THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY.
We are now in a position to consider certain matters which are of high
importance in relation to the subject of the present work. In earlier
chapters I have had occasion to show that the whole stress of the
psychological distinction between man and brute must be laid—and, in
point of fact, has been laid by all competent writers who are against
me—on the distinctively human faculty of judgment. Moreover, I have
shown that, by universal consent, this faculty is identical with that
of predication. Any mind that is able, in the strict psychological
signification of the term, to judge, is also able to predicate, and
_vice versâ_. I claim, indeed, to have conclusively shown that certain
writers have been curiously mistaken in their analysis of predication.
These mistakes on their part, however, do not relieve me of the
burden of explaining the rise of predication; and I have sought to
discharge the burden by showing how the faculty must have been given
in germ so soon as the denotative stage of sign-making passed into the
connotative, and thus furnished the condition to bringing into contact,
or _apposition_, the names of objects and the names of qualities or
actions. The discussion of this important matter, however, has so far
proceeded on grounds of psychological analysis alone. The point has
now arrived when we may turn upon the subject the independent light
of philological analysis. Whereas we have hitherto considered, on
grounds of mental science only, what _must have been_ the genesis of
predication—supposing predication to have had a genesis,—we have
next to ascertain whether our deduction admits of corroboration by any
inductive evidence supplied by the science of language, as to what this
genesis _actually was_.
And here I had better say at once that the results of philological
science will be found to carry us back to an even more primitive state
of matters than any which I have hitherto contemplated. For, so long
as I was restricted to psychological analysis, I was obliged to follow
my opponents where they take language as it now exists. In order to
argue with them at all upon these grounds, it was necessary for me to
consider what they had said on the philosophy of predication; and, in
order to do this, it was further necessary that I should postpone for
independent treatment those results of philological inquiry which they
have everywhere ignored. But now we have come to the place where we
can afford to abandon psychological analysis altogether, and take our
stand upon the still surer ground of what I have already termed the
palæontological record of mental evolution as this has actually been
preserved in the stratified deposits of language. Now, when we do this,
we shall find that hitherto we have not gone so far back in tracing the
genesis of conceptual out of receptual ideation as in point of fact we
are able to go on grounds of the most satisfactory evidence.
Up to this time, then, I have been meeting my opponents on their own
assumptions, and one of these assumptions has been that language must
always have existed as we now know it—at least to the extent of
comprising words which admit of being built up into propositions to
express the semiotic intention of the speaker. But this assumption
is well known by philologists to be false. As a matter of fact,
language did not begin with any of our later-day distinctions between
nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and the rest: it began as the
undifferentiated protoplasm of speech, out of which all these “parts
of speech” had afterwards to be developed by a prolonged course of
gradual evolution.” Die Sprache ist nicht stückweis order atomistisch;
sie ist gleich in allen ihren Theilen als Ganzes und demnach organisch
entstanden.”[218]
This highly general and most important fact is usually stated as it
was, I believe, first stated by the anthropologist Waitz, namely,
that “the unit of language is not the word, but the sentence;”[219]
and, therefore, that historically the sentence preceded the word.
Or, otherwise and less ambiguously expressed, every word was
originally itself a proposition, in the sense that of and by itself
it conveyed a statement. Of course the more that a single word thus
assumed the functions now discharged by several words when built
into a proposition, the more generalized—that is to say, the less
defined—must have been its meaning. The sentence or proposition as
we now have it represents what may be termed a psychological division
of labour as devolving upon its component parts: subject-words,
attributive-words, qualifying-words indicative of time, place, agent,
instrument, and so forth, are now all so many different organs
of language, which are set apart for the performance of as many
different functions of language. The life of language under this its
fully evolved form is, therefore, much more complex, and capable of
much more refined operations, than it was while still in the wholly
undifferentiated condition which we have now to contemplate.
In order to gain a clear conception of this protoplasmic condition of
language, we had better first take an example of it as it is presented
to our actual observation in the child which is just beginning to
speak. For instance, as Professor Max Müller points out, “if a child
says ‘Up,’ that _up_ is, to his mind, noun, verb, adjective, all in
one. If an English child says ‘Ta,’ that _ta_ is both noun (thanks),
and a verb (I thank you). Nay, even if a child learns to speak
grammatically, it does not yet think grammatically; it seems, in
speaking, to wear the garments of its parents, though it has not yet
grown into them.”[220]
Again, as Professor Friedrich Müller says, “the child’s word _Ba-ba_,
sleep, does not mean sleep only, as a particular kind of repose, but
rather also all the circumstances which appertain to sleep, such as
cot, bed, bolster, bed-clothes, &c.[221] It likewise and indifferently
means, sleeping, sleepy, sleeper, &c., and may stand for any variety of
propositions, such as “I am sleepy,” “I want to go to sleep,” “He is
asleep,” &c.
Of course innumerable other illustrations might be given; but these
are enough to show what is meant by a “sentence-word.” The next thing
we have to notice is the manner in which a young child particularizes
the meanings of its sentence-words, so as to limit their highly generic
significance _per se_, and thus to make them convey the special
significance intended. Briefly, the one and only means which the child
has of doing this is by the employment of tone and gesture. Here the
suiting of the action to the word is a necessary condition to semiotic
utterance; the more primitive forms of sign-making are the needful
supplements to these commencements of higher forms. And not only so;
they are likewise in large part the parents of these higher forms. It
is by pointing (_i.e._ falling back on what I have called the earliest
or “indicative stage” of language) that a child is able to signify the
place, agent, instrument, &c., to which it requires a sentence-word to
apply; and thus we catch our first glimpse of the highly important fact
that the earliest indications of grammar are given by the simultaneous
use of sentence-words and gesture-signs.
It will now be my object to prove, that in the history of the race
spoken language began in the form of sentence-words; that grammar
is the child of gesture; and, consequently, that predication is but
the adult form of the self-same faculty of sign-making, which in its
infancy we know as indication. Being myself destitute of authority in
matters philological, I will everywhere rely upon the agreement of
recognized leaders of the science.
Bunsen, I believe, was the first to point out that in Egyptian there
is no formal distinction between noun, adjective, verb, or particle;
such a word as _anh_, for instance, meaning indifferently, life, alive,
to live, lively, &c.[222] Similarly, in Chinese “the word can still be
used indifferently as a noun, a verb, an adverb, or the sign of a case,
much like such English words as silver, and picture, and its place in
the sentence alone determines in what sense it shall be construed.
