When I asked them to tell me more about the way in which they communicated with one another they said that the speech of inhabitants on that planet was not articulated^a as mine was, but that it nevertheless involved an emission of sounds that in some way resembled articulated speech. They explained what this kind of speech was like, namely that it did not involve the use of spoken words but of ideas, the sort that are at the forefront of a person's mind when he is actually speaking. These ideas are wholly different from those which the person is contemplating on a deeper level when he is not speaking but judging things. From the emission of sounds regulated in this way by ideas, what is being communicated is discerned more fully than anything communicated by the use of spoken words. For the overall affection present in the sound made by a person when he speaks, regulated in that manner by his ideas, leads to a deeper and so fuller discernment of what is being communicated.

Notes