This document discusses the importance of silence and distinguishing between the verbal and non-verbal realms of experience. It argues that: 1) Much of human experience like sensations, actions, and interactions with objects occurs on a "silent level" that is distinct and non-identical to any verbal descriptions of those experiences. 2) The richness and complexity of non-verbal experiences can never be fully captured or exhausted through language. 3) Learning to observe in silence helps people become aware of the limitations of language and avoid speaking dogmatically about topics they only partially understand. It can foster continued inquiry.

1. When to "keep still."
Author: Irving J. Lee
Date: Oct. 2005
From: ETC.: A Review of General Semantics(Vol. 62, Issue 4)
Publisher: Institute of General Semantics
Document Type: Article
Length: 1,898 words
Main content:
On Silence
WHAT IS ASKED may seem pointless, but the experience of many students of language in its
relation to life facts indicates that the procedure is effective. This is a plea for participation.
Pinch your finger. Say no words. Notice the experience. Do it again. Notice that something
happened on the silent level. You had a direct experience which may be described verbally in many
ways. But whatever might be said in words would not be what you felt by the pressure of the pinch.
You should continue to remain silent so that you may become more aware of what goes on inside-
your-skin. The nature of that inside feeling, of whatever happens, of whatever comes to awareness
is not an affair of language, but is in its entirety an un-speakable matter. This may seem obvious,
but unless it is sharply realized that what was felt belongs to the realm of silence, that it is quite
different from what may be said in the realm of discourse, we shall miss a most important factor in
the process of proper evaluation.
Pick up an object, a pencil or a book. Turn it over in your hands. Handle it. Drop it to the floor. Say
nothing as you go through these operations. Look at the object. Now say the word "book." Notice
that what you said was not the object itself. What you handled is not words. You might write with
the pencil, but you could not write with the word pencil You could drop the book to the floor, but you
could not drop the word "book" unless the word was objectified by being written on paper. You
must see that you are dealing with two distinct levels, one verbal, one silent.
Stand up and walk the length of your room. Notice the movements of your feet. Say nothing about
what you are doing. Don't even talk to yourself "inside." Merely realize that you are engaging in a
form of physical action. After walking, sit down. The action is now ended. Is it clear that the
walking took place on a level that was non-verbal, that you merely did something? Now you might
try to describe the process of walking, the way your legs move, the shifting positions of your body,
the character of the action as you felt it. Regardless of the clarity or complexity of what you have
just said, that description will not be on the silent level of the actual walking. No matter how you
walked, that action will not be on the level of what you said. Whatever you may say about your
behavior, the behavior itself will be different.
In short, the "feeling" of the pinch, the objective pencil or book, the action of walking and sitting
belong to a silent universe, while anything said belongs to a verbal universe. It must be clearly
understood that what was called "a pinch," "a pencil," and "walking" are matters which exist on un-
speakable levels, very much different from whatever exists on speech levels. Students who are in
any doubt about this point should reread the preceding paragraphs and follow the directions before
going on.
What is the importance of this emphasis on the difference between the silent and the verbal?

2. In the first place, it must be realized that our lives are lived on the silent, objective levels, that
whatever we "think," "feel," and "do" happens as such silently, and that only as a secondary matter
does talk come in. Actual living happens silently and is first in importance before speech. When
you sit down to dinner hungry, you are primarily interested in the silent food before you. The
digestive system, blood stream, etc., could not be nourished by words, but only by life facts
capable of being digested. As Emerson says in "New England Reformers,"
The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course in
astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow outvalues
all the theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an
artificial volcano are better than volumes of chemistry.
Language enters to serve auxiliary functions as a convenience at a different level of life. Whatever
use that language serves will be a use quite different from the use to which the food is put in the
stomach. Experiences of anything are primary in human living. And whatever may be said of them
does not appear as a part of that silent living.
Secondly, objective levels, objects, feelings, happenings, actions, etc., are infinitely diverse and
complex in their characteristics. So full of particulars are they that their fullness can never be
reached by words. The classic example of the inadequate coverage of speech appears in the futile
attempt to describe the taste or color of something to one who has never had a similar direct
experience. To know a taste or color it is necessary to go beyond the words to the experience
itself. Though the tasting or the seeing may be immediate and seemingly simple, the full
perception is so inconceivably complex that one cannot get to it by words alone. It can be reached
only as a first-order direct effect of the experience. The same may be said of objects. One may pick
up an object and say "This is a book" without recognizing the false-to-fact character of what was
said. The object appears as an absolute individual full of countless characteristics and it is not
words and never can be; to speak as if they are "identical" may be described as delusion. Further, to
say that it is a "book" is to say something that does not correspond to the totality of the object.
Whatever is said is not "all" that can be said. The manifold uses, interpretations, characteristics of
the silent objects and first-order experiences with which we become acquainted are ever so
infinitely complex and diverse that talk cannot exhaust them. A feeling of this may be at the bottom
of Maeterlinck's view in Treasure of the Humble:
It is idle to think that by means of words, any real communication
can ever pass from one man to another. From the moment we have
something to say to each other, we are compelled to hold our peace.
And in the Book of Job (ii:13):
So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven
nights and none spoke a word unto him: for they saw that his grief
was very great.
For us, even more important is this: an understanding of this silent universe will help dissolve the
false-to-fact character of our limited, too-often dogmatic talk.
In the third place, when you realize the complexity of un-speakable levels, you may not be so eager
to "burst into speech." It is easy to say something about anything. It is not so easy to be conscious
of the limited, partial character of what is said. Verbal levels represent abstractions of some details

