The Origin of Thought and Speech

by M. Moncalm

The 121 Original Concepts.

1. Dig.
2. Plait, weave, sew, bind.
3. Crush, pound, destroy, waste, rub, smoothe.
4. Sharpen.
5. Smear, colour, knead, harden.
6. Scratch.
7. Bite, eat.
8. Divide, share, eat.
9. Cut.
10. Gather, observe.
11. Stretch, spread.
12. Mix.
13. Scatter, strew.
14. Sprinkle, drip, wet.
15a. Shake, tremble, quiver, flicker.
15b. Shake mentally, be angry, abashed, fearful, etc.
16. Throw down, fall.
17. Fall to pieces.
18. Shoot, throw at.
19. Pierce, split.
20. Join, fight, check.
21. Tear.
22. Break, smash.
23. Measure.
24. Blow.
25. Kindle.
26. Milk, yield.
27. Pour, flow, rush.
28. Separate, free, leave, lack.
29. Glean.
30. Choose.
31. Cook, roast, boil.
32. Clean.
33. Wash.
34. Bend, bow.
35. Turn, roll.
36. Press, fix.
37. Squeeze.
38. Drive, thrust.
39. Push, stir, live.
40. Burst, gush, laugh, beam.
41. Dress.
42. Adorn.
43. Strip, remove.
44. Steal.
45. Check.
46. Fill, thrive, swell, grow strong.
47. Cross.
48. Sweeten.
49. Shorten.
50. Thin, suffer.
51. Fat, stick, love.
52. Lick.
53. Suck, nourish.
54. Drink, swell.
55. Swallow, sip.
56. Vomit.
57. Chew, eat.
58. Open, extend.
59. Reach, strive, rule, have.
60. Conquer, take by violence, struggle.
61. Perform, succeed.
62. Attack, hurt.
63. Hide, dive.
64. Cover, embrace.
65. Bear, carry.
66. Can, be strong.
67. Show.
68. Touch.
69. Strike.
70. Ask.
71. Watch, observe.
72. Lead.
73. Set.
74. Hold, wield.
75. Give, yield.
76. Couch.
77. Thirst, dry.
78. Hunger.
79. Yawn.
80. Spue.
81. Fly.
82. Sleep.
83. Bristle, dare.
84. Be angry, harsh.
85. Breathe.
86. Speak.
87. See.
88. Hear.
89. Smell, sniff.
90. Sweat.
91. Seethe, boil.
92. Dance.
93. Leap.
94. Creep.
95. Stumble.
96. Stick.
97. Burn.
98. Dwell.
99. Stand.
100. Sink, lie, fail.
101. Swing.
102. Hang down, lean.
103. Rise up, grow.
104. Sit.
105. Toil.
106. Weary, waste, slacken.
107. Rejoice, please.
108. Desire, love.
109. Wake.
110. Fear.
111. Cool, refresh.
112. Stink.
113. Hate.
114. Know.
115. Think.
116. Shine.
117. Run.
118. Move, go.
119a. Noise, inarticulate.
119b. Noise, musical.
120. Do.
121. Be.

This classification of the roots is purely tentative. It has been difficult to ascertain what is most likely to have been the original meaning of some; there are certain words of which it is almost impossible to find the etymology. The order in which the concepts succeed each other is not very systematic. Max Müller tried to classify them more correctly by keeping the special acts, such as to dig, the general acts, such as to find, the special states, such as to cough, and the general states, such as to stand—together. But it was impossible to adhere strictly to such a plan, because there are roots which express both acts and states; while in many cases it is difficult to determine whether the special or general meaning predominates; thus there are the words to boil, to make boil, or to be boiling. Some of the roots have closely allied meanings, so that there are as many as fifteen connected with the concepts to burn, and to speak; and many more which can be traced to shine.

We experience feelings at once humbling and elevating when we consider that all we admire, all on which we pride ourselves, our thoughts, whether poetical, philosophical, religious, our whole literature, all our dictionaries, whether scientific or industrial; in fact, our whole intellectual life is built upon this small number of mother-ideas, of 121 concepts. We should feel neither humbled nor elevated; we are making use of the wisdom of our ancestors. It is our duty to transmit the legacy to our descendants which they gave us, but purged from alloy.

Three chief points are to be noted, when we are concerned with the progress of the intellect:—

1. The creative activity of humanity is the basis of all the roots of words.

2. The source of all abstract ideas lies in acts which are entirely material.

3. It has been satisfactorily proved that we speak the language derived from that spoken by our primitive ancestors. It was the custom of Nebuchadnezzar to have his name stamped on every brick that was used during his reign in erecting his colossal palaces. Those palaces fell to ruins, but from the ruins the ancient materials were carried away for building new cities; and on examining the bricks in the walls of the modern city of Bagdad, travellers have discovered on every one the clear traces of that royal signature. Our modern languages were built up with the materials taken from the ruins of the ancient languages, and every word that we pronounce displays the royal stamp impressed upon it by the founders. The formation of those derived languages, by means of the roots with their successive change of meaning, the construction of their grammatical forms, the continued changes amongst the different dialects, all indicate the presence of a germ in man tending from the first to make him a reasoning being.

CHAPTER VI
ANCIENT LANGUAGE

Language may be divided into three distinct periods, when taken as a whole.

The first is, when language, finding itself released from those restraints which enveloped it in its cradle, supplies those words which are most indispensable to man in connecting the one word with others, such as pronouns, prepositions, names of numbers, and of objects of daily use. This must have been the first stage of a language hardly yet agglutinate, free from trammels, with no sign of nationality, or individuality, but containing in itself all the chief features of the many forms belonging to the Turanian, Aryan and Semitic families; the explorer of philosophic antiquity does not penetrate beyond this first period.

The second phase is that in which two linguistic families passing out of the agglutinate stage, unattached as yet to grammatical forms, received once for all the stamp of the formation which we find amongst the popular and modern dialects belonging both to the Semitic and Aryan divisions, and to which they owe this family resemblance, which justifies their inclusion in one or other of these branches of language; on the one side the Teutonic, Celtic, Slav, Italic, Hellenic, Iranian and Indian; on the other Arabic, Armenian and Hebrew; the yet unformed elements of grammar were eventually introduced into these languages at the substitution of the amalgamate for the agglutinate. The Turanian or Ural-Altaic languages have an entirely different character; they preserved for some time—and one or two still retain—the agglutinate form which retards the development of the grammar, and hides the evidence of relationship to the languages between China and the Pyrenees, and between Cape Comorin and Lapland.

These two periods are followed by a third, generally known as the mythological; it is obscure, and is calculated to shake one’s faith in the regular and orderly progress of human reason. We find it to be a phase through which all peoples have passed; yet in using the word mythology our thoughts naturally turn to the mythology of Greece, the only one with which we were made acquainted in our school days, and also the only one with which those were familiar who had not given themselves over specially to the study of the beliefs of antiquity. In the schools this study ran side by side with history; from our earliest days we had been taught the complete polytheism of heathen divinities; our work as pupils was to know our lessons, the work of the masters was to see that we learnt them. Mythology, therefore, was to us only one chapter in that great work, entitled the compulsory course of studies—a chapter which apparently required no more elucidation than the gymnastic lesson.

Our masters represented the Greeks as a people endowed with a vivid imagination, who recounted in exalted pure language most fantastic stories; we read in these authors: “Eos has fled—Eos will return—Eos has returned—Eos wakens the sleepers—Eos lengthens the life of mortals—Eos rises from the sea—Eos is the daughter of the sky—Eos is followed by the sun—Eos is loved by the sun—Eos is killed by the sun,” and so on ad infinitum; and we were told, “These are myths.” As no explanation was given of the word myth, we were none the wiser.

If the movements of Eos are inexplicable, they are not without a certain picturesqueness. But what shall we say of the myth concerning Saturn, who, on account of a prediction that he would be killed by his children, swallowed them as soon as they were born, with the exception of Jupiter, who was saved by the substitution of a stone, which Saturn afterwards brought up with the children he had swallowed. Or again, what can be said of the feast offered to the gods by Tantalus to test their omniscience; he caused the members of the body of his son Pelops to be mixed with other meats; a shoulder was eaten before Jupiter discovered the deception; he ordered the remainder to be thrown into a copper from which Pelops emerged alive with one shoulder lacking, and one made of ivory was given to him. Can anything more grotesque be imagined? And our children are subjected to this regimen, and their memories charged with these fables, under the pretext that they will the better appreciate the chefs-d’œuvre of classical literature.

