Prof. Max Müller’s theory of the identity of language and thought[11] is so valuable because it bridges the gap between the rational sphere of man and the not-yet rational sphere of the brute creation. It explains the origin of reason. The origin of reason in the world of living beings is explained as soon as the origin of language is understood, for reason develops with language and rational thought is nothing but rational speech. If the origin of language were an unfathomable mystery, Prof. Max Müller’s view of the identity of language and thought would lose all practical importance. The proposition of the identity of language and thought is a very radical idea; it is the fundamental idea of monism. In a more general form it was first pronounced by Giordano Bruno, who says somewhere that, if we could put the soul of a man into the organism of an animal, say of a snake, it would cease to be a human soul and become the soul of a snake. Speech would be changed into a hissing, in accordance with the snake’s organs for uttering sounds. And in the same way all the feelings, all the concepts, all the desires and inclinations—in short the whole psychical life would be that of a snake. Thought is the soul of language. As there are no ghost-souls, so there are no ghost-thoughts. And the soul is not something distinct from the organism, it is the form of the organism. It happens in fairy-tales that the Prince is transformed into a frog, but if a fairy could transform a man into a frog, his soul would certainly also become a frog-soul. Language is the visible organism of the invisible thought, and as is language, exactly so is thought.