Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 51

The tendency to blush is inherited. Dr. Burgess gives the case of a family consisting of a father, mother, and ten children, all of whom, without exception, were p.r.o.ne to blush to a most painful degree. The children were grown up; "and some of them were sent to travel in order to wear away this diseased sensibility, but nothing was of the slightest avail." Even peculiarities in blushing seem to be inherited. Sir James Paget, whilst examining the spine of a girl, was struck at her singular manner of blushing; a big splash of red appeared first on one cheek, and then other splashes, variously scattered over the face and neck. He subsequently asked the mother whether her daughter always blushed in this peculiar manner and was answered, "Yes, she takes after me." Sir J.

Paget then perceived that by asking this question he had caused the mother to blush and she exhibited the same peculiarity as her daughter.

In most cases the face, ears, and neck are the sole parts which redden; but many persons, whilst blushing intensely, feel that their whole bodies grow hot and tingle; and this shows that the entire surface must be in some manner affected. Blushes are said sometimes to commence on the forehead, but more commonly on the cheeks, afterward spreading to the ears and neck. In two albinos examined by Dr. Burgess, the blushes commenced by a small circ.u.mscribed spot on the cheeks, over the parotidean plexus of nerves, and then increased into a circle; between this blushing circle and the blush on the neck there was an evident line of demarcation, although both arose simultaneously. The retina, which is naturally red in the albino, invariably increased at the same time in redness. Every one must have noticed how easily after one blush fresh blushes chase each other over the face. Blushing is preceded by a peculiar sensation in the skin. According to Dr. Burgess the reddening of the skin is generally succeeded by a slight pallor, which shows that the capillary vessels contract after dilating. In some rare cases paleness instead of redness is caused under conditions which would naturally induce a blush. For instance, a young lady told me that in a large and crowded party she caught her hair so firmly on the b.u.t.ton of a pa.s.sing servant that it took some time before she could be extricated; from her sensation she imagined that she had blushed crimson but was a.s.sured by a friend that she had turned extremely pale.

The mental states which induce blushing consist of shyness, shame, and modesty, the essential element in all being self-attention. Many reasons can be a.s.signed for believing that originally self-attention directed to personal appearance, in relation to the opinion of others, was the exciting cause, the same effect being subsequently produced, through the force of a.s.sociation, by self-attention in relation to moral conduct. It is not the simple act of reflecting on our own appearance, but the thinking what others think of us, which excites a blush. In absolute solitude the most sensitive person would be quite indifferent about his appearance. We feel blame or disapprobation more acutely than approbation; and consequently depreciatory remarks or ridicule, whether of our appearance or conduct, cause us to blush much more readily than does praise. But undoubtedly praise and admiration are highly efficient: a pretty girl blushes when a man gazes intently at her, though she may know perfectly well that he is not depreciating her. Many children, as well as old and sensitive persons, blush when they are much praised.

Hereafter the question will be discussed how it has arisen that the consciousness that others are attending to our personal appearance should have led to the capillaries, especially those of the face, instantly becoming filled with blood.

My reasons for believing that attention directed to personal appearance, and not to moral conduct, has been the fundamental element in the acquirement of the habit of blushing will now be given. They are separately light, but combined possess, as it appears to me, considerable weight. It is notorious that nothing makes a shy person blush so much as any remark, however slight, on his personal appearance.

One cannot notice even the dress of a woman much given to blushing without causing her face to crimson. It is sufficient to stare hard at some persons to make them, as Coleridge remarks, blush--"account for that he who can."

With the two albinos observed by Dr. Burgess, "the slightest attempt to examine their peculiarities" invariably caused them to blush deeply.

Women are much more sensitive about their personal appearance than men are, especially elderly women in comparison with elderly men, and they blush much more freely. The young of both s.e.xes are much more sensitive on this same head than the old, and they also blush much more freely than the old. Children at a very early age do not blush; nor do they show those other signs of self-consciousness which generally accompany blushing; and it is one of their chief charms that they think nothing about what others think of them. At this early age they will stare at a stranger with a fixed gaze and unblinking eyes, as on an inanimate object, in a manner which we elders cannot imitate.

