These few indications should be enough to show how inept it is to make fun of stories that speak of the "language of the birds." It is all too easy and too simple to disdain as "superstitions" everything one cannot understand; but the ancients themselves knew very well what they meant when they used symbolic language. The true superstition in the strictly etymological sense (quod superstat) is what outlives itself, that is, the "dead letter"; but this very survival, however lacking in interest it may seem, is nonetheless not so totally insignificant, for the Spirit that "bloweth where it listeth" (and when it listeth) can always come to breathe fresh life into the symbols and the rites and give them back their lost meaning and the fullness of their original virtue. Essays: The Language of the Birds by Rene Guenon