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Since man can think only by means of words or other external symbols, these might turn round and say: "You mean nothing which we have not taught you, and then only so far as you address some word as the interpretants of your thought." In fact, therefore, men and words reciprocally educate each other; each increase of man's information involves, and is involved by, a corresponding increase of the word's information. . . . It is that the word or sign the man uses is the man himself. For, as the fact that life is a train of thought proves the fact that man is a sign, so that every thought is an external sign proves that man is an external sign. That is to say, man and the external signs are identical, in the same sense in which the words homo and man are identical. Thus my language is the sum total of myself. |
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