It is plain to everyone that young men and women are highly sensitive to the opinion of each other with reference to their personal appearance; and they blush incomparably more in the presence of the opposite s.e.x than in that of their own. A young man, not very liable to blush, will blush intensely at any slight ridicule of his appearance from a girl whose judgment on any important subject he would disregard. No happy pair of young lovers, valuing each other's admiration and love more than anything else in the world, probably ever courted each other without many a blush. Even the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego, according to Mr.

Bridges, blush "chiefly in regard to women, but certainly also at their own personal appearance."

Of all parts of the body, the face is most considered and regarded, as is natural from its being the chief seat of expression and the source of the voice. It is also the chief seat of beauty and of ugliness, and throughout the world is the most ornamented. The face, therefore, will have been subjected during many generations to much closer and more earnest self-attention than any other part of the body; and in accordance with the principle here advanced we can understand why it should be the most liable to blush. Although exposure to alternations of temperature, etc., has probably much increased the power of dilatation and contraction in the capillaries of the face and adjoining parts, yet this by itself will hardly account for these parts blushing much more than the rest of the body; for it does not explain the fact of the hands rarely blushing. With Europeans the whole body tingles slightly when the face blushes intensely; and with the races of men who habitually go nearly naked, the blushes extend over a much larger surface than with us. These facts are, to a certain extent, intelligible, as the self-attention of primeval man, as well as of the existing races which still go naked, will not have been so exclusively confined to their faces, as is the case with the people who now go clothed.

We have seen that in all parts of the world persons who feel shame for some moral delinquency are apt to avert, bend down, or hide their faces, independently of any thought about their personal appearance. The object can hardly be to conceal their blushes, for the face is thus averted or hidden under circ.u.mstances which exclude any desire to conceal shame, as when guilt is fully confessed and repented of. It is, however, probable that primeval man before he had acquired much moral sensitiveness would have been highly sensitive about his personal appearance, at least in reference to the other s.e.x, and he would consequently have felt distress at any depreciatory remarks about his appearance; and this is one form of shame. And as the face is the part of the body which is most regarded, it is intelligible that any one ashamed of his personal appearance would desire to conceal this part of his body. The habit, having been thus acquired, would naturally be carried on when shame from strictly moral causes was felt; and it is not easy otherwise to see why under these circ.u.mstances there should be a desire to hide the face more than any other part of the body.

The habit, so general with everyone who feels ashamed, of turning away or lowering his eyes, or restlessly moving them from side to side, probably follows from each glance directed toward those present, bringing home the conviction that he is intently regarded; and he endeavors, by not looking at those present, and especially not at their eyes, momentarily to escape from this painful conviction.

4. Laughing[141]

Sympathy, when it is not the direct cause, is conditional to the existence of laughter. Sometimes it provokes it; always it spreads it, sustains and strengthens it.

First of all, it is so much the nature of laughter to communicate itself that when it no longer communicates itself it ceases to exist. One might say that outbursts of merriment need to be encouraged, that they are not self-sufficient. Not to share them is to blow upon them and extinguish them. When, in an animated and mirthful group, some one remains cold or gloomy, the laughter immediately stops or is checked. Yet those whom the common people call, in their picturesque language, wet blankets, spoil-sports, or kill-joys, are not necessarily hostile to the gaiety of the rest. They may only have, and, in fact, very often do have, nothing but the one fault of being out of tune with this gaiety. But even their calm appears an offense to the warmth and the high spirits of the others and kills by itself alone this merriment.

Not only is laughter maintained by sympathy but it is even born of sympathy. The world is composed of two kinds of people: those who make one laugh and those who are made to laugh, these latter being infinitely more numerous. How many there are, indeed, who have no sense of humor, and who, of themselves, would not think of laughing at things at which they do nevertheless laugh heartily because they see others laugh. As for those who have a ready wit and a sense of the comic, do they not enjoy the success of their jokes as much, if not more, than their jokes themselves? Their mirthfulness, then, at least, grows with the joy of spreading it. Very often it happens that many good humorists are temperamentally far from gay, and laugh at their jokes only on the rebound, echoing the laughter which they provoke. To laugh, then, is to share the gaiety of others, whether this gaiety is communicated from them to us or from us to them. It seems that we can be moved to laughter only by the merriment of others, that we possess ours only indirectly when others send it to us. Human solidarity never appears more clearly than in the case of laughter.

