Essays on Life 



this covenant was to be, and acquiescing 

 in it. 



On the other hand, no ingenuity can torture 

 language into being a fit word to use in con- 

 nection with either sounds or any other sym- 

 bols that have not been intended to convey 

 a meaning, or again in connection with either 

 sounds or symbols in respect of which there 

 has been no covenant between sayer and sayee. 

 When we hear people speaking a foreign lan- 

 guage we will say Welsh we feel that 

 though they are no doubt using what is very 

 good language as between themselves, there is 

 no language whatever as far as we are con- 

 cerned. We call it lingo, not language. The 

 Chinese letters on a tea-chest might as well 

 not be there, for all that they say to us, though 

 the Chinese find them very much to the pur- 

 pose. They are a covenant to which we have 

 been no parties to which our intelligence has 

 affixed no signature. 



We have already seen that it is in virtue of 

 such an understood covenant that symbols 

 so unlike one another as the written word 



" stone " and the spoken word alike at once 



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