Lectures on The Science of Language Part 15

They know their masters, they know their home; they evince joy on recognizing those who have been kind to them, and they bear malice for years to those by whom they have been insulted or ill-treated. Who does not recollect the dog Argos in the Odyssey, who, after so many years'

absence, was the first to recognize Ulysses?(321)

4. Brutes are able to compare and to distinguish. A parrot will take up a nut, and throw it down again, without attempting to crack it. He has found that it is light; this he could discover only by comparing the weight of the good nuts with that of the bad: and he has found that it has no kernel; this he could discover only by what philosophers would dignify with the grand t.i.tle of syllogism, namely, "all light nuts are hollow; this is a light nut, therefore this nut is hollow."

5. Brutes have a will of their own. I appeal to any one who has ever ridden a restive horse.

6. Brutes show signs of shame and pride. Here again any one who has to deal with dogs, who has watched a retriever with sparkling eyes placing a partridge at his master's feet, or a hound slinking away with his tail between his legs from the huntsman's call, will agree that these signs admit of but one interpretation. The difficulty begins when we use philosophical language, when we claim for brutes a moral sense, a conscience, a power of distinguishing good and evil; and, as we gain nothing by these scholastic terms, it is better to avoid them altogether.

7. Brutes show signs of love and hatred. There are well-authenticated stories of dogs following their masters to the grave, and refusing food from any one. Nor is there any doubt that brutes will watch their opportunity till they revenge themselves on those whom they dislike.

If, with all these facts before us, we deny that brutes have sensation, perception, memory, will, and intellect, we ought to bring forward powerful arguments for interpreting the signs which we observe in brutes so differently from those which we observe in men.

Some philosophers imagine they have explained everything, if they ascribe to brutes _instinct_ instead of _intellect_. But, if we take these two words in their usual acceptations, they surely do not exclude each other.(322) There are instincts in man as well as in brutes. A child takes his mother's breast by instinct; the spider weaves its net by instinct; the bee builds her cell by instinct. No one would ascribe to the child a knowledge of physiology because it employs the exact muscles which are required for sucking; nor shall we claim for the spider a knowledge of mechanics, or for the bee an acquaintance with geometry, because _we_ could not do what they do without a study of these sciences. But what if we tear a spider's web, and see the spider examining the mischief that is done, and either giving up his work in despair, or endeavoring to mend it as well as may be?(323) Surely here we have the instinct of weaving controlled by observation, by comparison, by reflection, by judgment.

Instinct, whether mechanical or moral, is more prominent in brutes than in man; but it exists in both, as much as intellect is shared by both.

Where, then, is the difference between brute and man?(324) What is it that man can do, and of which we find no signs, no rudiments, in the whole brute world? I answer without hesitation: the one great barrier between the brute and man is _Language_. Man speaks, and no brute has ever uttered a word. Language is our Rubicon, and no brute will dare to cross it. This is our matter of fact answer to those who speak of development, who think they discover the rudiments at least of all human faculties in apes, and who would fain keep open the possibility that man is only a more favored beast, the triumphant conqueror in the primeval struggle for life.

Language is something more palpable than a fold of the brain, or an angle of the skull. It admits of no cavilling, and no process of natural selection will ever distill significant words out of the notes of birds or the cries of beasts.

Language, however, is only the outward sign. We may point to it in our arguments, we may challenge our opponent to produce anything approaching to it from the whole brute world. But if this were all, if the art of employing articulate sounds for the purpose of communicating our impressions were the only thing by which we could a.s.sert our superiority over the brute creation, we might not unreasonably feel somewhat uneasy at having the gorilla so close on our heels.

