Lecture IX. The Theoretical Stage, And The Origin Of Language.
“In examining the history of mankind, as well as in examining the phenomena of the material world, when we cannot trace the process by which an event has been produced, it is often of importance to be able to show how it may have been produced by natural causes. Thus, although it is impossible to determine with certainty what the steps were by which any particular language was formed, yet if we can show, from the known principles of human nature, how all its various parts might gradually have arisen, the mind is not only to a certain degree satisfied, but a check is given to that indolent philosophy which refers to a miracle whatever appearances, both in the natural and moral worlds, it is unable to explain.”[315]
This quotation from an eminent Scotch philosopher contains the best advice that could be given to the student of the science of language, when he approaches the problem which we have to examine to-day, namely, the origin of language. Though we have stripped that problem of the perplexing and mysterious aspect which it presented to the philosophers of old, yet, even in its simplest form, it seems to be almost beyond the reach of the human understanding.
If we were asked the riddle how images of the eye and all the sensations of our senses could be represented by sounds, nay, could be so embodied in sounds as to express thought and excite thought, we should probably give it up as the question of a madman, who, mixing up the most heterogeneous subjects, attempted to change color into sound and sound into thought.[316] Yet this is the riddle which we have now to solve.
It is quite clear that we have no means of solving the problem of the origin of language historically, or of explaining it as a matter of fact which happened once in a certain locality and at a certain time. History does not begin till long after mankind had acquired the power of language, and even the most ancient traditions are silent as to the manner in which man came in possession of his earliest thoughts and words. Nothing, no doubt, would be more interesting than to know from historical documents the exact process by which the first man began to lisp his first words, and thus to be rid forever of all the theories on the origin of speech. But this knowledge is denied us; and, if it had been otherwise, we should probably be quite unable to understand those primitive events in the history of the human mind.[317] We are told that the first man was the son of God, that God created him in His own image, formed him of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. These are simple [pg 345] facts, and to be accepted as such; if we begin to reason on them, the edge of the human understanding glances off. Our mind is so constituted that it cannot apprehend the absolute beginning or the absolute end of anything. If we tried to conceive the first man created as a child, and gradually unfolding his physical and mental powers, we could not understand his living for one day without supernatural aid. If, on the contrary, we tried to conceive the first man created full-grown in body and mind, the conception of an effect without a cause, of a full-grown mind without a previous growth, would equally transcend our reasoning powers. It is the same with the first beginnings of language. Theologians who claim for language a divine origin drift into the most dangerous anthropomorphism, when they enter into any details as to the manner in which they suppose the Deity to have compiled a dictionary and grammar in order to teach them to the first man, as a schoolmaster teaches the deaf and dumb. And they do not see that, even if all their premises were granted, they would have explained no more than how the first man might have learnt a language, if there was a language ready made for him. How that language was made would remain as great a mystery as ever. Philosophers, on the contrary, who imagine that the first man, though left to himself, would gradually have emerged from a state of mutism and have invented words for every new conception that arose in his mind, forget that man could not by his own power have acquired the faculty of speech which is the distinctive character of mankind,[318] unattained and unattainable by the mute [pg 346] creation. It shows a want of appreciation as to the real bearings of our problem, if philosophers appeal to the fact that children are born without language, and gradually emerge from mutism to the full command of articulate speech. We want no explanation how birds learn to fly, created as they are with organs adapted to that purpose. Nor do we wish to inquire how children learn to use the various faculties with which the human body and soul are endowed. We want to gain, if possible, an insight into the original faculty of speech; and for that purpose I fear it is as useless to watch the first stammerings of children, as it would be to repeat the experiment of the Egyptian king who intrusted two new-born infants to a shepherd, with the injunction to let them suck a goat's milk, and to speak no word in their presence, but to observe what word they would first utter.[319] The same experiment is said to have been repeated by the Swabian emperor, Frederic II., by James IV. of Scotland, and by one of the Mogul emperors of India. But, whether for the purpose of finding out which was the primitive language of mankind, or of discovering how far language was natural to man, the experiments failed to throw any light on the problem before us. Children, in learning to speak, do not invent language. Language is there ready made for [pg 347] them. It has been there for thousands of years. They acquire the use of a language, and, as they grow up, they may acquire the use of a second and a third. It is useless to inquire whether infants, left to themselves, would invent a language. It would be impossible, unnatural, and illegal to try the experiment, and, without repeated experiments, the assertions of those who believe and those who disbelieve the possibility of children inventing a language of their own, are equally valueless. All we know for certain is, that an English child, if left to itself, would never begin to speak English, and that history supplies no instance of any language having thus been invented.
