have the analogy of the cries of animals, of the songs of birds (“man,
like the nightingale, is a singing bird, but is ever binding up
thoughts with musical notes”), of music, of children learning to speak,
of barbarous nations in which the linguistic instinct is still
undecayed, of ourselves learning to think and speak a new language, of
the deaf and dumb who have words without sounds, of the various
disorders of speech; and we have the after-growth of mythology, which,
like language, is an unconscious creation of the human mind. We can
observe the social and collective instincts of animals, and may remark
how, when domesticated, they have the power of understanding but not of
speaking, while on the other hand, some birds which are comparatively
devoid of intelligence, make a nearer approach to articulate speech. We
may note how in the animals there is a want of that sympathy with one
another which appears to be the soul of language. We can compare the
use of speech with other mental and bodily operations; for speech too
is a kind of gesture, and in the child or savage accompanied with
gesture. We may observe that the child learns to speak, as he learns to
walk or to eat, by a natural impulse; yet in either case not without a
power of imitation which is also natural to him—he is taught to read,
but he breaks forth spontaneously in speech. We can trace the impulse
to bind together the world in ideas beginning in the first efforts to
speak and culminating in philosophy. But there remains an element which
cannot be explained, or even adequately described. We can understand
how man creates or constructs consciously and by design; and see, if we
do not understand, how nature, by a law, calls into being an organised
structure. But the intermediate organism which stands between man and
nature, which is the work of mind yet unconscious, and in which mind
and matter seem to meet, and mind unperceived to herself is really
limited by all other minds, is neither understood nor seen by us, and
is with reluctance admitted to be a fact.
Language is an aspect of man, of nature, and of nations, the
transfiguration of the world in thought, the meeting-point of the
physical and mental sciences, and also the mirror in which they are
reflected, present at every moment to the individual, and yet having a
sort of eternal or universal nature. When we analyze our own mental
processes, we find words everywhere in every degree of clearness and
consistency, fading away in dreams and more like pictures, rapidly
succeeding one another in our waking thoughts, attaining a greater
distinctness and consecutiveness in speech, and a greater still in
writing, taking the place of one another when we try to become
emancipated from their influence. For in all processes of the mind
which are conscious we are talking to ourselves; the attempt to think
without words is a mere illusion,—they are always reappearing when we
fix our thoughts. And speech is not a separate faculty, but the
expression of all our faculties, to which all our other powers of
expression, signs, looks, gestures, lend their aid, of which the
instrument is not the tongue only, but more than half the human frame.
The minds of men are sometimes carried on to think of their lives and
of their actions as links in a chain of causes and effects going back
to the beginning of time. A few have seemed to lose the sense of their
own individuality in the universal cause or nature. In like manner we
might think of the words which we daily use, as derived from the first
speech of man, and of all the languages in the world, as the
expressions or varieties of a single force or life of language of which
the thoughts of men are the accident. Such a conception enables us to
grasp the power and wonder of languages, and is very natural to the
scientific philologist. For he, like the metaphysician, believes in the
reality of that which absorbs his own mind. Nor do we deny the enormous
influence which language has exercised over thought. Fixed words, like
fixed ideas, have often governed the world. But in such representations
we attribute to language too much the nature of a cause, and too little
of an effect,—too much of an absolute, too little of a relative
character,—too much of an ideal, too little of a matter-of-fact
existence.
Or again, we may frame a single abstract notion of language of which
all existent languages may be supposed to be the perversion. But we
must not conceive that this logical figment had ever a real existence,
or is anything more than an effort of the mind to give unity to
infinitely various phenomena. There is no abstract language “in rerum
natura,” any more than there is an abstract tree, but only languages in
various stages of growth, maturity, and decay. Nor do other logical
distinctions or even grammatical exactly correspond to the facts of
language; for they too are attempts to give unity and regularity to a
subject which is partly irregular.
