Essays on Life 



nouns that are nevertheless felt as above, about 

 and underneath the gross material symbols 

 that lie scrawled upon the paper; and the 

 deeper the feeling with which anything is 

 written the more pregnant will it be of mean- 

 ing which can be conveyed securely enough, 

 but which loses rather than gains if it is 

 squeezed into a sentence, and limited by the 

 parts of speech. The language is not in the 

 words but in the heart-to-heartness of the 

 thing, which is helped by words, but is nearer 

 and farther than they. A correspondent 

 wrote to me once, many years ago, "If I 

 could think to you without words you would 

 understand me better." But surely in this 

 he was thinking to me, and without words, 

 and I did understand him better. ... So it 

 is not by the words that I am too presump- 

 tuously venturing to speak to-night that your 

 opinions will be formed or modified. They 

 will be formed or modified, if either, by some- 

 thing that you will feel, but which I have not 

 spoken, to the full as much as by anything 

 that I have actually uttered. You may say 



that this borders on mysticism. Perhaps it 



196 