If we want to gain an insight into the faculty of flying, which is a characteristic feature of birds, all we can do is, first, to compare the structure of birds with that of other animals which are devoid of that faculty, and secondly, to examine the conditions under which the act of flying becomes possible. It is the same with speech. Speech is a specific faculty of man. It distinguishes man from all other creatures; and if we wish to acquire more definite ideas as to the real nature of human speech, all we can do is to compare man with those animals that seem to come nearest to him, and thus to try to discover what he shares in common with these animals, and what is peculiar to him and to him alone. After we have discovered this, we may proceed to inquire into the conditions under which speech becomes possible, and we shall then have done all that we can do, considering that the instruments of our knowledge, wonderful as they are, are yet far too weak to carry us into all the regions to which we may soar on the wings of our imagination.
In comparing man with the other animals, we need not enter here into the physiological questions whether the difference between the body of an ape and the body of a man is one of degree or of kind. However that question is settled by physiologists we need not be afraid. If the structure of a mere worm is such as to fill the human mind with awe, if a single glimpse which we catch of the infinite wisdom displayed in the organs of the lowest creature gives us an intimation of the wisdom of its Divine Creator far transcending the powers of our conception, how are we to criticise and disparage the most highly organized creatures of His creation, creatures as wonderfully made as we ourselves? Are there not many creatures on many points more perfect even than man? Do we not envy the lion's strength, the eagle's eye, the wings of every bird? If there existed animals altogether as perfect as man in their physical structure, nay, even more perfect, no thoughtful man would ever be uneasy. His true superiority rests on different grounds. “I confess,” Sydney Smith writes, “I feel myself so much at ease about the superiority of mankind—I have such a marked and decided contempt for the understanding of every baboon I have ever seen—I feel so sure that the blue ape without a tail will never rival us in poetry, painting, and music, that I see no reason whatever that justice may not be done to the few fragments of soul and tatters of understanding which they may really possess.” The playfulness of Sydney Smith in handling serious and sacred subjects has of late been found fault with by many: but humor is a safer sign of strong convictions and perfect safety than guarded solemnity.
With regard to our own problem, no one can doubt that certain animals possess all the physical requirements for articulate speech. There is no letter of the alphabet which a parrot will not learn to pronounce.[320] The fact, therefore, that the parrot is without a language of his own, must be explained by a difference between the mental, not between the physical, faculties of the animal and man; and it is by a comparison of the mental faculties alone, such as we find them in man and brutes, that we may hope to discover what constitutes the indispensable qualification for language, a qualification to be found in man alone, and in no other creature on earth.
I say mental faculties, and I mean to claim a large share of what we call our mental faculties for the higher animals. These animals have sensation, perception, memory, will, and intellect, only we must restrict intellect to the comparing or interlacing of single perceptions. All these points can be proved by irrefragable evidence, and that evidence has never, I believe, been summed up with greater lucidity and power than in one of the last publications of M. P. Flourens, “De la Raison, du Génie, et de la Folie:” Paris, [pg 350] 1861. There are no doubt many people who are as much frightened at the idea that brutes have souls and are able to think, as by “the blue ape without a tail.” But their fright is entirely of their own making. If people will use such words as soul or thought without making it clear to themselves and others what they mean by them, these words will slip away under their feet, and the result must be painful. If we once ask the question, Have brutes a soul? we shall never arrive at any conclusion; for soul has been so many times defined by philosophers from Aristotle down to Hegel, that it means everything and nothing. Such has been the confusion caused by the promiscuous employment of the ill-defined terms of mental philosophy that we find Descartes representing brutes as living machines, whereas Leibniz claims for them not only souls, but immortal souls. “Next to the error of those who deny the existence of God,” says Descartes, “there is none so apt to lead weak minds from the right path of virtue, as to think that the soul of brutes is of the same nature as our own; and, consequently, that we have nothing to fear or to hope after this life, any more than flies or ants; whereas, if we know how much they differ, we understand much better that our soul is quite independent of the body, and consequently not subject to die with the body.”