This is an excellent illustration of the early days of speech, when
the sentence-words contained within themselves all the several parts
of speech at once—all that was needed for a complete sentence; and it
was only by bringing them into contact and contrast [i.e. _apposition_]
with other sentence-words, that they came to be restricted in their
meaning and use, and to be reduced to mere ‘words.’”[223]
Later on I will give abundant evidence of a similar state of matters
in the case of other existing languages presenting a low order of
development—especially those of savages. But perhaps it is even
of more importance to prove that the most highly developed of all
languages—namely, the Indo-European group—still bears unmistakable
evidence of having passed through this primitive phase. This is a
statement which it would be easy to substantiate by any number of
quotations; but I will only call the testimony of one witness in the
person of Professor Max Müller, whose evidence on this point may be
regarded as that of an opponent.
“Nothing, it is true, can exist in language except what is a sentence,
_i.e._ that conveys a meaning; but for that very reason it ought
to have been perceived that every word must originally have been a
sentence. The mere root, _quâ_ root, cannot be called a sentence, and
in that sense a mere root may be denied the dignity of a word. But as
soon as a root is used for predication, it becomes a word, whether
outwardly it is changed or not. What in Chinese is effected by position
or by tone, namely, the adaptation of a root to serve the purposes of
words, is in the Aryan languages achieved by means of suffixes and
terminations, though often also by change of tone. We saw that, in an
earlier stage, the Aryan languages, too, could raise a root into a
word, without the aid of suffixes, and that, for instance, _yudh_, to
fight, could be used in the five senses of the act of fighting, the
agent of fighting, the instrument of fighting, the place of fighting,
and the result of fighting. For the sake of distinction, however, as
soon as the necessity began to be felt, the Aryan language introduced
derivative elements, mostly demonstrative or pronominal.”
“The imperative may truly be called the most primitive sentence, and it
is important to observe how little in many languages it deviates from
what has been fixed upon as the true form of a root ... _va_, weave,
whether as a reminder or as a command, would have as much right to be
called a sentence as when we say, ‘Work,’ _i.e._ ‘Let us work.’ ...
From the use of a root in the imperative, or in the form of a general
assertion, there is a very easy transition to its employment in other
senses and for other purposes.... A master requiring his slaves to
labour, and promising them their food in the evening, would have no
more to say than ‘Dig—Feed,’ and this would be quite as intelligible
as ‘Dig, and you shall have food,’ or, as we now say, ‘If you dig, you
shall have food.’”[224]
Thus we may lay it down as a general doctrine or well-substantiated
principle of philological research, that “Language begins with
sentences; not with single words;”[225] or that originally every
word in and of itself required to convey a meaning, after the manner
of the early utterances of children. “The sentence is the only unit
which language can know, and the ultimate starting-point of all our
linguistic researches.... If the sentence is the unit of significant
speech, it is evident that all individual words must once have been
sentences; that is to say, when first used they must each have implied
or represented a sentence.”[226]
“The making of words as distinct from sentences was a long and
laborious process, and there are many languages, like those of North
America, in which the process has hardly yet begun. A dictionary is the
result of reflection, and ages must elapse before a language can enter
upon its reflective stage.”[227]
Or, to give only one more quotation, as Professor Max Müller says, “it
is difficult for us to think in Chinese, or in any radical language,
without transferring to it our categories of thought. But if we watch
the language of a child, which is really Chinese spoken in English,
we see that there is a form of thought, and of language, perfectly
rational and intelligible to those who have studied it, in which,
nevertheless, the distinction between noun and verb, nay, between
subject and predicate, is not yet realized.”[228]
Starting, then, from this undifferentiated condition of language, let
us next see how the “parts of speech” became evolved.
There appears to be no doubt that one of the earliest parts of
speech to become differentiated was the pronoun. Moreover, all the
pronouns (or “pronominal elements”) as originally differentiated
were indistinguishable from what we should now call adverbs; and
they were all concerned with denoting relations of place.[229] No
exception to this general statement can be made even as regards the
personal pronouns. “_Hic_, _iste_, _ille_, are notoriously a sort
of correlatives to _ego_, _tu_, _sui_, and, if the custom of the
languages had allowed it, might, on every occasion, be substituted
for them.”[230] Now, there is very good reason to conclude that these
pronominal adverbs, or adverbial pronouns, were in the first instance
what may be termed articulate translations of gesture-signs—_i.e._
of a pointing to place-relations. _I_ being equivalent to _this one_,
_he_ or _she_ or _it_ to _that one_, &c., we find it easy to supply
the indicative gestures out of which these denotative terms arose; and
although we are not now able to supply the phonetic source of these
highly ancient “pronominal” or “demonstrative elements,” it is easy to
imagine that they may have arisen in the same apparently spontaneous
way as very young children will now devise arbitrary sounds, both as
proper names and as adverbs of position. That we should not err in
thus comparing the grade of mental evolution exhibited by the earliest
framers of spoken language with that of a young child, is rendered
apparent by the additional and highly interesting fact, that, just as
a young child begins by speaking of the _Ego_ in the third person, so
it was with early man in his use of personal pronouns. “Man regarded
himself as an object before he learnt to regard himself as a subject;
and hence ‘the objective cases of the personal as well as of the other
pronouns are always older than the subjective;’ and the Sanskrit _mâm_,
_ma_ (Greek [Greek: me], Latin _me_) is earlier than _aham_ ([Greek:
egôn] and _ego_).”[231]
Lest it should be thought that I am assuming too much in thus referring
the origin of pronominal elements to gesture-signs, I will here quote
the opinion of Professor Max Müller, who of all philologists is least
open to suspicion of bias towards my side of the present argument.
