form so that it may be
appreciated and transmitted through the senses. There are things which
can be expressed neither by sound nor gesture. For instance, how shall
we say at the same time of a plant: "It is beautiful, but it has no
smell." Thought must then be revealed by conventional signs, which are
articulation. Therefore, God has endowed man with the rich gift of
speech.

Speech is the sense of the intelligence; sound the sense of the life,
and gesture that of the heart.

Soul communicates with soul only through the senses. The senses are the
condition of man as a pilgrim on this earth. Man is obliged to
materialize all: the sensations through the voice, the sentiments
through gesture, the ideas through speech. The means of transmission are
always material. This is why the church has sacraments, an exterior
worship, chants, ceremonies. All its institutions arise from a principle
eminently philosophical.

Speech is formed by three agents: the lips, the tongue and the
soft-palate.

It is delightful to study the special role of these agents, the reason
of their movements.

They have a series of gestures that may be perfectly understood. Thus
language resembles the hand, having also its gesture.

Chapter II.

Elements of Articulate Language.

Every language is composed of consonants and vowels. These consonants
and vowels are gestures. The value of the consonant is the gesture of
the thing expressed. But as gesture is always the expression of a moral
fact, each consonant has the intrinsic character of a movement of the
heart. It is easy to prove that the consonant is a gesture. For example,
in articulating it, the tongue rises to the palate and makes the same
movement as the arm when it would repel something.

The elements of all languages have the same meaning. The vowels
correspond directly to the moral state.

There is diversity of language because the things we wish to express
vary from difference in usage and difference of manner and climate. What
we call a shoe, bears among northern people a name indicating that it
protects the feet from the cold; among southern people it protects the
feet from the heat. Elsewhere the shoe protects the feet against the
roughness of the soil; and in yet other places, it exists only as a
defensive object--a weapon.

These diverse interpretations require diverse signs. This does not prove
the diversity of language, but the diversity of the senses affected b