The written symbol extends infinitely, as regards time and space, the range within which one mind can communicate with another; it gives the writer’s mind a life limited by the duration of ink, paper and readers, as against that of his flesh and blood body.  On the other hand, it takes longer 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 of a concerted symbol is as much language as the most finished oratory of Mr. Gladstone.  I demur therefore to the assertion that the lower animals have no language, inasmuch as they cannot themselves articulate a grammatical sentence.