Speaking of these “demonstrative elements, which point to an object in
space and time, and express what we now express by _then_, _this_ [=
I], _that_ [= there, he, she, it, &c.], near, far, above, below, &c.;”
he says, “in their primitive form and intention they are addressed
to the senses rather than to the intellect: they are sensuous, not
conceptual.”[232] And elsewhere he adds, “I see no reason why we should
not accept them as real survivals of a period of speech during which
pantomime, gesture, pointing with the fingers to actual things were
still indispensable ingredients of all conversation.”[233] Again, “it
was one of the characteristic features of Sanskrit, and the other Aryan
languages, that they tried to distinguish the various applications of a
root by means of what I have called demonstrative roots or elements. If
they wished to distinguish the mat as the product of their handiwork,
from the handiwork itself, they would say ‘Platting—there;’ if they
wished to encourage the work they would say, ‘Platting—they, or you,
or we.’ We found that what we call demonstrative roots or elements
must be considered as remnants of the earliest and almost pantomimic
phase of language, in which language was hardly as yet what we mean by
language, namely _logos_, a gathering, but only a pointing.”[234]
It is the opinion of some philologists, however, that these
demonstrative elements were probably “once full or predicative words,
and that if we could penetrate to an earlier stage of language, we
should meet with the original forms of which they are the maimed
half-obliterated representatives.”[235] But as even these philologists
do not question that all originally “predicative words” would be
found to have had their predicative value determined by gesture, “if
we could penetrate to an earlier stage of language,” the question
whether such demonstrative elements as have come down to us were or
were not themselves of originally predicative value, is not of vital
importance in the present connection. For there is no doubt that
pronominal elements which really were aboriginal as such, depended
on accompanying gesture-signs for a conveyance of their predicative
meaning; and although, as we might expect, there is a necessary absence
of proof in particular cases whether these elements have come down to
us in a practically aboriginal form, or whether they have done so as
the worn-out remnants of independently predicative words, the general
principles on which we are now engaged are not really affected by any
such philological uncertainties in matters of detail. For even the
authority just quoted as doubting whether we have evidence enough to
conclude that demonstrative elements which have come down to us were
never themselves predicative words, elsewhere says of early predicative
utterance in general,—“It is certain that there was a time in the
history of speech when the articulate, or semi-articulate, sounds
uttered by primitive man were made the significant representatives of
thought by the gestures with which they were accompanied; and this
complex of sound and gesture—a complex in which, be it remembered,
the sound had no meaning apart from the gesture—was the earliest
sentence.”[236] And, after giving examples from languages of Further
India, he adds,—“But an inflectional language does not permit us to
watch the word-making process so clearly as do those savage jargons,
in which a couple of sounds, like the Grebo _ni ne_, signify ‘I do
it,’ or ‘You do not,’ according to the context and the gestures of
the speaker. Here by degrees, with the growth of consciousness and
the analysis of thought, the external gesture is replaced by some
portion of the uttered sounds which agrees in a number of different
instances, and in this way the words by which the relations of grammar
are expressed came into being. A similar process has been at work in
producing those analogical terminations whereby our Indo-European
languages adapt a word to express a new grammatical relation.”
Therefore, not unduly to multiply quotations, we may take it as
the now established doctrine of philology that, as even this more
sceptical authority puts it, “Grammar has grown out of gesture and
gesticulation.”[237] Later on I will show in how interesting a manner
early forms of articulate utterance follow in their structure the
language of gesture already treated of in a previous chapter. It was
for the sake of displaying this resemblance that I there occupied so
much space with the syntax of gesture-language; and, therefore, it will
now be my object to trace the family likeness between the constructions
of primitive modes of utterance, and those of the parent gestures from
which these constructions have been directly inherited. But in order
to do this more completely, we must first consider the philology of
predicative words.
The parts of speech which are primarily concerned in predication, and
which, therefore, may be called _par excellence_ predicative words,
are substantives, adjectives, and verbs. I will, therefore, begin by
briefly stating what is known touching the evolution of these parts of
speech.
We have abundant evidence to show that originally there was no
distinction between substantives and adjectives, or object-words and
quality-words. Nor is this at all surprising when we remember that even
in fully developed forms of speech one and the same word may stand as
a substantive or an adjective according to its context. “Cannon” in
“cannonball,” or “pocket” in “pocket-book,” &c., are adjectives in
virtue of position—_i.e._ of _apposition_ with the substantives which
they thus serve to qualify.
Similarly as regards the genitive case. This, also, is of an
attributive quality, and, therefore, like the now independent
adjective, originally had no independent existence. When the force of
the genitive had to be conveyed, it was conveyed by this same device of
apposition. And, lastly, the same device was resorted to for purposes
of predication. Or, to quote these important facts from responsible
sources, Professor Sayce says:—“Even the genitive case, necessary
as it appears to us to be, once had no existence, as indeed it still
has none in groups of languages like the Taic or the Malay. Instead
of the genitive, we here have two nouns placed in apposition to one
another, two individuals, as it were, set side by side without any
effort being made to determine their exact relations beyond the mere
fact that one precedes the other, and is therefore thought of first....
Now, this apposition of two nouns, which still serves the purpose of
the genitive in many languages, might be regarded as attributive or
as predicative. If predicative, then the two contrasted nouns formed
a complete sentence, ‘Cup gold,’ for instance, being equivalent to
‘The cup is gold.’ If attributive, then one of the two nouns took the
place of an adjective, ‘gold cup’ being nothing more than ‘a golden
cup.’”[238] Then, after giving examples from different languages of
the artificial contrivances whereby in course of time these three
grammatical differentiations originated (namely, by conventional
changes of position between the words apposed, in some cases the form
of predication being A B, and that of attribution or possession B A,
while in other languages the reverse order has obtained), Professor
Sayce goes on to say:—“These primitive contrivances for distinguishing
between the predicate, the attribute, and the genitive, when the three
ideas had in the course of ages been evolved by the mind of the
speaker, gradually gave way to the later and more refined machinery of
suffixes, auxiliaries, and the like.”[239]
For the sake of putting this point beyond the reach of question, I will
quote another and independent authority to the same general effect.
“It is a curious fact hitherto overlooked by grammarians and logicians,
that the definition of a noun applies strictly only to the nominative
case. The oblique cases are really attribute-words, and the inflection
is practically nothing but a device for turning a noun into an
adjective or adverb. This is perfectly clear as regards the genitive,
and, indeed there is historical evidence to show that the genitive in
Aryan languages was originally identical with an adjective ending;
‘man’s life’ and ‘human life’ being expressed in the same way. It is
also clear that ‘noctem’ in ‘flet noctem’ is a pure adverb of time.
