Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 110

86

§ 40.

LANGUAGE

[Dn.

II

whether the image is a mere indication, a rough sign or a A motion of the hand, a sign, a look finely wrought form. of the eyes, a facial expression, are parts of human language as well as words.

Nor should

it

be overlooked that, at least

words has a broad While language in advantage over language in words. words serves your purpose as far as the knowledge of your own language extends, the language of symbol is universally intelligible, even to the deaf and dumb, with only the The old custom, which is reviving itself of blind excepted. late, of publishing books with pictures, is from this viewSince our consciousness has a twopoint entirely justified.

in our present state, language without

fold

manner

of

existence,

that

of

representation and of

conception, the union of image and word will ever be the most perfect means of communication between the conAnd communion can sciousness of one and of another. become so complete that a given content may be perfectly transmitted from the consciousness of one into that of

another.

The

real difficulty arises only

when

instead of

being borrowed from the morphological part of the cosmos, the content of your communication is taken from the

amorphic or asomatic part of the cosmos such as when you try to convey to others your impressions and perceptions of the world of the true, the good, and tlie beautiful. We have no proper means at command by which to reproduce the elements of this amorphic cosmos, so that by the aid of symbolism we must resort to analogies and other utterances This renders the of mind which are forever incomplete. ;

relations

among

these

elements continually uncertain, so

that our conceptions of these relations are never entirely clear, while nevertheless a tendency arises to interpret this amorphic cosmos as consisting purely of conceptions. As this, however, will be considered more fully later on, it is

sufficient to state here that for all science, language in its

widest sense

is

the indispensable means both of communica-

tion between the consciousness of one and that of another,

and for the generalization which all science roots.

of

the

human

consciousness in

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