The social need for a better understanding of one
another cannot be satisfied save by universal culture, by the increase
of communications, and by the interchange of thought among men.
[Sidenote] _Conclusion._
These observations must suffice to show that all the scientific problems
of Linguistic are the same as those of Aesthetic, and that the truths
and errors of the one are the truths and errors of the other. If
Linguistic and Aesthetic appear to be two different sciences, this
arises from the fact that people think of the former as grammar, or as a
mixture between philosophy and grammar, that is, an arbitrary mnemonic
scheme. They do not think of it as a rational science and as a pure
philosophy of speech. Grammar, or something grammatical, also causes the
prejudice in people's minds, that the reality of language lies in
isolated and combinable words, not in living discourse among expressive
organisms, rationally indivisible.
Those linguists, or glottologists with philosophical endowments, who
have best fathomed questions of language, resemble (to employ a worn but
efficacious figure) workmen piercing a tunnel: at a certain point they
must hear the voices of their companions, the philosophers of Aesthetic,
who have been piercing it from the other side. At a certain stage of
scientific elaboration, Linguistic, in so far as it is philosophy, must
be merged in Aesthetic; and indeed it is merged in it, without leaving a
residue.
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