its
superabundance and overflow. Expression for expression's sake is a
necessity of man's spiritual nature, in solitude no less than in
society. To speak, to give utterance to the truth that he sees, and to
the strong emotions that stir within his heart, is that highest
energizing in which man finds his natural perfection and his rest. His
soul is burdened and in labour until it has brought forth and expressed
to its complete satisfaction the word conceived within it. Nor is it
only within the mind that he so utters himself in secret self-communing;
for he is not a disembodied intelligence, but one clothed with body and
senses and imagination. His medium of expression is not merely the
spiritual substance of the mind, but his whole complex being. Nor has he
uttered his "word" to his full satisfaction till it has passed from his
intellect into his imagination, and thence to his lips, his voice, his
features, his gesture. And when the mind is more vigorous and the
passion for utterance more intense, he will not be at rest while there
is any other medium in which he can embody his conception, be it stone,
or metal, or line, or colour, or sound, or measure, or imagery, which
under his skilled hand can be made to shadow out his hidden thought and
emotion. We cannot hold with Max Mueller and others, who make thought
dependent and consequent on language.

For it is evident, on a moment's introspection, that thought makes
language for itself to live in, just as a snail makes its own shell or a
soul makes its own body. Who has not felt the anguish of not being able
to find a word to hit off his thought exactly?--which surely means that
the thought was already there unclothed, awaiting its embodiment. As the
soul disembodied is not man, so thought not clothed in language is not
perfect human thought. Its essence is saved, but not its substantial, or
at least its desirable, completeness. A man thinks more fully, more
humanly, who thinks not with his mind alone, but with his imagination,
his voice, his tongue, his pen, his pencil. If, therefore, solitary
contemplative thought is a legitimate end in itself; if it is that
_ludus_, or play of the soul, which is the highest occupation of man, a
share in the same honour must be allowed to its accompanying embodiment;
to the music which delights no ear but the performer's; to poetry, to
painting, to sculpture done for the joy of doing, and without reference
to the good of others communic