It cannot be denied that brutes, though they do not use articulate sounds for that purpose, have nevertheless means of their own for communicating with each other. When a whale is struck, the whole shoal, though widely dispersed, are instantly made aware of the presence of an enemy; and when the grave-digger beetle finds the carca.s.s of a mole, he hastens to communicate the discovery to his fellows, and soon returns with his _four_ confederates.(325) It is evident, too, that dogs, though they do not speak, possess the power of understanding much that is said to them, their names and the calls of their master; and other animals, such as the parrot, can p.r.o.nounce every articulate sound. Hence, although for the purpose of philosophical warfare, articulate language would still form an impregnable position, yet it is but natural that for our own satisfaction we should try to find out in what the strength of our position really consists; or, in other words, that we should try to discover that inward power of which language is the outward sign and manifestation.

For this purpose it will be best to examine the opinions of those who approached our problem from another point; who, instead of looking for outward and palpable signs of difference between brute and man, inquired into the inward mental faculties, and tried to determine the point where man transcends the barriers of the brute intellect. That point, if truly determined, ought to coincide with the starting-point of language: and, if so, that coincidence ought to explain the problem which occupies us at present.

I shall read an extract from Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding.

After having explained how universal ideas are made, how the mind, having observed the same color in chalk, and snow, and milk, comprehends these single perceptions under the general conception of whiteness, Locke continues:(326) "If it may be doubted, whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas that way to any degree: this, I think, I may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to."

If Locke is right in considering the having general ideas as the distinguishing feature between man and brutes, and, if we ourselves are right in pointing to language as the one palpable distinction between the two, it would seem to follow that language is the outward sign and realization of that inward faculty which is called the faculty of abstraction, but which is better known to us by the homely name of Reason.

Let us now look back to the result of our former Lectures. It was this.

After we had explained everything in the growth of language that can be explained, there remained in the end, as the only inexplicable residuum, what we called _roots_. These roots formed the const.i.tuent elements of all languages. This discovery has simplified the problem of the origin of language immensely. It has taken away all excuse for those rapturous descriptions of language which invariably preceded the argument that language must have a divine origin. We shall hear no more of that wonderful instrument which can express all we see, and hear, and taste, and touch, and smell; which is the breathing image of the whole world; which gives form to the airy feelings of our souls, and body to the loftiest dreams of our imagination; which can arrange in accurate perspective the past, the present, and the future, and throw over everything the varying hues of certainty, of doubt, of contingency. All this is perfectly true, but it is no longer wonderful, at least not in the Arabian Nights sense of that word. "The speculative mind," as Dr. Ferguson says, "in comparing the first and last steps of the progress of language, feels the same sort of amazement with a traveller, who, after rising insensibly on the slope of a hill, comes to look from a precipice of an almost unfathomable depth to the summit of which he scarcely believes himself to have ascended without supernatural aid." To certain minds it is a disappointment to be led down again by the hand of history from that high summit. They prefer the unintelligible which they can admire, to the intelligible which they can only understand. But to a mature mind reality is more attractive than fiction, and simplicity more wonderful than complication. Roots may seem dry things as compared with the poetry of Goethe. Yet there is something more truly wonderful in a root than in all the lyrics of the world.

What, then, are these roots? In our modern languages roots can only be discovered by scientific a.n.a.lysis, and, even as far back as Sanskrit, we may say that no root was ever used as a noun or as a verb. But originally roots were thus used, and in Chinese we have fortunately preserved to us a representative of that primitive radical stage which, like the granite, underlies all other strata of human speech. The Aryan root _Da_, to give, appears in Sanskrit _da-nam_, _donum_, gift, as a substantive; in _do_, Sanskrit _dadami_, Greek _di-do-mi_, I give, as a verb; but the root Da can never be used by itself. In Chinese, on the contrary, the root TA, as such, is used in the sense of a noun, greatness; of a verb, to be great; of an adverb, greatly or much. Roots therefore are not, as is commonly maintained, merely scientific abstractions, but they were used originally as real words. What we want to find out is this, What inward mental phase is it that corresponds to these roots, as the germs of human speech?

