to learn the rules so as to be able to
apply them with ease and security, and even then they cannot be
applied so quickly and easily as those attaching to spoken symbols.
Moreover, the spoken symbols admit of a hundred quick and subtle
adjuncts by way of action, tone and expression, so that no one will
use written symbols unless either for the special advantages of
permanence and travelling power, or because he is incapacitated from
using spoken ones. This, however, is hardly to the point; the point
is that these two conventional combinations of symbols, that are as
unlike one another as the Hallelujah Chorus is to St. Paul's
Cathedral, are the one as much language as the other; and we
therefore inquire what this very patent fact reveals to us about the
more essential characteristics of language itself. What is the
common bond that unites these two classes of symbols that seem at
first sight to have nothing in common, and makes the one raise the
idea of language in our minds as readily as the other? The bond
lies in the fact that both are a set of conventional tokens or
symbols, agreed upon between the parties to whom they appeal as
being attached invariably to the same ideas, and because they are
being made as a means of communion between one mind and another--for
a memorandum made for a person's own later use is nothing but a
communication from an earlier mind to a later and modified one; it
is therefore in reality a communication from one mind to another as
much as though it had been addressed to another person.

We see, therefore, that the nature of the outward and visible sign
to which the inward and spiritual idea of language is attached does
not matter. It may be the firing of a gun; it may be an old
semaphore telegraph; it may be the movements of a needle; a look, a
gesture, the breaking of a twig by an Indian to tell someone that he
has passed that way: a twig broken designedly with this end in view
is a letter addressed to whomsoever it may concern, as much as
though it had been written out in full on bark or paper. It does
not matter one straw what it is, provided it is agreed upon in
concert, and stuck to. Just as the lowest forms of life
nevertheless present us with all the essential characteristics of
livingness, and are as much alive in their own humble way as the
most highly developed organisms, so the rudest intentional and
effectual communication between two minds through the
instrumentality