Some courage is required to attack the subject of comparative philology
as treated by certain learned authors; they are bold enough to seek to
transport themselves to an age of such remote antiquity that history is
silent on the subject, but in which a nascent humanity endeavoured to
find expression for its sensations in a language which probably had no
name.
When my attention was first attracted to the work of this school, so
long as my mind was content to skim over the surface of an unknown
world, so immeasurably distant from us, and whilst flitting too rapidly
over it to be able to distinguish any of its features, it presented
itself to me as a creation of my heated imagination. Since then I have
lived in that world of wonders, and I then grasped the fact that it was
quite possible for this world to have been a reality. But to journey
thither, even to live in this strange country, the only path to which
is by induction, in company with Max Müller and Noiré, who, apparently,
are its inhabitants, from the ease with which they move in it, is a
totally different matter from explaining the methods of getting there,
or describing the sojourn. I should have to draw information from
various sources, and the scientific and hypothetical data connected
therewith would require sorting and rearranging to make them assimilate
more easily; these would present difficulties not readily surmounted.
How could a reasonable and speaking being come forth from that which
had no reason and no language?
The earliest traditions are silent on the manner of man’s acquisition
of his first ideas and his first words. But because a problem has not
been solved, that is no reason for the assertion that it is insoluble,
unless a refutation is at once demonstrable, as in the squaring of the
circle. “If every one had abstained from striving to penetrate hidden
things, no sciences would exist,” Noiré remarked. Newton might have
said: “The facts that a stone falls and the planets move are known
by actual experience, why search out the laws which produce these
phenomena?” And the theory of gravitation would have been lacking.
Lyell might have said: “We see that the crust of the earth is composed
of several strata, why reckon the time required for their formation?”
And there would have been no science of geology. Liebig might have
said: “We see that clover grows and cattle prosper, why should the
relation of cause and effect concern us?” And there would have been no
organic chemistry. Adam Smith might have said: “We know by experience
that valuable objects can be exchanged, and that their prices
fluctuate, why should we study the cause of rise and fall?” And this
chapter would have been missing from political economy.
No road presents itself to me by which to arrive in the midst of
primitive humanity; of necessity, therefore, I have recourse to
analogy, which, under the circumstances, is not the worst expedient.
When the Romans first encountered Germans, they were chiefly struck
by the great stature, the blue eyes, and the light hair of this
inimical race. Tacitus, in alluding to this fact, says that each
German exactly resembled his fellow. Although we are familiar with
the external appearance of various nations, yet if we found ourselves
in the presence of a large number of negroes we should experience an
analogous sensation, only by degrees should we distinguish one from the
other. In an intensified degree primitive man must have had similar
experiences when, first finding himself in a world of which he knew
nothing, and of which he understood nothing, the consciousness of
what he saw around him was making itself apparent. These early races
learnt the meaning of the details of surrounding nature but slowly;
their eyes followed the brilliant circle as it moved from one quarter
of the heavens to the other; they noticed the fire which came whence
they knew not; they heard the crash of thunder, reproduced by the
echoes in the mountains synchronising with the devastations caused by
the storm. If one man alone had witnessed these terrifying effects
in nature, his reason would have tottered from fear; the stones and
the herbs of the field could not share his agitation; the death of a
man from terror would leave them unmoved. Happily man was not alone,
all those around him shared his agitation, and the terror manifested
itself on each by signs which each would understand instinctively.
This period of semi-consciousness before the full awakening might
have been a prolonged one, but physical sensations and necessities
multiplied themselves, and were very various and imperative; action was
indispensable if privations were to be avoided; and instinct came to
their aid. The need of guarding themselves from the burning rays of the
sun caused them to provide shelters by interlacing branches of trees;
to protect themselves from cold they took the skins of wild beasts to
throw over their shoulders; where natural caverns were insufficient for
their wants they made themselves refuges in the sides of the mountains;
they were forced to light and maintain fires; sharpen stones either
for tools or for weapons of defence; the wants of one were the wants
of all, and all gave themselves to the task of satisfying them. It is
so evident that primitive activity must have been co-operative, that
it outrages common sense to picture each man labouring by himself for
himself alone. The mental phenomenon known as _intention_, was the
common property of all; the mutual sympathy played the part of the
electric current of our laboratories, and the inarticulate sounds
escaping involuntarily from the lips of each worker, served as a means
of communication.
In order the better to understand the function of the voice in the
education of primitive man, let us look around us and listen. Whenever
our senses are excited, and our muscles hard at work, we feel a kind of
relief in uttering sounds which in themselves have no meaning. “They
are a relief rather than an effort, a moderation or modulation of the
quickened breath in its escape through the mouth.”[38]
When men work together, on account of the nature of the task
requiring united effort, they are naturally inclined to accompany
their occupations with certain more or less rhythmical utterances,
which react beneficially on the inward disturbance caused by muscular
effort. When a body of men march, row, or wield hammers, they do not
keep silence; formerly soldiers sang as they marched to battle; our
modern civilisation only caused the substitution of fife and drums
for the songs; and our soldiers do not readily abandon these measured
accompaniments, which make them less susceptible of fatigue. When
savage races dance they make the air resound with measured cadences;
our peasants sing while joining in the country dances; the custom of
singing during work is more marked amongst those who belong to the
races which are less under the influence of civilisation, and are more
entirely absorbed by their manual occupation, and with whom personal
preoccupation has small hold.
These inarticulate sounds which Noiré has named _clamor concomitans_
and Max Müller _clamor significans_, uttered by primitive men when
working in concert, and always inseparable from acts, could be
differentiated in accordance with the acts performed; and at a period
when actual speech did not yet exist, they would always have this
practical value, they would awaken the remembrance of acts performed in
the past, and be repeated in the present, they would thus be instantly
understood by all, and readily retained by the memory. But what was
there to determine the application of certain sounds to certain
occupations? This has not been made clear. Plato, Socrates, and others,
have considered that the origin of language might be traced to the
imitation of the sounds of nature, and have sought for a resemblance
between these sounds and certain letters of the alphabet, but even were
it possible here and there to discover a faint analogy, our efforts
would only end in contradictions. There seems to be neither necessity
nor absolute freedom in the choice of the sounds expressive of these
acts, but rather the result of some accident, or of causes of which we
are ignorant. In any case these sounds were merely the materials of
which language was built.
