If I didn't know English and
French, it would be no good whatever. Language is a poor thing. You fill
your lungs with wind and shake a little slit in your throat, and make
mouths, and that shakes the air; and the air shakes a pair of little
drums in my head--a very complicated arrangement, with lots of bones
behind--and my brain seizes your meaning in the rough. What a roundabout
way, and what a waste of time!
* * * * *
And so with all the rest. We can't even smell straight! A dog would
laugh at us--not that even a dog knows much!
And feeling! We can feel too hot or too cold, and it sometimes makes us
ill, or even kills us. But we can't feel the coming storm, or which is
north and south, or where the new moon is, or the sun at midnight, or
the stars at noon, or even what o'clock it is by our own measurement. We
cannot even find our way home blindfolded--not even a pigeon can do
that, nor a swallow, nor an owl! Only a mole, or a blind man, perhaps,
feebly groping with a stick, if he has already been that way before.
And taste! It is well said there is no accounting for it.
And then, to keep all this going, we have to eat, and drink, and sleep,
and all the rest.
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