There is, however, another still more natural and fundamental form of
symbolism which is entirely normal, and almost, indeed, physiological.
This is the tendency by which qualities of one order become symbols of
qualities of a totally different order, because they instinctively seem
to have a similar effect on us. In this way, things in the physical
order become symbols of things in the spiritual order. This symbolism
penetrates indeed the whole of language; we cannot escape from it. The
sea is _deep_, and so also may thoughts be; ice is _cold_, and we say
the same of some hearts; sugar is _sweet_, as the lover finds also the
presence of the beloved; quinine is _bitter_, and so is remorse. Not only
our adjectives, but our substantives and our verbs are equally symbolical.
To the etymological eye every sentence is full of metaphor, of symbol,
of images that, strictly and originally, express sensory impressions of
one order, but, as we use them to-day, express impressions of a totally
different order. Language is largely the utilisation of symbols. This is a
well-recognised fact which it is unnecessary to elaborate.[131]
An interesting example of the natural tendency to symbolism, which may
be compared to the allied tendency in dreaming, is furnished by another
language, the language of music. Music is a representation of the
world--the internal or the external world--which, except in so far as
it may seek to reproduce the actual sounds of the world, can only be
expressive by its symbolism. And the symbolism of music is so pronounced
that it is even expressed in the elementary fact of musical pitch. Our
minds are so constructed that the bass always seems _deep_ to us and the
treble _high_. We feel it incongruous to speak of a _high_ bass voice or
a _deep_ soprano. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this and
the like associations are fundamentally based, that there are, as an acute
French philosophic student of music, Dauriac (in an essay 'Des Images
Suggérées par l'Audition musicale'[132]), has expressed it, 'sensorial
correspondences,' as, indeed, Baudelaire had long since divined[133]; that
the motor image is that which demands from the listener the minimum of
effort; and that music almost constantly evokes motor imagery.[134]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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