These extremes are called civilisation and barbarism - or savagery. But the use of these words is misleading, for they imply that there are barbarians on the one hand and civilised men on the other. The distinction is that civilised men speak and barbarians are silent, and the man who speaks is always the civilised man.

To put it more precisely, since language is by definition the expression of the civilised man, violence is silent. Many consequences result from that bias of language. Not only does “civilised” usually mean “us”, and barbarous “them”, but also civilisation and language grew as though violence was something outside, foreign not only to civilisation but also to man, man being the same thing as language.

Yet observation shows that the same peoples are alternately barbarous and civilised in their attitudes. All savages speak and by speaking they reveal their solidarity with the decency and kindness that are the root of civilisation. Conversely all civilised men are capable of savagery. Lynch law belongs to men who rate themselves as among the most highly civilised of our age.

If language is to be extricated from this impasse, we must declare that violence belongs to humanity as a whole and is speechless, and that thus humanity as a whole lies by omission and language itself is founded upon this lie.