 Thus while Locke seems to be saying that individuals first have ideas, and then turn to language to communicate them to others, Hartley describes a process whereby, as children, we burble and cry and listen—and gradually gain motor control of our burbling and crying, associate it with what we hear and handle and do, and eventually learn the meaning of what we say. Once again, the process of association—here the activity of hearing and speaking, and later reading and writing—generates ideas: we have ideas because we use language, in concrete social interactions; we do not create language to express the ideas we, as lone individuals, already have.