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Corpasenti Webulance Directory 14
Page 06
Professor Max Muller admits that we share with the lower animals what he calls an emotional language, and continues that we may call their interjections and imitations language if we like, as we speak of the language of the eyes or the eloquence of mute nature, but he warns us against mistaking metaphor for fact. It is indeed mere metaphor to talk of the eloquence of mute nature, or the language of winds and waves. There is no intercommunion of mind with mind by means of a covenanted symbol; but it is only an apparent, not a real, metaphor to say that two pairs of eyes have spoken when they have signalled to one another something which they both understand. A schoolboy at home for the holidays wants another plate of pudding, and does not like to apply officially for more. He catches the servant's eye and looks at the pudding; the servant understands, takes his plate without a word, and gets him some. Is it metaphor to say that the boy asked the servant to do this, or is it not rather pedantry to insist on the letter of a bond and deny its spirit, by denying that language passed, on the 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.
From La Merced there was a trail from one to three metres wide, cut out in the solid rock and skirting all along the foaming river, which flowed in the opposite direction from that in which we were travelling. In several places narrow tunnels had been excavated in the rock, through which the trail proceeded. These tunnels were dangerous when you encountered caravans of pack animals coming through from the opposite direction. The animals often got jammed in the middle of the tunnel, tearing their loads to pieces in their attempts to disentangle themselves. Once I got jammed myself, and came out minus a patch of skin several inches long from my left shin and knee.
If so, it is time we were made to understand this more clearly. If the Church, whether of Rome or England, would lean to some such view as this--tainted though it be with mysticism--if we could see either great branch of the Church make a frank, authoritative attempt to bring its teaching into greater harmony with the educated understanding and conscience of the time, instead of trying to fetter that understanding with bonds that gall it daily more and more profoundly; then I, for one, in view of the difficulty and graciousness of the task, and in view of the great importance of historical continuity, would gladly sink much of my own private opinion as to the value of the Christian ideal, and would gratefully help either Church or both, according to the best of my very feeble ability. On these terms, indeed, I could swallow not a few camels myself cheerfully enough.
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