I

CHAPTER VII

THE DYNAMICS OF HUMAN SPEECH

NDIVIDUAL life is formative action and reaction with

the environment. It is the acquisition of acquaintance. The environment of the individual constitutes not only everything outside the physical organism, but also everything outside the conscious mind, everything that appeals to and stimulates the conscious mind. Consequently, the different parts of the body and even the subconscious reflex centers of the brain, the seat of subconscious cerebration, indirectly belong to the environment of the real ego.

Whereas, as pointed out in Chapter I, all five senses of the individual are but branches of the single sense of feeling, and whereas there is nothing to be felt except environment, all that we are is what we are in terms of feeling. All our thoughts and ideas are born of accumulated sense impressions, which we are so constituted as to retain with varying degrees of vividness for varying periods of time, according to their intensity and importance. We can have no thought that is not either directly or indirectly dependent upon some impression received through the senses. Memory is but a record of sensuous experiences, which constitutes a real subjective environment that is constantly appealing to consciousness for attention exactly as does the physical environment. We are able to receive a sense impression of any object or thing in our environment because the thing felt acts as a nerve stimulus. Just as we can have no idea or thought not born of experience, so we can have no sequelae of experience, no directive or determining will, except through motives born of experience. We are true sensory motors, actuated by the stimulus of the environment, which builds us, repairs us, reproduces us, and wears us out.

The relation between the conscious and the subcon

scious mind is well set forth by Sully in his "Handbook of Psychology":

? "Conscious mind stands in relation to lower centers as the head of an office stands in relation to his subordinates. The mechanical routine of the office is carried on by them. He is called on to interfere only when some unusual action has to be carried out, and reflection and decision are needed. Moreover, just as the principal of an office is able to hand over work to his subordinates when it ceases to be unusual, and becomes methodized and reduced to rules, so the conscious mind is able to withdraw from acts thoroughly familiar."

Just as mutual confidence is engendered between subordinates and a leader, so is mutual confidence engendered between the subconscious mind and the conscious mind.

It is necessary, therefore, that the individual should have the respect of his faculties—that is to say, subconscious respect for his self-consciousness, based upon experience proving that the conscious mind is capable of eminent leadership.

Confidence can be secured only by deserving it. The dominating power of evil habits is due to lack of confidence of the subconscious mind in the fitness of the conscious mind for eminent leadership, whereas the tremendous influence of so-called mental therapy in the cure of disease, in the subordination of habit, appetites and passions, is largely because of the faith of the subconscious mind in the conscious mind. This is the true solution of the phenomena of faith cures. The force of the will depends entirely upon the degree of mastery of the conscious over the subconscious mind.

All sense impressions come into consciousness by way of the subconscious mind, and only the fittest ever actually arrive in consciousness. The remainder, altho felt, are not consciously felt, but often there may be a sort of par

tial consciousness of them. In other words, while the consciousness is directed upon a given sense impression, other sense impressions agitating the subconscious mind are felt in the field of consciousness. Such are the dynamics of attention.

Speech is an instrument for conveying ideas of experience from one individual to another by means of symbols of sensuous impressions. All our ideas are either direct or indirect perceptions of sensuous impressions through symbols standing for sensuous impressions. Hence, all thoughts must necessarily arise from sensuous stimuli. Our imagination embraces every sense.

There

is the imagination of touch, sight, smell, taste and hearing. By the power of association of ideas we are enabled through the imagination to perceive and express symbolically an impression received through one sense in terms of any other sense. Tho perhaps not justifiable by the best use, we may say that we see how a thing tastes, or smells, or feels, or how it sounds. A song is said to be sweet. A beautiful piece of music is said to be delicious. A delightful view of a landscape may be spoken of as a delicious view, the object being to aid thought perception by symbolizing it in terms of the most familiar experience.

We owe all our powers of perception of abstract thoughts and all our understanding of abstract words to their more or less intimate associations with sensuous impressions. The abstract word liberty suggests freedom of evolutions, opportunities for the pleasurable exercise of faculty. We perceive the meaning of the abstract word eternity through our associated sensuous ideas of duration. We are able to perceive the meaning of the abstract word truth only through its relation to sensuous experience. All abstract thoughts and ideas, and all abstract symbols of thoughts and ideas are either directly or indirectly tethered to sensuous experience.

All spoken ideas are conveyed either through symbols

of sound or symbols of sight, except when a person born deaf, dumb and blind is taught through the sense of feeling. Symbols of sight are confined to gesture, so that the possibilities of visual symbols are very limited, and gestures, except as employed in the language of the deaf and dumb, are mainly imitative of ideas to be conveyed; while the use of oral sounds in onomatopy is narrowly restricted to the conveyance of only such ideas of other sounds as may be imitated by them, or such roughness or smoothness of objects and actions as may be suggested by roughness or smoothness of oral sounds. Such words, altho they play an important and a potential part in language, are, nevertheless, but a leavening of that great mass of words which is used arbitrarily as symbols of ideas and quite independently of any attribute of imitation.

Of far more importance are loudness, duration, pitch and tone-color of oral sounds in the conveyance of ideas by words, phrases, clauses and sentences, because these properties not only enable us to convey ideas, but also serve to indicate the power and importance of the stimulus prompting utterance, the painful or pleasurable nature of it and the intensity of the nervous activity engendered by it. Furthermore, these properties of sound are ever-present concomitants of speech through arbitrary symbols.

A written letter is an arbitrary sign used to symbolize a sound, which in turn is used as the sign of an idea.

There are in the English language about forty different elementary sounds used in making syllables and words. That is to say, there are about forty oral sounds differing from one another fundamentally in tone-color, each of which may have three uses: first, to form the whole or part of a word used arbitrarily as the sign of an idea; second, to reveal the emotional state of the speaker; and third, to act as a stimulus to produce a desired emotional state or mood in the hearer.

Each of these elementary sounds is a tone-color blend, and may be emotional or non-emotional. In non-emotional literal statement-literatry-the tone-color blends used as arbitrary signs of ideas have no especial emotive significance or stimulative qualities. In potentry, however, the forty tone-color blends used as arbitrary symbols or signs of ideas, which are exprest by the letters of the alphabet, admit of further tone-coloring, to give them emotive significance, without altering in the least their arbitrary symbolic significance. Emotive significance is given to the non-emotive tone-color blends of meaning known as the elementary sounds, by superimposing upon them emotional tone-blends, so that pain, pleasure, love or anger, may be exprest in the voice without altering the fundamental tonal integrity of the blends used as arbitrary signs of ideas. This is generally done by superimposing emotive blends upon the vowel sounds. For example, the vowel O or the vowel A may be uttered entirely without feeling, or be uttered so as to indicate pain, pleasure or anger, and in each of these three cases with the same loudness, the same duration and the same pitch.

In music, the scale of the vocal register is divided into octaves, and the octaves into tones, differing sufficiently in pitch to be easily distinguished from one another and coordinated by the ear; still there are other degrees of pitch possible between the tones. Similarly, with the elementary sounds of the English language: there is and can be no hard and fast line of demarcation between these fundamental tone-color blends. The forty elementary sounds of the language may be looked upon as forty divisions of tone-color blending that differ from one another sufficiently to be easily recognized and coordinated by the ear.

As there are but twenty-six letters in the English alphabet with which to symbolize forty elementary sounds, it is necessary that some of the letters be used to symbolize several different elementary sounds.