We find, however, that there are distinctions of another kind by which
this vast field of language admits of being mapped out. There is the
distinction between biliteral and triliteral roots, and the various
inflexions which accompany them; between the mere mechanical cohesion
of sounds or words, and the “chemical” combination of them into a new
word; there is the distinction between languages which have had a free
and full development of their organisms, and languages which have been
stunted in their growth,—lamed in their hands or feet, and never able
to acquire afterwards the powers in which they are deficient; there is
the distinction between synthetical languages like Greek and Latin,
which have retained their inflexions, and analytical languages like
English or French, which have lost them. Innumerable as are the
languages and dialects of mankind, there are comparatively few classes
to which they can be referred.
Another road through this chaos is provided by the physiology of
speech. The organs of language are the same in all mankind, and are
only capable of uttering a certain number of sounds. Every man has
tongue, teeth, lips, palate, throat, mouth, which he may close or open,
and adapt in various ways; making, first, vowels and consonants; and
secondly, other classes of letters. The elements of all speech, like
the elements of the musical scale, are few and simple, though admitting
of infinite gradations and combinations. Whatever slight differences
exist in the use or formation of these organs, owing to climate or the
sense of euphony or other causes, they are as nothing compared with
their agreement. Here then is a real basis of unity in the study of
philology, unlike that imaginary abstract unity of which we were just
now speaking.
Whether we regard language from the psychological, or historical, or
physiological point of view, the materials of our knowledge are
inexhaustible. The comparisons of children learning to speak, of
barbarous nations, of musical notes, of the cries of animals, of the
song of birds, increase our insight into the nature of human speech.
Many observations which would otherwise have escaped us are suggested
by them. But they do not explain why, in man and in man only, the
speaker met with a response from the hearer, and the half articulate
sound gradually developed into Sanscrit and Greek. They hardly enable
us to approach any nearer the secret of the origin of language, which,
like some of the other great secrets of nature,—the origin of birth and
death, or of animal life,—remains inviolable. That problem is
indissolubly bound up with the origin of man; and if we ever know more
of the one, we may expect to know more of the other.[1]
[1] Compare W. Humboldt, _Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen
Sprachbaues_, and M. Müller, _Lectures on the Science of Language_.
It is more than sixteen years since the preceding remarks were written,
which with a few alterations have now been reprinted. During the
interval the progress of philology has been very great. More languages
have been compared; the inner structure of language has been laid bare;
the relations of sounds have been more accurately discriminated; the
manner in which dialects affect or are affected by the literary or
principal form of a language is better understood. Many merely verbal
questions have been eliminated; the remains of the old traditional
methods have died away. The study has passed from the metaphysical into
an historical stage. Grammar is no longer confused with language, nor
the anatomy of words and sentences with their life and use. Figures of
speech, by which the vagueness of theories is often concealed, have
been stripped off; and we see language more as it truly was. The
immensity of the subject is gradually revealed to us, and the reign of
law becomes apparent. Yet the law is but partially seen; the traces of
it are often lost in the distance. For languages have a natural but not
a perfect growth; like other creations of nature into which the will of
man enters, they are full of what we term accident and irregularity.
And the difficulties of the subject become not less, but greater, as we
proceed—it is one of those studies in which we seem to know less as we
know more; partly because we are no longer satisfied with the vague and
superficial ideas of it which prevailed fifty years ago; partly also
because the remains of the languages with which we are acquainted
always were, and if they are still living, are, in a state of
transition; and thirdly, because there are lacunae in our knowledge of
them which can never be filled up. Not a tenth, not a hundredth part of
them has been preserved. Yet the materials at our disposal are far
greater than any individual can use. Such are a few of the general
reflections which the present state of philology calls up.
(1) Language seems to be composite, but into its first elements the
philologer has never been able to penetrate. However far he goes back,
he never arrives at the beginning; or rather, as in Geology or in
Astronomy, there is no beginning. He is too apt to suppose that by
breaking up the existing forms of language into their parts he will
arrive at a previous stage of it, but he is merely analyzing what never
existed, or is never known to have existed, except in a composite form.