Two theories have been started to solve this problem, which, for shortness' sake, I shall call the _Bow-wow theory_ and the _Pooh-pooh theory_.(327)

According to the first, roots are imitations of sounds, according to the second, they are involuntary interjections. The first theory was very popular among the philosophers of the eighteenth century, and, as it is still held by many distinguished scholars and philosophers, we must examine it more carefully. It is supposed then that man, being as yet mute, heard the voices of birds and dogs and cows, the thunder of the clouds, the roaring of the sea, the rustling of the forest, the murmurs of the brook, and the whisper of the breeze. He tried to imitate these sounds, and finding his mimicking cries useful as signs of the objects from which they proceeded, he followed up the idea and elaborated language. This view was most ably defended by Herder.(328) "Man," he says, "shows conscious reflection when his soul acts so freely that it may separate, in the ocean of sensations which rush into it through the senses, one single wave, arrest it, regard it, being conscious all the time of regarding this one single wave. Man proves his conscious reflection when, out of the dream of images that float past his senses, he can gather himself up and wake for a moment, dwelling intently on one image, fixing it with a bright and tranquil glance, and discovering for himself those signs by which he knows that _this_ is _this_ image and no other. Man proves his conscious reflection when he not only perceives vividly and distinctly all the features of an object, but is able to separate and recognize one or more of them as its distinguishing features." For instance, "Man sees a lamb. He does not see it like the ravenous wolf. He is not disturbed by any uncontrollable instinct. He wants to know it, but he is neither drawn towards it nor repelled from it by his senses. The lamb stands before him, as represented by his senses, white, soft, woolly. The conscious and reflecting soul of man looks for a distinguishing mark;-the lamb bleats!-the mark is found. The bleating which made the strongest impression, which stood apart from all other impressions of sight or touch, remains in the soul. The lamb returns-white, soft, woolly. The soul sees, touches, reflects, looks for a mark. The lamb bleats, and now the soul has recognized it. 'Ah, thou art the bleating animal,' the soul says within herself; and the sound of bleating, perceived as the distinguishing mark of the lamb, becomes the name of the lamb. It was the comprehended mark, the word. And what is the whole of our language but a collection of such words?"

Our answer is, that though there are names in every language formed by mere imitation of sound, yet these const.i.tute a very small proportion of our dictionary. They are the playthings, not the tools, of language, and any attempt to reduce the most common and necessary words to imitative roots ends in complete failure. Herder himself, after having most strenuously defended this theory of Onomatopoieia, as it is called, and having gained a prize which the Berlin Academy had offered for the best essay on the origin of language, renounced it openly towards the latter years of his life, and threw himself in despair into the arms of those who looked upon languages as miraculously revealed. We cannot deny the possibility that _a_ language might have been formed on the principle of imitation; all we say is, that as yet no language has been discovered that was so formed. An Englishman in China,(329) seeing a dish placed before him about which he felt suspicious, and wishing to know whether it was a duck, said, with an interrogative accent,

_Quack quack?_

He received the clear and straightforward answer,

_Bow-wow!_

This, no doubt, was as good as the most eloquent conversation on the same subject between an Englishman and a French waiter. But I doubt whether it deserves the name of language. We do not speak of a _bow-wow_, but of a dog. We speak of a cow, not of a _moo_. Of a lamb, not of a _baa_. It is the same in more ancient languages, such as Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. If this principle of Onomatopoieia is applicable anywhere, it would be in the formation of the names of animals. Yet we listen in vain for any similarity between goose and cackling, hen and clucking, duck and quacking, sparrow and chirping, dove and cooing, hog and grunting, cat and mewing, between dog and barking, yelping, snarling, or growling.

There are of course some names, such as _cuckoo_, which are clearly formed by an imitation of sound. But words of this kind are, like artificial flowers, without a root. They are sterile, and are unfit to express anything beyond the one object which they imitate. If you remember the variety of derivatives that could be formed from the root _s.p.a.c_, to see, you will at once perceive the difference between the fabrication of such a word as _cuckoo_, and the true natural growth of words.

