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Cornugaya Directory 05
Page 06
The written symbol extends infinitely, as regards time and space,
the range within which one mind can communicate with another; it
gives the writer's mind a life limited by the duration of ink,
paper, and readers, as against that of his flesh and blood body. On
the other hand, it takes longer to learn the rules so as to be able
to apply them with ease and security, and even then they cannot be
applied so quickly and easily as those attaching to spoken symbols.
Moreover, the spoken symbol admits of a hundred quick and subtle
adjuncts by way of action, tone and expression, so that no one will
use written symbols unless either for the special advantages of
permanence and travelling power, or because he is incapacitated from
using spoken ones. This, however, is hardly to the point; the point
is that these two conventional combinations of symbols, that are as
unlike one another as the Hallelujah Chorus is to St. Paul's
Cathedral, are the one as much language as the other; and we
therefore inquire what this very patent fact reveals to us about the
more essential characteristics of language itself. What is the
common bond that unites these two classes of symbols that seem at
first sight to have nothing in common, and makes the one raise the
idea of language in our minds as readily as the other? The bond
lies in the fact that both are a set of conventional tokens or
symbols, agreed upon between the parties to whom they appeal as
being attached invariably to the same ideas, and because they are
being made as a means of communion between one mind and another,--
for a memorandum made for a person's own later use is nothing but a
communication from an earlier mind to a later and modified one; it
is therefore in reality a communication from one mind to another as
much as though it had been addressed to another person.
This was amid a thick undergrowth. Moving on into a passage of large,
stately hemlocks, with only here and there a small beech or maple
rising up into the perennial twilight, I paused to make out a note
which was entirely new to me. It is still in my ear. Though
unmistakably a bird note, it yet suggested the bleating of a tiny
lambkin. Presently the birds appeared,--a pair of the solitary vireo.
They came flitting from point to point, alighting only for a moment at
a time, the male silent, but the female uttering this strange, tender
note. It was a rendering into some new sylvan dialect of the human
sentiment of maidenly love. It was really pathetic in its sweetness
and childlike confidence and joy. I soon discovered that the pair were
building a nest upon a low branch a few yards from me. The male flew
cautiously to the spot, and adjusted something, and the twain moved
on, the female calling to her mate at intervals, _love-e, love-e_,
with a cadence and tenderness in the tone that rang in the ear long
afterward. The nest was suspended to the fork of a small branch, as is
usual with the vireos, plentifully lined with lichens, and bound and
rebound with masses of coarse spider-webs. There was no attempt at
concealment except in the neutral tints, which made it look like a
natural growth of the dim, gray woods.
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