"Exactly. You know, of course, some languages do have an implicit key? For example hieroglyphics or picture language. The word for _cow_ is a picture of a cow." _He looked at the toes of his shoes. "You won't be able to believe it. It's impossible to believe. I use the word impossible in its logical sense._ "In most languages," he continued, looking up from his shoes, "the sound of some words themselves indicates the meaning of the word. Onomatopoetic words like _bowwow, buzz_." "And the key to the unknown language?" I asked. "How did you find it?" * * * * * I watched him push the coin against the back of his arm, then lift it to read the backward letters pressed into his skin. He looked up at me and smiled. "I built models of the characters. Big material ones, exactly proportionate to the ones projected. Then--quite by accident--I viewed one of them through a glass globe the size of the original sphere. What do you think I saw?" "What?" I noticed he had the boyish look again. "A distortion of the model. But that's not what's important. The distortions, on study, gave specific visual entities. Like when looking at one of those trick pictures and suddenly seeing the lion in the grass. The lines outlining the lion are there all the time, only the observer has to view them as the outline of a lion. It was the same with the models of the characters, except the shapes that appeared were not of lions or other recognizable things. But they did suggest." _He pressed the coin against his forehead, closed his eyes and appeared to be thinking deeply. "Yes, impossible to believe. No one can believe it."_ "In addition to the visual response, the distortions gave me definite feelings. Not mixtures of feelings, but one definite emotional experience." "How do you mean?" "One character when viewed through the globe gave me a visual image and, at the same time, a strong feeling of light hilarity." "I take it then that these distortions seemed to connote meanings, rather than denote them. You might say that their meaning was conveyed through a Gestalt experience on the part of the observer." "Yes, each character gave a definite Gestalt. But, the Gestalt was the same for each observer. Or at least for thirty-five observers there was an eighty per cent correlation." I whistled softly. "And the translation?" "Doctor, what would you say if I told you the translation was unbelievable; that it couldn't be seriously entertained by any man? What if I said that it would take the sanity of any man who believed it?" "I would say that it might well be incorrect." He took some papers from his pocket and laughed excitedly, slumping down in the chair. "This is the complete translation in idiomatic English. I'm going to let you read it, but first I want you to consider a few things."