Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/141

 people, and it has its parallel deep within the heart. Therefore history can not be written without regard to slang.

Whatever else he may be, man is a material spheroid whose spiritual center is consciousness. Perhaps everything else is environment; and, so far as consciousness is concerned, the environment is the relationship between ideas. The ideas vary from unseen atoms to constellations of shining stars. They all are reflected in slang. They are expressed in argot. They live narrowly in dialect. But consciousness is of two kinds: the radiant and the black. One gives out light and warmth as some divine orb. The other lives in the shadow of a devilish, dead sun, and therefore it exhales darkness. The luminosity and the warmth of the one, the darkness and the woe of the other, express themselves in slang. Nothing could be more mysterious; for from some inexplicable synthesis of the two, genius is born.

Joseph Wright, M.A., Ph.D., D.C.L., of