derives was The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding, and this chapter, which is based on the first lecture, argues that one limit of human understanding is a systematic inability to understand language. This inability may strike you as paradoxical. How can you fail to understand your own language? You acquired it at your mother’s knee; it is yours inalienably. You know it intimately, so securely that with a few trivial exceptions—rare words, prolix constructions—you must understand it. But,