It is not so easy to see that the accusative in such sentences as ‘He
beats the boy’ is also a sort of adverb, because the connection between
verb and object is so intimate as almost to form one simple idea, as
in the case of noun-composition. But it is clear that if ‘boy’ in the
compound ‘boy-beating’ is an attribute-word, it can very well be so
also when ‘beating’ is thrown into the verbal form without any change
of meaning.”[240]
Lastly, upon this point Professor Max Müller says, while speaking of
Aryan adjectives:—“These were not used for the first time when people
said ‘The sun is bright,’ but when they predicated the quality of
brightness, or the act of shooting out light, and said, as it were,
‘Brightness-here.’ Adjectives, in fact, were formed, at first, exactly
like substantives, and many of them could be used in both characters.
There are languages in which adjectives are not distinguished from
substantives. But though outwardly alike, they are conceived as
different from substantives the moment they are used in a sentence for
the purpose of predicating or of qualifying a substantive.”[241]
So much, then, for substantives and adjectives: it cannot be said that
there is any evidence of historical priority of the one over the other;
but rather that so soon as the denotative meanings of substantives
became fixed, they admitted of having imparted to them the meanings
of adjectives, genitives, and predicates, by the simple expedient of
apposition—an expedient which, as we have seen in earlier chapters,
is rendered inevitable by the laws of association and “the logic of
events:” it is an expedient that must have been furnished _to_ the
mind, and therefore need never have been intentionally devised _by_ it.
Turning next to the case of verbs, or the class of words upon which
more especially devolves the office of predication, it is the opinion
of some philologists that these arose through the apposition of
substantives with the genitives of pronouns.[242] And there can be
no doubt that in many actually existing languages the functions of
predication are still discharged in this way, without the existence of
any verbs at all, as we shall see later on. But, on the other hand, it
is shown that a great many Aryan substantives were formed by joining
pronominal elements to previously existing verbal roots, in a manner
so strongly suggestive of pointing-gestures, that it is difficult to
doubt the highly primitive source of the construction. For example
“digging-he” = labourer, “digging-it” = spade, “digging-here” = labour,
“digging-there” = hole,[243] &c. Or again, “‘The hole is dark’ would
have been expressed originally (in Aryan) by ‘digging-it,’ ‘hiding
here,’ or, ‘hiding-somewhere.’ ‘Hiding-here’ might afterwards be
used in the sense of a hiding-place. But when it was used as a mere
qualifying predicate in a sentence in which there was but one subject,
it assumed at once the character of an adjective.”[244]
To me it appears evident that there is truth in both these views,
which, therefore, are in no way contradictory to one another. We have
evidence that many substantives were of later origin than many verbs,
and _vice versâ_; but this does not show which of these two parts of
speech preceded the other as a whole. Nor does it appear that we are
likely to obtain any definite evidence upon the point. On psychological
grounds, and from the analogy furnished by children, we might be
prepared to think it most probable that substantives preceded verbs;
and this view is no doubt corroborated by the remarkable paucity of
verbs in certain savage languages of low development. But as a matter
of pure philology “we cannot derive either the verb from the noun,
or the noun from the verb.”[245] This writer goes on to say, “they
are co-existent creations, belonging to the same epoch and impulse of
speech.” But whether or not this inference represents the truth is a
matter of no importance for us. With or without verbs, primitive man
would have been able to predicate—in the one case after the manner of
children who have just begun to learn the use of them, and in the other
case after the manner of those savages recently mentioned, who throw
upon their nouns, in conjunction with pronouns, the office of verbs.
Seeing that my psychological opponents have laid so much stress upon
the substantive verb as this is used by the Romance languages in
formal predication, I will here devote a paragraph to its special
consideration from a philological point of view. It will be remembered
that I have already pointed out the fallacy which these opponents have
followed in confounding the substantive verb, as thus used, with the
copula—it being a mere accident of the Romance languages that the two
are phonetically identified. Nevertheless, even after this fallacy
has been pointed out to them, my opponents may seek to take refuge
in the substantive verb itself: forced to acknowledge that it has
nothing especially to do with predication, they may still endeavour to
represent that elsewhere, or in itself, it represents a high order of
conceptual thought. This, of course, I allow; and if, as my opponents
assume, the substantive verb belonged to early, not to say primitive
modes of speech, I should further allow that it raises a formidable
difficulty in the otherwise even path of evolutionary explanation.
But, as a matter of fact, these writers are no less mistaken about the
primitive nature of the substantive verb itself, than they are upon the
function which it accidentally discharges in copulation.[246] In order
to prove this, or to show that the substantive verb is really very far
from primitive, I will furnish a few extracts from the writings of
philological authorities upon the subject.
“Whatever our _a priori_ estimate of the power of the verb-substantive
may be, its origin is traced by philology to very humble and material
sources. The Hebrew verbs חחמוה (_houa_) or הוה (_haia_) may very
probably be derived from an onomatopœia of respiration. The verb
_kama_, which has the same sense, means primitively ‘to stand out,’
and the verb _koum_, ‘to stand,’ passes into the sense of ‘being.’
In Sanskrit, _as-mi_ (from which all the verbs-substantives in the
Indo-European languages are derived, as [Greek: eimi], _sum_, am; Zend
_ahmi_; Lithuanic, _esmi_, Icelandic, _em_, &c.) is, properly speaking,
no verbal root, but ‘a formation on the demonstrative pronoun _sa_, the
idea meant to be conveyed being simply that of local presence.’ And of
the two other roots used for the same purpose, namely, _bhu_ ([Greek:
phuô], _fui_, &c.) and _sthâ_ (_stare_, &c.), the first is probably an
imitation of breathing, and the second notoriously a physical verb,
meaning ‘to stand up.’ May we not, then, ask with Bunsen, ‘What is
_to be_ in all languages but the spiritualization of _walking_ or
_standing_ or _eating_?’”[247]
Again, to quote only one other authority:—“In closing, for the
present, the discussion of this extensive subject, it is proposed to
make a few remarks upon the so-called verb-substantive, respecting
the nature and functions of which there has perhaps been more
misapprehension than about any other element of language. It is
well known that many grammarians have been accustomed to represent
this element as forming the basis of all verbal expression, and as
a necessary ingredient in every logical proposition. It would seem
to follow, from this statement, that nations so unfortunate as to
be without it, could neither employ verbal expression nor frame a
logical proposition. How far this is the case will be seen hereafter:
at present we shall make some brief remarks on this verb, and on the
substitutes usually employed in dialects where it is formally wanting.
