Leibniz and Adam Smith, particularly when both speak so positively as they
do on this subject. But there are two ways of judging of former
philosophers. One is to put aside their opinions as simply erroneous where
they differ from our own. This is the least satisfactory way of studying
ancient philosophy. Another way is to try to enter fully into the opinions
of those from whom we differ, to make them, for a time at least, our own,
till at last we discover the point of view from which each philosopher
looked at the facts before him, and catch the light in which he regarded
them. We shall then find that there is much less of downright error in the
history of philosophy than is commonly supposed; nay, we shall find
nothing so conducive to a right appreciation of truth as a right
appreciation of the error by which it is surrounded.
Now, in the case before us, Adam Smith is no doubt right, when he says
that the first individual cave which is called cave gave the name to all
other caves. In the same manner, the first _town_, though a mere
enclosure, gave the name to all other towns; the first imperial residence
on the Palatine hill gave the name to all palaces. Slight differences
between caves, towns, or palaces are readily passed by, and the first name
becomes more and more general with every new individual to which it is
applied. So far Adam Smith is right, and the history of almost every
substantive might be cited in support of his view. But Leibniz is equally
right when, in looking beyond the first emergence of such names as cave or
town or palace, he asks how such names could have arisen. Let us take the
Latin names of cave. A cave in Latin is called _antrum_, _cavea_,
_spelunca_. Now _antrum_ means really the same as _internum_. _Antar_ in
Sanskrit means _between_ and _within_.(339) _Antrum_, therefore, meant
originally what is within or inside the earth or anything else. It is
clear, therefore, that such a name could not have been given to any
individual cave, unless the general idea of being within, or inwardness,
had been present in the mind. This general idea once formed, and once
expressed by the pronominal root _an_ or _antar_, the process of naming is
clear and intelligible. The place where the savage could live safe from
rain and from the sudden attacks of wild beasts, a natural hollow in the
rock, he would call his _within_, his _antrum_; and afterwards similar
places, whether dug in the earth or cut in a tree, would be designated by
the same name. The same general idea, however, would likewise supply other
names, and thus we find that the _entrails_ were called _antra_ (neuter)
in Sanskrit, _enteron_ in Greek, originally things within.
Let us take another word for cave, which is _căvea_ or _căverna_. Here
again Adam Smith would be perfectly right in maintaining that this name,
when first given, was applied to one particular cave, and was afterwards
extended to other caves. But Leibniz would be equally right in maintaining
that in order to call even the first hollow _cavea_, it was necessary that
the general idea of _hollow_ should have been formed in the mind, and
should have received its vocal expression _cav_. Nay we may go a step
beyond, for _cavus_, or hollow, is a secondary, not a primary, idea.
Before a cave was called _cavea_, a hollow thing, many things hollow had
passed before the eyes of men. Why then was a hollow thing, or a hole,
called by the root _cav_? Because what had been hollowed out was intended
at first as a place of safety and protection, as a cover; and it was
called therefore by the root _ku_ or _sku_, which conveyed the idea of to
cover.(340) Hence the general idea of covering existed in the mind before
it was applied to hiding-places in rocks or trees, and it was not till an
expression had thus been framed for things hollow or safe in general, that
caves in particular could be designated by the name of _cavea_ or hollows.
Another form for _cavus_ was _koilos_, hollow. The conception was
originally the same; a hole was called _koilon_ because it served as a
cover. But once so used _koilon_ came to mean a cave, a vaulted cave, a
vault, and thus the heaven was called _cœlum_, the modern _ciel_, because
it was looked upon as a vault or cover for the earth.
