especially when we are dealing with merely subjective feelings and experiences, a positive (“good”) will to understand, hence an active sympathy, in so far as this is not replaced by interests, i.e., by the thought for which the understanding is means to another end. In every case the understanding of another’s meaning is, as reproduction, a kind of constructive effort, which is more or less successful, and the success of which is made more probable by attention and practice, but also by the knowledge of rules according to which we may infer the real meaning of the speaker who wishes to impart it, partly from the phenomenon (the sign used) and partly from the accompanying phenomena (e.g., of emphasis). It may be that a stammering or babbling will suffice for the understanding of one, which is incomprehensible to all others; or there may be needed a long apprenticeship, and—even for learned men—the unfolding of a thought in many complicated sentences.
20. Thus not only mutual, but even one-sided, understanding presupposes a similar knowledge of ideas and signs on both sides. Signs are themselves ideas, and their connexion with the ideas signified is that which must be forthcoming to make an understanding possible. When other than natural signs are to be understood this connexion can only be gained by learning, i.e., by increasing and confirmatory experience, which may be obtained chiefly for oneself or chiefly by the help of others. In every case the development of those associations of ideas which are known as habitual and involve a knowledge (though it may remain latent), is conditioned by our own practice and the habit which grows with it. But the habitual and familiar is felt and thought as natural, hence it is not easy for the naïve spirit to raise the question why the object has this name or the word this meaning, or the question is answered like similar questions as to the origin of modes of action, customs, etc., by reference to common agreement and to tradition from our ancestors. The power of the fact, when regarded as actual and natural, is indeed weakened in that there are many languages, and that it is only in this language of ours that the fact is so—for this leads us to regard the meaning or name as fortuitous instead of as necessary, to think of it as fixed by human will and therefore capable of change (νόμω) instead of as natural and immutable (φύσει). But the particular “language” appears as a natural or supernatural kind of being, it has a “spirit,” we make use of it as of a living instrument. We use it as a whole, and it presents itself as a whole because through it (if we will to use it) the particular words are held together in
