If we are strict in always connecting the same
symbols with the same ideas, we speak well, keep our meaning clear
to ourselves, and convey it readily and accurately to anyone who is
also fairly strict. If, on the other hand, we use the same
combination of symbols for one thing one day and for another the
next, we abuse our symbols instead of using them, and those who
indulge in slovenly habits in this respect ere long lose the power
alike of thinking and of expressing themselves correctly. The
symbols, however, in the first instance, may be anything in the wide
world that we have a fancy for. They have no more to do with the
ideas they serve to convey than money has with the things that it
serves to buy.
The principle of association, as everyone knows, involves that
whenever two things have been associated sufficiently together, the
suggestion of one of them to the mind shall immediately raise a
suggestion of the other. It is in virtue of this principle that
language, as we so call it, exists at all, for the essence of
language consists, as I have said perhaps already too often, in the
fixity with which certain ideas are invariably connected with
certain symbols.
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