ABSTRACT
Man’s progress from savagery to civilization is intimately bound up with the advance of abstract thinking, which enables him to rise above the chaos of particular sensations and to fashion therefrom an ordered cosmos. The growth of reasoning in its turn goes hand in hand with the development of language. The substratum of modern intellectual activities is very largely composed of those syntheses of audile and muscular sensations or images which represent words. These are not only means of communication, but also the vehicles of our abstract ideas. Words are the very stuff of thought. It follows then that a common language does imply a common mental outlook in its speakers; it not only reflects but also conditions ways of thinking peculiar to the users of the tongue in question. Moreover, intellectual progress may to a large extent be measured by the refinement of language. Hence to inherit an exceptionally delicate linguistic structure gives a people a vantage point on the path of progress.