The enigmatical part of this period of language will be more evident if we examine the early traditional history which began at its close, and at which time a light appeared in Greece destined to flood the world with a splendour hitherto unknown; it was the epoch which produced Thales, Pythagoras and Heraclitus, who, in the midst of much ignorance, had thoughts of wonderful lucidity. A national literature was beginning, where we find indications of the germs of political societies; the creation of laws, and the development of morals. And we ask ourselves: Whence come these sages? Who were their masters? How could these glorious days of Greek civilisation have been preceded by several generations whose principal occupation seemed to consist in inventing and repeating to satiety absurd fables concerning gods, heroes, and other beings whom no human being had ever seen; which fables contravene the simplest principles of logic, morality and religion? The ancient sages themselves were harsh in their judgment of these revolting stories contained in Grecian mythology; Xenophanes, a contemporary of Pythagoras, considered Hesiod and Homer responsible for these superstitions, and blamed them for attributing to the gods all that was most reprehensible in man. Heraclitus was of opinion that Homer deserved to be banished from the public assemblies, and Plato wrote, “Mothers and nurses tell their children stories full of misstatements and immoralities which are gathered from the poets.”

Thus spoke philosophers 500 years before our era, because they knew that if the “gods commit anything that is evil they are no gods.”

“Taken by themselves and in their literal meaning, most of these ancient myths are absurd and irrational, and frequently opposed to the principles of thought, religion, and morality which guided the Greeks as soon as they appear to us in the twilight of traditional history.”[47]

Many explanations have been sought to account in a rational manner for these strange tales; writers have striven to discover what can have given rise to such ridiculous inventions; some have asserted that it was the intention of the authors of mythology to convey to the people a knowledge of certain facts of nature, and certain moral truths whilst clothing them in allegorical form, and by endowing the divinities with certain virtues which it would become men to imitate and acquire; and that the worship of these divinities was instituted that man might be more fully impressed, that the likeness of the virtues upheld might be more deeply engraved in the heart of the pious worshipper. Zeus, was mind; Athene, art; Hercules, energy and perseverance in labours of great difficulty; whilst the Homeric heroes, Agamemnon, Achilles, and Hector represented physical activities. According to another theory the object with which the myths were composed was political, the laws of government were supposed to emanate from the gods; and whoso refused to recognise the excellence of the institutions of the country was held to be in revolt against the gods themselves. The philosopher Euhemerus was the author of a third theory, called the historical; he represented the mythological personages not as gods, but as kings, heroes, and philosophers, who, after their death, had received divine honours among their fellow men; in this system Eolus, the god of the winds, became a skilful mariner who could foretell atmospheric changes; Atlas, supporting the sky and earth on his wide shoulders, had been formerly a great astronomer; Jupiter, a ruler of Crete; Hercules, a knight-errant. Although these ancient writers interpreted the fables in so many different ways, they all agreed in denying that an atom of truth is found in these stories concerning the gods, and they insisted that no myth must be taken au pied de la lettre. At a later period it was thought that reminiscences of a barbaric age could be found in which the ancestors of the Greeks apparently occupied themselves by stealing, killing, deceiving, and eating their offspring. “Lactantius, St Augustine, and the first missionaries, in their attacks on the religious belief of the Greeks, and Romans availed themselves of these arguments of Euhemerus, and taunted them with worshipping gods that were no gods, but known and admitted to have been merely deified mortals.”[48] In later times the same theory was revived; certain theologians, rather lacking in penetration, looked to Greek mythology for traces of sacred personages, they imagined that they could recognise in Saturn and his three sons, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, the features of Noah and his sons, Ham, Japhet, and Shem; and in a recently published book the author suggests that when Hesiod describes the garden of the Hesperides, we have a tradition of the garden of Eden.

Thus from the moment when, for the first time, the ancient philosophers questioned “why?” from the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, to our own practical and matter-of-fact century, mythology has not ceased to compel attention, and to furnish endless matter of conjecture. Learned writers have sought in physical sciences, history, and metaphysics, an explanation of this phenomenon; but in spite of this vast labour inspired by a love of science, and carried on for more than two thousand years, the secret of the sphinx of mythology remains undisclosed, and we still ask, “what is mythology?” Is it an invention of Homer and Hesiod? Or is it a phase in the development of the human mind, a deviation in the growth of reason?

The school of philology has a solution of its own to offer; will it be as futile as the others? After hearing it shall we still say the Sphinx is mute? This school takes upon itself to assert that the explanation of the mystery can only be found in the Science of Language. It is a fact that the history of language—which is the history of the human mind—enables us to answer the preceding questions categorically. Yes. Mythology was inevitable, an inherent part of language itself, to be considered, not as a simple external symbol, but as the only incorporation of thought possible. Mythology, in the widest acceptation of the term, is the shadow which language casts on thought; and the whole history of philosophy from Thales to Hegel has been one uninterrupted struggle with mythology, a constant protest between thought and language.

CHAPTER VII
MYTHS

In order to appreciate truly our neighbour’s impressions and points of view, we must constantly detach ourselves from our own special way of seeing and feeling; this habit of abstraction—which is most difficult to every one—is indispensable when we are endeavouring to understand the natures of persons who lived many thousands of years ago, and who thought and spoke in a totally different manner from ourselves.

In seeking to grasp the phraseology of myths we perceive that its chief elements consist in a repetition of phrases in which the acts of nature are used as embodiments of the idea, under the figures of day and night, dawn and twilight, the sun and the moon, the heavens and the earth, as they stand in relation to man.

When we in the present century speak of the last hours of the day, we use precise and exact terms; we say, “It is late; the sun is setting; the moon rises; it is night.” Our ancestors also had occasion to mention these same hours, but as they did not speak of the facts of nature without investing them with some of their own personality, they preferred to say, “Dawn flies before the sun.” “The sun loves—pursues—embraces the dawn.” “She dies in the arms of the sun.” They spoke of the sun growing old—decaying—dying. Besides these general terms our ancestors used special designations, which the nature of their language suggested; the hymns of the Rig-Veda supply instances. One of these modes of speech it would be difficult for me to render in French, but the English language has the impersonal verb which will illustrate my meaning, for all such atmospheric phenomena such as rain, thunder, the light of day; instead of it rains, it thunders, it shines, our ancestors said, he rains, he thunders, he shines, without knowing who was this he, who for us is the third person masculine; but, naturally for them, he meant the rainer, the thunderer, the lightener, or, in other words—the agent.

Mythology, taken in its entirety, is the outcome of myths which preceded it. If the original meaning of the Greek word Logos—as both word and thought—has revealed to us a forgotten truth; the original meaning of mythos is also indispensable for the study of mythology. This Greek term means simply word as opposed to deed, and hardly differed at first from Logos. Afterwards, however, a distinction was made between myth,—a fable, a story, and logos, a historical account. Thus a myth was at first a word. Almost all terms used in the first spontaneous stage of language had for their basis striking metaphors, whose signification may have been forgotten, and these terms having lost their original as well as poetical meaning, remained words only, current in familiar conversation.

I give the following myths as they have come down to us.

Endymion is the son of Zeus and Kalyke, but he is also the son of Æthlios, a king of Elis, who is himself called a son of Zeus; for, according to Greek customs, the reigning race of Elis derived its origin from the king of the gods. Endymion is one of the many names of the sun, but with special reference to the setting or dying sun; it is derived from a verb which originally meant to dive into; an expression such as “the sun dived” presupposes an earlier conception, that it dived into the sea. But the verb enduo is never used in classical Greek for setting, because the simple verb duo had become the technical term for sunset. Thus this myth of Endymion owes its origin to the use probably of enduo in some Greek dialect, though not the commonly received term for sunset. The original meaning of Endymion being once forgotten, what was told originally of the setting sun was now told of a name, which in order to have any meaning, had to be changed into a god or hero.

This handsome prince or shepherd, according to the different versions of the tale, went to Karia, where on Mount Latmos he had strange adventures; he slept in a cave to which the rays of the moon, Selene, penetrated, and in the ancient poetical and proverbial language of Elis it was said, “Selene loves and watches Endymion; Selene embraces Endymion and kisses him into sleep.” The name Selene is so transparent that the word moon pierces through it; we should have guessed that the moon was intended, even if tradition had only preserved her other name, Asterodia—“wanderer amongst the stars”; the names Hecate or Lucina do not force us to acknowledge their fitness, they present to our imagination a totally different figure (as they suggest opaqueness) from Selene. Learned writers at times still put forward the explanation with regard to mythology that it “was a past which was never a present,” but this myth of Endymion was “present” with the people of Elis at the period of its narration.

