Language embraces Speech--Speech, Words, Grammar, and Rhetoric.
A definition of the word speech as used in this particular work is given
elsewhere, and by this definition the word is used only in that sense
which limits it to the sphere of oral sounds. It is that form of
language which addresses itself only to the ear. The sounds which
constitute it may be supplemented by signs or gestures, but such signs
are only adjuncts, and are not to be regarded as an integral part of
speech in its true sense. Speech cannot be acquired by those forms of
life which occupy the lowest horizons of the animal kingdom, and have no
organs with which to produce sound. In the light of modern use and
acceptation language, broadly interpreted, includes all modes and means
of communication between mind and mind. It therefore includes speech as
one form, while signs or gestures constitute another form. Writing in
all its various modes is another form of language. It may be substituted
for either speech or gestures, but it does not thereby become speech in
a literal sense, but within itself it constitutes another form of
language. There seems to be some vague and subtle method of
communication found in certain spheres of life which is called
telepathy. While it is a mere ghost of language, so to speak, it has an
identity which cannot be denied. This may perhaps be called another form
of language.
[Sidenote: LANGUAGE EMBRACES SPEECH]
By some eminent men of letters it is claimed that speech was invented,
and therefore cannot be universally the same; and this is proven by the
fact that different tribes of men have different tongues. They do not
appear to realise, that to the first cardinal sounds of speech so much
has been added age by age, by slow accretions, that the radex of speech
is but a mere drop in the great ocean of sounds. The mobility of speech
is such as to make it more susceptible to change than matter is; and yet
we find that, by the laws of change, man has been evolved from a less
complex state of matter, and that in these latter years he can only be
identified as the descendant of his prototype by the most scrutinising
care, and by picking up the dropped stitches in the great fabric of
Nature. To illustrate the slow and imperceptible, yet never ceasing,
never failing process of evolution, we may imagine a man picking up a
single grain of sand at a certain point and carrying it a distance of a
thousand feet, where he deposits it at another certain point; returning,
takes a second grain of sand from the same place as he secured the
first, and carries it to the point at which he deposited the first, and
thus continues through his life. At his death his son succeeds him in
the task, and continues through his life, and at the death of this man
his son succeeds; and thus in turn each one succeeds the other through
a million generations. Supposing the wind and rain left these grains of
sand unmolested during this long lapse of time, it is evident that at
the place from which the sand was taken there would be a hole, and where
it was deposited there would be a hill. It is by such slight changes
that Nature does her work; and thus it is that speech, as well as
matter, has been transformed from what it was to what it is. The
physical basis of life retains its identity through all those varied
forms, from protozoa to the highest type; and so the phonetic basis of
speech adheres through all the changing modes of thought and expression.
Speech is the highest type of language and the most accurate mode of
expression, and belongs only to the higher forms of the animal kingdom.
It has passed through all inferior horizons coinciding with the mental,
moral, and social planes through which man has passed in the course of
his evolution.
[Sidenote: SPEECH AND WORDS]
Words are the factors of speech and the highest development of that
faculty. A word may be composed of one or more sounds so articulated as
to preclude any interval of time between the utterance of any two of
them, as "tune," in which the sounds appear to overlap and blend into
each other. A single word may signify more than a single thing, and
sometimes will suggest to the mind a category or group of connected
thoughts, as "eat" or "telegraph," and such is the value of many of our
words. This is especially true of words which combine two roots; but
such a combination is usually found only in the higher types of human
speech. But in these higher types words bear such relations to each
other that we cannot well convey a complete idea with a single word; and
hence it is that in the modes of expression used by man, each separate
statement consists of two or more words bearing certain relations to
each other, and these are often qualified by other words of less
importance. This redundancy is due to the higher and more complex modes
of thought used by man; and it is on such a state of facts that we have
founded that branch of science called grammar, which would be of little
use among those forms which occupy the planes of life inferior to man,
and it is found of little use among the lower tribes of man, where it
does not exist in any written form. Grammar does not make language, but
serves as a kind of anchor by which the dialects of human speech are
somewhat unified and made more stable; and to this is due in some
measure the fact that savage tongues and dialects are more susceptible
to change in their structure, while the phonetic basis upon which they
rest remains the same.
[Sidenote: GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC]
In the more refined tongues of human speech, we go beyond that code of
laws called grammar and amplify them into rhetoric. This branch of the
science of speech could find no place among the lower types, as the
words are few from which they may select; and so exact and arbitrary is
the meaning of each one, and so uniform the relations, that no great
variety of expression can be made with such a limited vocabulary. Their
eloquence is in their brevity of speech. But while the types of speech
used by the lower primates occupy a plane so low in the scale, they are
as truly speech as the vocal organs that produce the sounds are truly
vocal organs. Life is life, in what form soever it is found. It is not
less real in the mollusc than in the man. The same is true of emotion,
of thought, of expression, and of speech. Life, emotion, thought,
expression, and speech began in embryo, and have developed co-ordinately
with all the faculties possessed by man. They are as dependent upon each
other as matter is on force, and as inseparable as light from energy.
Speech is the physical manifestation of which thought is the ultimate
force; it is a spoke in the chariot-wheels of consciousness; it is the
body of which thought is the soul.