to ask: What is the Material which possesses a certain structure? What is the Content which corresponds to the Form?
Very soon we shall feel certain misgivings as to whether there is any sense in a question of this sort, but at present we will put off these doubts and endeavour to understand Structure by trying to distinguish it from that which has the structure. Such a distinction appears to be not only reasonable but even necessary, for our examples seem to show that the same material may take many different structures, or even any structure; and that the same structure may belong to any material, or at least to any number of different materials. A sheet of music with its words and notes is as different as can be from the record on a gramophone disk, and different from the motions of the singer’s larynx and the motions of the pianist’s fingers: nevertheless all these things may be perfect expressions of one and the same song, which means that the structure of the melody (and of everything else which constitutes the “song”) must in some way be contained in them. On the other hand it goes without saying that a gramophone disk, for instance, must be regarded as a material which is capable of expressing anything that can be expressed, i.e. capable of taking any possible structure. The difference between structure and material, between form and content is, roughly speaking, the difference between that which can be expressed and that which cannot be expressed. The fundamental importance for philosophy of that which is vaguely indicated by this distiction can hardly be exaggerated. We shall avoid all the typical mistakes of traditional philosophy if we bear in mind that the inexpressible cannot be expressed, not even by the philosopher.
6. Communicability of Structure.
We have seen that Expression serves as a means for Communication and that the latter is rendered possible by the former. Undoubtedly a thought cannot be communicated without having been expressed before; we may, therefore, regard communicability as a criterion of expressibility, i.e. of structure, and throw some light on the distinction of form and content by examining some particular instances of communication.