Yet can one say that sympathy actually produces laughter? Is it not enough to say that it increases it, that it strengthens its effects? All our sentiments are without doubt in a sense revealed to us by others.

How many, as Rochefoucauld says, would be ignorant of love if they had never read novels! How many in the same way would never have discovered by themselves the laughable side of people and things. Yet even the feelings which one experiences by contagion one can experience only of one's own accord, in one's own way, and according to one's disposition.

This fact alone of their contagion proves that from one's birth one carries the germ in himself. Sympathy would explain, then, contagion, but not the birth, of laughter. The fact is that our feelings exist for ourselves only when they acquire a communicative or social value; they have to be diffused in order to manifest themselves. Sympathy does not create them but it gives them their place in the world. It gives them just that access of intensity without which their nature cannot develop or even appear: thus it is that our laughter would be for us as if it did not exist, if it did not find outside itself an echo which increases it.

From the fact that sympathy is the law of laughter, does it follow that it is the cause? Not at all. It would be even contradictory to maintain this. A laugh being given, others are born out of sympathy. But the first laugh or one originally given, where does it get its origin?

Communicated laughter implies spontaneous laughter as the echo implies a sound. If sympathy explains one, it is, it would seem, an antipathy or the absence of sympathy which produces the other. "The thing at which we laugh," says Aristotle, "is a defect or ugliness which is not great enough to cause suffering or injury. Thus, for example, a ridiculous face is an ugly or misshapen face, but one on which suffering has not marked." Bain says likewise, "The laughable is the deformed or ugly thing which is not pushed to the point where it is painful or injurious.

An occasion for laughter is the degradation of a person of dignity in circ.u.mstances which do not arouse a strong emotion," like indignation, anger, or pity. Descartes puts still more limits upon laughter. Speaking of malice he says that laughter cannot be provoked except by misfortunes not only _light_ but also _unforseen_ and _deserved_. "Derision or mockery," he says, "is a kind of joy mixed with hate, which comes from one's perceiving some _little misfortune_ in a person _whom one thinks deserves it_. We hate this misfortune but are happy at seeing it in some one who merits it, and, _when this happens unexpectedly, surprise causes us to burst out laughing_. But this misfortune must be small, for if it is great we cannot believe that he who meets it deserves it, unless one has a very malicious or hateful nature."

This fact can be established directly by a.n.a.lyzing the most cruel laughter. If we enter into the feelings of the one who laughs and set aside the disagreeable sentiments, irritation, anger, and disgust, which at times they produce upon us, we come to understand even the savage sneer which appears to us as an insult to suffering; the laugh of the savage, trampling his conquered enemy under foot, or that of the child torturing unfortunate animals. This laugh is, in fact, inoffensive in its way, it is cruel in fact but not in intention. What it expresses is not a perverse, satanic joy but a _heartlessness_, as is so properly said. In the child and the savage sympathy has not been born, that is to say, the absence of imagination for the sufferings of others is complete. As a result we have a negative cruelty, a sort of altruistic or social anaesthesia.

When such an anaesthesia is not complete, when the altruistic sensibility of one who laughs is only dull, his egotism being very keen, his laughter might appear still less hatefully cruel. It would express then not properly the joy of seeing others suffer but that of not having to undergo their suffering and the power of seeing it only as a spectacle.

a.n.a.logous facts may be cited closer to us, easier to verify. Those who enjoy robust health often laugh at invalids: their imagination does not comprehend physical suffering, they are incapable of sympathizing with those who experience it. Likewise those who possess calm and even dispositions cannot witness without laughing an excess of mad anger or of impotent rage. In general we do not take seriously those feelings to which we ourselves are strangers; we consider them extravagant and amusing. "How can one be a Persian?" To laugh is to detach one's self from others, to separate one's self and to take pleasure in this separation, to amuse one's self by contrasting the feelings, character, and temperament of others and one's own feelings, character, and temperament. _Insensibility_ has been justly noted by M. Bergson as an essential characteristic of him who laughs. But this _insensibility_, this heartlessness, gives very much the effect of a positive and real ill nature, and M. Bergson had thus simply repeated and expressed in a new way, more precise and correct, the opinion of Aristotle: the cause of laughter is malice mitigated by insensibility or the absence of sympathy.