3. from the fullness of the silent objects, actions, and experiences. This consciousness of abstracting
whenever one talks will be more readily acquired when one stops to notice the silent levels. The
acquisition of this habit is most difficult. Existing educational procedures somehow generate
habits of speaking as the primary human function, so that students too readily speak without
awareness that the first-order experiences about which they speak are unreachable by words. To
train students to be silent, to know they live on a level comparable to the level of "things" goes
contrary to conventional training. And yet training in silence seems to be the most practical means
by which to become aware that there are un-speakable realms in actual living. One must learn to be
silent outwardly as well as inwardly. Students should learn to look at objects and actions while
closing their lips with one hand. To see what is going on and to evaluate it properly without
identification we must be silent. There must come a consciousness that as soon as we speak we
shall be leaving out differences and emphasizing similarities. Learning to point with a finger will
keep the silence. Looking and pointing are silent means of expression, analogues of the silent
world. Silence on the objective levels may well be the first step to the achievement of a
consciousness of abstracting and of the realization that there is much more in our world than we
normally take cognizance of.
In the fourth place, one of the more immediate beneficial results of acquiring the habit of silence is
the development of an awareness that study and analysis are on-going, never finished. When once
this is understood, the student develops a creative outlook; more and more of the limitless content
of the world about him comes into view. Silence gives opportunity for observation. There is time to
see what there is to be seen. Arguments, debates, conflicts are quickly generated when the objects,
situations, people are known only in part but thought and talked about otherwise. The habit of
silence gives one time to look first before speaking. And that looking is, after all, the creative
source of what we know as science, art, technology, etc.
The experience of those who have learned silence on the objective level reveals a heightened
development of critical attitude. Constant and continuing use of silence when writing or speaking
may develop sharply the memory of characteristics left out, no matter what the subject under
consideration. Statements are not the un-speakable world; the demarcation of the two levels
automatically suggests that statements will leave some things unsaid, some characteristics
omitted. Inquiry, investigation, further searching--these are the hall-marks of useful criticism.
Students will learn, once silence is fundamental in their reactions, to ask questions: "What do you
mean?" "Does that statement cover all?" "Where was the abstracting?" Questions inevitably lead to
further search and more talk and an understanding of the limited reasons for whatever conflicts
arise.
Our eagerness to make statements on matters which may be foreign to our experience or
knowledge may well be a major source of the superficiality of so much speech-making and writing.
Students too readily take what they hear and see as the full expression and the complete
experience, instead of sharply realizing that too often those statements are merely introductory to
the matter in question. As Walter Lippmann has said in his book Public Opinion, "For the most part
we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see." The achievement of silence
should reverse this unnatural pattern. Looking at the silent world, we must first be silent. For unless
we have learned to observe the vast panorama, "the great blooming buzzing confusion of the outer
world," we shall pass over too much that we might know about.
It is important to point out that "we do not repress or suppress ... the bursting into speech; a
gesture of the hand to the labels reminds us that words are not objects, or actions, or happenings,
or feelings." (1) Lapsing into silence will have a jarring effect, which is not to repress but to make
for the realization of an important evaluation mechanism in which we must be trained, if we would
avoid the harmful effects of speech which becomes false-to-fact when too little is considered. (2)
Phatic Communion

4. Silence must be regarded as a methodological device of first importance when it functions to
induce delay, to aid the inspection of life facts, and to achieve a non-allness orientation. But there
are occasions when we do not wish to keep still, when we talk for the sheer joy of talking...
REFERENCES
1. Alfred Korzybski. Science and Sanity, (4th Edition, 1958). Lakeville, CT: Institute of General
Semantics.
2. For the substance of the material on "silence," see Science and Sanity, pp. 34-35, 399-400, 416-
417, 476-477, 481-485.
* Excerpts from Language Habits in Human Affairs, Second Edition, by Irving J. Lee, edited by
Sanford I. Berman, published by the International Society for General Semantics, Concord, CA, in
1994, available from the Institute of General Semantics.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 Institute of General Semantics
http://www.generalsemantics.org
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition:
Lee, Irving J. "When to 'keep still'*." ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, vol. 62, no. 4, Oct. 2005,
pp. 424+. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A138483277/LitRC?
u=googlescholar&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=f066eb1b. Accessed 4 Mar. 2023.
APA 7th Edition:
Lee, I. J. (2005). When to "keep still"*. ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, 62(4), 424+.
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A138483277/LitRC?u=googlescholar&sid=bookmark-
LitRC&xid=f066eb1b
Chicago 17th Edition:
Lee, Irving J. "When to 'keep still'*." ETC.: A Review of General Semantics 62, no. 4 (2005): 424+.
Gale Literature Resource Center (accessed March 4, 2023).
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A138483277/LitRC?u=googlescholar&sid=bookmark-
LitRC&xid=f066eb1b.
Harvard:
Lee, I.J. (2005) 'When to "keep still"*', ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, 62(4), 424+, available:
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A138483277/LitRC?u=googlescholar&sid=bookmark-
LitRC&xid=f066eb1b [accessed 04 Mar 2023].