LANGUAGE seem inert and dead; what is it that gives them life (PG 40, 107; PI i 430)? The obvious answer is that they become alive by being meant by speakers and writers and understood by hearers and readers This obvious answer is the true one; but we must get clear what meaning and understanding are They are not, as one might think, mental processes that accompany spoken sentences If you are tempted to think this, try to perform that process without the speaking ‘Make the following experiment,’ says Wittgenstein; ‘say ‘‘It’s cold here’’ and mean ‘‘it’s warm here’’ Can you it? and what are you doing as you it?’ (PI i 332, 510) If you try to perform an act of meaning without uttering the appropriate sentence, you are likely to find yourself reciting the sentence itself under your breath But of course it would be absurd to suggest that simultaneously with every public utterance of a sentence there is also a sotto voce one It would take skill to ensure that the two processes were exactly in synchrony—and how disastrous it would be if they got out of step so that the meaning of a word got wrongly attached to its neighbour! It is true that when we hear a sentence in a language we know, there are mental events—feelings, images, etc.—that differ from those that occur when we hear a sentence in a language we not know But these experiences will vary from case to case, and cannot be regarded as themselves constituting the understanding Understanding cannot really be thought of as a process at all Wittgenstein asks: When we understand a sentence? When we have uttered the whole of it? Or while we are uttering it? Is the understanding an articulated process like the speaking of the sentence; and does its articulation correspond to the articulation of the sentence? Or is it non-articulated, accompanying the sentence in the way in which a pedal point accompanies a melody? (PG 50) Understanding language, like knowing how to play chess, is a state rather than a process; but we should not think of it as a state of some hidden mental mechanism Sometimes we are tempted to think that the conscious operations of our mind are the outcome of a mental process at a level lower than that of introspection Perhaps, we think, our mental mechanism operates too swiftly for us to be able to follow all its movements, like the pistons of a steam engine or the blades of a lawn mower If only we could sharpen our faculty for introspection, or get the machinery to run in slow motion, we 139