ch we call our character. We extend this
into all our thinking. Between us and the realities of social life we
build up a mass of generalizations, abstract ideas, ancient glories, and
personal wishes. They simplify and soften experience. It is so much
easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor, to argue the rights
of capital than to see its results. Pretty soon we come to think of the
theories and abstract ideas as things in themselves. We worry about their
fate and forget their original content.

For words, theories, symbols, slogans, abstractions of all kinds are
nothing but the porous vessels into which life flows, is contained for a
time, and then passes through. But our reverence clings to the vessels.
The old meaning may have disappeared, a new one come in--no matter, we
try to believe there has been no change. And when life's expansion
demands some new container, nothing is more difficult than the
realization that the old vessels cannot be stretched to the present need.

It is interesting to notice how in the very act of analyzing it I have
fallen into this curious and ancient habit. My point is that the metaphor
is taken for the reality: I have used at least six metaphors to state it.
Abstractions are not cloaks, nor wax figures, nor walls, nor vessels, and
life doesn't flow like water. What they really are you and I know
inwardly by using abstractions and living our lives. But once I attempt
to give that inwardness expression, I must use the only weapons I
have--abstractions, theories, phrases. By an effort of the sympathetic
imagination you can revive within yourself something of my inward sense.
As I have had to abstract from life in order to communicate, so you are
compelled to animate my abstractions, in order to understand.

I know of no other method of communication between two people. Language
is always grossly inadequate. It is inadequate if the listener is merely
passive, if he falls into the mistake of the literal-minded who expect
words to contain a precise image of reality. They never do. All language
can achieve is to act as a guidepost to the imagination enabling the
reader to recreate the author's insight. The artist does that: he
controls his medium so that we come most readily to the heart of his
intention. In the lyric poet the control is often so delicate that the
hearer lives over again the finely shaded mood of the poet. Take the
words of a lyric for what they say, and they say no