Thus defined, malice is after all essentially relative, and when one says that the object of our laughter is the misfortune of someone else, _known by us_ to be endurable and slight, it must be understood that this misfortune may be _in itself_ very serious as well as undeserved, and in this way laughter is often really cruel.

The coa.r.s.er men are, the more dest.i.tute they are of sympathetic imagination, and the more they laugh at one another with an offensive and brutal laugh. There are those who are not even touched by contact with physical suffering; such ones have the heart to laugh at the shufflings of a bandy-legged man, at the ugliness of a hunchback, or the repulsive hideousness of an idiot. Others there are who are moved by physical suffering but who are not at all affected by moral suffering.

These laugh at a self-love touched to the quick, at a wounded pride, at the tortured self-consciousness of one abashed or humiliated. These are, in their eyes, harmless, and slight p.r.i.c.ks which they themselves, by a coa.r.s.eness of nature, or a fine moral health, would endure perhaps with equanimity, which at any rate they do not feel in behalf of others, with whom they do not suffer in sympathy.

_Castigat ridendo mores._ According to M. A. Michiels, the author of a book upon the _World of Humor and of Laughter_, this maxim must be understood in its broadest sense. "Everything that is contrary to the absolute ideal of human perfection," in whatever order it be, whether physical, intellectual, moral, or social, arouses laughter. The fear of ridicule is the most dominant of our feelings, that which controls us in most things and with the most strength. Because of this fear one does "what one would not do for the sake of justice, scrupulousness, honor, or good will;" one submits to an infinite number of obligations which morality would not dare to prescribe and which are not included in the laws. "Conscience and the written laws," says A. Michiels, "form two lines of ramparts against evil, the ludicrous is the third line of defense, it stops, brands, and condemns the little misdeeds which the guards have allowed to pa.s.s."

Laughter is thus the great censor of vices, it spares none, it does not even grant indulgence to the slightest imperfections, of whatever nature they be. This mission, which M. Michiels attributes to laughter, granting that it is fulfilled, instead of taking its place in the natural or providential order of things, does it not answer simply to those demands, whether well founded or not, which society makes upon each of us? M. Bergson admits this, justly enough, it appears, when he defines laughter as a social bromide. But then it is no longer mere imperfection in general, it is not even immorality, properly speaking; it is merely unsociability, well or badly understood, which laughter corrects. More precisely, it is a special unsociability, one which escapes all other penalties, which it is the function of laughter to reach. What can this unsociability be? It is the self-love of each one of us in so far as it has anything disagreeable to others in it, an abstraction of every injurious or hateful element. It is the harmless self-love, slight, powerless, which one does not fear but one scorns, yet for all that does not pardon but on the contrary pitilessly pursues, wounds, and galls. Self-love thus defined is vanity, and what is called the moral correction administered by laughter is the wound to self-love.

"The specific remedy for vanity," says M. Bergson, "is laughter, and the essentially ridiculous is vanity."

One sees in what sense laughter is a "correction." Whether one considers the jests uttered, the feelings of the jester, or of him at whom one jests, laughter appears from the point of view of morality as a correction most often undeserved, unjust--or at least disproportionate to the fault--pitiless, and cruel.

In fact, the self-love at which one laughs is, as we have said, harmless. Besides it is often a natural failing, a weakness, not a vice.

Even if it were a vice, the jester would not be justified in laughing at it, for it does not appear that he himself is exempt. On the contrary, his vanity is magnified when that of others is upon the rack. Finally the humiliation caused by laughter is not a chastis.e.m.e.nt which one accepts but a torture to which one submits; it is a feeling of resentment, of bitterness, not a wholesome sense of shame, nor one from which anyone is likely to profit. Laughter may then have a social use; but it is not an act of justice. It is a quick and summary police measure which will not stand too close a scrutiny but which it would be imprudent either to condemn or to approve without reserve. Society is established and organized according to natural laws which seem to be modeled on those of reason, but self-loves discipline themselves, they enter into conflict and hold each other in check.

C. LANGUAGE AND THE COMMUNICATION OF IDEAS

1. Intercommunication in the Lower Animals[142]

The foundations of intercommunication, like those of imitation, are laid in certain instinctive modes of response, which are stimulated by the acts of other animals of the same social group.