It will be easily understood that nothing would penetrate more deeply
into man’s consciousness, or produce mutual understanding more
readily, than acts undertaken and accomplished with the same end in
view by a number of men united in a common impulse. During the digging
of the caves, the weaving of the nets, the thrashing of the grain,
the workers would follow with their eyes the gradual transformation
perceptible in these activities, and the sounds which they emitted,
or the half-formed words issuing from their lips would be modified or
softened at each development in the work; these developments becoming
more and more distinct, more and more impressed with their own special
characteristic. The idea of individuality must have been very clouded,
very confused amongst primitive man; that which one saw the other saw
after the same manner; they designed each object in creating it; in
this way the world became as a book to them, this book, the result of
their combined labour, they learnt to read fluently by means of these
sounds and words which increased as they varied. Thus work--man’s good
genius--is proved to be the source of what is truly human, viz., reason
and language.
Here I will note a curious fact and one which is historical. At a
period when writing was unknown in India, the Brahmans had already
established the rules of poetical metre, which were originally
connected with dancing and music. These rules had been preserved in the
Veda. The various Sanscrit names for metre are a witness of the union
of corporal and phonetic movements. The root of _Khandas_, metre, is
the same as the Latin _scandere_ in the sense of stepping; _vritta_,
metre, from _vrit_, verto--to turn, meant originally the last three
or four steps of a dancing movement, the turn, the _versus_, which
determined the whole character of dance or of the metre. _Trishtubh_,
the name of a common metre in the Veda, meant three-step, because
its turn--its _vritta_ or _versus_--consisted of three steps, ∪ - -.
Thus the innate necessity that man feels of linking the play of the
vocal chords to the movement of hands or feet, had been controlled by
fixed laws, twenty-four centuries ago, by the Hindoo grammarians; and
the most recent theories of modern writers on the subject attest the
excellence of these laws. The assertion that it is natural to peasants
not to keep silence when working is of very ancient date, but Noiré was
the first to deduce scientific data from the fact.
The study of Sanscrit has shown us that two thousand years ago it
occurred to Hindoo grammarians to investigate the origin of the words
of their language, when they discovered that all words could be reduced
to roots, and that these roots all expressed various forms of activity;
that they were therefore verbs, and that the number of these roots was
very restricted. Our present philologists have continued this work
and are not only able to acknowledge the accuracy of the Brahmanic
discovery, but also to certify that the grammatical analysis of the
Hindoos, put forth 500 years before our era, has never been surpassed.
It is important to remember that roots are the fundamental elements
which permeate the whole organism of the language. Hebrew has been
reduced by Renan and other Hebraists to about 500 roots; the work
has still to be done for the whole Semitic family. The same process
has been carried out with regard to the Aryan languages; we find the
number of roots in Sanscrit reduced to about 800; of Gothic about 600;
rather more than 400 in the Teutonic family, and 600 in the Slavic. The
Ural-Altaic languages have also undergone a partial analysis of the
same kind, and the result at present corresponds to that obtained by
the examination of the other families. After eliminating the tertiary
and secondary roots from the Sanscrit the residuum is 600 or 500,
and we arrive at the fact that this entire language, and, in a great
measure, all the Aryan languages, can be traced back to an extremely
small number of roots.
As the Hindoo grammarians asserted that all roots contain the
representation of various forms of activity, it behoved our
philologists to investigate this and discover their meaning. Professor
Noiré thought that the consciousness that men had of their own acts
must have formed the origin of the primitive concepts of the human
mind, and found expression in signs or words. Max Müller shows us[39]
that all the Sanscrit roots express a concept or consciousness of
the repeated acts, the acts with which man in his infancy would be
most familiar. But it must be noted that the concepts or signs are
not of single acts, but the realisation of repeated acts; to dig was
not to put a spade into the ground once, it is the action of digging
continuously; to sharpen was not to pass one flint over another
once, it was the continual action of sharpening. The consciousness of
accomplishing these repeated acts as if one act, became the first germ
of conceptual thought. During this initial phase of thought, when the
first consciousness of his own repeated acts awoke in man and assumed
a conceptual character, will, act and knowledge were as yet one and
undivided, and the whole of his conscious knowledge was subjective,
exclusively concerned with his own voluntary act. We possess the
genealogy of a large number of Aryan roots, and we find on examination
that the activity which formed their basis was at the beginning always
a creative activity, since it called into life conceptions which up to
that time had not existed.
Nothing is more interesting than researches into the origin of the
growth of human thought, when carried out not according to the systems
of certain philologists of our day, but historically, after the fashion
of the Indian trapper, who notes on the sand every imprint of the
footsteps of him whom he pursues.
For the present I will content myself by bringing forward in
illustration three primary roots. _Vê_ (_Vâ_), which is, to weave;
_Mar_, to crush; and _Khan_, to dig. _Vê_ (_Vâ_), _Mar_, and _Khan_ are
thus verbs.