The spirit of these remarks is excellent, but the argument is extremely weak. It does not follow that brutes have no souls because they have no human souls. It does not follow that the souls of men are not immortal, because the souls of brutes are not immortal; nor has the major premiss ever been proved by any philosopher, namely, that the souls of brutes must [pg 351] necessarily be destroyed and annihilated by death. Leibniz, who has defended the immortality of the human soul with stronger arguments than even Descartes, writes:—“I found at last how the souls of brutes and their sensations do not at all interfere with the immortality of human souls; on the contrary, nothing serves better to establish our natural immortality than to believe that all souls are imperishable.”
Instead of entering into these perplexities, which are chiefly due to the loose employment of ill-defined terms, let us simply look at the facts. Every unprejudiced observer will admit that—
1. Brutes see, hear, taste, smell, and feel; that is to say, they have five senses, just like ourselves, neither more nor less. They have both sensation and perception, a point which has been illustrated by M. Flourens by the most interesting experiments. If the roots of the optic nerve are removed, the retina in the eye of a bird ceases to be excitable, the iris is no longer movable; the animal is blind, because it has lost the organ of sensation. If, on the contrary, the cerebral lobes are removed, the eye remains pure and sound, the retina excitable, the iris movable. The eye is preserved, yet the animal cannot see, because it has lost the organs of perception.
2. Brutes have sensations of pleasure and pain. A dog that is beaten behaves exactly like a child that is chastised, and a dog that is fed and fondled exhibits the same signs of satisfaction as a boy under the same circumstances. We can only judge from signs, and if they are to be trusted in the case of children, they must be trusted likewise in the case of brutes.
3. Brutes do not forget, or as philosophers would [pg 352] say, brutes have memory. 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 title 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 [pg 353] 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 [pg 354] 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 [pg 355] by which we could assert 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 carcass 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 pronounce 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 [pg 356] 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 constituent elements of all languages. This discovery has simplified the problem of the origin of language immensely. It has taken away all excuse for those [pg 357] 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 analysis, and, even as far back as Sanskrit, we may say that no root was ever used as a noun or as a verb. [pg 358] 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 DÂ, to give, appears in Sanskrit dâ-nam, donum, gift, as a substantive; in do, Sanskrit dadâmi, Greek di-dō-mi, I give, as a verb; but the root DÂ 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 [pg 359] 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 [pg 360] 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 constitute 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 spac, 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 [pg 362] of the Anglo-Saxon geac, the German Gauch, and, being purely onomatopoëtic, 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 cock, the Sanskrit kukkuṭa. 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 kukkuṭa 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 cock; coquetterie; cocart, conceited; cocarde, a cockade; coquelicot, originally a cock's comb, then the wild red poppy, likewise so called from its similarity with a cock's comb.
Let us now examine the word raven. It might seem at first, as if this also was merely onomatopoëtic. 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 kârava also, the Latin corvus, and the Greek korōnē, all are supposed to show some similarity with the unmelodious sound of Maître Corbeau. But as soon as we analyze the word we find that it is of a different structure from cuckoo or cock. It is derived from a root which has a general predicative [pg 363] 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, hoarse; rumor, a whisper; in German rûnen, 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 klaiō, klausomai; the Sanskrit kruś, 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 śru in Sanskrit, klyō 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 kârava in Sanskrit is quite distinct from that which produced cuckoo. Kârava[331] means a shouter, a caller, a crier. It might [pg 364] 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 God 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, sucré? Yet sugar came from India, and it is there called śarkhara, which is anything [pg 365] but sweet sounding. This śarkhara 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 mârjâra, cat, might seem to imitate the purring of the cat; but it is derived from the root mṛij, to clean, mârjâra, 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 [pg 366] 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 [pg 367] 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 title to be called parts of speech, as interjections have. Voluntary interjections are only employed where the suddenness and vehemence of some affection or passion returns men to their natural state; and makes them for a moment forget the use of speech; or when, from some circumstance, the shortness of time will not permit them to exercise it.”