These and similar expressions were repeated long after their meaning had ceased to be understood; and as the human mind is generally as anxious for a reason as ready to invent one, the poets added to this story several details, and reasons why Endymion sank into eternal sleep after a life of but one day; and if allusions were made to these by a popular poet, it became a mythological fact, repeated and embellished by later poets.

The construction of such a name as Eos does not differ materially from that of any other name, but as all roots expressed at the first denote action, it follows that for all an agent must be found; the name of Eos in Sanscrit is Ushas, dawn, or “the bright one” from the root Vas, to shine; thus Eos meant originally “he or she shines.” But who was “he” or “she”? Thus the inevitable myth is evolved. For us the dawn is only the natural illumination of the sky, the brightness of the morning; our ancestors received a different impression by the break of day. After having coined a word meaning “he or she shines,” that is the light, or Eos, the Greeks continued to portray each step of Eos as she preceded the appearance of the sun on the celestial vault; “Eos is followed by the sun—is loved by the sun”; she is conceived as a bright and beautiful woman; if she appeared veiled in clouds, she would be considered as a veiled bride; thus the epithets and relationships showered on Eos become intelligible, she is the daughter of Hyperion, thus her father would be the high heaven, since hyper corresponds to the Latin super; she is the sister of Helios and Selene, the sun and the moon. As soon as a name such as Eos was first enunciated and used in daily conversation, it grew and gathered new materials round itself; all the names surrounding Eos in Greek and Aurora in Latin show us how inevitably what we call mythology springs up from the soil of language. Even such simple sentences as “Eos appears, disappears, or dies” are changed at once into myth, fable, and legend, and it soon becomes impossible to draw a line between what is simple language and what is myth.

We do not unfortunately always possess the original form of each legend as it first passed from mouth to mouth in the towns and country; thus our chief sources are the ancient chroniclers, who took mythology for history, and used only so much of it as answered their purpose, and these accounts do not reach us at first hand.

We find a legend in Greek mythology which has much exercised the learned; the nymph Daphne flies before Phœbus Apollo, her mother, the earth, moved by compassion, takes her to her bosom, and immediately a laurel appears and fills the abyss into which Daphne had vanished. The mythologists asked themselves what could be the meaning of this; the more phlegmatic amongst them considered that it had no special meaning at all, but was simply to be looked upon as a fable; why seek further for a hidden import? Why? Because people do not relate such stories concerning their gods and heroes without some good motive.

In the legend of Endymion the Greek language supplies all that is needed to make it intelligible, but there are many instances of the difficulty, or even the impossibility of explaining certain Greek names by the help of Greek only; since a name is not converted into a myth until its original meaning has become obscured in the language which gave it birth, though still perfectly comprehensible in another of the same family, it behoves the classical philologist to surrender all etymological researches of this nature to the comparative philologist, whose privilege it is to seek to discover the signification of a Greek word by confronting it with contemporary witnesses from the German, Celtic, or Sanscrit. In the Teutonic languages, for instance, day has several names which are derived from the root dah, to burn, to be hot; and this same root has also given rise to the Greek name for dawn. In Sanscrit it is called Ahana, from ahan or dahan, the root of which is ah; dah and dahan may have lost their initial d, or this letter may have been added to the root ah; these gains and losses are met with frequently.

The Sanscrit name Ahana, known before Greek and Sanscrit became separated, occurs but once in a hymn of the Rig-Veda; in India this mythological germ withered away, and even the name Ahana would not have survived, but for this single verse which saved it from oblivion; but it developed into a splendid growth in Greece, in the legend of Eos, which I have quoted.

In this hymn addressed to Ushas we read: “We have crossed the frontier of this darkness; Ahana shining forth gives light, lighting up all the world, awakening mortals to walk about—she received praise from every thinker.” Ahana rises from the head of Dyu, the forehead of the sky; she shows herself in the east, she advances and awakens the sleepers. In Sanscrit budh means to wake and to know, but light in Sanscrit has again a double meaning, and means knowledge, much more frequently and distinctly than light; this explains how Ahana, in awakening mortals, causes persons to know.

The stories of Daphne and of Ahana are closely allied, and the one explains the other. As long as we remain ignorant of the fact that at first Daphne and Aurora were one, this myth is inexplicable; but turn the name Ahana into Greek, and you have the Dawn in the features of a nymph loved by Apollo, and dying when the bright sun touched her with his rays.

But why, it may be asked, was Daphne supposed to have been changed into a laurel-tree? The dawn was called daphne, the burning; so was the laurel—as wood that burns easily, and whose flame throws a bright light—two different objects, but alike under one aspect, though two distinct acts. The root dah is found in daphne for laurel equally with Daphne, dawn, the synonymy of the two names producing the myth of Daphne. Although this legend first came to life on Greek soil, it would have been unintelligible without the help of the Veda, as the later Sanscrit supplied no key to it.

The Sanscrit root Ah is also the germ of the name of Athena, the termination of the name corresponding to Ahana; Athene is said to spring from the head of Zeus. This extraordinary birth, though post-Homeric, is no doubt of ancient date, since it repeats exactly the birth of Ahana. The Hellenists maintain that the Greeks were unconscious that the word Athene meant the dawn; doubtless few amongst them knew that Zeus originally meant the surface or forehead of the sky. It is also true that when the people of Athens worshipped Athene as their tutelary deity, she became something very different from the Indian Ushas; but if we notice carefully all the many and various ideas concerning this Greek goddess, we shall be led to the supposition that her cradle was no other than that of the dawn, namely, the east, the forehead of the sky, or Zeus. Neither in the Veda, nor in Homer, is there any mention of the mother of the dawn, although both mention her parents.

It is a curious fact that in the mythology of Italy, Minerva, who was identical with Athene, should from the beginning have assumed a name apparently expressive of the intellectual rather than the physical character of the Dawn-goddess. Minerva or Menerva is clearly connected with mens, the Greek menos, the Sanscrit manas, mind; mane in Latin is morning; manare is specially used of the rising sun; and matuta, another name of the same category, is the Dawn. The root man, which in all Aryan languages means thought, was at a very early time, like the Sanscrit budh, destined to express the revived consciousness of the whole of nature at the approach of the light of the morning. The equation Ahane = Athene is both phonetically and mythologically irreproachable, the correlative Minerva can also be explained mythologically.

To reject the explanations of these myths which Comparative Philology furnishes, it would be necessary to prove that Ahana and Eos do not mean the dawn, that Athene does not correspond with Ahana, and that Helios is not the sun.

Mythologists have sometimes failed to discover the primitive character of certain myths, because they have not looked beyond the Greek etymology. The word Erinnys, “hovering in the gloom,” corresponds exactly to the Sanscrit Saranyû = “break of day.” Poets sometimes speak of the Dawn as avenging the crimes committed in the dark; the myth of Erinnys denotes this same idea. Instead of our lifeless and abstract expression, “A crime is sure to be discovered,” the old proverbial and poetical saying amongst the Greeks and Hindoos was, Erinnys—Saranyû, “will bring misdeeds to light.” At first this phrase was free from all mythological taint, but it was afterwards transformed into a myth by the Greeks, as they were ignorant of the true signification of the name of Erinnys.

When the mythology of Greece fails to furnish an explanation of many of the Greek phrases, because it belongs to a later date than the classical period, the Veda may then be questioned, and will supply us with the information, by disclosing an ancient substratum of human thought, such as existed amongst the inhabitants of one of the most important regions of the world, India. It is with as much pleasure as assurance that we repeat to those learned scholars, who decline to open their eyes in order to see, or see only what they consider should be there, the Brahmanic saying, “It is not the fault of the post that the blind man passes it without noticing it.”

