[436] are in business relations, they use the abbreviations for the great corporation, [such] as "G.M.," the auto manufacturer, and I am supposed to know this language^a, when I speak to someone, but I never was in school to learn it! And it is at least a thousand words which are in common use; and who

can know all of them? What to do these words mean? They mean that the word doesn't mean anything any more--the original words of which the combined words are the letters. These original words are not necessary for the technical communication of separated monads, but they are sufficient in order to point to something which, if you have learned it, you know, and no more is needed. The whole realm of connotations, the power of language which lies in the connotations and the history^b of the words and the rhythms and the combinations, in which all participate, which then are real doors and windows from one to the other: they are taken away, and what is left are signs^c pointing to something in which cooperation is possible, for instance buying what somebody else wants to sell!

Now this is the second form of individualism^d, the rational individual who is atomized, goes his way, and where only the doctrine of reestablished harmony, which is lying in God^e, is able to make understandable that communication is possible at all! When I speak to you--according to this doctrine--it is not me whom you hear, but the movements of sounds which come to you are coordinated to the movements of my thoughts in myself, and my thoughts have no direct causality on the movements, the waves, which hit your ears and then are perceived by you. And even more, what is perceived by your body has no direct influence on what is going on in your central monad, which is your soul^f; and the only way in which such communication is possible