possession in common. Thus by understanding a social will issues from the individual will. But the less social validity a word has, the more effort it needs for the individual to make himself understood; he then strengthens by natural signs—tones and gestures—the meaning which he desires to give to the word.
14. But words are essentially and according to the law of their development social signs; and the social will which expresses itself in them, which settles and gives to them their meaning, is—like all social will—of various kinds.
15. Here we must first of all indicate the profound difference between the social will which has formed itself in a natural way, and that which is made consciously. From this difference arises the fundamental difference of the sense in which a word means anything. But before we can consider this in detail a general exposition must precede.
16. In every case the meaning is a kind of equation; a word is equal to one or more other words by which it is explained, and is thus mediately or immediately equal to the object of a perception or recollection. But these equations are not generally thought of as something willed, but as something actual, which therefore we know or do not know, and concerning which we can have a right or wrong opinion; we know or do not know what a word means, i.e., for what it is the sign, or what a thing is “called,” i.e., by what word it is denoted. The question from what cause a thing is called so and so, is at first as remote from us as the question from what cause a thing is green or blue.
17. In every circle of human beings, that which all know (or at any rate may learn), that therefore to which all feel themselves bound, is held to be so real (i.e., like the natural), the connexion between name and thing becomes so firm, that it is felt and thought of as necessary. The name is held to belong to the thing, and to have a mystic connexion with it like that of a picture or a shadow. This is especially the case with the names of persons, giving rise to the fear that knowledge of the name gives power over body and soul, and hence to anxiety to conceal proper names and avoidance of uttering the names of the dead lest their rest should be disturbed, and much allied superstition. Even in philosophy it is not easy to overcome the view that certain names belong to things by nature (φύσει), and the Christian thinkers laid it down that Adam assigned the right name to things; even in the beginning of this century the doctrine that all languages are to be derived from Hebrew was again received. Nay, there are still famous authors to-day who regard the posses-
