When people know themselves only from how others respond to them and then for the first time, by means of some new technology, suddenly see themselves clearly, in some totally new way, they are often so frightened, so exhilarated, they cover their mouths & duck their heads.

I think they do so to try to prevent loss of identity. The Highlanders of New Guinea call it loss of spirit or soul, but it's the same phenomenon. It's their response to any sudden embarrassment, to any sudden self-consciousness. When they first see pictures of themselves or hear recordings of their voices, this response is greatly intensified. It's as if they had vomited up an organ; they cover their mouths, almost as a delayed reflex, trying to prevent this loss. In the U.S. Navy, vomiting is called "discovering your soul."

That New Guineans regard the breath as the seat of the soul, and associate speech with intelligence, is understandable. To be conscious is to have breath. What easier way to reveal intelligence than to speak? To be speechless is to be dumb.

Ben Jonson's "Speak, that I may see Thee!" actually comes from the ancient Greeks, who used it as a daily greeting. Like other ancients, they believed breath was the most powerful force radiating from any being. To them, it was the center of life itself.

Genesis tells us that when God made man, "He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." To speak meant to call into being: "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light"; "By the word of the Lord were the Heavens made, and all the hosts of them by the breath of His mouth."

Children often identify thinking with the mouth, and thought with the voice. Thought is confused with the thing itself, in the sense that the word is part of the thing. Thoughts are word-things, stored in the breath or chest: the ears & mouth merely receive & transmit them.

SWISS FATHER: What is thinking really?
HILDA (4 years, 9 months): Don't know.
FATHER: Well, what do you think with?
HILDA: Animals think with their mouths.
FATHER: And people?
HILDA: With their tongues.
FATHER: What does a man do when he thinks?
HILDA: He speaks.

Among the Trobrianders, intelligence & moral qualities reside in the larynx. In locating it, Trobrianders point to the organs of speech. Memory, that is, traditions learned by heart, lie deeper, in the belly. Power is in words, not things: it resides within man & escapes through his voice.

Society Islanders call thinking "speaking in the stomach" and thoughts "words in the belly." When a sacred recorder (harepo), famous in life for ancient knowledge, is dying, his son & successor places his mouth over the mouth of the dying man to inhale the parting soul: in this way lore is transmitted. Sages attribute their learning to this expedient.

The conception of words as part of the soul - the soul being that which survives death - may lie behind the poet's claim: "Let no man mourn me."