The Interpretation of Words Our understanding of language relies on our direct experience of the component concepts which words represent. Consequently we cannot understand any language-borne message unless we have the direct experience of the elements of reality for which its words are the labels.

I have never seen a tapir, an animal I believe lives in the Far East. But I have heard it described. That description was a message in symbolic language passed to me from a writer who had obviously seen a tapir. In paraphrase, the message was something like what follows:

"It is like a horse, but a bit broader and with 5 toes instead of a hoof. It has a flexible elephant's trunk no longer than a horse's muzzle, lives in herds, eats vegetation and looks a bit prehistoric."

From this description, I have a fairly reasonable picture of a tapir in my mind. I would probably recognise a tapir if I saw one. But supposing I had never seen a horse or an elephant. How would I understand the description of a tapir? It would be difficult.

Take this a stage further. Suppose I am a visitor from another planet, and I have never seen a quadruped animal of any kind. Now try to explain what a tapir is! Suppose further that I have never been on a planet with gravity. Suppose I have never seen any biochemical life-form or even experienced the concepts of motion under gravity on the surface of a planet. Then in what terms could you possibly explain to me what a tapir is using symbolic language - words?

The fact is that we need an intimate experience of our ecological environment in order to be able to think, and to possess the powers of symbolic language through which to be able to communicate our thoughts to others.