He may divide nouns and verbs into roots and inflexions, but he has no
evidence which will show that the omega of tupto or the mu of tithemi,
though analogous to ego, me, either became pronouns or were generated
out of pronouns. To say that “pronouns, like ripe fruit, dropped out of
verbs,” is a misleading figure of speech. Although all languages have
some common principles, there is no primitive form or forms of language
known to us, or to be reasonably imagined, from which they are all
descended. No inference can be drawn from language, either for or
against the unity of the human race. Nor is there any proof that words
were ever used without any relation to each other. Whatever may be the
meaning of a sentence or a word when applied to primitive language, it
is probable that the sentence is more akin to the original form than
the word, and that the later stage of language is the result rather of
analysis than of synthesis, or possibly is a combination of the two.
Nor, again, are we sure that the original process of learning to speak
was the same in different places or among different races of men. It
may have been slower with some, quicker with others. Some tribes may
have used shorter, others longer words or cries: they may have been
more or less inclined to agglutinate or to decompose them: they may
have modified them by the use of prefixes, suffixes, infixes; by the
lengthening and strengthening of vowels or by the shortening and
weakening of them, by the condensation or rarefaction of consonants.
But who gave to language these primeval laws; or why one race has
triliteral, another biliteral roots; or why in some members of a group
of languages b becomes p, or d, t, or ch, k; or why two languages
resemble one another in certain parts of their structure and differ in
others; or why in one language there is a greater development of
vowels, in another of consonants, and the like—are questions of which
we only “entertain conjecture.” We must remember the length of time
that has elapsed since man first walked upon the earth, and that in
this vast but unknown period every variety of language may have been in
process of formation and decay, many times over.
(Compare Plato, Laws):—
“ATHENIAN STRANGER: And what then is to be regarded as the origin of
government? Will not a man be able to judge best from a point of view
in which he may behold the progress of states and their transitions to
good and evil?
CLEINIAS: What do you mean?
ATHENIAN STRANGER: I mean that he might watch them from the point of
view of time, and observe the changes which take place in them during
infinite ages.
CLEINIAS: How so?
ATHENIAN STRANGER: Why, do you think that you can reckon the time which
has elapsed since cities first existed and men were citizens of them?
CLEINIAS: Hardly.
ATHENIAN STRANGER: But you are quite sure that it must be vast and
incalculable?
CLEINIAS: No doubt.
ATHENIAN STRANGER: And have there not been thousands and thousands of
cities which have come into being and perished during this period? And
has not every place had endless forms of government, and been sometimes
rising, and at other times falling, and again improving or waning?”
Aristot. Metaph.:—
“And if a person should conceive the tales of mythology to mean only
that men thought the gods to be the first essences of things, he would
deem the reflection to have been inspired and would consider that,
whereas probably every art and part of wisdom had been DISCOVERED AND
LOST MANY TIMES OVER, such notions were but a remnant of the past which
has survived to our day.”)
It can hardly be supposed that any traces of an original language still
survive, any more than of the first huts or buildings which were
constructed by man. Nor are we at all certain of the relation, if any,
in which the greater families of languages stand to each other. The
influence of individuals must always have been a disturbing element.
Like great writers in later times, there may have been many a barbaric
genius who taught the men of his tribe to sing or speak, showing them
by example how to continue or divide their words, charming their souls
with rhythm and accent and intonation, finding in familiar objects the
expression of their confused fancies—to whom the whole of language
might in truth be said to be a figure of speech. One person may have
introduced a new custom into the formation or pronunciation of a word;
he may have been imitated by others, and the custom, or form, or
accent, or quantity, or rhyme which he introduced in a single word may
have become the type on which many other words or inflexions of words
were framed, and may have quickly ran through a whole language. For
like the other gifts which nature has bestowed upon man, that of speech
has been conveyed to him through the medium, not of the many, but of
the few, who were his “law-givers”—“the legislator with the
dialectician standing on his right hand,” in Plato’s striking image,
who formed the manners of men and gave them customs, whose voice and
look and behaviour, whose gesticulations and other peculiarities were
instinctively imitated by them,—the “king of men” who was their priest,
almost their God...But these are conjectures only: so little do we know
of the origin of language that the real scholar is indisposed to touch
the subject at all.