Let us compare two words such as _cuckoo_ and _raven_. _Cuckoo_ in English is clearly a mere imitation of the cry of that bird, even more so than the corresponding terms in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin. In these languages the imitative element has received the support of a derivative suffix; we have _kokila_ in Sanskrit, and _kokkyx_ in Greek, _cuculus_ in Latin.(330) _Cuckoo_ is, in fact, a modern word, which has taken the place of the Anglo-Saxon _geac_, the German _Gauch_, and, being purely onomatopoetic, it is of course not liable to the changes of Grimm's Law. As the word _cuckoo_ predicates nothing but the sound of a particular bird, it could never be applied for expressing any general quality in which other animals might share; and the only derivatives to which it might give rise are words expressive of a metaphorical likeness with the bird. The same applies to _c.o.c.k_, the Sanskrit _kukku?a_. Here, too, Grimm's Law does not apply, for both words were intended to convey merely the cackling sound of the bird; and, as this intention continued to be felt, phonetic change was less likely to set in. The Sanskrit _kukku?a_ is not derived from any root, it simply repeats the cry of the bird, and the only derivatives to which it gives rise are metaphorical expressions, such as the French _coquet_, originally strutting about like a c.o.c.k; _coquetterie_; _cocart_, conceited; _cocarde_, a c.o.c.kade; _coquelicot_, originally a c.o.c.k's comb, then the wild red poppy, likewise so called from its similarity with a c.o.c.k's comb.

Let us now examine the word _raven_. It might seem at first, as if this also was merely onomatopoetic. Some people imagine they perceive a kind of similarity between the word _raven_ and the cry of that bird. This seems still more so if we compare the Anglo-Saxon _hrafn_, the German _Rabe_, Old High-German _hraban_. The Sanskrit _karava_ also, the Latin _corvus_, and the Greek _korone_, all are supposed to show some similarity with the unmelodious sound of _Maitre Corbeau_. But as soon as we a.n.a.lyze the word we find that it is of a different structure from _cuckoo_ or _c.o.c.k_. It is derived from a root which has a general predicative power. The root _ru_ or _kru_ is not a mere imitation of the cry of the raven; it embraces many cries, from the harshest to the softest, and it might have been applied to the nightingale as well as to the raven. In Sanskrit this root exists as _ru_, a verb which is applied to the murmuring sound of rivers as well as to the barking of dogs and the mooing of cows. From it are derived numerous words in Sanskrit. In Latin we find _raucus_, hoa.r.s.e; _rumor_, a whisper; in German _runen_, to speak low, and _runa_, mystery. The Latin _lamentum_ stands for an original _ravimentum_ or _cravimentum_. This root _ru_ has several secondary forms, such as the Sanskrit _rud_, to cry; the Latin _rug_ in _rugire_, to howl; the Greek _kru_ or _klu_, in _klaio_, _klausomai_; the Sanskrit _krus_, to shout; the Gothic _hrukjan_, to crow, and _hropjan_, to cry; the German _rufen_. Even the common Aryan word for hearing is closely allied to this root. It is _sru_ in Sanskrit, _klyo_ in Greek, _cluo_ in Latin; and before it took the recognized meaning of hearing, it meant to sound, to ring. When a noise was to be heard in a far distance, the man who first perceived it might well have said I ring, for his ears were sounding and ringing; and the same verb, if once used as a transitive, expressed exactly what we mean by I hear a noise.

You will have perceived thus that the process which led to the formation of the word _karava_ in Sanskrit is quite distinct from that which produced _cuckoo_. _Karava_(331) means a shouter, a caller, a crier. It might have been applied to many birds; but it became the traditional and recognized name for the crow. Cuckoo could never mean anything but the cuckoo, and while a word like _raven_ has ever so many relations from a _rumor_ down to _a row_, cuckoo stands by itself like a stick in a living hedge.