It seems astonishing that a people so richly endowed as the Greeks should have found pleasure in romancing so constantly concerning the sun and the moon, the day and the night, the dawn and the twilight; but the custom of repeating these mythological phrases, which much resembled each other, dated from an epoch before the Greeks, when nothing more powerfully attracted and fascinated the imagination of man than the aspect of nature’s forces, especially the return of the sun, bringing with it each morning light and heat and life. Repeated thus incessantly these phrases became idiomatic, and were retold long after the thread connecting them with the simple facts of nature was broken and lost to memory. At first some old grandmother would repeat them, partly understanding them in their true natural sense, and partly metaphorically; the sons of the old people would repeat them with a partial understanding; but the grandsons would relate them only for their peculiarities, or for the charm of their style and setting; and the great-grandchildren would hand them on at random, with no comprehension of their meaning. At a much later period when all these sayings, with no connection between them, had become traditional, the poets would embody them in verse, giving them their first form and permanence in a cycle of legends. They congratulated themselves on the treasure-trove, but marvelled that the Greeks should enclose these bald phrases of perpetual iteration in the casket of their literature. They might as well ask why the Greeks apparently sanctioned all the irregular verbs their language holds by retaining them in their grammar. Is it not a historical fact that cannot be denied that the whole Aryan peoples, without exception, have conserved as the heritage of their common origin not only the names of their divinities, their legends, and their folk-lore, but also remains of their primitive language. Here is a noteworthy statement. Comparative Philology has proved that there is nothing really irregular in a language, and that what was formerly considered so in declensions and conjugations is the stratum on which the edifice of each language raised itself progressively. This same apparent irregularity is found also in mythology, because it is itself only a sort of dialect or offshoot of language.

Since the raison d’être of myths, as such, is a forgetfulness of the original sense of the words, we cannot hope to be able to explain all the mythological recitals; no one has more clearly stated the difficulty, nor expressed it with greater modesty, than he who has laid the most lasting foundation of comparative mythology. Grimm says: “I shall indeed interpret all that I can, but I cannot interpret all that I should like.”[49]

In examining these archives, which, if only on account of their antiquity, are very superior to any other evidence for our purpose, we learn that identification differs from comparison. It is only possible to identify two or more divinities by seeing if one name applies equally to all, and by showing that this name denotes the essence of each; this result is obtained when, for instance, we note a general resemblance between a god or a hero of the Veda, and a god or hero of Hesiod, and discover that though their names may be phonetically dissimilar, yet that they have one source. Uranus, in the language of Hesiod, is used as a name for the sky—“a firm place for the blessed gods”; and the poet says that Uranus covers everything, and that when he brings the night he is stretched out, everywhere embracing the earth. This sounds like a reproduction of the name of Varuna, which is derived from a root Var, to cover (the Sanscrit term varutra, overcoat, would prove this if need be). The name Uranus in the Greek apparently retains something of its primitive meaning, which is not the case with the name of Zeus and Apollo. Varuna and Uranus evidently both express the same mythological concept, that of the covering, enclosing sky; this may even be one of the most ancient discoveries of comparative mythology. In the same way we prove that Ushas, Eos, Daphne, Ahana, and Athene were five names of the dawn, and that they can be traced back to a time before Greek and Sanscrit were separated. Thus, whilst one legend becomes differentiated from another by its own peculiar form and attributes, the name of its original prototype remains etymologically the same, though taking varying forms amongst the various peoples who use the legend; it is in this immutable name that the continuity of ideas lies, which nothing obliterates, and which traverses the centuries, and connects the mythologies of countries as totally distinct as India, Greece, and Ireland. But we must remember that all that is taken for etymology is not always so; the explanations which Homer gives of the names of the divinities only proves that at his time the original meaning had been forgotten. To us who now know the true principles of mythology, it is clear that it represents a prehistoric period of language, and the light it throws on the times that followed, has the same importance with regard to the study of the human mind, that geology and paleontology have for the knowledge of the earth.

Sometimes we come upon difficulties of another kind when we seek to translate the language of the poets into our modern forms of thought and speech. In consequence of the absence of merely auxiliary words in mythological language, each word, whether noun or verb, had its full original power, it was heavy and unwieldy, it said more than it ought to say. Here is an example: Nyx (night), the mother of Moros (fate), of Ker (destruction), of Thanatos (death), of Hypnos (sleep), and of the Oneïroi (dreams), and these,—her progeny, Night is said, by the poet, to have borne without a father. She has also other children: Momos (blame), Oizys (woe), the Hesperides, which are the evening stars, Nemesis (vengeance), Apate (fraud), Philotes (lust), Geras (old age), and Eris (strife). Now let us use our modern expressions. “The stars are seen as the night approaches,” “we sleep, we dream, we die,” “we run into danger during night,” “nightly revels lead to strife, angry discussions, and woe,” “many nights bring old age, and at last death,” “an evil deed concealed at first by the darkness of night will at last be revealed by the day,” “night herself will be revenged on the criminal”; and we have translated the language of Hesiod, a language to a great extent understood by the people to whom it was addressed many hundreds of years ago, and it is made comprehensible to us by the addition of some auxiliary words. This is hardly mythological language, but rather a poetical and proverbial kind of expression known to all poets whether modern or ancient, and frequently to be found in the language of common people when it becomes proverbial.

“In Greece the mortal element, inherent in all gods, was eliminated to a great extent by the conception of heroes. Whatever was too human in the ancient legends told of Zeus and Apollo was transferred to so-called half gods or heroes, who were represented as the sons or favourites of the gods. The two-fold character of Herakles as a god and as a hero is acknowledged even by Herodotus, and some of his epithets would have been sufficient to indicate his solar and originally divine character. But in order to make some of the legends told of the solar deity possible or conceivable, it was necessary to represent Herakles as a more human being, and to make him rise to the seat of the immortals only after he had endured toils and sufferings incompatible with the dignity of an Olympian god.”[50] The divinities of a second and third order, who were sometimes solicited for special favours, were perhaps placed in the same category as some provincial or local saints, who were considered more accessible and more pitiful in certain places, just as some physicians make a practice of curing those ills only of which they had made a speciality.

There were also abstract divinities, representing certain virtues in the eyes of the people, which were highly esteemed and useful to possess; each of these qualities which were conceived separately, and considered in the superlative degree, were from that time raised to the rank of a divine person, thus altars and temples were dedicated to Courage, Strength, and Piety; Fame was likewise thus honoured. “Great Fame is never lost though scattered abroad,” said Hesiod, “it is in itself a divinity.”

The language of mythology was in use at a late period. History tells us that the Greek town of Cyrene in Libya was founded about the thirty-seventh Olympiad, the ruling race came from Thessaly; the foundation of the colony was due to the oracle of Apollo at Pytho. This simple historical fact has been thus rendered, from the habit of not recounting events as they happened. “The heroic maid Cyrene, who lived in Thessaly, was loved by Apollo, and carried off to Libya.”

The question has been often asked, what can be the origin of the fables which are identical in character and form, whether we find them on Indian, Greek, Italian, Persian, Slavonic, Celtic, or Teutonic soil. Was there a period of temporary insanity, through which the human mind had to pass, and was it a madness identically the same in the south of India and in the north of Ireland? The necessity of solving this problem became more imperative when collections of these ancient traditions were brought from countries which formerly were almost unknown to us; incredible tales came from all parts, from amongst the Hottentots, the Patagonians, Zulus, Esquimaux, and Mongols; in all cases we were able to recognise the fables with which we were already so well acquainted, from having seen them in Aryan literature. When Max Müller first published his essays on the Greek myths, the mythologists acknowledged generally that it was very natural he should devote so much time to the explanation of the Greek legends, since these same stories had been universally found in all parts of the globe, from the one pole to the other; stories of men and women turned into trees, trees transformed into men, men behaving as animals, animals talking as if they were men, men swallowed by gods and brought up again whole, as were the children of Kronos; in all places the same adventures were told of the sun and moon, also swallowed, but the swallower not known. The Greek myths—so it was asserted by the learned who did not care to abandon the old paths—form only one page of that vast mythology created by the disordered imagination of nations in their infancy; the epidemic was general, and it is useless to seek for a definite or peculiar meaning in such and such a local myth.

Nevertheless, in presence of these striking likenesses, impartial and clear-sighted science recognised that there must be something in the human mind that of necessity tended to mythology, nay, that there must be some reason in all the unreason that goes by the name of myth. That “something” Max Müller discovered to be language, in its natural progress from roots to words, up to definite and special names. Mythology has now been acknowledged to be an inevitable phase in the growth of language and thought; a form of expression which changes non-personal beings into personal, and all relationships into actions; it is a mental phenomenon so peculiar that it would be difficult to avoid the admission that it emanated from a distinct stratum, it is metaphoric language and thought; and it is the duty of the geologist of language to establish the authenticity of this epoch of organic life in humanity, which is contemporaneous with the most ancient forms of language.

If Hegel compares the discovery of the common origin of Greek and Sanscrit to that of a new world, the same may be said with regard to the common origin of all the mythologies, for already the science of Comparative Mythology has risen to the same importance as Comparative Philology.

