In the general equilibrium of clinical thought, the symptom plays more or less the role of the language of action: like it, it is caught up in the general movement of nature; and its force of manifestation is as primitive, as naturally given as the `instinct' that bears this initial form of language;' it is the disease in its manifest state, just as the language of action is the impression itself in the animation that prolongs it, maintains it, and turns it back into an external form, which is of the same nature as its internal truth.