The power of expression is not the monopoly of
man. Expression and communication are, to some degree, something of which
animals are capable. What characterizes man is not only his ability to
develop words and symbols, but also his being compelled to draw a
distinction between the utterable and the unutterable, to be stunned
by that which is but cannot be put into words.
It is the sense of the sublime that we have to regard as the
root of man's creative activities in art, thought and noble living.
Just as no flora has ever fully displayed the hidden vitality of the
earth, so has no work of art ever brought to expression the depth of the
unutterable, in the sight of which the souls of saints, poets and
philosophers live. . . . A sensitive person knows that the intrinsic,
the most essential, is never expressed. Most--and often the best--of
what goes on in us is our own secret; we have to wrestle with it ourselves.
The stirring in our hearts when watching the star-studded sky is something
no language can declare. What smites us with unquenchable amazement
is not that which we grasp and are able to convey but that which lies
within our reach and beyond our grasp; not the quantitative aspect of
nature but something qualitative; not what is beyond our range in time
and space but the true meaning, source and end of being, in other
words, the ineffable.
