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THE MYSTERY LANGUAGE
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great simplicity of the principles upon which the Mystery Language has been constructed will seem to give it the characteristics of an evolutional product of natural selection, and even suggest that-if speech was ejaculatory in origin, each exclamation the reflex of an emotional impression produced by the perception of some external object ideally transferred to the mind-- then each ideogram or ideograph (as the case might be) would recall the idea of the object to the mind (actually) or qualitatively) by silently reflecting the impres sion that object had originally produced, and renewing the emotional suggestion; in which case the ideogram indicates the simple idea, and the ideograph the more complex.
The principles which underly the mechanism of the Mystery Language are not far to seek. They are in a great measure arbitrary-comprising constructive grafts on the primary power of suggesting ideas inherent in the ideograms. It is in conformity with these princi. ples, for instance, that Aleph (A), as the first letter of the ideograph, stands for the ego supposed to be speaking of itself to another in the sign, as A-ish (man), "I take"-in which the conventional man of substance is contrasted with A-d'm ( I reflect), the primary or natural man, figured as the husbandman: that Tau(T), whether as the first or last letter, stands for thou" the self addressed through the sign, as T-sh'ch, "thou deliverest''; that Aleph and Tau-the first and last
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