It will be sufficient to produce a few prominent instances, as the
multiplying of examples from all known languages would be a mere
repetition of the same general phenomena.
“In the portion of the essay relating to the Coptic, it was observed:
‘What are called the auxiliary and substantive verbs in Coptic are
still more remote from all essential verbal character (than the
so-called verbal roots). On examination they will almost invariably be
found to be articles, pronouns, particles, or abstract nouns, and to
derive their supposed verbal functions entirely from their accessories,
or from what they imply.’ In fact any one who examines a good Coptic
grammar or dictionary will find that there is nothing formally
corresponding to our _am_, _art_, _is_, _was_, &c., though there is a
counterpart to Lat. _fieri_ (_sthopi_) and another to _poni_ (_chi_,
neuter passive of _che_); both occasionally rendered _to be_, which,
however, is not their radical import. The Egyptians were not, however,
quite destitute of resources in this matter, but had at least half a
dozen methods of rendering the Greek verb-substantive when they wished
to do so. The element most commonly employed is the demonstrative _pe_,
_te_, _ne_; used also in a slightly modified form for the definite
article; _pe_ = is, having reference to a subject in the singular
masculine; _te_, to a singular feminine; and _ne_ = are, to both
genders in the plural. The past tense is indicated by the addition of a
particle expressing remoteness. Here, then, we find as the counterpart
of the verb-substantive an element totally foreign to all the received
ideas of a verb; and that instead of its being deemed necessary to
say in formal terms ‘Petrus est,’ ‘Maria est,’ ‘Homines sunt,’ it is
quite sufficient, and perfectly intelligible, to say, ‘Petrus hic,’
‘Maria hæc,’ ‘Homines hi.’ The above forms, according to Champollion
and other investigators of ancient hieroglyphics, occur in the oldest
known monumental inscriptions, showing plainly that the ideas of the
ancient Egyptians as to the method of expressing the category _to be_,
did not exactly accord with those of some modern grammarians.... Every
Semitic scholar knows that personal pronouns are employed to represent
the verb-substantive in all the known dialects, exactly as in Coptic,
but with less variety of modification. In this construction it is not
necessary that the pronoun should be of the same person as the subject
of the proposition. It is optional in most dialects to say either _ego
ego, nos nos_, for _ego sum, nos sumus_, or _ego ille, nos illi_. The
phrase ‘Ye are the salt of the earth,’ is, in the Syriac version,
literally ‘You they (_i.e._ the persons constituting) the salt of the
earth.’ Nor is this employment of the personal pronoun confined to the
dialects above specified, it being equally found in Basque, in Galla,
in Turco-Tartarian, and various American languages.... It is true
that the Malayan, Javanese, and Malagassy grammarians talk of words
signifying _to be_; but an attentive comparison of the elements which
they profess to give as such, shows clearly that they are no verbs at
all, but simply pronouns or indeclinable particles, commonly indicating
the time, place, or manner of the specified action or relation. It is
not therefore easy to conceive how the mind of a Philippine islander,
or of any other person, can supply a word totally unknown to it, and
which there is not a particle of evidence to show that it was ever
thought of.... A verb-substantive, such as is commonly conceived,
vivifying all connected speech, and binding together the terms of every
logical proposition, is much upon a footing with the phlogiston of
the chemists of the last generation, regarded as a necessary pabulum
of combustion, that is to say, _vox et præterea nihil_.... If a given
subject be ‘I,’ ‘thou,’ ‘he,’ ‘this,’ ‘that,’ ‘one;’ if it be ‘here,’
‘there,’ ‘yonder,’ ‘thus,’ ‘in,’ ‘on,’ ‘at,’ ‘by;’ if it ‘sits,’
‘stands,’ ‘remains,’ or ‘appears,’ we need no ghost to tell us that it
_is_, nor any grammarian or metaphysician to proclaim that recondite
fact in formal terms.”[248]
* * * * *
Having thus briefly considered the philology of predicative words, we
must next proceed to the not less important matter of the philology
of predication itself. And here we shall find that the evidence is
sufficiently definite. We have already seen good reason for concluding
that what Grimm has called the “antediluvian” pronominal roots were the
phonetic equivalents of gesture-signs—or rather, that they implied
accompanying gesture-signs for the conveyance of their meaning. Now, it
is on all hands allowed that these pronominal roots, or demonstrative
elements, afterwards became attached to nouns and verbs as affixes or
suffixes, and so in older languages constitute the machinery both of
declension and conjugation. Thus, we can trace back, stage by stage,
the form of predication as it occurs in the most highly developed, or
inflective, languages, to that earliest stage of language in general,
which I have called the indicative. In order to show this somewhat more
in detail, I will begin by sketching these several stages, and then
illustrate the earliest of them that still happen to survive by quoting
the modes of predication which they actually present.
As we thus trace language backwards, its structure is found to
undergo the following simplification. First of all, auxiliary words,
suffixes, affixes, prepositions, copulas, particles, and, in short,
all inflections, agglutinations, or other parts of speech which are
concerned in the indication of _relationship_ between the other
component parts of a sentence, progressively dwindle and disappear.
When these, which I will call relational words, are shed, language is
left with what may be termed object-words (including pronominal words),
attributive-words, action-words, and words expressive of states of mind
or body, which, therefore, may be designated condition-words. Roughly
speaking, this classification corresponds with the grammatical nouns,
pronouns, adjectives, active verbs, and passive verbs; but as our
regress through the history of language necessitates a total disregard
of all grammatical forms, it will conduce to clearness in my exposition
if we consent to use the terms suggested.