The supposition that grammatical gender of nouns must necessarily be the cause of personification, and produce myths which had no previous existence at the time when this denotation of sex did not yet exist, has been proved incorrect. But the following fact, which concerns language more than mythology, is not so evident at first sight, viz., that however the various languages may differ externally, and however they may lack gender, yet they have without exception what is analogous to it, and takes its place; this is a system of fundamental classification to which all equally submit, and which each language supplies; the result is that at the foundation of thought common to all humanity, certain forms are found answering the purpose of gender. Each myth and each legend was at first the intelligible expression of an intelligible thought, and as the thought contained in each recital must evidently be the same wherever there were men to repeat it, the science of Comparative Mythology seeks to place its hand on the expression which best renders this one and the selfsame thought, under different aspects.

What is commonly called Hindoo mythology is of little or no avail for comparative purposes, because nothing is systematically arranged. Names are used in one hymn of the Rig-Veda as appellatives, in another as names of gods. There are as yet no genealogies, and no recorded marriages between gods and goddesses. As the conception of the poet varied, so varied the nature of these gods; the myths are arranged with little order. Nowhere is the wide distance which separates the ancient poems of India from the most ancient literature of Greece more clearly felt than when we compare the growing myths of the Veda with the full-grown, or already decaying myths on which the poetry of Homer is founded. The Veda is the real theogony of the Aryan races, while that of Hesiod is a copy only of the original image. The Hindoo Rishis differed much amongst themselves in their representation of things; some of them attributed the dispersion of clouds by a solar hero, to the will of some supreme or divine being; others considered the combatants to be the supreme beings themselves, who dispersed the clouds full of lightning and thunder, making the sky serene after the fight. These are the two distinct interpretations of the solar and atmospheric schools; the dualism in nature, which at a later period took the character of light and darkness, even of good and evil, was at the beginning the dualism of day and night, spring and winter, life and death, represented by the two great luminaries of the physical world.

The characteristic traits of the moon which made the deepest impression on our ancestors were its increase, and afterwards its gradual diminution, until its total disappearance. The eclipses, though filling the minds of the people with sudden fear at first, did not continue long to awaken dread or curiosity, as they were of rare occurrence and transitory; the moon, it was thought, was swallowed and afterwards disgorged by some hostile power; but the monthly increase and diminution required some other explanation. The Hindoos, in seeking to discover the abode of the gods and of their own ancestors, assigned the brilliant sky to the former, and where, therefore, should the Fathers live if not in the vast vault and in the moon? This was, in fact, the belief of the whole Aryan race. But the subject is complicated, since in an earlier period of lunar mythology, we find in the Vedic Pantheon a divinity of the name of Soma, which certain poets identify with the plant of that name, whose intoxicating juice played an important part in the sacrifices; there is no doubt a great obscurity with regard to these two rival powers, to which the same name had been given, and on which mythologists have found it difficult to enlighten us; but quite recently exponents of the Rig-Veda have discovered that Soma originally meant the moon itself, thus the Rishis allow it to be apparent in their hymns that there were at one time two Somas—the plant and its juice, and at an earlier period the other Soma, known only to the old Brahmans, which was the moon. A belief held by the Hindoos was that the moon supplied nourishment to the gods, which was the cause of the diminution; its increase was explained by the entrance into it of the souls of their ancestors; the gods swallowing these also as an integral portion of the moon.

All these ideas were of slow development, and of successive growth; no portion of mythology had a systematic elaboration.

I will add as a curious scientific fact, that lately botanists have sought in vain in Northern India and in Persia for a plant whose qualities correspond to those of the Soma as described in the Vedic hymns; they are more or less agreed that it must be akin to the Ephedra, but as this plant abounded in the whole country between Siberia and the Iberian Peninsula, there was no hope of discovering the locality of the Aryans by means of the habitat of the plant.

It has been often asserted that these stories of men and things that have been swallowed must have come from countries formerly inhabited by cannibals; learned writers, even Herbert Spencer—to quote one instance—consider, not without some appearance of reason, that Hindoos, Greeks, Romans and Germans could hardly have put forth similar stories of this kind had there been no foundation in fact. But the verbs to eat, to swallow, will admit of divers interpretations; we say of a man that it was impossible for him to swallow such an insult, or that he has consumed his fortune; and this mode of speech surprises no one; where we speak of an eclipse, the inhabitants of the shores of the Baltic say that the moon or sun is in the act of being eaten; in India instead of saying such an one has been flogged, it would be said, he has tasted the whip. A little reflection will convince us that if nations who had nothing in common but human nature, spoke of the night as covering, hiding, swallowing various beings, especially the sun and the day, it was not more unreasonable on their part than to say, as we do, that day and night follow each other, instead of expressing ourselves after a more scientific manner, and not less correctly, in saying that day and night are the successive effects of the rotation of the earth on its axis.

Having discovered that mythological phraseology was sometimes due to misconceptions of names, and that poetical fantasies had their share, philologists quoted an instance of the imagination being misled by a simple mistake; that of the name “Great Bear” being given to a certain group of stars. The Sanscrit root Ark signified to brighten, to praise, to glorify, to celebrate; man praised, glorified, celebrated the sun, moon and stars; for these purposes the word Ark was used. For all we know the substantive rik may really have conveyed all these meanings during the earliest period of the Aryan language; but if we look at the fully developed branches of that family of speech, we find that in this, its simplest form, rik has been divested of all meaning in the Rig-Veda except one; it only means a song of praise, a hymn, that gladdens the heart of man, and brightens the countenance of the gods. The other words, however, which rik might have expressed were not entirely given up, but the root was rendered more definite; thus arki and arkis were formed, these no longer meant hymns of praise, but light, ray. It is difficult to understand how Riksha, in the sense of bright, has become the name of “the bear”; might it not be on account of his brilliant tawny fur, or from his bright eyes? No one knows. Certain it is that in Sanscrit bears were called Riksha. But the word Riksha had also another meaning, as shown by a passage in the Rig-Veda 1, 24, 10. “These stars (riksha) fixed high above, which are seen by night; whither did they go by day?” The Commentator observed that the word riksha is not used in the sense of stars in general, but that according to tradition the name is only given to that particular constellation, which in later Sanscrit is called “the Seven Rishis,” or “the Seven Sages.” And thus it happened that when the dispersion took place, and the Aryans left their primitive home and settled in Europe, they ceased to use the plural form “Arktoi,” or many bears, and spoke of the group of seven stars as the Bear, the Great Bear, without knowing why these stars had originally received that name.

It did not escape the notice even of the less erudite that the gods of Greece and Rome and of other Aryan nations had a close connection with the most striking phenomena of nature; they also recognised the same origin amongst the divinities of the Semitic nations, as well as those of Egypt, Africa and America; this could, of course, be accounted for by the presence of the same primitive stratum of human thought, resembling those deeper geological layers, which only show themselves in a partial and fragmentary manner.

But none of these mythologists attached the least importance to the names of the divinities, and if they were told that they were nothing but names, it sounded almost like heresy to them, and they ignored the fact that one of the latest scientific discoveries was being submitted to them. Yet it is indubitable that the sun and the moon were in the places occupied by them at present before they were named; but not till they were named was there a Savitar, a Helios, a Selene or a Mene. If then it is the name which makes the gods in mythology, in enabling us to distinguish one from another, it follows that we must call the Science of Language to our aid in order to solve the problem of mythology, since that alone discloses the causes which have despoiled the names of their primitive meaning, and that alone shows how the germs of decrepitude, inherent in language, affect both the phonetic portion and also the signification of words, since words naturally react on thought and mould it.

CHAPTER VIII
BETWEEN SLEEPING AND WAKING

The habit which I have contracted of living in the society of our ancestors of prehistoric times, would, it might be thought, naturally cause me to notice the dissimilarities between us and them rather than the likenesses; this often happens, but not always. Our fathers, for instance, did not know the thousandth part of our vocabulary, which is very copious; this would seem to indicate that our knowledge has considerably increased in the course of thirty or forty centuries. Words of deep import are familiar to us; who amongst us does not know and use such as these—Law, Necessity, Liberty, Spirit, Matter, Conscience, Belief, Nature, Providence, Revelation, Inspiration, the Soul, Religion, Infinite, Immortality, and many others, which are either of recent origin, or have become new because their meaning has changed? Here the difference between our fathers and ourselves springs into sight.

But the points of resemblance are still more striking.