It is the same with all nouns. They all express originally one out of the
many attributes of a thing, and that attribute, whether it be a quality or
an action, is necessarily a general idea. The word thus formed was in the
first instance intended for one object only, though of course it was
almost immediately extended to the whole class to which this object seemed
to belong. When a word such as _rivus_, river, was first formed, no doubt
it was intended for a certain river, and that river was called _rivus_,
from a root _ru_ or _sru_, to run, because of its running water. In many
instances a word meaning river or runner remained the proper name of one
river, without ever rising to the dignity of an appellative. Thus
_Rhenus_, the Rhine, means river or runner, but it clung to one river, and
could not be used as an appellative for others. The Ganges is the Sanskrit
_Gangâ_, literally the Go-go; a word very well adapted for any majestic
river, but in Sanskrit restricted to the one sacred stream. The Indus
again is the Sanskrit _Sindhu_, and means the irrigator, from _syand_, to
sprinkle. In this case, however, the proper name was not checked in its
growth, but was used likewise as an appelative for any great stream.
We have thus seen how the controversy about the _primum cognitum_ assumes
a new and perfectly clear aspect. The first thing really known is the
general. It is through it that we know and name afterwards individual
objects of which any general idea can be predicated, and it is only in the
third stage that these individual objects, thus known and named, become
again the representatives of whole classes, and their names or proper
names are raised into appellatives.(341)
There is a petrified philosophy in language, and if we examine the most
ancient word for name we find it is _nâman_ in Sanskrit, _nomen_ in Latin,
_namo_ in Gothic. This _nâman_ stands for _gnâman_, which is preserved in
the Latin _co-gnomen_. The _g_ is dropped as in _natus_, son, for
_gnatus_. _Nâman_, therefore, and name are derived from the root gnâ, to
know, and meant originally that by which we know a thing.
And how do we know things? We perceive things by our senses, but our
senses convey to us information about single things only. But to _know_ is
more than to feel, than to perceive, more than to remember, more than to
compare. No doubt words are much abused. We speak of a dog _knowing_ his
master, of an infant _knowing_ his mother. In such expressions, to know
means to recognize. But to know a thing, means more than to recognize it.
We know a thing if we are able to bring it, and any part of it, under more
general ideas. We then say, not that we have a perception, but a
conception, or that we have a general idea of a thing. The facts of nature
are perceived by our senses; the thoughts of nature, to borrow an
expression of Oersted’s, can be conceived by our reason only.(342) Now the
first step towards this real knowledge, a step which, however small in
appearance, separates man forever from all other animals, is the _naming
of a thing_, or the making a thing knowable. All naming is classification,
bringing the individual under the general; and whatever we know, whether
empirically or scientifically, we know it only by means of our general
ideas. Other animals have sensation, perception, memory, and, in a certain
sense, intellect; but all these, in the animal, are conversant with single
objects only. Man has sensation, perception, memory, intellect, and
reason, and it is his reason only that is conversant with general
ideas.(343)
Through reason we not only stand a step above the brute creation: we
belong to a different world. We look down on our merely animal experience,
on our sensations, perceptions, our memory, and our intellect, as
something belonging to us, but not as constituting our most inward and
eternal self. Our senses, our memory, our intellect, are like the lenses
of a telescope. But there is an eye that looks through them at the
realities of the outer world, our own rational and self-conscious soul; a
power as distinct from our perceptive faculties as the sun is from the
earth which it fills with light, and warmth, and life.
At the very point where man parts company with the brute world, at the
first flash of reason as the manifestation of the light within us, there
we see the true genesis of language. Analyze any word you like, and you
will find that it expresses a general idea peculiar to the individual to
which the name belongs. What is the meaning of moon?—the measurer. What is
the meaning of sun?—the begetter. What is the meaning of earth?—the
ploughed. The old name given to animals, such as cows and sheep, was
_pasú_, the Latin _pecus_, which means _feeders_. _Animal_ itself is a
later name, and derived from _anima_, soul. This _anima_ again meant
originally blowing or breathing, like spirit from _spirare_, and was
derived from a root, _an_, to blow, which gives us _anila_, wind, in
Sanskrit, and _anemos_, wind, in Greek. _Ghost_, the German _Geist_, is
based on the same conception. It is connected with _gust_, with _yeast_,
and even with the hissing and boiling _geysers_ of Iceland. _Soul_ is the
Gothic _saivala_, and this is clearly related to another Gothic word,
_saivs_,(344) which means the sea. The sea was called _saivs_ from a root
_si_ or _siv_, the Greek _seiō_, to shake; it meant the tossed-about
water, in contradistinction to stagnant or running water. The soul being
called _saivala_, we see that it was originally conceived by the Teutonic
nations as a sea within, heaving up and down with every breath, and
reflecting heaven and earth on the mirror of the deep.
