The Cool Web, by Robert Graves.

I believe that the message of the story goes beyond the compartmentalizing/dismissing issue, though it certainly includes that. I think it goes beyond that, to a fundamental kernel of the relationship between mind and reality. I don’t think I can articulate it better than Mahud — check out his trackback to this post, earlier in this comment stream — but here’s my take regardless…

To be clear: a word — name, label, or whatever — has a certain relationship with Reality. This relationship hides some parts of Reality, and exposes or emphasizes other parts — this is unavoidable. It’s also desirable, because the process of simplification makes reasoning possible. Further, there are certain aspects of Reality that cannot be expressed with words.

At the same time, a word has relationships with other words. The sum total of the network of relationships between words is a model of Reality. This model is subset of Reality, but it’s also a Creation in its own right! And thus it is holy in its own way.

When we write a poem or tell a story or name a child, we add to the sub-Creation model, by drawing more Reality into it, or changing its relationship to Reality in some way. Thus these are holy acts. But we must not be deluded into thinking that the Model is Reality, or lose our ability to see Reality, to the extent we can. Both are necessary to be fully human.