es not, to be sure, give us much information,
and what there is is mythical, but he uses words that are fairly
alive with suggested feeling.

But this emotional aura in which words are haloed, beautiful
though it is in literature, and facile though it makes the
communication of common feelings, is a serious impediment
in the use of words as effective instruments of communication.
Language oscillates, to speak metaphorically, between algebra
and music. To be useful as an instrument of thought it
should keep to the prosaic terseness of a telegraphic code. One
should be able to pass immediately from the word to the thing,
instead of dissolving in emotions at the associations that the
mere sound or music of the epithet arouses. Words should,
so to speak, tend to business, which, in their case, is the
communication of ideas. But words are used in human situations.
And they accumulate during the lifetime of the individual
a great mass of psychological values. Thus, to take
another illustration, "brother" is a symbol of a certain relationship
one person bears to another. "Your" is also a symbolic
statement of a relation. But if a telegram contains the
statement "Your brother is dead," it is less a piece of information
to act on than a deep emotional stimulus to which one
responds. Bacon long ago pointed out how men "worshipped
words." As we shall see presently, he was thinking of errors
in the intellectual manipulation of words. Perhaps as serious
is the inveterate tendency of men to respond to the more or
less irrelevant emotions suggested by a word, instead of to its
strict intellectual content. If the emotions stirred up by an
epithet were always appropriate to the word's significance,
this might be an advantage. But not infrequently, as we shall
see immediately, words suggest and may be used to suggest
emotions that, like "the flowers that bloom in the spring,"
have nothing to do with the case.

In practice, political and social leaders, and all who have
to win the loyalties and support of masses of men have appreciated
the use--and misuse--that might be made of the
emotional fringes of words. Words are not always used as
direct and transparent representations of ideas; they are as
frequently used as stimuli to action. A familiar instance is
seen in the use of words in advertisements. Even the honest
advertiser is less interested in giving an analysis of his product
that will win him the rational estimation and favor