ABSTRACT
The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Infiuence ofLanguage upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism admirably illustrates, in its fuIl title, its own ßamboyance. Perhaps the best way of describing it is as a book written by two young men who pretend to be angry. It is an immensely high-spirited book. They attack almost everybody, and claim to solve a host of fundamental problems in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and aesthetics, or, if not to solve them, at least to indicate the generallines upon which others might now proceed to their solution. Some of the brash positivism associated with youth reveals itself in their attitudes. It shows itsclf in great hopefulness, in impatience with uncertainties, in a belief in the practical importance of their mission. "Convinced as they are" , they wrote in the Preface to the first edition, "of the urgency of a stricter examination of language from a point ofview which is at present receiving no attention, the authors have preferred to publish this essay in its present form rather than to wait, perhaps indefinitely, until, in lives otherwise sufficiently occupied, enough moments of leisure had accumulated for it to be rewritten in a more complete and more systematized form" (xxx).! The authors revel in a display of learning. The book is a sort of polymathic orgy. We are prepared for this, again in the first edition's Preface, by their description of past work in the field they are to tackle.
