Art and Science 



ground that the symbols covenanted upon and 

 assented to by both were uttered and received 

 by eyes and not by mouth and ears ? When 

 the lady drank to the gentleman only with 

 her eyes, and he pledged with his, was there 

 no conversation because there was neither 

 noun nor verb ? Eyes are verbs, and glasses 

 of wine are good nouns enough as between 

 those who understand one another. Whether 

 the ideas underlying them are expressed and 

 conveyed by eyeage or by tonguage is a detail 

 that matters nothing. 



But everything we say is metaphorical if we 

 choose to be captious. Scratch the simplest 

 expressions, and you will find the metaphor. 

 Written words are handage, inkage and paper- 

 age ; it is only by metaphor, or substitution 

 and transposition of ideas, that we can call 

 them language. They are indeed potential 

 language, and the symbols employed presup- 

 pose nouns, verbs, and the other parts of 

 speech; but for the most part it is in what 

 we read between the lines that the profounder 

 meaning of any letter is conveyed. There are 



words unwritten and untranslatable into any 



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