B1213 <=> B1215 [BTG XLVIII From the Author, p. 1214]

Thanks to this, even the isolation of the inner life of each individual man is increased, and as a consequence what is called the “mutual instruction” so necessary to people’s collective existence is always more and more destroyed.

Owing to the loss of the capacity to ponder and reflect, whenever the contemporary average man hears or employs in conversation any word with which he is familiar only by its consonance, he does not pause to think, nor does there even arise in him any question as to what exactly is meant by this word, he having already decided, once and for all, both that he knows it and that others know it too.

A question, perhaps, does sometimes arise in him when he hears an entirely unfamiliar word the first time; but in this case he is content merely to substitute for the unfamiliar word another suitable word of familiar consonance and then to imagine that he has understood it.

To bring home what has just been said, an excellent example is provided by the word so often used by every contemporary man – “world.”

If people knew how to grasp for themselves what passes in their thoughts when they hear or use the word “world,” then most of them would have to admit – if of course they intended to be sincere – that the word carries no exact notion whatever for them. Catching by ear simply the accustomed consonance, the meaning of which they assume that they know, it is as if they say to themselves “Ah, world, I know what this is,” and serenely go on thinking.

Should one deliberately arrest their attention on this word and know how to probe them to find just what they understand by it, they will at first be plainly as is said “embarrassed,” but quickly pulling themselves together, that is to say, quickly deceiving themselves, and recalling the first definition of the word that comes to mind, they will then offer it as their own, although, in fact, they had not thought of it before.