Now as representations, thus sublimated and analysed to form abstract conceptions, have, as we have said, forfeited all perceptibility, they would entirely escape our consciousness, and be of no avail to it for the thinking processes to which they are destined, were they not fixed and retained in our senses by arbitrary signs. These signs are words. In as far as they constitute the contents of dictionaries and therefore of language, words always designate _general_ representations, conceptions, never perceptible objects; whereas a lexicon which enumerates individual things, only contains proper names, not words, and is either a geographical or historical dictionary: that is to say, it enumerates what is separated either by Time or by Space; for, as _my_ readers know, Time and Space are the _principium individuationis_. It is only because animals are limited to intuitive representations and incapable of any abstraction--incapable therefore of forming conceptions--that they are without language, even when they are able to articulate words; whereas they understand proper names. That it is this same defect which excludes them from laughter, I have shown in my theory of the ridiculous.[118] [118] See "Die Welt a. W. u. V." vol. i. sect. 13, and vol. ii. ch. 8. On analyzing a long, continuous speech made by a man of no education, we find in it an abundance of logical forms, clauses, turns of phrase, distinctions, and subtleties of all sorts, correctly expressed by means of grammatical forms with their inflections and constructions, and even with a frequent use of the _sermo obliquus_, of the different moods, &c. &c., all in conformity with rule, which astonishes us, and in which we are forced to recognise an extensive and perfectly coherent knowledge. Still this knowledge has been acquired on the basis of the perceptible world, the reduction of whose whole essence to abstract conceptions is the fundamental business of the Reason, and can only take place by means of language. In learning the use of language therefore, the whole mechanism of Reason--that is, all that is essential in Logic--is brought to our consciousness. Now this can evidently not take place without considerable mental effort and fixed attention, for which the desire to learn gives children the requisite strength. So long as that desire has before it what is really available and necessary, it is vigorous, and it only appears weak when we try to force upon children that which is not suited to their comprehension. Thus even a coarsely educated child, in learning all the turns and subtleties of language, as well through its own conversation as that of others, accomplishes the development of its Reason, and acquires that really concrete Logic, which consists less in logical rules than in the proper application of them; just as the rules of harmony are learnt by persons of musical talent simply by playing the piano, without reading music or studying thorough-bass.--The deaf and dumb