Some account has already been given of the sounds made by young birds, which seem to be instinctive and to afford an index of the emotional state at the time of utterance. That in many cases they serve to evoke a like emotional state and correlated expressive behavior in other birds of the same brood cannot be questioned. The alarm note of a chick will place its companions on the alert; and the harsh "krek" of a young moor-hen, uttered in a peculiar crouching att.i.tude, will often throw others into this att.i.tude, though the maker of the warning sound may be invisible. That the cries of her brood influence the conduct of the hen is a matter of familiar observation; and that her danger signal causes them at once to crouch or run to her for protection is not less familiar. No one who has watched a cat with her kittens, or a sheep with her lambs, can doubt that such "dumb animals" are influenced in their behavior by suggestive sounds. The important questions are, how they originate, what is their value, and how far such intercommunication--if such we may call it--extends.

There can be but little question that in all cases of animals under natural conditions such behavior has an instinctive basis. Though the effect may be to establish a means of communication, such is not their conscious purpose at the outset. They are presumably congenital and hereditary modes of emotional expression which serve to evoke responsive behavior in another animal--the reciprocal action being generally in its primary origin between mate and mate, between parent and offspring, or between members of the same family group. _And it is this reciprocal action which const.i.tutes it a factor in social evolution._ Its chief interest in connection with the subject of behavior lies in the fact that it shows the instinctive foundations on which intelligent and eventually rational modes of intercommunication are built up. For instinctive as the sounds are at the outset, by entering into the conscious situation and taking their part in the a.s.sociation-complex of experience, they become factors in the social life as modified and directed by intelligence. To their original instinctive value as the outcome of stimuli, and as themselves affording stimuli to responsive behavior, is added a value for consciousness in so far as they enter into those guiding situations by which intelligent behavior is determined. And if they also serve to evoke, in the reciprocating members of the social group, similar or allied emotional states, there is thus added a further social bond, inasmuch as there are thus laid the foundations of sympathy.

"What makes the old sow grunt and the piggies sing and whine?" said a little girl to a portly, substantial farmer. "I suppose they does it for company, my dear," was the simple and cautious reply. So far as appearances went, that farmer looked as guiltless of theories as man could be. And yet he gave terse expression to what may perhaps be regarded as the most satisfactory hypothesis as to the primary purpose of animal sounds. They are a means by which each indicates to others the fact of his comforting presence; and they still, to a large extent, retain their primary function. The chirping of gra.s.shoppers, the song of the cicada, the piping of frogs in the pool, the bleating of lambs at the hour of dusk, the lowing of contented cattle, the call-notes of the migrating host of birds--all these, whatever else they may be, are the rea.s.suring social links of sound, the grateful signs of kindred presence. Arising thus in close relation to the primitive feelings of social sympathy, they would naturally be called into play with special force and suggestiveness at times of strong emotional excitement, and the earliest differentiations would, we may well believe, be determined along lines of emotional expression. Thus would originate mating cries, male and female after their kind; and parental cries more or less differentiated into those of mother and offspring, the deeper note of the ewe differing little save in pitch and timbre from the bleating of her lamb, while the cluck of the hen differs widely from the peeping note of the chick in down. Thus, too, would arise the notes of anger and combat, of fear and distress, of alarm and warning. If we call these the instinctive language of emotional expression, we must remember that such "language" differs markedly from the "language" of which the sentence is the recognized unit.

It is, however, not improbable that, through a.s.sociation in the conscious situation, sounds, having their origin in emotional expression and evoking in others like emotional states, may acquire a new value in suggesting, for example, the presence of particular enemies. An example will best serve to indicate my meaning. The following is from H. B.

Medlicott:

In the early dawn of a grey morning I was geologizing along the base of the Muhair Hills in South Behar, when all of a sudden there was a stampede of many pigs from the fringe of the jungle, with porcine shrieks of _sauve qui peut_ significance.

