A Theory of Communication
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent.
_Matthew Arnold._
Artificial mysteries are as prevalent in unreflecting and even
in elaborately excogitated opinion upon communication as elsewhere.
On the one hand are some who define communication as the actual
transference of experiences in the strictest possible sense of
transference—the sense in which a penny can be transferred from
one pocket to another—and are led to most fantastic hypotheses.
Blake seems sometimes to have believed that one single, the same,
identical state of mind, imagined as a being or power, can occupy
now one mind, now another, or many minds at once. Other thinkers,
in less picturesque manners, have fallen back upon no less transcendental
considerations as necessities in the explanation of communication.
We must suppose, it is alleged, that human minds are wider than
we ordinarily believe, that parts of one mind may pass over to
become parts of another, that minds interpenetrate and intermingle,
or even that particular minds are merely an illusory appearance
and the underlying reality one mind whose facets or aspects are
many. In this way it is easy to enter the maze. Probably some
wanderings in it are unavoidable for all speculative persons
at some period of their mental development. The only escape from
it is by the original entrance.
For communication defined as strict transference of or participation
in identical experiences does not occur. This is not a heart-breaking
conclusion. No general theory, in fact, as to the nature or conditions
of experiences can affect their value. For value is prior to
all explanations. If actual transference and participation did
occur we should of course be compelled to adopt a transcendental
theory. It does not occur[56] and no arguments which assume it
have the least weight.
All that occurs is that, under certain conditions, separate minds
have closely similar experiences. Those who are unable to accept
this view reject it not on grounds of evidence, not through the
ways in which the world influences them, but on grounds of desire,
due to the influence of the contrary opinion on their attitudes
to their fellows. At moments anyone may wish it otherwise; severance
seems a deprivation; caught in a moment of maladjustment we feel
that our essential insularity is a blight and a defect, and to
accept the facts and upon them to found a new and more perfect
adjustment is for all sensitive people in some situations difficult.
But the true belief does not, and perhaps no true belief can,
really deprive anyone of any values. Sad cases of bad systematisations
there doubtless are, for which no readjustment is possible. A
false belief may become an indispensable condition for the most
important activities of individuals who without it break down
into confusion. So it is with many religious beliefs; and in
saying that the removal of such beliefs need involve no loss,
and may involve great gains in values, we do not say that there
are not certain individuals whose values will be destroyed in
the process. We say only that adaptable people will find that
most of their values can be retained after rejecting their errors,
that compensations and equivalents for their losses are available,
and that whole sets of fresh values become open to them through
their better adjustment to the actual world in which they live.
This is the justification for the opinion which has so often
been held, that knowledge is the greatest of all goods. The opinion
appears to be warranted. Knowledge _is_, we are slowly finding
out, an indispensable condition for the attainment of the widest,
most stable, and most important values.
We start then from the natural isolation and severance of minds.
Their experiences at the best, under the most favourable circumstances,
can be but similar. Communication, we shall say, takes place
when one mind so acts upon its environment that another mind
is influenced, and in that other mind an experience occurs which
is like the experience in the first mind, and is caused in part
by that experience. Communication is evidently a complicated
affair, and capable of degrees at least in two respects. The
two experiences may be more or less similar, and the second may
be more or less dependent upon the first. If A and B are walking
in the street together and A touches B and says, “There is the
Lord Chief Justice,” B’s experience while he contemplates the
dignitary is only adventitiously dependent upon A’s experience.
But if A, having met the Lord Chief Justice, describes him to
a friend afterwards in a quarry at Portland, for example, his
friend’s experience will depend very largely upon the particular
judges he may himself have encountered, and for the rest will
derive its special features from A’s description. Unless A has
remarkable gifts of description and B extraordinarily sensitive
and discriminating receptive ability, their two experiences will
tally at best but roughly. They may completely fail to tally
without either being clearly aware of the fact.
In general, long and varied acquaintanceship, close familiarity,
lives whose circumstances have often corresponded, in short an
exceptional fund of common experience is needed, if people, in
the absence of special communicative gifts, active and receptive,
are to communicate, and even with these gifts the success of
the communication in difficult cases depends upon the extent
to which past similarities in experience can be made use of.
Without such similarities communication is impossible. Difficult
cases are those in which the speaker must himself supply and
control a large part of the causes of the listener’s experience;
in which correspondingly the listener has to struggle against
the intrusions of elements from his own past experience which
are irrelevant. When A can point and B gaze, the matter is sometimes
easy; although, as is well known, a complex object, for example
a landscape, where many different selections are possible corresponding
to different emphases of interest, cannot be dealt with in so
simple a manner. Less complex things in which the interesting
feature is more salient, for example, a gentleman asleep in Church,
may be merely indicated with more confidence of communication,
although here again one person may feel indignation and another
amusement at the sight.
In difficult cases the vehicle of communication must inevitably
be complex. The effect of a word varies with the other words
among which it is placed. What would be highly ambiguous by itself
becomes definite in a suitable context. So it is throughout;
the effect of any element depends upon the other elements present
with it. Even in such shallow communication as is involved in
merely making out the letters in a handwriting this principle
is all-important, and in the deepest forms of communication the
same principle holds good. To this is due the superiority of
verse to prose for the most difficult and deepest communications,
poetry being by far the more complex vehicle. A similar instance
is the increased ambiguity of a monochromatic reproduction as
compared with the original painting. What _difficulty_ of
communication depends upon we have already considered. It should
not be confused with the difficulty of the matter communicated,
although the two are often connected. Some very difficult calculations,
for example, can be communicated with ease. _Depth_ of communication
likewise is not necessarily connected with difficulty. It is
a name for the degree of completeness in the response required.
A glance at the diagram on p. 116 will make this use of the term
clear. Communications involving attitudes are deeper than those
in which references alone are concerned. Abstract and analytic
prose, in fact, depends for its success upon the shallowness
of its draught. It must avoid any stirring of the emotions lest
its required distinctions become obscured.
[56] The very strange and important phenomena of apparent telepathy,
and the feats of some ‘psychometrists’ and ‘clairvoyants’, although
they may call for a great extension of our ideas as to how minds
influence one another, do not require any such desperate devices
as transference of, or participation in, _identical_ experiences.
If they did, the possibility of investigating them by the only
technique with which anything has ever been successfully investigated
would be remote. On any ‘identity’ or ‘participation’ theory,
communication becomes an ineffable and irremovable mystery. There
may, of course, be any number of strange events occurring about
which we cannot know, but to discuss such events is unprofitable.