Long before our present era, certain philosophers asserted that their world was full of gods, we may say with equal truth that God fills our world; His name is in every mouth, and our little children know it well. Moreover the complete identity between certain mental acts of our fathers and our own is easily recognised. Our fathers were satisfied not to enquire concerning the nature of their gods, they knew their names, and that sufficed. We too have become accustomed to hear God’s name repeated frequently, without always questioning ourselves as to its meaning, and in what way He has made the earth His habitation.

To talk of what we do not grasp must be essentially human, since we find the practice in two social conditions, separated from each other by thousands of years.

It is incredible to what a point we of the nineteenth century carry our lack of enquiry. If one day we were to count on our fingers the number of interesting subjects we had allowed to pass by us without any interrogations concerning them, fifty hands would not suffice us for the tale; our ignorance would then become apparent. Should we feel humiliated? In all probability no, for before arriving at this much to be desired consummation, we should have been carried away by many thoughts in no way bearing on the subject, and the one thought which would come prominently to the front and hinder us from passing our conduct in review would be, “I see no necessity to apply myself to them.” In fact, nothing is easier and nothing so reposeful to our mind as acquiescence in the popular opinion, which we allow to guide us in our estimation of words and phrases; as so frequently happens with ourselves (by “ourselves” I mean that very considerable portion of society which separates the working classes from the savants and philosophers).

“All things are full of the gods,” was said by the heathen in former days; and in fact divinities abounded; this was not surprising. “God has chosen to Himself a people and spread His name over the whole earth, and to make His will to be known,” as we say now. Thus we know that God is, and that His commandments must be kept.

To consider words as ideas is not wise. Why do we not imitate the savages who when they hear an organ for the first time have a great desire to open it in order to see what is inside; and we who are civilised play with much light-hearted readiness on the gigantic instrument of language without seeking to know the value of the sounds we draw from it; and the names of beings and objects which should exercise the most powerful influence to which moral things can be subjected, are treated as mere sounds.

Have we asked ourselves the meaning of the word God? Many must answer no to this question. This is not well, in spite of the fact that those who have asked it in this form have not always succeeded in obtaining an answer; no one has formed a complete conception of God, since neither sense nor reason is equal to the task. Plato, although named “Divine” by the ancient philosophers and by Christian theologians, did not like to speak of The Gods, but replacing the plural by the singular used the word “Divine,” but he did not explain what he understood by this word. Plato certainly mentions the Creator of the Universe, the Father of humanity, but—“he does not tell His name, for he knew it not; he does not tell His colour, for he said it not; he does not tell His size, for he touched it not.”[51] Xenophanes, who lived 300 years before Plato, said, “There is one God, the greatest amongst gods and men; neither in form nor in thought like unto mortals.”[52]

The Greek philosophers protested against all attempts to apply a name which should be adequate to the Supreme Being; since all the words chosen failed to grasp His essence, and only designated certain sides and points of view, predicting of Him whatever was most beautiful in nature. For this reason early Christian writers who were Greeks rather than Jews, who had studied in the schools of Plato and Aristotle, spoke of God in the same abstract language, the same negative terms; they said, “We cannot call Him Light, since Light is His creation; we cannot call Him Spirit, since the Spirit is His breath; nor Wisdom, since Wisdom emanates from Him; nor Force, since Force is the manifestation of His Power.”

Thus instead of saying what God is, the philosophers, heathen as well as Christian, prefer to say what He is not. But in that case what idea could man form of a Being whom the wisest amongst them could not represent or describe? Do we understand the nature of this Supreme Being better by using the name so well known of Providence? Again no; since we have introduced several meanings into this word which are inconsistent the one with the other. Amongst them there might well be some that are erroneous, which would thus lead us to rest our hopes on false foundations.

This mist, hiding from us the meaning of words and obscuring our ideas, is partly owing to a fault committed by the ancients themselves.

When our ancestors communed with their divinities, they did not ask themselves what the names they pronounced really meant; in invoking Varuna, Helios, Athene, Prithvi, and the others, they were satisfied, at least for the time being, since names possess a strange calming property; this unquestioning acquiescence has been bequeathed to us. We are neither more enquiring, more exact, nor more pedantic than the greater part of our ancestors; we speak of angels, for instance, without seeking to fathom their nature, much in the same way as we might mention lords and dukes without troubling ourselves to reflect that the one means “bread-giver” and the other “dux,” or one capable of being a leader of men.

In speaking of the soul, the immortality of the soul, and of religion, we use words which have become common property, and it is not necessary to analyse them in order to feel sure that they represent things which are very real; still we do not strive to understand what these things really are. Thus it happens that words whose meaning is unknown to us or escapes us, are generally those of which we make daily use; we keep to the impression received of them in our childhood, or accepted by current opinion, or with which sentiment invests them, but this is unsatisfactory; we should feel ashamed of not possessing more accurate knowledge than this of geography or arithmetic. On the other hand, there are scientific terms which seem to us so technical that we willingly abandon their use to experts, and yet their meaning can be readily and definitely grasped.

What meaning, for instance, has the word infinite for us, even if taken in its most simple acceptation; this infinite towards which our thoughts travel when we raise our eyes to the skies? Astronomers say to us, “Look at something greater than the greatest possible greatness, that is the infinitely great.” They then quote figures, but these figures of infinite greatness elude our imagination, we repeat them mechanically and only out of respect to the high scientific authority who guarantees the accuracy of the calculations or the value of the appreciation.

A small object, apparently of the size of a homeopathic globule, moves in space, it contains our continents and our oceans, this globule moves in company with other globules of the same nature.

Astronomers speak to us of the millions of miles separating us from the sun, yet this distance dwindles down to nothing as compared with the nearest star, which, we are told, lies twenty millions of millions of miles from our earth. Another stupendous thought is that a ray of light traverses space at the rate of 187,000 miles in a second, and yet it requires three years to reach us.

But this is only a small matter.

More than one thousand millions of such stars have been discovered by our telescopes, and there may be millions of millions of suns within our siderial system which are as yet beyond the reach of our best telescopes; even that siderial system need not be regarded as single within the universe, thousands of millions of similar systems may be recognised in the galaxy or milky way.[53]

Now let us turn our eyes to the infinitely little. One drop of water taken from the ocean contains atoms so small that a grain of the finest dust would seem colossal by the side of them; chemists are now able to ascertain the relative positions of atoms so minute that millions of them can stand upon a needle’s point.

All this we gather from science when—working together with the telescope—it investigates space; and this may still be little compared to what we might see through glasses, which should magnify objects some millions of times more than our best instruments.

The infinite in space has engaged the attention of many thinkers; I will quote from two only, as this infinite, which they studied from different points of view, yet suggests thoughts somewhat alike. Kepler, the discoverer of the laws on which our planetary system is based, said, “My highest wish is to find within the God whom I have found everywhere without.” Kant, the philosopher, to whom the Divine in nature and the Divine in man appeared as transcendent and beyond our cognisance, and who refused to listen to any theological argument tending to prove the existence of God, yet says, “Two things fill me with new and ever growing admiration and awe: the starry firmament above me, and the moral law within me; neither of them is hidden in darkness, I see them both before me, and I connect them directly with the consciousness of my own existence.”[54]

These are very abstract thoughts; and it is pertinent to notice that the most solemn religious terms, and the most striking expressions of admiration, and poetical phrases of love, have their source in verbal roots, indicative of acts and conditions palpable to the senses.

But I am approaching too closely to matters of high import. I am drawn by the word Infinite. Aristotle said truly, “the Infinite attracts.” He was thinking of that other infinite, which is not the one intended by astronomers; but for myself the infinite in nature captivates me so powerfully that I find it difficult to touch earth again. Let us walk in beaten paths; let us endeavour to grasp the meaning of the more simple words learnt mechanically at school, such as those denoting abstraction as well as nouns, and terms both general and particular; and let us see to what phase of thought and speech these grammatical exercises will carry us.

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Each palpable object is known to us according as it affects our senses, that is to say, by its properties; all impalpable objects cannot be known otherwise than by their qualities; but nothing exists in nature, whether palpable or impalpable, that has only one property or one quality, each object has several; an object as it exists in reality is concrete, and has a concrete name. If we wished to consider only one of its attributes, we should have to take that apart and isolate it, in order to fix our thoughts exclusively on that; “we must drop that of which the attributes are attributes.”[55] We see white snow, white chalk, white milk, we have the sensation of the white colour; but to take whiteness apart from the snow, the chalk, and the milk, is an operation which requires an instrument, a means, this we possess in a word, viz., the word white. Without that word we should have the sensation of whiteness, but not the idea; it is the word white, whilst separating the white colour from the snow, the chalk, and the milk, that gives us the abstract idea as well as the abstract term whiteness. This mental act is called abstraction: and it is by this process of abstraction that we really arrive at the true knowledge of anything, apart from the sensation of it only.

