Undoubtedly speech is a more perfect medium than writing, because it is less material: the vibrations of the air are dissipated, while the trace of the ink remains. Undoubtedly the _flatus vocis_, like everything fugitive, is richer in association, more complete in orchestration, while writing, like everything concrete, remains detached. But better still if pure thought could communicate itself by means only of those vague and fluid words upon which it floats within the soul! To make oneself understood in words or writing is to communicate the accidents, not the substance, of thought. Our man looks at the clouds in the western sky, combed out by the unseen comb of the wind, and watches them turn to flame in the light of the setting sun. And he thinks of the substantial communion of spirits, communication by the act of spiritual presence alone. He remembered how once, on hearing some old ballad sung by a shepherd boy, the sound of which had come to him faintly through a leafy screen of grey oaks, he had trembled and felt as if he heard voices from another world, not from another world beyond this world, but from a world that lives within the world we know--voices which seemed to issue from the very heart of things, as if they were the song of the soul of the oaks, of the clouds, of the pebbles of the stream, of the earth and of the sky. Where had he heard that song before? Who knows? Perhaps one night, when he lay asleep, the shepherd boy had passed by singing his song, and the song had lapped his dream and steeped it in the fountains of life. Another time--he remembered--when on a journey, he had met a woman, a foreigner, who did not know his language nor did he know hers. Neither of them knew any human tongue in which they could make themselves understood, and they sat there in the railway carriage alone, opposite one another, looking and sometimes smiling at one another. Theirs was a protracted and mute conversation. When he thought kindly and tenderly of her the stranger smiled, and when a less innocent desire stirred within him the shadow of a frown crossed her brow. Perhaps they heard, without themselves knowing that they heard, the measured beating of their hearts, beating in unison while their eyes gazed at one another; but without a doubt the breath of their souls mingled together. For the soul breathes. The soul breathes.--Why not speak in metaphors? Our man began to think about breathing and how the air, penetrating into the cells of the lungs, aerates the blood, this inner atmosphere of our bodies. It is the material substance of the world--he thought--which circulates within us; it is the world diluted and made our own. And from this he went on to imagine a kind of spiritual aeration of our mind, and how the world of colours, forms, sounds and impressions of every kind is diluted in it.