The next thing we notice is that the distinction between object-words
and attributive-words begins to grow indistinct, and eventually all but
disappears: substantives and adjectives are fused in one, and whether
the resulting word is to be understood as subject or predicate—as the
name of the object or the name of a quality—depends upon its position
in the sentence, upon the tone in which it is uttered, or, in still
earlier stages, upon the gestures by which it is accompanied. Thus,
as Professor Sayce remarks, “the apposition of two substantives [and,
_a fortiori_, of two such partly or wholly undifferentiated words as
we are now contemplating] is the germ out of which no less than three
grammatical conceptions have developed—those of the genitive, of the
predicate, and of the adjective.”[249]
While this process of fusion is being traced in the case of
substantives and adjectives, it becomes at the same time observable
that the definition of verbs is gradually growing more and more vague,
until it is difficult, and eventually impossible, to distinguish a verb
at all as a separate part of speech.
Thus we are led back by continuous stages, or through greater and
greater simplifications of language-structure, to a state of things
where words present what naturalists might term so generalized a
type as to include, each within itself, all the functions that
afterwards severally devolve upon different parts of speech. Like those
animalcules which are at the same time but single cells and entire
organisms, these are at the same time single words and independent
sentences. Moreover, as in the one case there is life, in the other
case there is meaning; but the meaning, like the life, is vague
and unevolved: the sentence is an organism without organs, and is
generalized only in the sense that it is protoplasmic. In view of
these facts (which, be it observed, are furnished by languages still
existing, as well as by the philological record of languages long since
extinct) it is impossible to withhold assent from the now universal
doctrine of philologists—“language diminishes the farther we look back
in such a way, that we cannot forbear concluding it must once have had
no existence at all.”[250]
* * * * *
From all the evidence which has now been presented showing that
aboriginally words were sentences, it follows that aboriginally
there can have been no distinction between terms and propositions.
Nevertheless, although this follows deductively from the general truth
in question, it is desirable that we should study in more detail the
special application of the principle to the case of formal predication,
seeing that, as so often previously remarked, this is the place where
my opponents have taken their stand. The reader will remember that I
have already disposed of their assertions with regard to the copula.
It will now be my object to show that their analysis is equally
erroneous where it is concerned with both the other elements of which a
formal proposition consists. Not having taken the trouble to acquaint
themselves with the results of linguistic research, and therefore
relying only on what may be termed the accidents of language as these
happen to occur in the Aryan branch of the great language-tree, these
writers assume that a proposition must always and everywhere have been
thrown into the precisely finished form in which it was analyzed by
Aristotle. As a matter of fact, however, it is now well known that
such is not the case; that the form of predication as we have it in
our European languages has been the outcome of a prolonged course of
evolution; and that in its most primitive stage, or in the earliest
stage which happens to have been preserved in the palæontology of
language, predication can scarcely be said to have been differentiated
from what I have called indication. For the sake of placing this
important fact beyond the reach of doubt, I will begin by quoting the
statements of a few among the leading authorities upon the philology of
the subject.
“Primitive man would not trouble himself much with such propositions
as ‘Man is mortal,’ ‘Gold is heavy,’ which are a source of such
unfailing delight to the formal logician; but if he found it necessary
to employ permanent attribute-words, would naturally throw them into
what is called the attributive form, by placing them in immediate
proximity with the noun, whose inflections they would afterwards
assume. And so the verb gradually came to assume the purely formal
function of predication. The use of verbs denoting action necessitated
the formation of verbs to denote ‘rest,’ ‘continuance in state,’ and
when, in course of time, it became necessary in certain cases to
predicate permanent as well as changing attributes, these words were
naturally employed for the purpose, and such a sentence as ‘The sun
continues bright’ was simply ‘The bright sun’ in another form. By
degrees these verbs became so worn away in meaning, gradually coming
to signify simple existence, that at last they lost all vestiges of
meaning whatever, and came simply to be marks of predication. Such is
the history of the verb ‘to be,’ which in popular language has entirely
lost even the sense of ‘existence.’ Again, in a still more advanced
state, it was found necessary to speak, not only of things, but of
their attributes. Thus such a sentence as ‘Whiteness is an attribute of
snow,’ has identically the same meaning as ‘Snow is white’ and ‘White
snow;’ and the change of ‘white’ into ‘whiteness’ is a purely formal
device to enable us to place an attribute-word as the subject of a
proposition.”[251]
“Now comes a very important consideration, that not only is the order
of subject and predicate to a great extent conventional, but that the
very idea of the distinction between subject and predicate is purely
linguistic, and has no foundation in the mind itself. In the first
place, there is no necessity for a subject at all: in such a sentence
as ‘It rains,’ there is no subject whatever, the _it_ and the terminal
_s_ being merely formal signs of predication. ‘It rains: therefore I
will take my umbrella,’ is a perfectly legitimate train of reasoning,
but it would puzzle the cleverest logician to reduce it to any of his
figures. Again, the mental proposition is not formed by thinking first
of the subject, then of the copula, and then of the predicate; it is
formed by thinking of the three simultaneously. When we formulate in
our minds the proposition ‘All men are bipeds,’ we have two ideas, ‘all
men’ and ‘an equal number of bipeds,’ or, more tersely, ‘as many men,
as many bipeds,’ and we think of the two ideas simultaneously [_i.e._
in _apposition_] not one after the other, as we are forced to express
them in speech. The simultaneity of conception is what is expressed by
the copula in logic, and by the various forms of sentences in language.
It by no means follows that logic is entirely destitute of value, but
we shall not arrive at the real substratum of truth until we have
eliminated that part of the science which is really nothing more than
an imperfect analysis of language.”[252]
Again, as a result of his prolonged study of some of the most primitive
forms of language still extant among the Bushmen of South Africa, Dr.
Bleek entertains no doubt whatever that aboriginally the same word,
without alteration, implied a substantival or a verbal meaning, and
could be used indifferently also as an adjective, adverb, &c.[253] That
is to say, primitive words were sentence-words, and as such were used
by early man in just the same way as young children use their hitherto
undifferentiated signs, _Byby_ = _sleep_, _sleeping_, _to sleep_,
_sleeper_, _asleep_, _sleepy_, &c.; and, by connotative extension,
_bed_, _bolster_, _bed-clothes_, &c.
Lastly, as already indicated, we are not left to mere inference
touching the aboriginal state of matters with regard to predication.
For in many languages still existing we find the forms of predication
in such low phases of development, that they bring us within easy
distance of the time when there can have been no such forms at all.
