ideas to which we have agreed to
attach them.

The written symbol is formed with the hand, appeals to the eye, leaves a
material trace as long as paper and ink last, can travel as far as paper
and ink can travel, and can be imprinted on eye after eye practically _ad
infinitum_ both as regards time and space.

The spoken symbol is formed by means of various organs in or about the
mouth, appeals to the ear, not the eye, perishes instantly without
material trace, and if it lives at all does so only in the minds of those
who heard it. The range of its action is no wider than that within which
a voice can be heard; and every time a fresh impression is wanted the
type must be set up anew.

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 symbol admits 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