THE PICTURE AND THE TEXT 277 



proper sense, part of the discussion which they accompany, but form an 

 independent source of value. Their service to the understanding is also 

 twofold — they make clear to us relations too complex to be successfully 

 conveyed by words, or conveyable only at inordinate length. Of this 

 class of pictures the spatial diagram is typical. Their second function is 

 to bring before us a scene whose splendor and richness can not be suc- 

 cessfully represented in imagination. The latter bears to material con- 

 tent the relation which explanatory diagrams sustain to formal synthesis. 

 Pictures of buildings and natural scenery, of the human figure and 

 organic forms at large, indeed all concrete objects which are either un- 

 familiar or present subtle complications and gradations of quality, fall 

 within this category. 



While pictures have their own distinct place in literature, they can 

 not be substituted for the textual description in any degree without 

 affecting the place of the whole composition in the evolutionary scale. 

 Language sets as its ideal the development of an adequate system of sym- 

 bols for the representation of experience. The spoken sentence has ful- 

 filled its function only when, through its own elements and syntactical 

 form alone, it has adequately expressed the content of meaning intended 

 by him who utters it. Writing is a transliteration of speech, and merely 

 substitutes another medium in its performance of the same ideal office. 

 Each in its own field aims at the development of a pure system of sym- 

 bols, that is, a system which without accessories is capable of indicating 

 the whole range of distinctions with which thought is concerned. 

 Among civilized peoples both speech and writing approach adequacy in 

 this regard, but in so far as pantomime persists in the one case, or illus- 

 tration is relied on in the other, it marks a deficiency in the medium. In 

 its ideal form language should no more depend upon gestures and pict- 

 ures than upon the presence of the original objects and relations them- 

 selves which it seeks to represent through conceptual forms. 



One has mastered the uses of language only when he is able to make 

 a continuous translation of experience into its symbols and, with a simi- 

 lar facility, to interpret these signs in terms of their ideal meanings. In 

 writing, then, such mastery is attained when adequacy in the expression 

 of thought has been secured without any recourse to pictures, diagrams, 

 models or objects. It is part of the mental training at which a cultiva- 

 tion of language aims to render the mind so far as possible independent 

 of pictorial or other concrete ways of presenting the materials with which 

 discourse deals. Like the use of the abacus in numbering, these aids may 

 be indispensable in certain forms and at particular stages of develop- 

 ment, but they must be superseded if any high degree of attainment is 

 to be secured 



Language will doubtless always fall short of this ideal aim. Speech 

 will continue to be made more picturesque as well as intelligible by 

 gesture, and illustration will enrich while it illuminates the printed page. 