When we now picture the four acts of weaving, spinning, sewing, and
knitting, they appear so to differ the one from the other, that it
seems impossible to consider them other than four distinct acts, and
difficult to believe that there is one common origin to all. These four
processes, however, all had their germ in the one primitive act of
interlacing the boughs of trees to form a hedge or roof. This root _Vê_
(_Vâ_) had an immense number of offshoots; from the acts of interlacing
and platting came the conception of binding, in Latin _vieo_, to twist,
to divide; in German, _winden_, _wickeln_; the Latin words _vitis_, a
vine; _vimen_, osier, a twig; _viburnum_, a climbing plant; the Slavic
word _vetla_, willow; the Sanscrit _vetra_, reed, rush; the German
word for rush, _binse_, is connected with _binden_, to join, and the
secondary meaning of ties of relationship and alliance: again, in the
Old High-German, _nothbendig_, or _nothwendigkeit_, bound, straitened,
and the Gothic _naudibandi_, tie, chain. All these words, whether in
the Roman, German, or Slavonic dialects, have retained the root _Vê_
(_Vâ_), so that it is impossible not to recognise the trunk of which
these are the branches. Thus a large number of apparently dissimilar
images became entangled the one with the other, and in proportion as
we approach their starting-point do we find them discarding their own
special signification, and becoming absorbed in the single conception
of weaving and platting.
The root _mar_, to grind, has also the meaning of to crush, to powder,
to rub down, etc., and whether we look at the Latin, Greek, Celtic,
German, or Slav, the words representing the verb _to mill_, and the
name _mill_ come thence; the transition from _milling_ to _fighting_ is
natural; thus Homer used the word _mar-na-mai_, I fight, I pound. _Mar_
produced in Latin the words _mordeo_, I bite; _morior_ (originally,
to decay), I die; _mortuus_, dead; _mors_, death; _morbus_, illness;
in Greek, _marasmos_, decay; rendered in German by _sich aufreiben_,
to become exhausted. In Sanscrit we must remember that the consonants
_r_ and _l_ are cognate and interchangeable; thus, _mar_ = _mal_;
and that _ar_ in Sanscrit is shortened, and the vowel modified and
pronounced _ri_, _mar_ = _mri_; that _ar_ may be pronounced _ra_,
and _al_, _la_; _mar_ = _mra_ and _mal_ = _mla_: thus in Sanscrit
we find _mrita_, dead; _mritya_, death, and _mriye_, I die. One of
the earliest names for man was _marta_, the dying; the equivalent in
Greek for the Sanscrit _mra_ and _mla_ is _mbro_, _mblo_; and after
dropping the _m_ becomes _bro_ and _blo_; _brotos_, mortal. Having
chosen this name for himself, man gave the opposite name to the gods;
he called them _Ambrotoi_, without decay, immortal; and their food
_ambrosia_, immortality. An offshoot of _mar_ is _mard_ and _mrg_;
thence _mradati_, rubbing down, pulverising, grind to powder; _mrid_
is in Sanscrit the word for dust, and afterwards was used for soil
in general or earth; _mrid_, to weaken, to soften, to melt; thus,
fluid mass. This idea in English takes the form _malt_, grain soaked
and softened; then the Greek _meldo_, and the Gothic _mulda_, soft
ground or morass, and that which is softened by use or the action of
time. The Latin _sordes_ and _sordidus_ are connected herewith, as the
same root may be found in _smarna_, Gothic, and the Greek _mélas_ and
_moros_, black, and in _murus_, brown-black; in the Russian _smola_,
wax and resin. “Colour was conceived originally as the result of the
act of covering or extending a fluid over a surface; it was not till
the art of painting, in its most primitive form, was discovered and
named, that there could have been a name for colour.”[40] The name of
colour in Sanscrit is _varna_, from _var_, to cover. The idea conveyed
by the words, to smooth, to flatter, to soften, to mollify, to melt a
hard substance, to polish a rough surface by constant rubbing, led to
the same terms being used for expressing the softening influence which
man exercised on man, by looks, gestures, words or prayers, and these
expressions were especially used by men in their relations to the gods,
when they strove to propitiate them by supplications and sacrifices:
thus the prayer which we now translate by “Be gracious unto us, O God,”
meant originally, “Melt to us; be softened, ye gods.”
Language grew and made offshoots, but without confusion; disorder had
no place in the progress of thought (still less chance), which was
simple and rational. This was not the development of the conscious
effort towards some goal. At this period there was no such thing as
reflection properly so called; for instance, man did not ponder how
best to express a feeling of fear, since fear, like so many other
impressions, received vague expression before the concept of fear
acquired shape; but our ancestors had a root to express shaking (in
Sanscrit _kap_, _kamp_, to shake): they used it to describe fear,
which manifested itself in the trembling of voice or limbs. Thus, “I
shake” might mean, “I shake a tree,” or “I am shaken,” “I am shaken
by him” (by my horse), but also “I am trembling”; from it we have
in Greek _karnos_, smoke, not what shakes, or is shaken, but what
is in a shaking state, that which moves; _kup_, which is probably a
modification of _kamp_, means to shake inwardly, to be angry.
Some learned writers have felt disconcerted when after tracing words to
their source, they have found nothing but roots with general meanings,
such as to go, to move, to run, to do; however, it is by means of these
vague, pale conceptions that language has obtained the material for
an entire language. The Aryan root _ar_ signified originally to go,
to send, to advance, to proceed, going regularly, to stir. Applied to
the stirring of the soil, it took the meaning of ploughing; in Latin
_ar-are_, in Greek _ar-oun_, in Irish _ar_, in Lithuanian _ar-ti_, in
Russian _ora-ti_; this root, from its meaning of advancing regularly,
was the name of the plough; one derivative was applied to the cattle
fit for ploughing, and also to the labourer. _Ar_ was also used for
the ploughing of the sea, or rowing, and was found in the words rower
and rudder. The Latin word _ævum_, originally from _i_, to go, became
the name of time, age; and its derivative _æviternus_, _æturnus_ was
made to express eternity. It was by a poetical fiat that the Greek
_probata_, which originally meant no more than things walking forward,
became in time the name of cattle. In French, the word _meuble_ means
literally anything that is movable, but it became the name of chairs,
tables, wardrobes, etc. In this way we see the power of language,
which, out of a few simple elements, has created names sufficient to
express the infinite aspects of nature.
