Speech has such a peculiarly intimate connection with thought as to require special discussion. Although the very word logic comes from logos ([Greek: logos]), meaning indifferently both word or speech, and thought or reason, yet "words, words, words" denote intellectual barrenness, a sham of thought. Although schooling has language as its chief instrument (and often as its chief matter) of study, educational reformers have for centuries brought their severest indictments against the current use of language in the schools. The conviction that language is necessary to thinking (is even identical with it) is met by the contention that language perverts and conceals thought. [Sidenote: Language a necessary tool of thinking,] [Sidenote: for it alone fixes meanings] Three typical views have been maintained regarding the relation of thought and language: first, that they are identical; second, that words are the garb or clothing of thought, necessary not for thought but only for conveying it; and third (the view we shall here maintain) that while language is not thought it is necessary for thinking as well as for its communication. When it is said, however, that thinking is impossible without language, we must recall that language includes much more than oral and written speech. Gestures, pictures, monuments, visual images, finger movements--anything consciously employed as a _sign_ is, logically, language. To say that language is necessary for thinking is to say that signs are necessary. Thought deals not with bare things, but with their _meanings_, their suggestions; and meanings, in order to be apprehended, must be embodied in sensible and particular existences. Without meaning, things are nothing but blind stimuli or chance sources of pleasure and pain; and since meanings are not themselves tangible things, they must be anchored by attachment to some physical existence. Existences that are especially set aside to fixate and convey meanings are _signs_ or _symbols_. If a man moves toward another to throw him out of the room, his movement is not a sign. If, however, the man points to the door with his hand, or utters the sound _go_, his movement is reduced to a vehicle of meaning: it is a sign or symbol. In the case of signs we care nothing for what they are in themselves, but everything for what they signify and represent. _Canis_, _hund_, _chien_, dog--it makes no difference what the outward thing is, so long as the meaning is presented. [Sidenote: Limitations of natural symbols]