ii
Words are organised thoughts, as living forms are organised actions.
How a thought can find embodiment in words is nearly, though perhaps
not quite, as mysterious as how an action can find embodiment in
form, and appears to involve a somewhat analogous transformation and
contradiction in terms.
There was a time when language was as rare an accomplishment as
writing was in the days when it was first invented. Probably talking
was originally confined to a few scholars, as writing was in the
middle ages, and gradually became general. Even now speech is still
growing; poor folks cannot understand the talk of educated people.
Perhaps reading and writing will indeed one day come by nature.
Analogy points in this direction, and though analogy is often
misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
iii
Communications between God and man must always be either above words
or below them; for with words come in translations, and all the
interminable questions therewith connected.
iv
The mere fact that a thought or idea can be expressed articulately in
words involves that it is still open to question; and the mere fact
that a difficulty can be definitely conceived involves that it is
open to solution.
v
We want words to do more than they can. We try to do with them what
comes to very much like trying to mend a watch with a pickaxe or to
paint a miniature with a mop; we expect them to help us to grip and
dissect that which in ultimate essence is as ungrippable as shadow.
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