Chapter 78

SPEECH AND SIGNIFICATION

Sounds well fitted to be symbols.—Language has a structure independent of things.—Words, remaining identical, serve to identify things that change.—Language the dialectical garment of facts.—Words are wise men’s counters.—Nominalism right in psychology and realism in logic.—Literature moves between the extremes of music and denotation.—Sound and object, in their sensuous presence, may have affinity.—Syntax positively representative.—Yet it vitiates what it represents.—Difficulty in subduing a living medium.—Language foreshortens experience.—It is a perpetual mythology.—It may be apt or inapt, with equal richness.—Absolute language a possible but foolish art Pages 68-86