The philologists distinguish carefully between a science of language and a science of languages. The latter teaches Egyptian, Assyrian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English, French, etc., while the former treats of the general characteristics common to all languages, of language itself.

Philosophical logic stands in the same relation to other sciences. The latter make us acquainted with special truths, while logic treats of truth in general. Those overintelligent people who claim that truth is merely a collective term for many truths do not see the woods for trees. Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Max MÜller, Steinthal, etc., have many things to say about the science of language of which the linguists with many languages never dream.

The science of language, aside from its many amenities, is also burdened with a difficult problem which it cannot solve without the help of logic. This problem is the point of differentiation where babbling and word-mongery cease and intelligent speech begins. For human speech has a certain meaning, and even the cries of the animals are not without sense. The sparrows know how to converse together, the rooster calls his flock together, the dog knows how to announce that a stranger enters his master's home. Not alone the jokers, but serious thinkers speak of animal language, of a sign language, and maintain that speech does not alone consist of words, but also of inarticulate sounds and gestures. Poets endow even the storm, the thunder and the winds with speech. We wish to clear this confusion and ascertain what language is and where it begins. Languages, as is well known, have their beginning at the Tower of Babel. But in order to get close to language, we must look for a beginning of things either in God or in logic.

You know the old question: Which was first, the egg or the hen? But only a frivolous mind overlooks the serious side of this question and turns it into a mere joke. The question of beginning and end is an eminently logical one, and an unequivocal and clear answer to it would bring light not alone into the science of language, but also into the human brain.

Let us, therefore, follow up the problem of the "origin of language" a little farther. When our forefathers dealt with this question, they thought that a God had given speech to man or some genius had invented it. They thought of a beginning in time. The modern thinkers speculate more deeply. They have found out that language is not a fixed thing, but fluid, and has risen from low beginnings to a great perfection. We can no more find its temporal beginning by looking backward than we can see its end by looking ahead. For this reason we no longer look for its temporal, but for its ideological beginning. (Steinthal.) We should like to have a fixed mark where we might say: Up to this point that which resembles speech is only roaring, exclamation, noise, and here is the beginning of the well articulated sound which deserves the name of "spoken word."

But there is still another factor which complicates the question further. Some say: It is not only the sound, the word, which constitutes speech, but the connected sentence; there must be sense and reason mixed with it. And this applies to the speaker and to the listener. Language presupposes reason.

Then, again, intellect is not a fixed thing, but a fluid process which develops in, from, and by speech. So it appears on one side as if the mind produces language, and on the other, as if language produces the mind, the reason. Where, then, is the beginning and end, and how can we bring order into these relations?

For us, who are studying the mind, not the language, the conclusion follows that it is not alone the word, but also the sound, the tone, the gesture, that all things have a meaning and speak a language. We find mind wherever we penetrate with our mind. Not alone language, but the world is connected with the mind, with the thought. But the connection with language may well serve as an illustration by which the connection of the cosmic mind may be demonstrated and the human brain illuminated.

Language shares the honor with the mind of being extolled, even in this sober century, if not to the skies, at least far out of the general connection of common things. For this reason, we must emphasize in the case of language as in that of the mind, that they exist, that they are part and parcel of the universal existence. At this point I wish to give you a vivid illustration of the unity of all being by pointing out that it is indubitably established by the existence of one single name which is sufficient to designate All. True, language employs many names for this unity of the world, but that is a luxury. It is logical and necessary for the intellect to have one name for the All, because everything is not only infinitely variegated, but also infinitely one, or a unit. There are many different waters, but all water partakes of the general nature of water. Unless that nature is present, there is no water and the name of water does not apply. In the same way there are many kinds of oil; olive oil, kerosene oil, castor oil, etc., and each kind has its own subdivisions. But everything that has a common name is a unit.

Kindly observe, now, that the names of things form just such circles as the water does after being struck by a stone. Just as the name water, so the name oil indicates a ring. Then the name fluid constitutes another and wider ring which includes both oil and water. Then the name matter draws a still wider circle and includes solids as well as fluids, and finally the name being, or All, includes mind and matter, all matter and force, including heaven and hell, in one sole ring, in one unit.

On the basis of this universal unity, from which it becomes apparent that high and low, dry and fluid, in short the whole universe is made of the same substance, any fantastic thinker can prove that human and animal language is one, for otherwise one could not refer to both of them as language. He may then justly contend that speech, producing a sound, is a noise, that speech and noise are one. Speech is sound and sound speaks. In this way language would have no beginning and no end. In the last analysis it would be one with all things, and all things would be one with it. In this way the whole universe would become an inexplicable, incomprehensible, inexpressible mixture of speech.

And yet it is an old story that man's insight grows the more he magnifies a thing. The more excessively we exaggerate a thing, the plainer become its boundaries. Language indeed requires one single name for All, but it also requires an infinite number of names in order to specify the parts of All. Inasmuch as language claims to be only a part of existence, this part has to be bounded, and you should in this connection remember the unlimited freedom of man in drawing such boundaries. Words are not merely empty words, but names of cosmic parts, of cosmic rings of undulation. Language, or rather the mind connected with language, wishes to bound the infinite by the help of language. The instinctive popular use of language does this in a haphazard way. Conscious science proceeds in an exact manner. Just as it has determined on the field of temperature what should be called hot and what warm, so it is at liberty on the field of sounds to determine where the name of language begins or ceases. The end of the discussion of language is therefore this: That which has already been done to horse power has not yet been done to the concept of language; it has been somewhat fixed by common usage, but only insufficiently. And so the moral of this tale is that the things of this world, even mind and language, are connected and intermingling undulations of the same stream, which has neither beginning nor end.

Let me say it once more clearly and without circumlocution: The logic which I teach and the thought which is its object are parts of the world, of the infinite, and every part being a piece of the infinite is likewise infinite. Every part partakes of the nature of the infinite. Hence you must not expect that I should exhaust my infinite subject. I confine myself to the logical chapter of "the One and the Many." I simply wish to make it plain that without any contradiction the whole multiplicity of existence is of the same nature, and that this oneness of nature subdivides into manifold forms. The world is interconnected and this interconnection is subdivided into departments. It adds to the general enlightenment of the human brain to recognize this in regard to language, to mind, to all parts of the universe.

I repeat, then: One may think logically without having attended any lectures on logic, just as one may raise potatoes without a scientific knowledge of agriculture. It was possible to invent the thermometer, to clearly distinguish between sounds and colors, and a hundred other things, without having explained the faculty of discrimination. But the most abstract distinctions, such as beginning and end, word and meaning, body and soul, man and animal, matter and force, truth and error, presuppose for their explanation a logical explanation of their interconnection with our intellect.