(2) There are other errors besides the figment of a primitive or
original language which it is time to leave behind us. We no longer
divide languages into synthetical and analytical, or suppose similarity
of structure to be the safe or only guide to the affinities of them. We
do not confuse the parts of speech with the categories of Logic. Nor do
we conceive languages any more than civilisations to be in a state of
dissolution; they do not easily pass away, but are far more tenacious
of life than the tribes by whom they are spoken. “Where two or three
are gathered together,” they survive. As in the human frame, as in the
state, there is a principle of renovation as well as of decay which is
at work in all of them. Neither do we suppose them to be invented by
the wit of man. With few exceptions, e.g. technical words or words
newly imported from a foreign language, and the like, in which art has
imitated nature, “words are not made but grow.” Nor do we attribute to
them a supernatural origin. The law which regulates them is like the
law which governs the circulation of the blood, or the rising of the
sap in trees; the action of it is uniform, but the result, which
appears in the superficial forms of men and animals or in the leaves of
trees, is an endless profusion and variety. The laws of vegetation are
invariable, but no two plants, no two leaves of the forest are
precisely the same. The laws of language are invariable, but no two
languages are alike, no two words have exactly the same meaning. No two
sounds are exactly of the same quality, or give precisely the same
impression.
It would be well if there were a similar consensus about some other
points which appear to be still in dispute. Is language conscious or
unconscious? In speaking or writing have we present to our minds the
meaning or the sound or the construction of the words which we are
using?—No more than the separate drops of water with which we quench
our thirst are present: the whole draught may be conscious, but not the
minute particles of which it is made up: So the whole sentence may be
conscious, but the several words, syllables, letters are not thought of
separately when we are uttering them. Like other natural operations,
the process of speech, when most perfect, is least observed by us. We
do not pause at each mouthful to dwell upon the taste of it: nor has
the speaker time to ask himself the comparative merits of different
modes of expression while he is uttering them. There are many things in
the use of language which may be observed from without, but which
cannot be explained from within. Consciousness carries us but a little
way in the investigation of the mind; it is not the faculty of internal
observation, but only the dim light which makes such observation
possible. What is supposed to be our consciousness of language is
really only the analysis of it, and this analysis admits of innumerable
degrees. But would it not be better if this term, which is so
misleading, and yet has played so great a part in mental science, were
either banished or used only with the distinct meaning of “attention to
our own minds,” such as is called forth, not by familiar mental
processes, but by the interruption of them? Now in this sense we may
truly say that we are not conscious of ordinary speech, though we are
commonly roused to attention by the misuse or mispronunciation of a
word. Still less, even in schools and academies, do we ever attempt to
invent new words or to alter the meaning of old ones, except in the
case, mentioned above, of technical or borrowed words which are
artificially made or imported because a need of them is felt. Neither
in our own nor in any other age has the conscious effort of reflection
in man contributed in an appreciable degree to the formation of
language. “Which of us by taking thought” can make new words or
constructions? Reflection is the least of the causes by which language
is affected, and is likely to have the least power, when the linguistic
instinct is greatest, as in young children and in the infancy of
nations.
A kindred error is the separation of the phonetic from the mental
element of language; they are really inseparable—no definite line can
be drawn between them, any more than in any other common act of mind
and body. It is true that within certain limits we possess the power of
varying sounds by opening and closing the mouth, by touching the palate
or the teeth with the tongue, by lengthening or shortening the vocal
instrument, by greater or less stress, by a higher or lower pitch of
the voice, and we can substitute one note or accent for another. But
behind the organs of speech and their action there remains the
informing mind, which sets them in motion and works together with them.