The Sanskrit name for love is _smara_; it is derived from _smar_, to
recollect; and the same root has supplied the German _schmerz_, pain, and
the English _smart_.
If the serpent is called in Sanskrit _sarpa_, it is because it was
conceived under the general idea of creeping, an idea expressed by the
word _srip_. But the serpent was also called _ahi_ in Sanskrit, in Greek
_echis_ or _echidna_, in Latin _anguis_. This name is derived from quite a
different root and idea. The root is _ah_ in Sanskrit, or _anh_, which
means to press together, to choke, to throttle. Here the distinguishing
mark from which the serpent was named was his throttling, and _ahi_ meant
serpent, as expressing the general idea of throttler. It is a curious root
this _anh_, and it still lives in several modern words. In Latin it
appears as _ango_, _anxi_, _anctum_, to strangle, in _angina_,
quinsy,(345) in _angor_, suffocation. But _angor_ meant not only quinsy or
compression of the neck; it assumed a moral import and signifies anguish
or anxiety. The two adjectives _angustus_, narrow, and _anxius_, uneasy,
both come from the same source. In Greek the root retained its natural and
material meaning; in _eggys_, near, and _echis_, serpent, throttler. But
in Sanskrit it was chosen with great truth as the proper name of sin. Evil
no doubt presented itself under various aspects to the human mind, and its
names are many; but none so expressive as those derived from our root,
_anh_, to throttle. _Anhas_ in Sanskrit means sin, but it does so only
because it meant originally throttling,—the consciousness of sin being
like the grasp of the assassin on the throat of his victim. All who have
seen and contemplated the statue of Laokoon and his sons, with the serpent
coiled round them from head to foot, may realize what those ancients felt
and saw when they called sin _anhas_, or the throttler. This _anhas_ is
the same word as the Greek _agos_, sin. In Gothic the same root has
produced _agis_, in the sense of _fear_, and from the same source we have
_awe_, in awful, _i.e._ fearful, and _ug_, in _ugly_. The English
_anguish_ is from the French _angoisse_, the Italian _angoscia_, a
corruption of the Latin _angustiæ_, a strait.
And how did those early thinkers and framers of language distinguish
between man and the other animals? What general idea did they connect with
the first conception of themselves? The Latin word _homo_, the French
_l’homme_, which has been reduced to _on_ in _on dit_, is derived from the
same root which we have in _humus_, the soil, _humilis_, humble. _Homo_,
therefore, would express the idea of a being made of the dust of the
earth.(346)
Another ancient word for man was the Sanskrit _marta_,(347) the Greek
_brotos_, the Latin _mortalis_ (a secondary derivative), our own _mortal_.
_Marta_ means “he who dies,” and it is remarkable that where everything
else was changing, fading, and dying, this should have been chosen as the
distinguishing name for man. Those early poets would hardly have called
themselves mortals unless they had believed in other beings as immortal.
There is a third name for man which means simply the thinker, and this,
the true title of our race, still lives in the name of _man_. _Mâ_ in
Sanskrit means to measure, from which you remember we had the name of
moon. _Man_, a derivative root, means to think. From this we have the
Sanskrit _manu_, originally thinker, then man. In the later Sanskrit we
find derivatives, such as _mânava_, _mânusha_, _manushya_, all expressing
man. In Gothic we find both _man_, and _mannisks_, the modern German
_mann_ and _mensch_.
There were many more names for man, as there were many names for all
things in ancient languages. Any feature that struck the observing mind as
peculiarly characteristic could be made to furnish a new name. The sun
might be called the bright, the warm, the golden, the preserver, the
destroyer, the wolf, the lion, the heavenly eye, the father of light and
life. Hence that superabundance of synonymes in ancient dialects, and
hence that _struggle for life_ carried on among these words, which led to
the destruction of the less strong, the less happy, the less fertile
words, and ended in the triumph of _one_, as the recognized and proper
name for every object in every language. On a very small scale this
process of _natural selection_, or, as it would better be called,
_elimination_, may still be watched even in modern languages, that is to
say, even in languages so old and full of years as English and French.
