26 
MALLERY. 
that words possess color and also substantive form wholly 
distinct from their alphabetic notation. Word-blindness 
among English-speaking patients is most frequently diag¬ 
nosed in those ignorant of the capacities of their vernacular, 
and more specially ignorant of Latin (a topic which will be 
dwelt upon in another connection), and then there is hope 
for the patient through education. But when the knowl¬ 
edge of and about words is present without any real appre¬ 
ciation of their value, then the disease or deformity of word- 
blindness is incurable. 
The notion that the whole duty of science is to bring out 
facts somehow would commend for its vehicle the slipshod 
terms and unconnected paragraphs of newspapers, which are 
never intended to endure and may be printed without ex¬ 
pectation of credence even for the day. Such a notion does 
not accord with the history of scientific advance. Latent 
facts and concepts have often been in a state ready for crys¬ 
tallization, to use the physical term, or for formulation, in 
the proper linguistic phrase, yet lay amorphous, though sub¬ 
stantially known, waiting for the formative words which 
should act on them as with an enchanter’s spell. The actual 
sway of words is so momentous that they quickened myth 
and magic as well as truth. The word, the Logos, has there¬ 
fore its power in Philosoj^hy as it had for similar reasons in 
religion. It is the rightly chosen word that first brings the 
fact into cosmic light. But such words are not found in the 
slovenly makeshifts of writers who ignore or who despise 
style. 
A further assertion might be ventured that words not only 
convey thought, but develop thought. Linguistically con¬ 
sidered, as in dictionaries, they are but signs for concepts 
and things, but when existing in an author’s fervid brain, in 
affinity with correlated ideas, one might almost imagine 
them as charged with psychic electricity which arranges 
them, apart from the author’s consciousness, into organic 
and sympathetic sense. The imagined battery, thus magne¬ 
tizing thought to word instead of word to thought, requires, 