And behind the great structure of human speech and the lesser varieties
of language which arise out of the many degrees and kinds of human
intercourse, there is also the unknown or over-ruling law of God or
nature which gives order to it in its infinite greatness, and variety
in its infinitesimal minuteness—both equally inscrutable to us. We need
no longer discuss whether philology is to be classed with the Natural
or the Mental sciences, if we frankly recognize that, like all the
sciences which are concerned with man, it has a double aspect,—inward
and outward; and that the inward can only be known through the outward.
Neither need we raise the question whether the laws of language, like
the other laws of human action, admit of exceptions. The answer in all
cases is the same—that the laws of nature are uniform, though the
consistency or continuity of them is not always perceptible to us. The
superficial appearances of language, as of nature, are irregular, but
we do not therefore deny their deeper uniformity. The comparison of the
growth of language in the individual and in the nation cannot be wholly
discarded, for nations are made up of individuals. But in this, as in
the other political sciences, we must distinguish between collective
and individual actions or processes, and not attribute to the one what
belongs to the other. Again, when we speak of the hereditary or
paternity of a language, we must remember that the parents are alive as
well as the children, and that all the preceding generations survive
(after a manner) in the latest form of it. And when, for the purposes
of comparison, we form into groups the roots or terminations of words,
we should not forget how casual is the manner in which their
resemblances have arisen—they were not first written down by a
grammarian in the paradigms of a grammar and learned out of a book, but
were due to many chance attractions of sound or of meaning, or of both
combined. So many cautions have to be borne in mind, and so many first
thoughts to be dismissed, before we can proceed safely in the path of
philological enquiry. It might be well sometimes to lay aside figures
of speech, such as the “root” and the “branches,” the “stem,” the
“strata” of Geology, the “compounds” of Chemistry, “the ripe fruit of
pronouns dropping from verbs” (see above), and the like, which are
always interesting, but are apt to be delusive. Yet such figures of
speech are far nearer the truth than the theories which attribute the
invention and improvement of language to the conscious action of the
human mind...Lastly, it is doubted by recent philologians whether
climate can be supposed to have exercised any influence worth speaking
of on a language: such a view is said to be unproven: it had better
therefore not be silently assumed.
“Natural selection” and the “survival of the fittest” have been applied
in the field of philology, as well as in the other sciences which are
concerned with animal and vegetable life. And a Darwinian school of
philologists has sprung up, who are sometimes accused of putting words
in the place of things. It seems to be true, that whether applied to
language or to other branches of knowledge, the Darwinian theory,
unless very precisely defined, hardly escapes from being a truism. If
by “the natural selection” of words or meanings of words or by the
“persistence and survival of the fittest” the maintainer of the theory
intends to affirm nothing more than this—that the word “fittest to
survive” survives, he adds not much to the knowledge of language. But
if he means that the word or the meaning of the word or some portion of
the word which comes into use or drops out of use is selected or
rejected on the ground of economy or parsimony or ease to the speaker
or clearness or euphony or expressiveness, or greater or less demand
for it, or anything of this sort, he is affirming a proposition which
has several senses, and in none of these senses can be assisted to be
uniformly true. For the laws of language are precarious, and can only
act uniformly when there is such frequency of intercourse among
neighbours as is sufficient to enforce them. And there are many reasons
why a man should prefer his own way of speaking to that of others,
unless by so doing he becomes unintelligible. The struggle for
existence among words is not of that fierce and irresistible kind in
which birds, beasts and fishes devour one another, but of a milder
sort, allowing one usage to be substituted for another, not by force,
but by the persuasion, or rather by the prevailing habit, of a
majority. The favourite figure, in this, as in some other uses of it,
has tended rather to obscure than explain the subject to which it has
been applied. Nor in any case can the struggle for existence be deemed
to be the sole or principal cause of changes in language, but only one
among many, and one of which we cannot easily measure the importance.
There is a further objection which may be urged equally against all
applications of the Darwinian theory. As in animal life and likewise in
vegetable, so in languages, the process of change is said to be
insensible: sounds, like animals, are supposed to pass into one another
by imperceptible gradation. But in both cases the newly-created forms
soon become fixed; there are few if any vestiges of the intermediate
links, and so the better half of the evidence of the change is wanting.