The ramifications of the Aryan root _Dâ_ give a good idea of the
process. Thus _Dâ_ = to give, is in the Sanscrit _dădāmi_, I give;
in Latin, _do_; in Old Slavonic, _da-mi_; in Lithuanian, _du-mi_; in
French, _donner_ and _pardonner_; in Latin, _trado_, to give over; in
Italian, _tradire_; in French, _trahir_, _trahison_; in Latin again,
_reddo_, to give back; in French, _rendre_ and _rente_. Side by side
with the root _Dâ_, there is another root also _Dâ_, exactly the same
in all outward appearance; it consists of _D_ + _Â_, but is totally
distinct from the former. While from the former we have in Sanscrit,
_dâ-tram_, a gift, we have from the latter _dâ´-tram_, a sickle. The
meaning of the second root is to cut, to carve; the difference is
shown by the accent remaining on the radical syllable in _dâ´-tram_,
_i.e._, the cutting (active); whilst it leaves the radical syllable in
_dâ-trám_, _i.e._, what is given (passive).
The history of these roots _dâ_ affords an opportunity of noticing
a curious resemblance between natural history and philology, two
sciences which otherwise are totally different, but alike in one idea
which enters into the inwardness of both. Darwin admitted four or five
progenitors in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, so that the primary
elements of all living organisms are the simple cells. In the same
way philologists have discovered that there remain in the end certain
simple elements of human speech--the primordial roots--which have
sufficed to provide the innumerable multitude of words used by the
human race. A principle neglected by a great number of evolutionists
is that if two origins, whether the roots of language or living
cells, have at their starting-point an absolutely similar appearance,
and afterwards diverge, it is because at their origin they bore in
themselves the germs destined to produce this divergence. Darwin says
that two organic cells, which in the embryonic stage may perfectly
resemble each other, in growing, gradually develop, the one into an
inferior animal, the other into a superior animal, never varying the
process; the reason of which fact is that the cells, although not
distinguishable the one from the other, differ in the rudiments or
principle of life: in the same way philologists say that when two roots
have the same sound, but produce families of perfectly distinct words,
it is because the germs in each differ. We learn from this that the
sound of the words is a matter of indifference at the commencement of
a language; no one has succeeded, or will succeed, in making the sound
alone the vehicle of a conception.
To Locke belongs the merit of having first clearly asserted that
roots, the true irreducible elements of language, which furnish
words for the most abstract and sublime conceptions, had at the
beginning only a material or sensuous meaning, and this fact, on which
idealists and materialists are agreed, is confirmed by comparative
philologists. All primitive roots express directly only those acts
and those conditions which come under the domain of the senses; all
express the consciousness of repeated acts familiar to the members of
a society in its infancy, such as pounding, striking, weaving, tying,
burning, rubbing, moving, cutting, sharpening, softening. By means of
generalisation and specialisation, the roots have acquired the most
abstract terms of our advanced society; thus the root to burn developed
into the thought of to love, and also to be ashamed; to dig, came
to mean to search for, to enquire; the root which means to gather,
expressed in primitive logic what we now call observation of facts;
the connection of major and minor, or even syllogism. This is without
doubt, and it is as certain that the words rake and pinchers came from
the verbs to rake and to pinch.
To make the assertion of Locke the more striking, Noiré adds: “When
the representative words springing from one root are found side by
side, it is always the more ancient of the two which expresses the
more material act. The verbs to tear and to cut are the offshoots of
a single root; but the passage from the concept of tearing to that of
cutting would be slowly effected; the act of tearing was immediate with
man, cutting was a mediate act, and of later date, since it could not
be done whilst the instrument was lacking.”
I shall now bridge over the distance between the primordial roots,
and the organised language as we possess it, in order to show how
our ancestors succeeded in forming real phrases, that is to say,
intelligible propositions; this will show us the continuous thread
which connects our present language with primitive speech.
We can show that both dictionary and grammar are made up of predicative
roots and demonstrative elements. By the help of the first we make
affirmations concerning things, derived from our knowledge of another
object or of many, either in combination under one name, or taking each
separately. With the demonstrative element we point to any object in
space or time, by using such words as this, that, then, here, there;
near, far, above, below, and others of the same kind, whose existence
may be explained as a survival of the gesticulating phase in which
objects were neither conceived nor described but pointed out; from this
we are not to infer that gestures--even accompanied by sounds--gave
birth to speech, since they rather excluded it. In their primitive
form and intention, these demonstrative elements are addressed to
the senses rather than to the intellect. They have in themselves no
meaning, and to be of service they must be attached to words that
have. The history of the root _Khan_, to dig, will explain my thought.
When our Aryan ancestors had learnt to say _Khan_, and they wanted
to distinguish between those who were digging and the instruments
used in digging, between the object of the digging and the time and
place of the work, it is possible that these demonstrative suffixes,
combined with predicative roots, formed bases, such as _Khan-ana_,
_Khan-i_, _Khan-a_, _Khan-itra_, and still others, which were intended
probably for digging-here, digging-now, dig-we, dig-you. By means of
these combinations, which varied in their application according to
the customs of different villages and families, the speaker sought
to distinguish between the subject acting and the object acted upon;
and when this difficulty was surmounted, a great step had been taken,
the passage from perception to conception was accomplished, and this
passage no philosopher prior to Noiré had made clear. “We must always
bear in mind that we are speaking here of times, so far beyond the
reach of history, and of intellectual processes so widely removed from
our own, that none would venture to speak dogmatically on what was
actually passing in the minds of the early framers of language when
they first uttered these words.”[41] All we can do is to hazard an
explanation, and accept it in as far as it seems reasonable; and in the
interest of science, we must carefully guard ourselves from asserting
that our theory is the only true one. It is easy to conceive that
after centuries of constant use certain derivatives should have become
unalterably attached to certain meanings, and others should have also
retained their special meanings. But what we do not know, is how the
sounds destined to become demonstrative elements or personal pronouns
were restricted to the terms required for such words, as--here, there,
those, he, I, that, etc. There were cases in which a verb in the
infinitive would develop into a phrase without any additions being
made to it; it would suffice, for instance, if a man uttered the
word _Khan_ in a commanding voice--as we should say “work”--for his
fellow-labourers to understand that they were to begin to dig. Thus the
imperative could be considered a complete sentence with as much justice
as Veni-Vedi-Vici would be termed independent and complete sentences.
