THE SIGNIFICANCE OF COMMUNICATION
MEANING OF COMMUNICATION—ITS RELATION TO HUMAN NATURE—TO SOCIETY AT
LARGE.
By Communication is here meant the mechanism through which human
relations exist and develop—all the symbols of the mind, together with
the means of conveying them through space and preserving them in time.
It includes the expression of the face, attitude and gesture, the
tones of the voice, words, writing, printing, railways, telegraphs,
telephones, and whatever else may be the latest achievement in the
conquest of space and time. All these taken together, in the intricacy
of their actual combination, make up an organic whole corresponding to
the organic whole of human thought; and everything in the way of mental
growth has an external existence therein. The more closely we consider
this mechanism the more intimate will appear its relation to the inner
life of mankind, and nothing will more help us to understand the latter
than such consideration.
There is no sharp line between the means of communication and the rest
of the external world. In a sense all objects and actions are symbols
of the mind, and nearly anything may be used as a sign—as I may signify
the moon or a squirrel to a child by merely pointing at it, or by
imitating with the voice the chatter of the one or drawing an outline
of the other. But there is also, almost from the first, a conventional
development of communication, springing out of spontaneous signs but
soon losing evident connection with them, a system of standard symbols
existing for the mere purpose of conveying thought; and it is this we
have chiefly to consider.
Without communication the mind does not develop a true human nature,
but remains in an abnormal and nondescript state neither human nor
properly brutal. This is movingly illustrated by the case of Helen
Keller, who, as all the world knows, was cut off at eighteen months
from the cheerful ways of men by the loss of sight and hearing; and did
not renew the connection until she was nearly seven years old. Although
her mind was not wholly isolated during this period, since she retained
the use of a considerable number of signs learned during infancy,
yet her impulses were crude and uncontrolled, and her thought so
unconnected that she afterward remembered almost nothing that occurred
before the awakening which took place toward the close of her seventh
year.
The story of that awakening, as told by her teacher, gives as vivid a
picture as we need have of the significance to the individual mind of
the general fact and idea of communication. For weeks Miss Sullivan
had been spelling words into her hand which Helen had repeated and
associated with objects; but she had not yet grasped the idea of
language in general, the fact that everything had a name, and that
through names she could share her own experiences with others, and
learn theirs—the idea that there is _fellowship in thought_. This came
quite suddenly.
“This morning,” writes her teacher, “while she was washing, she wanted
to know the name for water.... I spelled w-a-t-e-r and thought no
more about it until after breakfast. Then it occurred to me that with
the help of this new word I might succeed in straightening out the
mug-milk difficulty [a confusion of ideas previously discussed]. We
went out into the pump-house and I made Helen hold her mug under the
pump while I pumped. As the cold water gushed forth filling the mug I
spelled w-a-t-e-r in Helen’s free hand. The word coming so close upon
the sensation of cold water rushing over her hand seemed to startle
her. She dropped the mug and stood as one transfixed. A new light came
into her face. She spelled water several times. Then she dropped on
the ground and asked for its name, and pointed to the pump and the
trellis, and suddenly turning round she asked for my name. I spelled
‘teacher.’ Just then the nurse brought Helen’s little sister into the
pump-house, and Helen spelled ‘baby’ and pointed to the nurse. All the
way back to the house she was highly excited, and learned the name of
every object she touched, so that in a few hours she had added thirty
new words to her vocabulary.”
The following day Miss Sullivan writes, “Helen got up this morning
like a radiant fairy. She has flitted from object to object, asking
the name of everything and kissing me for very gladness.” And four
days later, “Everything must have a name now.... She drops the signs
and pantomime she used before, so soon as she has words to supply
their place, and the acquirement of a new word affords her the
liveliest pleasure. And we notice that her face grows more expressive
each day.”[22]
This experience is a type of what happens more gradually to all of us:
it is through communication that we get our higher development. The
faces and conversation of our associates; books, letters, travel, arts,
and the like, by awakening thought and feeling and guiding them in
certain channels, supply the stimulus and framework for all our growth.
In the same way, if we take a larger view and consider the life of a
social group, we see that communication, including its organization
into literature, art, and institutions, is truly the outside or
visible structure of thought, as much cause as effect of the inside or
conscious life of men. All is one growth: the symbols, the traditions,
the institutions are projected from the mind, to be sure, but in the
very instant of their projection, and thereafter, they react upon it,
and in a sense control it, stimulating, developing, and fixing certain
thoughts at the expense of others to which no awakening suggestion
comes. By the aid of this structure the individual is a member not only
of a family, a class, and a state, but of a larger whole reaching back
to prehistoric men whose thought has gone to build it up. In this whole
he lives as in an element, drawing from it the materials of his growth
and adding to it whatever constructive thought he may express.
Thus the system of communication is a tool, a progressive invention,
whose improvements react upon mankind and alter the life of every
individual and institution. A study of these improvements is one of
the best ways by which to approach an understanding of the mental and
social changes that are bound up with them; because it gives a tangible
framework for our ideas—just as one who wished to grasp the organic
character of industry and commerce might well begin with a study of the
railway system and of the amount and kind of commodities it carries,
proceeding thence to the more abstract transactions of finance.
And when we come to the modern era, especially, we can understand
nothing rightly unless we perceive the manner in which the revolution
in communication has made a new world for us. So in the pages that
follow I shall aim to show what the growth of intercourse implies in
the way of social development, inquiring particularly into the effect
of recent changes.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] The Story of My Life, 316, 317.