As in the case of Onomatopoieia, it cannot be denied [pg 368] 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 [pg 369] 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 pîy, to hate, to destroy; just as friend is derived from a root which in Sanskrit is prî, to delight.[336]
There is one more remark which I have to make about the Interjectional and the Onomatopoëtic theories, [pg 370] namely this: If the constituent 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 analysis 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 analyze 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 [pg 371] 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 assignation,” he says, “of particular names to denote particular objects, that is, the institution 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 assigned 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 [pg 372] 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 multitude. 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 [pg 373] to a great multitude 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 classes and assortments 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 constitution 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 destitute. 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, assert 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 [pg 374] 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 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. [pg 375] 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, [pg 376] 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, [pg 377] 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 [pg 379] 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 [pg 380] 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 [pg 381] 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 [pg 382] 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 [pg 383] 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 [pg 384] 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 [pg 385] 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, [pg 387] 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 [pg 388] 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 [pg 389] 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.
I do not say that every form in Greek or Sanskrit has as yet been analyzed and explained. There are formations in Greek and Latin and English which have hitherto baffled all tests; and there are certain contrivances, such as the augment in Greek, the change of vowels in Hebrew, the Umlaut and Ablaut in the Teutonic dialects, where we might feel inclined to suppose that language admitted distinctions purely musical or phonetic, corresponding to very palpable and material distinctions of thought. Such a supposition, however, is not founded on any safe induction. It may seem inexplicable to us why bruder in German should form its plural as brüder; or brother, brethren. But what is inexplicable and apparently artificial in our modern languages becomes intelligible in their more ancient phases. The change of u into ü, as in bruder, brüder, was not intentional; least of all was it introduced to expressed plurality. The change is phonetic, and due to the influence of an i or j,[355] which existed originally in the last syllable and which reacted regularly on the vowel of the preceding syllable; nay, which leaves its effect behind, even after it has itself disappeared. By a false analogy such a change, perfectly justifiable in a [pg 390] certain class of words, may be applied to other words where no such change was called for; and it may then appear as if an arbitrary change of vowels was intended to convey a grammatical change. But even into these recesses the comparative philologist can follow language, thus discovering a reason even for what in reality was irrational and wrong. It seems difficult to believe that the augment in Greek should originally have had an independent substantial existence, yet all analogy is in favor of such a view. Suppose English had never been written down before Wycliffe's time, we should then find that in some instances the perfect was formed by the mere addition of a short a. Wycliffe spoke and wrote:[356] I knowlech to a felid and seid þus; i.e. I acknowledge to have felt and said thus. In a similar way we read: it should a fallen; instead of “it should have fallen;” and in some parts of England common people still say very much the same: I should a done it. Now in some old English books this a actually coalesces with the verb, at least they are printed together; so that a grammar founded on them would give us “to fall” as the infinitive of the present, to afallen as the infinitive of the past. I do not wish for a moment to be understood as if there was any connection between this a, a contraction of have in English, and the Greek augment which is placed before past tenses. All I mean is, that, if the origin of the augment has not yet been satisfactorily explained, we are not therefore to despair, or to admit an arbitrary addition of a consonant or vowel, used as it were algebraically or by mutual agreement, to distinguish a past from a present tense.
If inductive reasoning is worth anything, we are justified in believing that what has been proved to be true on so large a scale, and in cases where it was least expected, is true with regard to language in general. We require no supernatural interference, nor any conclave of ancient sages, to explain the realities of human speech. All that is formal in language is the result of rational combination; all that is material, the result of a mental instinct. The first natural and instinctive utterances, if sifted differently by different clans, would fully account both for the first origin and for the first divergence of human speech. We can understand not only the origin of language, but likewise the necessary breaking up of one language into many; and we perceive that no amount of variety in the material or the formal elements of speech is incompatible with the admission of one common source.
The Science of Language thus leads us up to that highest summit from whence we see into the very dawn of man's life on earth; and where the words which we have heard so often from the days of our childhood—“And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech”—assume a meaning more natural, more intelligible, more convincing, than they ever had before.
And now in concluding this course of Lectures, I have only to express my regret that the sketch of the Science of Language which I endeavored to place before you, was necessarily so very slight and imperfect. There are many points which I could not touch at all, many which I could only allude to: there is hardly one to which I could do full justice. Still I feel grateful to the President and the Council of this Institution [pg 392] for having given me an opportunity of claiming some share of public sympathy for a science which I believe has a great future in store; and I shall be pleased, if, among those who have done me the honor of attending these Lectures, I have excited, though I could not have satisfied, some curiosity as to the strata which underlie the language on which we stand and walk; and as to the elements which enter into the composition of the very granite of our thoughts.