“The shortest sentence of all is, no doubt, the imperative, and it is
in the imperative that almost to the present day roots retain their
simplest form.”[42]
Our intellects in the present day are developed by the discourses we
hear, the books we read, the reflections suggested by our experiences
of life; our vocabularies become enriched as our knowledge increases
and embraces a greater number of subjects; and if we retrace the path
taking us to our ancestors who could not count beyond four sometimes,
we should find words and ideas becoming fewer and conspicuous by their
absence. It does not therefore follow that because we use language
that we made it. It is not our invention; to us every language is
traditional. “The words in which we think are channels of thought
which we have not dug ourselves, but which we found ready made for
us. The work of making language belongs to a period in the history of
mankind beyond the reach of the ordinary historian, and of which we
in our advanced state of mental development can hardly form a clear
conception.” Yet that time must have been a fact not less possible of
verification than that geological period when “the earth was absorbed
in producing the carboniferous vegetation which still supplies us with
the means of warmth, light, and life, accumulating during enormous
periods of time small deposits of organic matter forming the strata of
the globe on which we live. In the same manner the human mind formed
that linguistic vegetation, the produce of which still supplies the
stores of our grammars and dictionaries”; and after a close examination
of these primordial roots whence our language has sprung, we find that
it does not consist in a conglomeration of words, the result of an
agreement amongst a certain number of men, or the result of chance, but
expresses human activity by means of verbs, the living and vivifying
portion of speech by the side of which the remainder may almost be
considered as dead matter.
The question of the birth of the substantive, without being
deliberately posed as a problem, occupied the minds of the Grecian
philosophers, and was involved in their researches concerning the
relation of an object to the name it bears, of the unknown cause by
which a certain name designates a certain object and no other. Whilst
the Greeks speculated on the subject after a tentative manner, building
up theories which later observations were not long in upsetting, the
Hindoos were also engaged in efforts to solve the problem by the help
of a more reliable process--the historical.
The early grammarians, having found that words came from roots
expressing general concepts, and that these concepts represented some
sort of activity, made this fact the basis of their studies; profound
thinkers as they were they discovered that man at first could not give
a name to a tree, an animal, a star, a river, nor to any other object
without discovering first some special quality that seemed at the time
most characteristic of the object to be named. Sanscrit has a root
_As_, having amongst other meanings sharpness, quickness; from the
same root came words for needle, point, sharpness of sight, quickness
of thought; this root is found in the Sanscrit name for a horse, which
is _asva_, runner or racer, one who leaves space quickly behind him.
Many other names might have been given to the horse besides the one
here mentioned, but all must recall some characteristic trait of this
animal; that name, _the quick_, could also have been given to other
animals, but having been repeatedly applied to one, it became unfit
for other purposes, and the horse retains undisputed possession. The
Sanscrit _aksha_, eye, comes from the same root as, which also meant to
point, to pierce. Another name for eye in Sanscrit is _netram_, leader,
from _nî_, to lead.
Noiré has just put forth an ingenious theory, that the first
substantives would not be miller, digger, weaver, carpenter; but flour,
cave, pit, mat, hedge, club, arrow, boat, because these were what had
been thought and willed, whilst the agents, of no account from that
point of view, remained in the shade, forgotten, and it is possible
that for some time no names were given to them.
“When we have once seen that thought in its true sense is always
conceptual, taking a verbal form, and that every word is derived from a
conceptual root, we shall be ready for the assertion that words being
conceptual can never stand for a single percept.”--MAX MÜLLER.
Locke first insisted that names are not the signs of things themselves,
but always the signs of our concepts of them. This remark received
small attention at first, and remained little appreciated until such
time as the discoveries of our contemporaries, with no preconcerted
unanimity, confirmed its value. Max Müller explains Locke’s words
in the following manner: “Each time that we use a general name, if
we say dog, tree, chair, we have not these objects before our eyes,
only our concepts of them; there can be nothing in the world of sense
corresponding even to such simple words as dog, tree, chair. We can
never expect to see a dog, a tree, a chair. Dog means every kind of dog
from the greyhound to the spaniel; tree, every kind of tree from the
oak to the cherry; chair, every kind of chair from the royal throne to
the artisan’s stool. We may see a spaniel or a Newfoundland dog; we may
see a fir or an apple tree; we may see such and such a chair. People
often imagine that they can form a general image of a dog by leaving
out what is peculiar to every individual dog.”[43]
This general idea we have in our mind of which we can talk, but our
eyes cannot see it as they could a real object. Nothing that we name,
nothing that we find in our dictionary can ever be heard, or seen, or
felt. “We can even have names for things which never existed, such as
gnomes; also for things which exist no more, or which exist not yet,
such as the grapes of the last harvest, and those of the next. The mere
fact that I call a thing past or future ought to be sufficient to show
that it is my concept of which I am speaking, and not the thing as
independent of me.”[44]
Berkeley showed that it is simply impossible for any human being to
make to himself a general image of a triangle, for such an image would
have to be at the same time right-angled, obtuse-angled, acute-angled,
and other kinds also; such an object does not exist; whereas it is
perfectly possible to have an image of any single triangle; to name
some characteristic features common to all triangles, and thus to
form a name and at the same time a concept of a triangle.[45] This
mental process which Berkeley described so well as applied to modern
concepts we can adopt with regard to all, even the most primitive.
