1 How is communication actually achieved? It depends, of course, either on a common language or on known conventions, or at least on the beginnings of these. If the common language and the conventions exist, the contributor, for example, the creative artist, the performer, or the reporter, tries to use them as well as he can. But often, especially with original artists and thinkers, the problem is in one way that of creating a language, or creating a convention, or at least of developing the language and conventions to the point where they are capable of bearing his precise meaning. In literature, in music, in the visual arts, in the sciences, in social thinking, in philosophy, this kind of development has occurred again and again. It often takes a long time to get through, and for many people it will remain difficult. But we need never think that it is impossible creative energy is much more powerful than we sometimes suppose. While a man is engaged in this struggle to say new things in new ways, he is usually more than ever concentrated on the actual work, and not on its possible audience. Many artists and scientists share this fundamental unconcern about the ways in which their work will be received. They may be glad if it is understood and appreciated, hurt if it is not, but while the work is being done there can be no argument. The thing has to come out as the man himself sees it. 2 In this sense it is true that it is the duty of society to create conditions in which such men can live. For whatever the value of any individual contribution, the general body of work is of immense value to everyone. But of course things are not so formal, in reality. There is not society on the one hand and these individuals on the other. In ordinary living, and in his work, the contributor shares in the life of his society, which often affects him both in minor ways and in ways sometimes so deep that he is not even aware of them. His ability to make his work public depends on the actual communication system the language itself, or certain visual or musical or scientific conventions and the institutions through which the communication will be passed. The effect of these on his actual work can be almost infinitely variable. For it is not only a communication system outside him. it is also, however original he may he, a communication system which is in fact part of himself. Many contributors make active use of this kind of internal communication system. It is to themselves, in a way, that they first show their conceptions, play their music, present their arguments. Not only as a way of getting these clear, in the process of almost endless testing that active composition involves. But also, whether consciously or not, as a way of putting the experience into a communicable form. If one mind has grasped it, then it may be open to other minds. 3 In this deep sense, the society is in some ways already present in the act of composition. This is always very difficult to understand, but often, when we have the advantage of looking back at a period, we can see, even if we cannot explain, how this was so. We can see how much even highly original individuals had in common, in their actual work, and in what is called their 'structure of feeling', with other individual workers of the time, and with the society of that time to which they belonged. The historian is also continually struck by the fact that men of this kind felt isolated at the very time when in reality they were beginning to get through. This can also be noticed in our own time, when some of the most deeply influential men feel isolated and even rejected. The society and the communication are there, but it is difficult to recognize them, difficult to be sure. Creative artists and thinkers achieve communication by