The art of sound pictures (1930)

196 THE ART OF SOUND PICTURES register a little. And this little which serves you as data is construed almost wholly in terms of your own unique nature. Now reverse the situation. Suppose that you are a zoologist making a biological survey of an unknown territory. You have telescopes, a large staff of helpers, and plenty of time to investigate the little dots you see on the distant field. Furthermore, you are moved by a strong desire to make your report of the local fauna as complete and as accurate as possible. Instead, then, of guessing what the dots are, you command your party to march over to them, making observations as you go. Finally, you get close enough so that you see them, hear them, smell them, and perhaps touch them. Every member of your party does likewise. You exchange information and impressions with one another. And now what happens? Your conclusion as to what these things are is determined almost entirely by the totality of sense impressions of all the members of your party, taken in combination. So long as you were all ten miles away from the moving dots, one of you might have insisted in all sincerity that they were antelopes, while another declared that they were brown bears. But, as you increased the number and variety of your immediate impressions, such personal differences of opinion are inevitably overwhelmed. Now the objective fact stands forth. What has this to do with the motion pictures? Well, for one thing, it means that when you look at a mere play of light upon a screen in a darkened hall, you are far closer to dream life than when you are hearing the characters on a movie screen talk their parts. Every word they utter determines the nature of the situation,