Man, in entering a forest, discovered in the trees something that was
interesting to him. For practical purposes trees were particularly
interesting to the primitive framers of language, because they could be
split in two, three, or four pieces, cut, shaped according to the size
of the piece into blocks, planks, boats, and shafts; any object for
which the necessity had made itself felt. Hence, from a root _dar_, to
tear, our Aryan ancestors called trees _dru_, or _dâru_, literally what
can be torn, or split, or cut; from the same root the Greeks called the
skin of an animal _dérma_, because it was torn off, and a sack _dóros_
(in Sanscrit _driti_), because it was made of leather, and a spear
_dóry_, because it came from a tree, and was cut and shaped and planed.
Such words being once given would produce many offshoots; the Celts
of Gaul and of Ireland called their priests _Druids_, literally the
men of oak-groves. The Greeks called the spirits of the forest trees
_Dryades_; and the Hindoos called a man of wood, or a man with a
wooden, or, as we say, flinty heart, _dâruna_, cruel.
The immense number of intelligible roots gave birth to many new images,
these roots crossed and recrossed, for the concepts of to go, to give,
to move, to make, would be the foundations of others, in some ways
differing; one idea or thought in its flight would meet others perhaps
of a conflicting nature, thoughts and words would equally undergo
incessant modifications, which fact explains why in these earlier
stages of language the members of a community soon ceased to understand
each other if separated but for a short period of time.
Ovid, in speaking of the chaos at the beginning of the world, makes
a picture which would equally well describe the birth of language.
“Matter was in an unformed mass ... the sky, the earth, the sea had all
one aspect; there where was the earth, was also the sea, and the sky
was there also.”
The extraordinary destinies of the roots I have named constitutes a
short chapter only, in the birth and development of tongues; but short
as it is, it suffices to give us an idea of the elastic nature of
these roots, their faculty of extension, and the part they play in the
economy of language, and in the administration of the affairs of the
human mind.
Every mental phenomenon has its history, which can only be discovered
by tracing it to its source; and as speech has undergone many phases,
of which the earlier must have been very different from those now in
existence, it is pardonable in the greatest philosophers of antiquity
not to have known the intricacies of the human mind, which this
changeable speech could alone interpret. The ancients knew their
own times, but were ignorant of the preceding ones, in the same way
they knew their own language only, and of this language only its
contemporary form; and in the case of a word whose meaning was lost or
of a foreign word, they sought its origin in an idiom with which they
were familiar; in other words, not where it could be found.
For a long time man only knew one kind of being, his own; and possessed
one language only, that which expressed his own acts and his own
states; the primitive men were sufficiently advanced to say: “let us
dig,” “grind,” “they weave”; but if, at the beginning, concepts and
speech arose from the consciousness of their own activity, how was the
advance made when men desired to speak of the external objects of the
world which they saw around them, and were conscious of not having
made, and which consequently remained outside the sphere of their wills
and of their experience? It is clear that these outward objects to be
grasped and named, must have their part in the human activities for
which names had already been found. When he saw the lightning tearing
a hole in the field, or splitting the trunk of a tree, man could no
longer say, “_We_ have dug this hole, _you_ have split the tree.” It
was no longer _someone_, but _something_ that had dug and struck.
Nothing seems more simple to us than after saying “_I dig_” to say
also “_it digs_,” and yet it was a passing to a new world of thought,
from the conscious feeling of our own activity to the intuition of the
activity of an outward object; this mental act, though inevitable,
was by no means an easy one; men realised that the world around was a
reflex of themselves, the only light was the light from within. If men
could measure, so could the moon; hence he was called the measurer of
the sky, from the root _Mâ_, to measure; the moon was called _Mâs_,
that which measures, its actual name in Sanscrit; in Latin, _mensis_;
in Greek, _mêné_; English, _moon_; German, _Monat_; in Russian,
_miésets_. Men who ran called themselves runners; also the rivers
they named _sar_, running; and to designate the position of the river
they added the suffix _it_, _sar-it_; literally, running here. Thus
_sarit_ is river in Sanscrit; _Mâs_ and _sarit_ thus become complete,
intelligible sentences. What we call lightning was originally, tearing,
digging, bursting, sparkling; what we call storm and tempest were,
grinding, smashing, bursting, blowing; if man could smash, so could the
thunderbolt, hence it was called the smasher; and tempest and storm and
thunderbolt may have been, smashing, grinding, hurling; and with the
addition of the suffix, smashing here, now, there, then.
We have seen that the attribute which was the peculiar characteristic
of an object supplied its name, but as most objects possessed more
than one attribute, more than one designation were given to it; thus
several names were used for river besides _sarit_, each representing
one of its aspects; when flowing in a straight line it was called
_sîrâ_, arrow, plough, plougher; if it seemed to nourish the fields
it was _mâtar_, mother; if it separated or protected one country from
another, it became _sindhu_, the defender, from _sidh_ or _sedhati_,
to keep off; if it became a torrent it received the name of _nadi_,
noisy. In all these forms the river is considered as acting, and is
named by roots expressing action; it nourishes, it traces a furrow, it
guards, it roars as a wild beast roars. The sun has many attributes;
he is brilliant, the warmer, the generator, the scorcher, he is
vivifying, overpowering, his many qualities giving him fifty different
names, all synonyms of the sun. The earth also had many, it was known
by twenty-one names, amongst others it was _urvî_, wide; _jurithvî_,
broad; _mahî_, great; but each characteristic trait of the earth could
also be found in other objects, thus _urivî_ also meant a river; sky
and dawn were called _prithvî_; and _mahî_ (great, strong) is used for
cow and speech. Hence earth, river, sky, dawn, cow, and speech would
become homonyms.
These names are of clearly defined objects, all recognisable by the
senses; this fact entitles us to apply the following definition to this
primitive stage of language; the conscious expression of impressions
perceived by the senses.
