In order to link the representation of a meaning with that of a word, it is necessary to refer to, and to have recourse to, the purely grammatical laws of a language which, apart from all power of representing representations, is subjected to the rigorous system of its phonetic modifications and its synthetic subordinations; in the Classical age, languages had a grammar because they had the power to represent; now they represent on the basis of that grammar, which is for them a sort of historical reverse side, an interior and necessary volume whose representative values are no more than the glittering, visible exterior.