What it was at the first burst of dialects we can only gather from such
isolated cases as when Vón Hammer counts 5744 words relating to the
camel.(348)
The fact that every word is originally a predicate, that names, though
signs of individual conceptions, are all, without exception, derived from
general ideas, is one of the most important discoveries in the science of
language. It was known before that language is the distinguishing
characteristic of man; it was known also that the having of general ideas
is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes; but that
these two were only different expressions of the same fact was not known
till the theory of roots had been established as preferable to the
theories both of Onomatopoieia and of Interjections. But, though our
modern philosophy did not know it, the ancient poets and framers of
language must have known it. For in Greek language is _logos_, but _logos_
means also reason, and _alogon_ was chosen as the name, and the most
proper name, for brute. No animal thinks, and no animal speaks, except
man. Language and thought are inseparable. Words without thought are dead
sounds; thoughts without words are nothing. To think is to speak low; to
speak is to think aloud. The word is the thought incarnate.
And now I am afraid I have but a few minutes left to explain the last
question of all in our science, namely—How can sound express thought? How
did roots become the signs of general ideas? How was the abstract idea of
measuring expressed by _mâ_, the idea of thinking by _man_? How did _gâ_
come to mean going, _sthâ_ standing, _sad_ sitting, _dâ_ giving, _mar_
dying, _char_ walking, _kar_ doing?
I shall try to answer as briefly as possible. The 400 or 500 roots which
remain as the constituent elements in different families of language are
not interjections, nor are they imitations. They are _phonetic types_
produced by a power inherent in human nature. They exist, as Plato would
say, by nature; though with Plato we should add that, when we say by
nature, we mean by the hand of God.(349) There is a law which runs through
nearly the whole of nature, that everything which is struck rings. Each
substance has its peculiar ring. We can tell the more or less perfect
structure of metals by their vibrations, by the answer which they give.
Gold rings differently from tin, wood rings differently from stone; and
different sounds are produced according to the nature of each percussion.
It was the same with man, the most highly organized of nature’s
works.(350) Man, in his primitive and perfect state, was not only endowed,
like the brute, with the power of expressing his sensations by
interjections, and his perceptions by onomatopoieia. He possessed likewise
the faculty of giving more articulate expression to the rational
conceptions of his mind. That faculty was not of his own making. It was an
instinct, an instinct of the mind as irresistible as any other instinct.
So far as language is the production of that instinct, it belongs to the
realm of nature. Man loses his instincts as he ceases to want them. His
senses become fainter when, as in the case of scent, they become useless.
Thus the creative faculty which gave to each conception, as it thrilled
for the first time through the brain, a phonetic expression, became
extinct when its object was fulfilled. The number of these _phonetic
types_ must have been almost infinite in the beginning, and it was only
through the same process of _natural elimination_ which we observed in the
early history of words, that clusters of roots, more or less synonymous,
were gradually reduced to one definite type. Instead of deriving language
from nine roots, like Dr. Murray,(351) or from _one_ root, a feat actually
accomplished by a Dr. Schmidt,(352) we must suppose that the first
settlement of the radical elements of language was preceded by a period of
unrestrained growth,—the spring of speech—to be followed by many an
autumn.