But there is another class of words differing somewhat from those
we have named, such words, as day, night, spring, winter, dawn and
twilight; these lack the individuality and tangibleness of the others;
and when we say “day approaches, night comes,” we attribute acts to
things which are not agents, we affirm propositions, which, logically
analysed, have no properly defined subjects. Semi-tangible names, such
as sky, earth, belong to the same category. When we say “the earth
nourishes man,” we do not allude to any well defined portion of the
soil, we take the earth as a whole; and the sky is not only the small
portion of the horizon grasped by our eyes, our imagination conceives
objects not within the ken of our senses, but inasmuch as we look upon
the earth or sky as a whole, see in it a power or an ideal, we make
of it, involuntarily, an individuality. Now these words had certain
terminations affixed to them indicating what we call gender, and
became masculine or feminine, the neuter gender at that time did not
enter into the language, until thought becoming more lucid perceived
it in nature. What was the result? That it was impossible to speak of
morning or night, of spring or winter, of dawn or twilight, of sky
and earth, without clothing them not only with active and individual
characteristics, but with personal and sexual attributes; hence all
the objects of discourse as used by the founders of language became
necessarily so many actors, as men and women act; and thought, when
once launched in this direction, being irresistibly attracted by the
tendency towards analogy and metaphor, overspread the whole world
of human experience with this method of representation. What is
called animism, anthropomorphism, and personification, have therefore
their source in this inevitable dynamic stage, as Max Müller calls
it, of thought and language, in which the psychological necessity of
representing the external objects as resembling themselves operated on
our ancestors. This necessity might have been named subjectivism had
it not received more specific terms such as _animism_, which consists
in conceiving of inanimate objects as animate; _anthropomorphism_,
conceiving objects as men, and _personification_, conceiving objects
as persons. As soon as this new mental act was performed, a new world
was called into existence, a world of names, or as we now call it, the
world of myths.
“So long as the real identity of thought and language had not been
grasped, so long as people imagined that language is one thing and
thought another, it was but natural that they should fail to see the
real meaning of treating mythology, if not as a disease, at all events
as an inevitable affection of language. If the active verb was merely
a grammatical, and not at the same time a psychological, nay, an
historical fact, it might seem absurd to identify the active meaning of
our roots with the active meaning ascribed to the phenomena of nature.
But let it be once perceived that language and thought are one and
indivisible, and nothing will seem more natural than that what, as the
grammarian tells us, happened in language, should, as the psychologist
tells us, have likewise happened in thought.”[46]
The men who spoke in this manner of the external phenomena understood
perfectly that they themselves, who struck, who measured, who ran, who
rose up, who lay down, were not to be confounded with the thunder,
the moon, the river, and the sun; those scholars who studied thought
as apart from language, rather allowed themselves selves to be misled
by the phraseology of the time, and considered it a proof that our
Aryan ancestors looked upon their physical surroundings as human
beings, endowed with the appropriate organs and acts. Not only had the
early Aryans perfectly understood that they were not identical with
themselves, but they were far more struck by the differences between
them than by any imaginary similarities. The confirmation of this
theory is preserved for us in the Veda. “The torrent is roaring--not
a bull,” _i.e._ like a bull; instead of saying as we do, “firm as
a rock,” the poets of the Veda would say “firm--not a rock.” “The
mountains were _not_ to be thrown down, but they were _not_ warriors,”
“The fire was eating up the forest, yet it was _not_ a lion.”
The men of that time used few words; all thoughts that went beyond the
narrow horizon of their daily and practical lives had to be expressed
by the transference of a name from the object to which it properly
belongs to other well known objects. It was the birth of metaphor; it
was metaphor that enabled the inner consciousness to project itself
into the outer chaos of the world of objects; which it recreated with
personal images; and the fact that each natural phenomenon bore many
names, and that these same names were used for many other different
objects furnished germs of metaphor. Metaphor was to language what rain
and sunshine are to the harvest, it multiplies each grain a hundred and
a thousand fold; and metaphor in multiplying language disperses it in
every direction; without it no language would have progressed beyond
the simplest rudiments.
We must be careful not to confuse the radical metaphor with the
poetical which we use daily, and which is very different from the
former. If we open any book of poetry at whatever page, we shall find
inanimate and mute objects described as speaking, rejoicing, praising
their Creator; there is no portion of nature however insentient,
however incapable of thought, in which we do not infuse our own
sentiments, our own ideas. This mode of expression is especially a
poet’s prerogative, and that it does not strike us as incongruous is
owing to the fact that poetry appeals to the generality of men, and
is more natural to them than prose, and that this outpouring of our
heart towards nature costs us less effort than to speak of it in the
abstract. It requires cold reflection to describe lightning as an
electrical discharge, and rain as condensed vapour; in this case it is
no longer the transference of the characteristic of a known object to
one still unknown, but that of a known object to another equally well
known; the poet who transfers the word tear to the dew has already
clear names and concepts both for tear and dew; the poetical metaphor
is thus a voluntary creative act of our mind, and as such takes no part
in the formation of the human mind.
The world was astonished some few years ago by a declaration made by
students of the science of language that the 250,000 words comprehended
in the English Dictionary now being published at Oxford all proceeded
from about 800 roots; and it has now been found possible to reduce
this number. In any case 500 to 800 Sanscrit roots, on account of
their great fertility, sufficed our Aryan ancestors for all the many
words occurring in Sanscrit literature, and suffice also for us who
have 245,000 living animals and 95,000 fossil specimens to name; also
100,000 living and 2500 fossil plants, without speaking of crystals,
metals and minerals. Another surprising discovery is that every thought
that has ever passed through a human brain can be expressed in 121
radical concepts, of which I give a list. It is taken from Max Müller’s
_Science of Thought_, p. 404. Each single word of every phrase that
we use has its origin in one of the 800 roots, and not a thought but
proceeds from the 121 fundamental concepts. This is as accepted a fact
as that all that is visible on the earth and in the vault of heaven is
composed of about 60 elementary substances.