It is curious to observe how apt we are to deceive ourselves when we once adopt this system of Onomatopoieia. Who does not imagine that he hears in the word "thunder" an imitation of the rolling and rumbling noise which the old Germans ascribed to their G.o.d Thor playing at nine-pins? Yet _thunder_ is clearly the same word as the Latin _tonitru_. The root is _tan_, to stretch. From this root _tan_, we have in Greek _tonos_, our tone, _tone_ being produced by the stretching and vibrating of cords. In Sanskrit the sound thunder is expressed by the same root _tan_, but in the derivatives _tanyu_, _tanyatu_, and _tanayitnu_, thundering, we perceive no trace of the rumbling noise which we imagined we perceived in the Latin _tonitru_ and the English _thunder_. The very same root _tan_, to stretch, yields some derivatives which are anything but rough and noisy. The English _tender_, the French _tendre_, the Latin _tener_, are derived from it. Like _tenuis_, the Sanskrit _tanu_, the English _thin_, _tener_ meant originally what was extended over a larger surface, then _thin_, then _delicate_. The relationship betwixt _tender_, _thin_, and _thunder_ would be hard to establish if the original conception of thunder had really been its rumbling noise.

Who does not imagine that he hears something sweet in the French _sucre_, _sucre_? Yet sugar came from India, and it is there called _sarkhara_, which is anything but sweet sounding. This _sarkhara_ is the same word as _sugar_; it was called in Latin _saccharum_, and we still speak of _saccharine_ juice, which is sugar juice.

In _squirrel_ again some people imagine they hear something of the rustling and whirling of the little animal. But we have only to trace the name back to Greek, and there we find that _skiouros_ is composed of two distinct words, the one meaning shade, the other tail; the animal being called shade-tail by the Greeks.

Thus the word _cat_, the German _katze_, is supposed to be an imitation of the sound made by a cat spitting. But if the spitting were expressed by the sibilant, that sibilant does not exist in the Latin _catus_, nor in _cat_, or _kitten_, nor in the German _kater_.(332) The Sanskrit _marjara_, cat, might seem to imitate the purring of the cat; but it is derived from the root _m?ij_, to clean, _marjara_, meaning the animal that always cleans itself.

Many more instances might be given to show how easily we are deceived by the constant connection of certain sounds and certain meanings in the words of our own language, and how readily we imagine that there is something in the sound to tell us the meaning of the words. "The sound must seem an echo to the sense."

Most of these Onomatopoieias vanish as soon as we trace our own names back to Anglo-Saxon and Gothic, or compare them with their cognates in Greek, Latin, or Sanskrit. The number of names which are really formed by an imitation of sound dwindle down to a very small quotum if cross-examined by the comparative philologist, and we are left in the end with the conviction that though _a_ language might have been made out of the roaring, fizzing, hissing, gobbling, twittering, cracking, banging, slamming, and rattling sounds of nature, the tongues with which _we_ are acquainted point to a different origin.(333)

And so we find many philosophers, and among them Condillac, protesting against a theory which would place man even below the animal. Why should man be supposed, they say, to have taken a lesson from birds and beasts?

Does he not utter cries, and sobs, and shouts himself, according as he is affected by fear, pain, or joy? These cries or interjections were represented as the natural and real beginnings of human speech. Everything else was supposed to have been elaborated after their model. This is what I call the Interjectional, or Pooh-pooh, Theory.

Our answer to this theory is the same as to the former. There are no doubt in every language interjections, and some of them may become traditional, and enter into the composition of words. But these interjections are only the outskirts of real language. Language begins where interjections end.

There is as much difference between a real word, such as "to laugh," and the interjection ha, ha! between "I suffer," and oh! as there is between the involuntary act and noise of sneezing, and the verb "to sneeze." We sneeze, and cough, and scream, and laugh in the same manner as animals, but if Epicurus tells us that we speak in the same manner as dogs bark, moved by nature,(334) our own experience will tell us that this is not the case.

An excellent answer to the interjectional theory has been given by Horne Tooke.