Here is another example of abstraction. Let us suppose that two persons are in one room, and that there are in the room two windows, two doors, two tables and two chairs. Let us try to obliterate in our mind the persons, the windows, the doors, the tables and the chairs; nothing now remains but the abstraction two. Now two, as such, apart from objects, does not exist in nature; still it is a conception we can retain in our mind, and this abstract idea can be incorporated in the abstract word two.

These two examples of abstraction tell us but little of what is meant by it; and although they teach us little of the part abstraction plays in our mental life, they are correct from a logical point of view, and clearly demonstrate the impossibility of retaining a thought apart from the word expressing it, since evidently the representation of two and of whiteness could not have been made if the words had been lacking.

The faculty of abstraction has no doubt taken time to develop in man, and the absence of abstract words and consequently of abstract ideas was complete in primitive man as it now is in our very young children. The faculties of brutes can by no means attain to abstraction. One reason, amongst others, why we have no ground to think brutes have abstract general ideas is that they do not speak, that they have no use of the words without which it is impossible to carry out the operation which I have just described, and to cause a conception to arise from a sensation.

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When, in our early days, our parents gave us instruction on the three divisions of natural history, and explained to us of what they consisted, we did not suspect that a period of immense length had elapsed before man succeeded in thus skilfully classifying the vast mass of names in the manner which struck us as so natural and inevitable. Many thousands of objects were before us, each one entitled to bear an expressive name; and in proportion as our knowledge of things increased was science called upon to furnish new terms; their name became legion and memory failed to retain them. It therefore became a necessity to classify the objects of a common nature under one name; hence the evolution of the terms animal, vegetable and mineral, which relieved us from the burden of enumerating all the objects composing genus and species; then in speaking of them to others we use the generic term, which at the same time presents the image to our own minds. Thus when we wish to denote men having the same nationality as ourselves we employ the collective term compatriot; in the same way the word furniture includes all that serves to furnish our rooms. By the help of this ingenious combination we relieve our memories of a mass of encumbering words, we economise our time and our powers, and simplify the machinery of our thoughts.

This is evidently an advantage. But now a difficulty presents itself. When employing these general terms, such as vegetable, animal, the human race, we are speaking of things of which we are ignorant, and are therefore for us as if they had no existence. We cannot have a complete knowledge of vegetables since that word comprehends all plants and trees on the earth; neither of animals, since “animal” includes not only all beasts lacking reason but also man who is endowed with it. We are equally ignorant of the human race, since it is composed of all human creatures, past, present and to come. It is evident that we only know individual persons and things, such as this fir tree or that oak, this horse, this cow, Paul or James, and we know them because we are in a position to distinguish them by naming them, or indicating them.

How is it that philosophers of the mental calibre possessed by Locke, Hume and Berkeley—whose minds follow so closely the progress of the perception of general ideas—did not question how it was that terms which were applicable to these ideas could equally well be applied to particular things? What was the origin of the word man that it could be as suitable for Paul or James as for many men, in fact the whole human race? This is a fact about which philosophers do not appear to have troubled themselves, and which the science of language alone can explain.

In the time of our primitive ancestors human knowledge was evolved gradually from what was confused and vague, before arriving at what was deemed settled and distinct. Man’s vocabulary was small, substantives were rare; that which we now understand by garden, courtyard, field, habitation, was merged into one and the same conception, and would be expressed by one vocable, of which the modern equivalent is enclosure; the word serpent designated all creatures that crawled, the word fruit implied all that could be eaten, the word man all who could think; each name was a general term expressive of a general idea.

We may remember that the Sanscrit word sar, to run, which was at first used for rivers in general, became a particular name; a demonstrative element joined to the verb, changing it into sarit, run here, sufficed at once to turn it into an intelligible phrase, and the name of a particular river. In order to form the word man-u-s, man, the constructors of language combined the root man, measurer, thinker, in its secondary form man-u, with the suffix s, which gives the meaning think-here. This was at first not of general application, but as it could be repeated any number of times and referred each time to different persons, who could each be named thinker-here, it became a general term. We thus see that the name manus was from the beginning something more than a mere conventional sign applied to a particular person as are all proper names. It was a predicative name, that is applicable to all possessing the same attributes, viz., of being able to think, and capable of the same act, that of thinking.

This discovery was followed by another not less unexpected. When examining the oldest word for name, which in Sanscrit is nâman, in Greek onoma, in Latin nomen, we find that it dates from a time when the Sanscrit, Greek and Latin languages were all one; consequently the English name and the German Name are not as we supposed, words invented by the ancient Saxons, but they already existed before the separation of Teutonic idioms from their elder brothers.

After some further steps our contemporary philologists discovered the sources whence proceeded this Sanscrit nâman; it is formed of the root nâ, originally gnâ, to know, joined to a suffix which generally expresses an instrument, a means; nâman is the representative of gnâman, which we recognise in the Latin cognomen, the consonant g being dropped as in natus, son, which was formerly gnatus. This word name had at first a much more extended meaning than that of a simple arbitrary sign applied “to what we call a thing.” The constructors of the word were aware of a fact of which consciousness was afterwards lost, and which the learned ignored during all the supervening centuries—viz., that all names, far from being mere conventional signs used to distinguish one thing from another, were meant to express what it was possible to know of a thing; and that a name thus places us in a position really to be cognisant of a thing. A natural insight taught the early framers of our language a truth only acquired by us after interminable researches, such as Hegel expresses when saying, “We think in words,” and which we find again in this somewhat tautological expression “nominibus noscimus” = “tel nom, telle notion.”

The fact that names, which are signs not of things, but of particular concepts, are all derived from general ideas, is one of the most fruitful discoveries of the science of language; since it not only expresses the truth which has been stated below, that language and the capability of forming general ideas separate man from the animals, but also a second truth that these two phenomena are two sides of the same truth. This explains the reason why the science of language rejects equally the interjectional theory and the mimetic, but accepts the final elements of language, those roots which all contain concepts.

The name man, which we all apply to ourselves, is a title of nobility to which none other can compare. It is the direct issue of man, which in its turn came from mâ, to measure, this gave mâs, moon, to the Sanscrit language. The word man contains in itself the kernel of subtle thought; if we connect the word with the celestial body that helps us to measure our time, we do not therefore necessarily invest the moon with a living and thinking personality; it is sufficient to consider that if our ancestors conceived of it as measuring the nights and days, they had in themselves the capabilities with which they invested the words they created.

We must also notice that the creators of this name having connected it with the loftiest thing of which they could conceive—thought—did not stop there; the sight of what was lowest—the dust—inspired them with another name, homo = earth-born; this Latin word having the same source as humus = the soil. Our fathers also gave themselves a third name, which was brotos in Greek, mortalis in Latin, and marta—the dying—in Sanscrit; they could hardly have applied the word mortal to themselves if they had not at the same time believed in other beings who did not die.

And this strange fact has come to pass, that on our planet there existed in former days men—simple mortals as they were—who manipulated thought, incorporating it with language, the only domain in which it can exist; then these marvellous men so entirely eclipsed themselves, and passed out of our ken, that their posterity do not recognise them under their modest garb of anonymity; for their work though still living through thousands of centuries, is so unrecognised that men ask themselves, “Why is it not possible to think apart from words?”

Thus we acknowledge the profound wisdom of the conceptions of our ancestors; but their understanding worked unequally, on certain points it was very advanced, but on others behindhand.

In following the march of human intellect in the past, we are struck by the slowness with which thought and speech co-operated. As long as our ancestors had no occasion to speak of the action of covering a surface with a liquid or soft substance, they did not possess the word var = to cover; “the name of colour in Sanscrit is varna, clearly derived from this word; and not till the art of painting, in its most primitive form, was discovered and named, could there have been a name for colour.” For some time they continued to view various objects differently coloured without distinguishing the tints; it is well known that the distinction of colours is of late date; our ancestors gazed on the blue sky, or the green trees, as in a dream, without recognising blue or green, as long as they lacked words to define the two colours, and some time elapsed before they particularised the colours by giving each its proper title.

