[36] Now a last consideration. Language^a has two sides: meaning and power-- as everything in man's spiritual life [does]. The very definition of man's creative spirit, is: the unity of meaning and power. Some mystical [?] expressions are completely, or rather almost completely, determined by meaning without power; others are determined almost completely by power without meaning. The two extremes are the mathematical sign, which is completely defined in its meaning by the decision which makes up the definition of this mathematical sign; and on the other hand a liturgical language, which is not understandable to the present generation, especially if it is given in a foreign language. There, only the sound as such is important, and the power expressed in this sound. Now my main criticism of logical positivism^b (I have others, too) is that it tries to reduce language to meaning, and to remove the element of power. In mathematical abstraction, this is certainly possible, but otherwise it takes away one decisive element of language. The power of a word is based on its connotations--traditional connotation and personally experienced connotation. The power of a sentence is dependent on the images produced by special words in it. The power of speech is dependent on the constellation of images PRODUCED BY the speech, and on the rhythm, the musical element, in it. Now these sides of language are not unessential, emotional additions, but they all witness to the encounter^c with reality which has produced them, and where they are mediators to us of the same encounter--or of a similar one, because it is never absolutely the same. If you see this, then you can understand a lot about the manifoldness of human language^d. I would say one of the consequences of this polarity of meaning and power in all language is that we can find an answer to the question whether philosophy is possible or not. It is not by chance but very consistent that some of the logical positivists have rejected the whole history of philosophy--except the beginnings of logical positivism^e in the "Vienna Circle" a few decades ago--because philosophy, all classical philosophy, through the whole history of mankind, has terms in which meaning and power are united, and if you take away the element of power, then these words are (as some logical positivists tell us) meaningless, or they have an emotional meaning. But they have not