THE 121 ORIGINAL CONCEPTS.
1. Dig.
2. Plait, weave, sew, bind.
3. Crush, pound, destroy, waste, rub, smoothe.
4. Sharpen.
5. Smear, colour, knead, harden.
6. Scratch.
7. Bite, eat.
8. Divide, share, eat.
9. Cut.
10. Gather, observe.
11. Stretch, spread.
12. Mix.
13. Scatter, strew.
14. Sprinkle, drip, wet.
15_a_. Shake, tremble, quiver, flicker.
15_b_. Shake mentally, be angry, abashed, fearful, etc.
16. Throw down, fall.
17. Fall to pieces.
18. Shoot, throw at.
19. Pierce, split.
20. Join, fight, check.
21. Tear.
22. Break, smash.
23. Measure.
24. Blow.
25. Kindle.
26. Milk, yield.
27. Pour, flow, rush.
28. Separate, free, leave, lack.
29. Glean.
30. Choose.
31. Cook, roast, boil.
32. Clean.
33. Wash.
34. Bend, bow.
35. Turn, roll.
36. Press, fix.
37. Squeeze.
38. Drive, thrust.
39. Push, stir, live.
40. Burst, gush, laugh, beam.
41. Dress.
42. Adorn.
43. Strip, remove.
44. Steal.
45. Check.
46. Fill, thrive, swell, grow strong.
47. Cross.
48. Sweeten.
49. Shorten.
50. Thin, suffer.
51. Fat, stick, love.
52. Lick.
53. Suck, nourish.
54. Drink, swell.
55. Swallow, sip.
56. Vomit.
57. Chew, eat.
58. Open, extend.
59. Reach, strive, rule, have.
60. Conquer, take by violence, struggle.
61. Perform, succeed.
62. Attack, hurt.
63. Hide, dive.
64. Cover, embrace.
65. Bear, carry.
66. Can, be strong.
67. Show.
68. Touch.
69. Strike.
70. Ask.
71. Watch, observe.
72. Lead.
73. Set.
74. Hold, wield.
75. Give, yield.
76. Couch.
77. Thirst, dry.
78. Hunger.
79. Yawn.
80. Spue.
81. Fly.
82. Sleep.
83. Bristle, dare.
84. Be angry, harsh.
85. Breathe.
86. Speak.
87. See.
88. Hear.
89. Smell, sniff.
90. Sweat.
91. Seethe, boil.
92. Dance.
93. Leap.
94. Creep.
95. Stumble.
96. Stick.
97. Burn.
98. Dwell.
99. Stand.
100. Sink, lie, fail.
101. Swing.
102. Hang down, lean.
103. Rise up, grow.
104. Sit.
105. Toil.
106. Weary, waste, slacken.
107. Rejoice, please.
108. Desire, love.
109. Wake.
110. Fear.
111. Cool, refresh.
112. Stink.
113. Hate.
114. Know.
115. Think.
116. Shine.
117. Run.
118. Move, go.
119_a_. Noise, inarticulate.
119_b_. Noise, musical.
120. Do.
121. Be.
This classification of the roots is purely tentative. It has been
difficult to ascertain what is most likely to have been the original
meaning of some; there are certain words of which it is almost
impossible to find the etymology. The order in which the concepts
succeed each other is not very systematic. Max Müller tried to classify
them more correctly by keeping the special acts, such as to dig,
the general acts, such as to find, the special states, such as to
cough, and the general states, such as to stand--together. But it was
impossible to adhere strictly to such a plan, because there are roots
which express both acts and states; while in many cases it is difficult
to determine whether the special or general meaning predominates; thus
there are the words to boil, to make boil, or to be boiling. Some of
the roots have closely allied meanings, so that there are as many as
fifteen connected with the concepts to burn, and to speak; and many
more which can be traced to shine.
We experience feelings at once humbling and elevating when we consider
that all we admire, all on which we pride ourselves, our thoughts,
whether poetical, philosophical, religious, our whole literature, all
our dictionaries, whether scientific or industrial; in fact, our whole
intellectual life is built upon this small number of mother-ideas,
of 121 concepts. We should feel neither humbled nor elevated; we are
making use of the wisdom of our ancestors. It is our duty to transmit
the legacy to our descendants which they gave us, but purged from alloy.
Three chief points are to be noted, when we are concerned with the
progress of the intellect:--
1. The creative activity of humanity is the basis of all the roots of
words.
2. The source of all abstract ideas lies in acts which are entirely
material.
3. It has been satisfactorily proved that we speak the language derived
from that spoken by our primitive ancestors. It was the custom of
Nebuchadnezzar to have his name stamped on every brick that was used
during his reign in erecting his colossal palaces. Those palaces fell
to ruins, but from the ruins the ancient materials were carried away
for building new cities; and on examining the bricks in the walls of
the modern city of Bagdad, travellers have discovered on every one the
clear traces of that royal signature. Our modern languages were built
up with the materials taken from the ruins of the ancient languages,
and every word that we pronounce displays the royal stamp impressed
upon it by the founders. The formation of those derived languages,
by means of the roots with their successive change of meaning, the
construction of their grammatical forms, the continued changes amongst
the different dialects, all indicate the presence of a germ in man
tending from the first to make him a reasoning being.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] Max Müller’s _Science of Thought_, p. 300.
[39] _Science of Thought_, p. 219.
[40] Max Müller, _Science of Thought_, p. 303.
[41] Max Müller, _Science of Thought_, p. 223.
[42] Max Müller, _Science of Thought_, p. 421.
[43] _Science of Thought_, pp. 77, 78. _Natural Religion_, p. 381.
[44] _Science of Thought_, p. 79.
[45] _Natural Religion_, p. 382.
[46] Max Müller, _Natural Religion_, p. 406.