Language, is especially subject to the depredations of self-deception, perhaps because it is a wholly human construct. Ones habit of calling all flowers bluebells (insert any such habit here), regardless of their variety divorces the word from living reality and turns it into abstraction. In written form, words can be just as inadequate to deeper understanding and meaningful communication—perhaps even more so than spoken words for they are fixed and motionless, and we tend to worship them as we worship artifacts generally. Whether spoken or written, however, language as modern man uses it is yet another of the abstractions he makes in an effort to deny the vitality, energy, and change that characterize real life. The consequences are grave, in Bely’s view; for language—or, “the word”—is our only means of knowing the world and ourselves. The living word, is sound or speech. Without it, “there is neither nature, nor the world, nor anyone cognizing them.” If modern thought and modern society are in a state of crisis, then that is because language, as modern man employs it, is dying. Here is the position that is just the opposite as Emerson’s, who wrote: “The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language.”