No idea can be clearly conveyed to another unless there is a word to express it. Inward thought and outward utterance are the correlated conditions of intelligent advancement. The spoken word evokes in the mind of the hearer the picture, the emotion, the reasoning, which is occupying our own. A thousand minds are brought instantly to bear on the same thought by the words in the mouth of one. I cannot place too high the instant and magical effect of the word. Not only does it convey a new thought to the mind, but it is itself the begetter of thought. It is a seed sown, which grows and branches, bearing flower and fruit, beauteous and everlasting, or noxious and destructive. Through the faculty of speech, social life becomes possible; on it depends the sweet interchange of souls; by it we are led to think in unison; through it we share the meditations of the philosopher, and the inspired visions of the poet and the prophet. If there is any way in which the spirits of the sky and air, the hosts of the Divine, can touch and teach our souls, it must be chiefly through the spoken word. Every religion of the world bears witness to this. There is no other element in them in which all join with like unanimity. From the rudest to the ripest they echo the verse of the evangelist philosopher when he wrote: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The highest teachings of them all are expressed in the formula: “And the word of the Lord came saying—” We may go back to the earliest forms of the ancient Egyptian religion, and we find the doctrine that the man who had learned and could pronounce the divine words revealed through the god Thoth (Thought, Mind), by their utterance would be elevated to the god, and be blended with him, as one and inseparable. “The primary idea concerning the ritual formulas was assimilation to God, brought about by the power of the words themselves.”[92] Probably in all primitive faiths the word is regarded as a magical power in itself. In Egypt it was believed that by words the most powerful of the gods could be made obedient to the will of man. By them, as exorcisms or incantations everywhere, demons could be loosed or bound, and spirits summoned from the vasty deep. The stock in trade of the Indian medicine-man is principally his store of exorcisms, and among the Goras of North-Western India any one can become a priest who will learn the formulas which compel the demons.[93] Our word “charm” comes from the Latin _carmen_, the sacred rhythmic formula, such as Virgil averred could by its occult power drag the moon from the sky. “Carmina vel cælo possunt deducere lunam.” There were such songs scarcely less potent among the Australian Blacks, which could summon the rain in dry seasons or cause it to cease in floods.[94]