Signs, Processes and Associations
always reliable evidence that the civilization of that time was ignorant of the thing for which the word stands. One may as well infer that the French, according to the old saw, have no home because la maison, le chez nous, le foyer, are used by them as equivalents of our English word. Everybody admits that no people ever were more keenly awake to the finer significance or clearer meaning which we give to the word home, than are the French. Neither is the frequent occurrence of a word in an ancient idiom necessarily the proof that a certain corresponding thing existed in the civilization of the people, or that a corresponding feature was present in their more immediate environment. To assume this would be to ignore the exotic instinct—the tendency to borrow—which we know pervades all human states of being and virtually all tongues at all times.
Language regarded as a system of signs, no matter how expressed—phonetically, gesturally, or graphically—is conservative and
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