In the last two chapters we have explored several dimensions of the content of speech, but one topic has remained largely undiscussed and must be approached now: the fact that we also speak about things when they are not bodily present. In Chapter 7 we used as our paradigm the case of two people, Henry and Jane, speaking to each other about an oak tree that is present to both of them; Henry points it out and says something about it. But most of our speech and conversation is about things that are not present: about what we did last week or what we will do tomorrow, about Tokyo or Buenos Aires, Napoleon or Charlemagne, quarks or the center of the sun. The names that designate things before us can also be used to designate things that are absent. An essential strength of speech and thinking is that they can reach into the absent as well as respond to what is present. The ability to deal with the absent is a constitutive element in rationality. One of the important philosophical discoveries of Edmund Husserl was the role of absence in human experience, thinking, and expression. We can distinguish four ways in which absence enters into our experience and thinking.