image in the mind, but in reality they have no ideas outside of the word sentences they unconsciously reformulate. Define the term idea correctly, and it will be shown that an idea is a sentence, and if a sentence is made of words already created, there can be no new idea, for every word has a fixed meaning. Hence, when men think, they only rearrange words that carry with themselves networks of ideas, and thus play upon their several established meanings. How can men so circumscribed construct a new idea or teach a new science?" "New words are being created." "Language is slowly progressing, but no new word adds itself to a language; it is linked to thought-chains that precede. In order to create a word, as a rule, roots are used that are as established in philology as are building materials in architecture. When a new sound is thrust into a language, its intent must be introduced by words already known, after which it conveys a meaning derived from the past, and becomes a part of mind sentences already constructed, as it does of spoken language. Language has thus been painfully and slowly evolved and is still being enlarged, but while new impressions may be felt by an educated person, the formulated feeling is inseparable, from well-known surviving words." "Some men are dumb."