 That Collingwood has a theory of language might seem tangential to his theory of art, but in fact it is integral to it. For Collingwood’s approach to it comes not from the theory of reference and truth as in Frege or Russell, but from the point of view which regards language as fundamentally or in the first instance expressive behaviour. Concepts of referential semantics—as a ‘symbolism’ in Collingwood’s terminology—become applicable only later, with a certain degree of sophistication is attained. ‘In its original or native state, language in imaginative or expressive … It is imaginative activity whose function is to express emotion.’ (225). Of course ‘imaginative’ must be understood in the broader sense just described, denoting all consciousness of ideated analogues of sensation or feeling. From this angle, we can speak of the ‘totality of our motor activities’ as a ‘parent organism’ (247), from which every type of ‘language (speech, gesture, and so forth)’ is an ‘offshoot’ (246).