After a short run in the open they took to the jungle again, and in a few minutes there was another uproar, but different in sound and in action; there was a rush, presumably of the fighting members, to the spot where the row began, and after some seconds a large leopard sprang from the midst of the scuffle. In a few bounds he was in the open, and stood looking back, licking his chops. The pigs did not break cover, but continued on their way. They were returning to their lair after a night's feeding on the plain, several families having combined for mutual protection; while the beasts of prey were evidently waiting for the occasion. I was alone, and, though armed, I did not care to beat up the ground to see if in either case a kill had been effected. The numerous herd covered a considerable s.p.a.ce, and the scrub was thick. The prompt concerted action must in each case have been started by the special cry. I imagine that the first a.s.sailant was a tiger, and the case was at once known to be hopeless, the cry prompting instant flight, while in the second case the cry was for defense. It can scarcely be doubted that in the first case each adult pig had a vision of a tiger, and in the second of a leopard or some minor foe.

If we accept Mr. Medlicott's interpretation as in the main correct, we have in this case: (1) common action in social behavior, (2) community of emotional state, and (3) the suggestion of natural enemies not unfamiliar in the experience of the herd. It is a not improbable hypothesis, therefore, that in the course of evolution the initial value of uttered sounds is emotional; but that on this may be grafted in further development the indication of particular enemies. If, for example, the cry which prompts instant flight among the pigs is called forth by a tiger, it is reasonable to suppose that this cry would give rise to a representative generic image of that animal having its influence on the conscious situation. But if the second cry, for defense, was prompted sometimes by a leopard and sometimes by some other minor foe, then this cry would not give rise to a representative image of the same definiteness. Whether animals have the power of intentionally differentiating the sounds they make to indicate different objects is extremely doubtful. Can a dog bark in different tones to indicate "cat" or "rat," as the case may be? Probably not. It may, however, be asked why, if a pig may squeak differently, and thus, perhaps, incidentally indicate on the one hand "tiger" and on the other hand "leopard," should not a dog bark differently and thus indicate appropriately "cat" or "rat"? Because it is a.s.sumed that the two different cries in the pig are the instinctive expression of two different emotional states, and Mr. Medlicott could distinguish them; whereas, in the case of the dog, we can distinguish no difference between his barking in the one case and the other, nor do the emotional states appear to be differentiated. Of course there may be differences which we have failed to detect. What may be regarded, however, as improbable is the _intentional_ differentiation of sounds by barking in different tones with the _purpose_ of indicating "cat" or "rat."

Such powers of intercommunication as animals possess are based on direct a.s.sociation and refer to the here and the now. A dog may be able to suggest to his companion the fact that he has descried a worriable cat; but can a dog tell his neighbor of the delightful worry he enjoyed the day before yesterday in the garden where the man with the biscuit tin lives? Probably not, bark he never so expressively.

From the many anecdotes of dogs calling others to their a.s.sistance or bringing others to those who feed them or treat them kindly, we may indeed infer the existence of a social tendency and of the suggestive effects of behavior, but we cannot derive conclusive evidence of anything like descriptive communication.

Such intentional communication as is to be found in animals, if indeed we may properly so call it, seems to arise by an a.s.sociation of the performance of some act in a conscious situation involving further behavior for its complete development. Thus the cat which touches the handle of the door when it wishes to leave the room has had experience in which the performance of this act has coalesced with a specific development of the conscious situation. The case is similar when your dog drops a ball or stick at your feet, wishing you to throw it for him to fetch. Still, it is clear that such an act would be the perceptual precursor of the deliberate conduct of the rational being by whom the sign is definitely realized as a sign, the intentional meaning of which is distinctly present to thought. This involves a judgment concerning the sign as an object of thought; and this is probably beyond the capacity of the dog. For, as Romanes himself says, "It is because the human mind is able, so to speak, to stand outside of itself and thus to const.i.tute its own ideas the subject-matter of its own thought that it is capable of judgment, whether in the act of conception or in that of predication. We have no evidence to show that any animal is capable of objectifying its own ideas; and therefore we have no evidence that any animal is capable of judgment."

2. The Concept as the Medium of Human Communication[143]

There is a petrified philosophy in language, and if we examine the most ancient word for "name," we find it is _naman_ in Sanskrit, _nomen_ in Latin, _namo_ in Gothic. This _naman_ stands for _gnaman_, and is derived from the root _gna_, to know, and meant originally that by which we know a thing.

And how do we know things?

The first step toward the 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 cla.s.sification, bringing the individual under the general; and whatever we know, whether empirically or scientifically, we know it by means of our general ideas.

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. a.n.a.lyze any word you like and you will find that it expresses a general idea peculiar to the individual to whom 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.