Even Professor Max Müller allows that there are still existing
languages “in which there is as yet no outward difference between what
we call a root, and a noun or a verb. Remnants of that phase in the
growth of language we can detect even in so highly developed a language
as Sanskrit.” Elsewhere he remarks:—“A child says, ‘I am hungry,’
without an idea that _I_ is different from _hungry_, and that both are
united by an auxiliary verb.... A Chinese child would express exactly
the same idea by one word, ‘Shi,’ _to eat_, or _food_, &c. The only
difference would be that a Chinese child speaks the language of a
child, an English child the language of a man.”[254]
It is no doubt remarkable that the Chinese should so long have retained
so primitive a form; but, as we know, the functions of predication
have here been greatly assisted by devices of syntax combined with
conventionally significant intonation, which really constitute Chinese
a well-developed language of a particular type. Among peoples of a
much lower order of mental evolution, however, we are brought into
contact with still more rudimentary forms of predication, inasmuch
as these devices of syntax and intonation have not been evolved. As
previously stated, the most primitive of all actually existing forms
of predication where articulate language is concerned, is that wherein
the functions of a verb are undertaken by the apposition of a noun with
what is equivalent to the genitive case of a pronoun. Thus, in Dayak,
if it is desired to say, “Thy father is old,” “Thy father looks old,”
&c., in the absence of verbs it is needful to frame the predication by
mere apposition, thus:—“Father-of-thee, age-of-him.” Or, to be more
accurate, as the syntax follows that of gesture-language in placing the
predicate before the subject, we should translate the proposition into
its most exact equivalent by saying, “His age, thy father.” Similarly,
if it is required to make such a statement as that “He is wearing a
white jacket,” the form of the statement would be, “He-with-white
with-jacket,” or, as we might perhaps more tersely translate it, “He
jackety whitey.”[255]
Again, in Feejee language the functions of a verb may be discharged
by a noun in construction with an oblique pronominal suffix, _e.g._,
_loma-qu_ = heart or will-of-me, = I will.[256]
So likewise, “almost all philologists who have paid attention to the
Polynesian languages, concur in observing that the divisions of parts
of speech received by European grammarians are, as far as external form
is concerned, inapplicable, or nearly so, to this particular class. The
same element is admitted to be indifferently substantive, adjective,
verb, or particle.”[257] “I will eat the rice,” would require to be
rendered, “The-eating-of-me-the-rice = My eating will be of the rice.”
“The supposed verb is, in fact, an abstract noun, including in it the
notion of futurity of time in construction with an oblique pronominal
suffix; and the ostensible object of the action is not a regimen in the
accusative case, but an apposition. It is scarcely necessary to say
how irreconcilable this is with the ordinary grammatical definition of
a transitive verb; and that, too, in a construction where we should
expect that true verbs would be infallibly employed, if any existed
in the language.”[258] And, not to overburden the argument with
illustrations, it will be enough to add with this writer, “there can be
no question that nouns in conjunction with oblique cases of pronouns
may be, and, in fact, are employed as verbs. Some of the constructions
above specified admit of no other analysis; and they are no accidental
partial phenomena, but capable of being produced by thousands.”[259]
* * * * *
It would be easy to multiply quotations from other authorities to the
same effect; but these, I think, are enough to show how completely the
philology of predication destroys the philosophy of predication, as
this has been presented by my opponents. Not only, as already shown,
have they been misled by the verbal accident of certain languages with
which they happen to be familiar identifying the copula with the verb
“to be” (which itself, as we have also seen, has no existence in many
languages); but, as we now see, their analysis is equally at fault
where it deals with the subject and predicate. Such a fully elaborated
form of proposition as “A negro is black,” far from presenting “the
simplest element of thought,” is the demonstrable outcome of an
enormously prolonged course of mental evolution; and I do not know a
more melancholy instance of ingenuity misapplied than is furnished
by the arguments previously quoted from such writers, who, ignoring
all that we now know touching the history of predication, seek to
show that an act of predication is at once “the simplest element of
thought,” and so hugely elaborate a process as they endeavour to
represent. The futility of such an argument may be compared with that
of a morphologist who should be foolish enough to represent that the
Vertebrata can never have descended from the Protozoa, and maintain
his thesis by ignoring all the intermediate animals which are known
actually to exist.
Take an instance from among the quotations previously given. It will be
remembered that the challenge which my opponents have thrown down upon
the grounds of logic and psychology, is to produce the brute which “can
furnish the blank form of a judgment—the ‘is’ in ‘A is B.’”[260]
Now, I cannot indeed produce a brute that is able to supply such a
form; but I have done what is very much more to the purpose: I have
produced many nations of still existing men, in multitudes that
cannot be numbered, who are as incapable as any brute of supplying
the blank form that is required. Where is the “is,” in “Age-of-him
Father-of-thee” = “His-age-thy-father” = “Thy-father-is-old”? Or, in
still more primitive stages of human utterance, how shall we extract
the blank form of predication from a “sentence-word,” where there
is not only an absence of any copula, but also an absence of any
differentiation between the subject and the predicate? The truth, in
short, is, as now so repeatedly shown, that not only the brute, but
likewise the young child—and not only the young child, but likewise
early man—and not only early man, but likewise savage man—are all and
equally unable to furnish the blank form of predication, as this has
been slowly elaborated in the highest ramifications of the human mind.
Of course all this futile (because erroneous) argument on the part
of my opponents, rests upon the analysis of the proposition as this
was given in the Aristotelian system of logic—an analysis which,
in turn, depends on the grammar of the Greek language. Now, it goes
without saying that the whole of this system is obsolete, so far as any
question of the _origin_ either of thought or of speech is concerned.
I do not doubt the value of this grammatical study, nor of the logic
which is founded upon it, provided that inferences from both are kept
within their legitimate sphere. But at this time of day to regard as
primitive the mode of predication which obtained in so highly evolved a
language as the Greek, or to represent the “categories” of Aristotle’s
system as expressive of the simplest elements of human thought, appears
to me so absurd that I can only wonder how intelligent men can have
committed themselves to such a line of argument.[261]
Quitting, then, all these old-world fallacies which were based on an
absence of information, we must accept the analysis of predication
as this has been supplied to us by the advance of science. And this
analysis has proved to demonstration, that “the division of the
sentence into two parts, the subject and the predicate, is a mere
accident; it is not known to the polysynthetic languages of America,
which herein reflect the condition of primeval speech.... So far as
the act of thought is concerned, subject and predicate are one and the
same, and there are many languages in which they are so treated.”[262]
Consequently, it appears to me that the only position which remains for
my opponents to adopt is that of arguing in some such way as follows.