With the process of elimination, or natural selection, the historical
element enters into the science of language. However primitive the Chinese
may be as compared with terminational and inflectional languages, its
roots or words have clearly passed through a long process of mutual
attrition. There are many things of a merely traditional character even in
Chinese. The rule that in a simple sentence the first word is the subject,
the second the verb, the third the object, is a traditional rule. It is by
tradition only that _ngŏ ģin_, in Chinese, means a bad man, whereas _ģin
ngŏ_ signifies man is bad. The Chinese themselves distinguish between
_full_ and _empty_ roots,(353) the former being predicative, the latter
corresponding to our particles which modify the meaning of full roots and
determine their relation to each other. It is only by tradition that roots
become empty. All roots were originally full whether predicative or
demonstrative, and the fact that empty roots in Chinese cannot always be
traced back to their full prototypes shows that even the most ancient
Chinese had passed through successive periods of growth. Chinese
commentators admit that all empty words were originally full words, just
as Sanskrit grammarians maintain that all that is found in grammar was
originally substantial. But we must be satisfied with but partial proofs
of this general principle, and must be prepared to find as many fanciful
derivations in Chinese as in Sanskrit. The fact, again, that all roots in
Chinese are no longer capable of being employed at pleasure, either as
substantives, or verbs, or adjectives, is another proof that, even in this
most primitive stage, language points back to a previous growth. _Fu_ is
father, _mu_ is mother; _fu mu_ parents; but neither _fu_ nor _mu_ is used
as a root in its original predicative sense. The amplest proof, however,
of the various stages through which even so simple a language as Chinese
must have passed is to be found in the comparatively small number of
roots, and in the definite meanings attached to each; a result which could
only have been obtained by that constant struggle which has been so well
described in natural history as the struggle for life.
But although this sifting of roots, and still more the subsequent
combination of roots, cannot be ascribed to the mere working of nature or
natural instincts, it is still less, as we saw in a former Lecture, the
effect of deliberate or premeditated art, in the sense in which, for
instance, a picture of Raphael or a symphony of Beethoven is. Given a root
to express flying, or bird, and another to express heap, then the joining
together of the two to express many birds, or birds in the plural, is the
natural effect of the synthetic power of the human mind, or, to use more
homely language, of the power of putting two and two together. Some
philosophers maintain indeed that this explains nothing, and that the real
mystery to be solved is how the mind can form a synthesis, or conceive
many things as one. Into those depths we cannot follow. Other philosophers
imagine that the combination of roots to form agglutinative and
inflectional language is, like the first formation of roots, the result of
a natural instinct. Thus Professor Heyse(354) maintained that “the various
forms of development in language must be explained by the philosophers as
_necessary_ evolutions, founded in the very essence of human speech.” This
is not the case. We can watch the growth of language, and we can
understand and explain all that is the result of that growth. But we
cannot undertake to prove that all that is in language is so by necessity,
and could not have been otherwise. When we have, as in Chinese, two such
words as _kiai_ and _tu_, both expressing a heap, an assembly, a quantity,
then we may perfectly understand why either the one or the other should
have been used to form the plural. But if one of the two becomes fixed and
traditional, while the other becomes obsolete, then we can register the
fact as historical, but no philosophy on earth will explain its absolute
necessity. We can perfectly understand how, with two such roots as _kûŏ_,
empire, and _ćung_, middle, the Chinese should have formed what we call a
locative, _kŭŏ ćung_, in the empire. But to say that this was the only way
to express this conception is an assertion contradicted both by fact and
reason. We saw the various ways in which the future can be formed. They
are all equally intelligible and equally possible, but not one of them is
inevitable. In Chinese _ỳaó_ means to will, _ngò_ is I; hence _ngò ỳaó_, I
will. The same root _ỳaó_, added to _ḱiú_, to go, gives us _ngò ỳaó ḱiú_,
I will go, the first germ of our futures. To say that _ngò ỳaó ḱiú_ was
the necessary form of the future in Chinese would introduce a fatalism
into language which rests on no authority whatever. The building up of
language is not like the building of the cells in a beehive, nor is it
like the building of St. Peter’s by Michael Angelo. It is the result of
innumerable agencies, working each according to certain laws, and leaving
in the end the result of their combined efforts freed from all that proved
superfluous or useless. From the first combination of two such words as
_ģin_, man, _kiai_, many, to form the plural _ģin kiai_, to the perfect
grammar of Sanskrit and Greek, everything is intelligible as the result of
the two principles of growth which we considered in our second Lecture.
What is antecedent to the production of roots is the work of nature; what
follows after is the work of man, not in his individual and free, but in
his collective and moderating, capacity.