WHAT DO YOU SAY TO YOURSELF

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 308, 21 May 1941, Page 5

WHAT DO YOU SAY TO YOURSELF

*j^gss3sr !mrr "-"" When you are alone with yourself, how tlo you talk with yourself? What sort of things you are habitu--ally saying to yourself? In what: tone of quarrelsomeness, fear, an-* xiety, hate, hope or confidence isyour conversation pitched? Let us get at this matter by noi> ing first how influential talk is. We commonly regard it merely a* a means of expression. What is in us, we think, gets out by ways of speech; the tongue is a sluiceway through which the ideals, affections and purposes that spring up within us are channeled into the world. This, however, is not thei whol» truth. What we say to ourselves is not simply expressive; it is creative It doea things to us. As a man habitually talks to himself, so he is. This power of words is evident itt history. The development of language was one of the most important events in the story of the race. Among the differences that mark man off from the animals, languageis always put high in the list'. By language, man's accumulating: heritage of thought and experience could be handed down from one* generation to another. By language, the insights of the . wise' could be made the common property of the many. By language, individual isolations, could be overcome in conscious cooperation. Words are not little things; the" progress of mankinds-has depended on them. Abolish words and the race .would be> done for. No wonder the New Testament calls the tongue a "rudder." Ou~ speech steers us. It does not simpler convey what is in us; it guides and controls its.—Harry Emerson For-* dick.