"The dominion of speech," he says,(335) "is erected upon the downfall of interjections. Without the artful contrivances of language, mankind would have had nothing but interjections with which to communicate, orally, any of their feelings. The neighing of a horse, the lowing of a cow, the barking of a dog, the purring of a cat, sneezing, coughing, groaning, shrieking, and every other involuntary convulsion with oral sound, have almost as good a t.i.tle to be called parts of speech, as interjections have. Voluntary interjections are only employed where the suddenness and vehemence of some affection or pa.s.sion returns men to their natural state; and makes them for a moment forget the use of speech; or when, from some circ.u.mstance, the shortness of time will not permit them to exercise it."

As in the case of Onomatopoieia, it cannot be denied that with interjections, too, some kind of language might have been formed; but not a language like that which we find in numerous varieties among all the races of men. One short interjection may be more powerful, more to the point, more eloquent than a long speech. In fact, interjections, together with gestures, the movements of the muscles of the mouth, and the eye, would be quite sufficient for all purposes which language answers with the majority of mankind. Lucian, in his treatise on dancing, mentions a king whose dominions bordered on the Euxine. He happened to be at Rome in the reign of Nero, and, having seen a pantomime perform, begged him of the emperor as a present, in order that he might employ him as an interpreter among the nations in his neighborhood with whom he could hold no intercourse on account of the diversity of language. A pantomime meant a person who could mimic everything, and there is hardly anything which cannot be thus expressed. We, having language at our command, have neglected the art of speaking without words; but in the south of Europe that art is still preserved. If it be true that one look may speak volumes, it is clear that we might save ourselves much of the trouble entailed by the use of discursive speech. Yet we must not forget that _hum!_ _ugh!_ _tut!_ _pooh!_ are as little to be called words as the expressive gestures which usually accompany these exclamations.

As to the attempts at deriving some of our words etymologically from mere interjections, they are apt to fail from the same kind of misconception which leads us to imagine that there is something expressive in the sounds of words. Thus it is said "that the idea of disgust takes its rise in the senses of smell and taste, in the first instance probably in smell alone; that in defending ourselves from a bad smell we are instinctively impelled to screw up the nose, and to expire strongly through the compressed and protruded lips, giving rise to a sound represented by the interjections faugh! foh! fie! From this interjection it is proposed to derive, not only such words as _foul_ and _filth_, but, by transferring it from natural to moral aversion, the English _fiend_, the German _Feind_." If this were true, we should suppose that the expression of contempt was chiefly conveyed by the aspirate f, by the strong emission of the breathing with half-opened lips. But _fiend_ is a participle from a root _fian_, to hate; in Gothic _fijan_; and as a Gothic aspirate always corresponds to a tenuis in Sanskrit, the same root in Sanskrit would at once lose its expressive power. It exists in fact in Sanskrit as _piy_, to hate, to destroy; just as _friend_ is derived from a root which in Sanskrit is _pri_, to delight.(336)

There is one more remark which I have to make about the Interjectional and the Onomatopoetic theories, namely this: If the const.i.tuent elements of human speech were either mere cries, or the mimicking of the cries of nature, it would be difficult to understand why brutes should be without language. There is not only the parrot, but the mocking-bird and others, which can imitate most successfully both articulate and inarticulate sounds; and there is hardly an animal without the faculty of uttering interjections, such as huff, hiss, baa, &c. It is clear also that if what puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes is the having of general ideas, language which arises from interjections and from the imitation of the cries of animals could not claim to be the outward sign of that distinctive faculty of man. All words, in the beginning at least (and this is the only point which interests us), would have been the signs of individual impressions and individual perceptions, and would only gradually have been adapted to the expression of general ideas.

The theory which is suggested to us by an a.n.a.lysis of language carried out according to the principles of comparative philology is the very opposite.

We arrive in the end at roots, and every one of these expresses a general, not an individual, idea. Every name, if we a.n.a.lyze it, contains a predicate by which the object to which the name applies was known.

