L. P. Jacks: Meaning

L. P. Jacks was British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister. Explore interesting quotes on meaning.
L. P. Jacks: 52   quotes 0   likes

“How can the Universe tell its own story save by making use of human speech; how convey its meanings to finite minds save by employing a thinker to declare them?”

L. P. Jacks

The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Context: How can the Universe tell its own story save by making use of human speech; how convey its meanings to finite minds save by employing a thinker to declare them? So long as the story remains unspoken, unwritten, can we say it exists at all? Does not the significance of things become a story by the very process which ends in the movement of an intelligently guided pen over a sheet of paper, in the reading of printed types, in the utterance of recognised vocables; and until this process has been accomplished is not the “meaning” a mere promise or unrealized potency? Can we learn the history of the world, and of human life, otherwise than by reading, or hearing it spoken? How, then, can we receive it without the intermediation of a writer, a speaker?

Universe

“Of all the media of expression employed by man (and let us never forget that they are many) none are so unstable, none so quick to change their meaning, as words.”

L. P. Jacks

The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Context: Of all the media of expression employed by man (and let us never forget that they are many) none are so unstable, none so quick to change their meaning, as words. Even sculpture, architecture, painting, in their noblest works, speak differently under different conditions; but these arts are relatively immortal compared with speech.

Change , Forgetting

“Would not all we mean by “communication between mind and mind” be provided for if we suppose that common knowledge comes about, not from our explaining things to one another, but from things explaining themselves in the same terms to us all? Accepting the object as its own interpreter, as its own “medium of communication,” do we not begin to understand what is utterly dark on any other view, how it comes to pass that the resulting knowledge is a common possession?”

L. P. Jacks

The Usurpation Of Language (1910)

Communication , Understanding , Knowledge

“'"Spirit" is matter seen in a stronger light. What else did Malebranche mean when he spoke of "seeing all things in God"? Existence is a mystery because the light of it is inexhaustible.”

L. P. Jacks

Near the Brink: Observations of a Nonagenarian (1952). p. 17.

God , Light

“Are there not many Arts which, though speechless, express their meanings with perfect adequacy, with satisfaction to the recipient, and serve at the same time as a medium of communication between soul and soul?”

L. P. Jacks

The Usurpation Of Language (1910)

Art , Soul , Communication , Time

“Is not every man familiar with situations in his own life, when the needs of self-expression cannot be satisfied by saying any thing whatsoever times and occasions when, to make his fellows understand what he means, he must straight way do something, or be something, and perhaps hold his tongue the while? And can we deny that the same holds good of the Universe?”

L. P. Jacks

The Usurpation Of Language (1910)

Life , Way , Understanding , Universe