Freely admitting, they may say, that the issue must be thrown back
from predication as it occurs in Greek to predication as it occurs in
savage languages of low development, still we are in the presence of
predication all the same. And even when you have driven us back to the
most primitive possible form of human speech, wherein as yet there are
no parts of speech, and predication therefore requires to be conducted
in a most inefficient manner, still most obviously it _is_ conducted,
inasmuch as it is only for the purpose of conducting it that speech can
have ever come into existence at all.
Now, in order to meet this sole remaining position, I must begin by
reminding the reader of some of the points which have already been
established in previous chapters.
First of all, when seeking to define “the simplest element of thought,”
I showed that this does not occur in the fully formed proposition,
but in the fully formed concept; and that it is only out of two such
concepts as elements that full or conceptual propositions can be
formed as compounds. Or, as this was stated in the chapter on Speech,
“conceptual names are the ingredients out of which is formed the
structure of propositions; and, in order that this formation should
take place, there must be in the ingredients that element of conceptual
ideation which is already present in every denominative term.” Or, yet
again, as the same thing was there quoted from Professor Sayce, “it is
a truism of psychology that the terms of a proposition, when closely
interrogated, turn out to be nothing but abbreviated judgments.”[263]
Having thus defined the simplest element of thought as a concept, I
went on to show from the psychogenesis of children, that before there
is any power of forming concepts—and therefore of bestowing names as
denominative terms, or, _a fortiori_, of combining such terms in the
form of conceptual propositions—there is the power of forming recepts,
of naming these recepts by denotative terms, and even of placing such
terms in apposition for the purpose of conveying information of a
pre-conceptual kind. The pre-conceptual, rudimentary, or unthinking
propositions thus formed occur in early childhood, prior to the advent
of self-consciousness, _and prior, therefore, to the very condition
which is required for any process of conceptual thought_. Moreover, it
was shown that this pre-conceptual kind of predication is itself the
product of a gradual development. Taking its origin from the ground of
gesture-signs, when it first begins to sprout into articulate utterance
there is absolutely no distinction to be observed between “parts of
speech.” Every word is what we now know as a “sentence-word,” any
special applications of which can only be defined by gesture. Next,
these sentence-words, or others that are afterwards acquired, begin
to be imperfectly differentiated into denotative names of objects,
qualities, actions, and states; and the greater the definition which
they thus acquire as parts of speech, the more do they severally
undergo that process of connotative extension as to meaning which is
everywhere the index of a growing appreciation of analogies. Lastly,
object-words and attributive-words (_i.e._ denotative names of things
and denotative names of qualities or actions), come to be used in
apposition. But the rudimentary or unthinking form of predication
which results from this is due to merely sensuous associations and
the external “logic of events;” like the elements of which it is
composed, it is not conceptual, but pre-conceptual. With the dawn
of self-consciousness, however, predication begins to become truly
conceptual; and thus enters upon its prolonged course of still gradual
development in the region of introspective thought.
All these general facts, it will be remembered, were established on
grounds of psychological observation alone; I nowhere invoked the
independent witness of philology. But the time having now come for
calling in this additional testimony, the corroborating force of it
appears to me overwhelming. For it everywhere proves the growth of
predication to have been the same in the race as we have found it to be
in the individual. Therefore, as in the latter case, so in the former,
I now ask—Will any opponent venture to affirm that pre-conceptual
ideation is indicative of judgment? Or, which is the same thing, will
he venture to deny that there is an all-important distinction between
predication as receptual and predication as conceptual? Will he still
seek to take refuge in the only position now remaining, and argue, as
above supposed, that not only in the childish appositions of denotative
names, but even in the earlier and hitherto undifferentiated protoplasm
of a “sentence-word,” we have that faculty of predication on which he
founds his distinction between man and brute? Obviously, if he will not
do this, his argument is at an end, seeing that in the race, as in the
individual, there is now no longer any question as to the continuity
between the predicative germ in a sentence-word, and the fully evolved
structure of a formal proposition. On the other hand, if he does elect
to argue thus, the following brief considerations will effectually
dislodge him.
If the term “predication” is extended from a conceptual proposition
to a sentence-word, it thereby becomes deprived of that distinctive
meaning upon which alone the whole argument of my opponents is reared.
For, when used by a young child (or primitive man), sentence-words
require to be supplemented by gesture-signs in order to particularize
their meaning, or to complete the “predication.” But, where such is
the case, there is no longer any psychological distinction between
_speaking_ and _pointing_: if this is called predication, then the
predicative “category of language” has become identified with the
indicative: man and brute are conceded to be “brothers.”
Take an example. At the present moment I happen to have an infant who
has not yet acquired the use of any one articulate word. Being just
able to toddle, he occasionally comes to grief in one way or another;
and when he does so he seeks to communicate the nature of his mishap
by means of gesture-signs. To-day, for instance, he knocked his head
against a table, and forthwith ran up to me for sympathy. On my asking
him where he was hurt, he immediately touched the part of his head in
question—_i.e._ _indicated_ the painful spot. Now, will it be said
that in doing this the child was _predicating_ the seat of injury? If
so, all the distinctive meaning which belongs to the term predicating,
or the only meaning on which my opponents have hitherto relied, is
discharged. The gesture-signs which are so abundantly employed by the
lower animals would then also require to be regarded as predicatory,
seeing that, as before shown at considerable length, they differ in no
respect from those of the still speechless infant.
Therefore, whether my opponents allow or disallow the quality of
predication to sentence-words, alike and equally this argument
collapses. Their only logical alternative is to vacate their argument
altogether; no longer to maintain that “Speech is the Rubicon of Mind,”
but to concede that, as between the indicative phase of language which
we share with the lower animals, and the truly predicative phase which
belongs only to man, there is no distinction of kind to be attributed;
seeing that, on the contrary, whether we look to the psychogenesis of
the individual or to that of the race, we alike find a demonstrable
continuity of evolution from the lowest to the highest level of the
sign-making faculty.