There is an old controversy among philosophers, whether language originated in general appellations, or in proper names.(337) It is the question of the _primum cognitum_, and its consideration will help us perhaps in discovering the true nature of the root, or the _primum appellatum_.

Some philosophers, among whom I may mention Locke, Condillac, Adam Smith, Dr. Brown, and with some qualification Dugald Stewart, maintain that all terms, as at first employed, are expressive of individual objects. I quote from Adam Smith. "The a.s.signation," he says, "of particular names to denote particular objects, that is, the inst.i.tution of nouns substantive, would probably be one of the first steps towards the formation of language. Two savages who had never been taught to speak, but had been bred up remote from the societies of men, would naturally begin to form that language by which they would endeavor to make their mutual wants intelligible to each other by uttering certain sounds whenever they meant to denote certain objects. Those objects only which were most familiar to them, and which they had most frequent occasion to mention, would have particular names a.s.signed to them. The particular cave whose covering sheltered them from the weather, the particular tree whose fruit relieved their hunger, the particular fountain whose water allayed their thirst, would first be denominated by the words _cave_, _tree_, _fountain_, or by whatever other appellations they might think proper, in that primitive jargon, to mark them. Afterwards, when the more enlarged experience of these savages had led them to observe, and their necessary occasions obliged them to make mention of, other caves, and other trees, and other fountains, they would naturally bestow upon each of those new objects the same name by which they had been accustomed to express the similar object they were first acquainted with. The new objects had none of them any name of its own, but each of them exactly resembled another object which had such an appellation. It was impossible that those savages could behold the new objects without recollecting the old ones; and the name of the old ones, to which the new bore so close a resemblance. When they had occasion, therefore, to mention or to point out to each other any of the new objects, they would naturally utter the name of the correspondent old one, of which the idea could not fail, at that instant, to present itself to their memory in the strongest and liveliest manner. And thus those words, which were originally the proper names of individuals, became the common name of a mult.i.tude. A child that is just learning to speak calls every person who comes to the house its papa or its mamma; and thus bestows upon the whole species those names which it had been taught to apply to two individuals. I have known a clown who did not know the proper name of the river which ran by his own door. It was _the river_, he said, and he never heard any other name for it. His experience, it seems, had not led him to observe any other river. The general word _river_ therefore was, it is evident, in his acceptance of it, a proper name signifying an individual object. If this person had been carried to another river, would he not readily have called it _a river_? Could we suppose any person living on the banks of the Thames so ignorant as not to know the general word _river_, but to be acquainted only with the particular word _Thames_, if he were brought to any other river, would he not readily call it a _Thames_? This, in reality, is no more than what they who are well acquainted with the general word are very apt to do. An Englishman, describing any great river which he may have seen in some foreign country, naturally says that it is another Thames.... It is this application of the name of an individual to a great mult.i.tude of objects, whose resemblance naturally recalls the idea of that individual, and of the name which expresses it, that seems originally to have given occasion to the formation of those cla.s.ses and a.s.sortments which, in the schools, are called _genera_ and _species_."

This extract from Adam Smith will give a clear idea of one view of the formation of thought and language. I shall now read another extract, representing the diametrically opposite view. It is taken from Leibniz,(338) who maintains that general terms are necessary for the essential const.i.tution of languages. He likewise appeals to children.

"Children," he says, "and those who know but little of the language which they attempt to speak, or little of the subject on which they would employ it, make use of general terms, as _thing_, _plant_, _animal_, instead of using proper names, of which they are dest.i.tute. And it is certain that all proper or individual names have been originally appellative or general." And again: "Thus I would make bold to affirm that almost all words have been originally general terms, because it would happen very rarely that man would invent a name, expressly and without a reason, to denote this or that individual. We may, therefore, a.s.sert that the names of individual things were names of species, which were given _par excellence_, or otherwise, to some individual; as the name _Great Head_ to him of the whole town who had the largest, or who was the man of the most consideration of the great heads known."

It might seem presumptuous to attempt to arbitrate between such men as 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nominal 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.