We speak of the seven colours of the rainbow, because the intermediate tints elude us; the ancients acted much in the same way, Xenophanes speaks of the rainbow as a cloud of purple, red, and yellow; Aristotle also speaks of the tri-coloured rainbow, red, yellow, and green; and Democritus seems only to have mentioned black, white and yellow.

Does this indicate that our senses have gradually become more acute and accurate? No, no one has asserted that the sensitiveness of the organs of sense was less thousands of years ago than it is now; the sensation has not changed, but “we see in this evolution of consciousness of colour how perception goes hand in hand with the evolution of language, and how, by a very slow process, every definite concept is developed out of an infinitude of indistinct perceptions.”[56]

The names of colours have not been applied arbitrarily, any more than the names given to divinities. Blue, for instance, owes its origin to the visible results of violence, or of an accident; the science of etymology shows us that the Old Norse words, blár, blá, blatt, which now mean blue, meant originally the livid colour of a bruise. Grimm traces these words back to the Gothic bliggvan, to strike; and he quotes as an analogous case the Latin cæsius—a bluish grey, from cædere, to cut. If the assertion that blue and green are rarely mentioned until a late date be correct, it would follow that they had been worked out of an infinity of colours before they took their place definitely as the colour of the sky and the colour of the trees and grass.

As we trace etymology to its source, we see how man’s perception was confused at first. From the Sanscrit root ghar, which has many different meanings, such as to heat, to melt, to drip, to burn, to shine, come not only many words—heat, oven, warmth, and brightness, but also the names of many bright colours, all varying between yellow, green, red, and white. But the most striking example is afforded by the Sanscrit word ak-tu. Here we have the first instance of the uncertainty in the meaning of the names of colours which pervades all languages, and which can be terminated at last by scientific definition only. This word has two opposite meanings—a light tinge or ray of light, and also a dark tinge, and night; this same word in Greek, ak-tis, means a ray of light. Thus, whilst ideas are not definitely named, even the most simple, such as those of white and black, are not realised; philosophers have long known this, but the learned in physical science seem only recently to have drawn attention to the fact. Virchow was the first to make the following assertion: “Only after their perceptions have become fixed by language, are the senses brought to a conscious possession and a real understanding of them.”[57]

Surgeons have explained that the faculty of sight proceeds from the movement of an unknown medium, which in the case of light has been called ether, this strikes the retina, and is conveyed to the brain by the optic nerve; “but what relation there is between the effect, namely, our sensation of red, and the cause, namely, the 500 millions of millions of vibrations of ether in one second, neither philosophy nor physical science has yet been able to explain.”[58]

We are able to picture to ourselves the difficulties which assailed man in his efforts to express his impressions in primitive times, since we find ourselves at times struggling with the same difficulties, and there are occasions when we struggle in vain, we do not conquer the difficulty.

Sensations which are subjective and personal are of all others the most difficult to define, since we lack words to express what is from its nature purely personal; and yet we have frequently occasion to mention them, how can we best express ourselves? As the required word does not seem forthcoming we have recourse to metaphor, and almost unconsciously we use terms borrowed from external phenomena connected with the sense of hearing, of smelling, and of tasting, and which for the most part are acts or conditions in the domain of the sense of sight. Our old acquaintances the roots, whose meanings are to cut, to pinch, to bite, to burn, to hit, to sting, to soften, having formed the base of the adjectives sharp, sweet, keen, burning, we use these to describe certain sensations. We do not know how better to particularise a physical pain than by comparing it to something that tears, cuts or stings. But if certain physical ills, certain colour perceptions, certain impressions of sharpness, sweetness and heat experienced when tasting various foods find metaphorical expression in external acts, there still remains a whole category of simple ideas for which no words can be found. There are certain sensations of taste which cannot be expressed in words. Yesterday I ate a pear, to-day I have eaten a peach; I am quite capable of distinguishing the special flavour of each, but finding nothing in the world of facts with which to compare them, I am without words to apply to them, and it would be as impossible for me to convey an idea of the flavour to any one who had never eaten a pear or a peach as to make any person understand if I spoke in a language which was unknown to him.

Since all words that succeed in expressing our sensations are drawn from external phenomena, we are in a position to know the origin and historic past of these words. But I cannot thus easily foresee even the near future of some of these words. The sound of the clarionet and that of the hautbois, the whistling of the wind, the whisper of the waves, the yellow of the straw and that of the lemon, the green of the emerald and the blue of the sky, all characterise objects belonging to the material world; but if these words: clarionet and hautbois, wind and waves, straw and lemon, emerald and sky, which alone enable us to define clearly to our minds certain sounds and certain colours were lacking in our vocabulary, I do not know how a musician could have composed a symphony, or an artist painted his picture, although the creation of both works of art proceeds equally from personal inspiration invisible to the eye.

The tie that binds thought to speech has been alternately acknowledged and forgotten; if Plato believed that the origin of language was the imitation of the voices of nature (an error which weighed heavily on humanity during the space of two thousand years), he also knew that words are indispensable to man for the very formation of thought. Abelard was more explicit on this point, he said: “Language is generated by the intellect, and generates intellect.” Hobbes understood so well that language was meant first of all for ourselves, and afterwards only for others, that he calls words, as meant for ourselves, notæ, and distinguishes them from signa, the same words as used for the sake of communication, and he added: “If there were only one man in the world he would require notæ.”[59] The close connection between thought and speech cannot be more clearly or concisely expressed.

This discovery makes its way slowly in the world, because certain philosophers who have been rendered immobile by tradition, darken counsel by their speculations. Some of the Polynesians would seem to have a far truer insight into the nature of thought and language than these philosophers to whom I have made allusion; they call thinking “speaking in the stomach,” which means of course to speak inaudibly, and it is this absolutely inarticulate speech which is so often mistaken for thought without words; because the fact is ignored that notion and name are two words for one thing. “It is certain,” they say, “that a thought may be conceived in the mind, but is formulated at a later period; for instance, if you have to write a letter of no great importance, and which affects you little, take your pen, and before the idea appears to you completely clothed, your hand has passed over the paper, and you proceed to read your ideas in the words you see before you.” This is an illusion. We can no doubt distinguish the written word from the word-concept, but the former could not exist without the latter. I defy our opponents to think of the most ordinary and familiar object, such as a dog for instance, without saying to themselves the word dog. They would explain that the remembrance only of a special dog, or of its bark would suffice to call up the image of the dog in their minds; they do not see that the likeness of a dog, or the remembrance of its bark is equivalent to the word dog, and that they cannot possibly become conscious to themselves of what they appear to be thinking, without having the word in reserve in some part of themselves, either “in the stomach,” as some savages say, or, as is more gracefully expressed by the Italians, in petto.

Descartes was a learned Christian, who pondered for some time over the questions whether the human mind could be certain of anything without being supernaturally enlightened; he resolved to prove it; and to this end he imagined that he, Descartes, was certain of nothing—doubted of all—even mathematical conclusions; he then reflected on this position, and after a time the idea occurred to him that as he was capable of reflection it proved without a doubt that he, Descartes, existed, and that consequently it was no longer possible to have doubts of his own identity.

The portrait of this philosopher as depicted on the cover of his works, represents him reclining in a chair thinking—thinking—thinking—and exclaiming, “Cogito ergo sum.”

Those persons amongst us who are not specially interested in any system of philosophy are certainly in the majority; all know that such systems exist, and that they are noted, but from the want of reflection, however little, some persons look upon them as having sprung fully equipped, and in their present form, from the brains of their founders. But it would be incorrect, simply on the evidence of a frontispiece, to consider these philosophical processes as thus instantaneous. The systems of philosophy, even those of small value, require much time for their elaboration, and ripen slowly, and are never free from opposition. They establish close links between the living thinkers of to-day, and those who are no longer on earth. The philosophers of the Middle Ages consulted those of antiquity, the thinkers of to-day strove to be in agreement with those alike of the Middle Ages and of antiquity, and there arise from this intercommunion of knowledge, groups of ideas of which some are borrowed and some original, some true and some false; these are dependent on the intellectual lucidity and vigour of the latest arrivals in the arena. Many problems are thus threshed out before our eyes. Not long ago three philosophers were in dispute and Noiré records the arguments; the discussion turned on the question of priority of thought or speech.

They agreed on the fundamental point, all three said there could be no reason without language, nor language without reason. But as they penetrated more deeply into the question, they perceived divergencies; although the conception and the word be inseparable, yet there may be a moment of time—infinitely little, doubtless—between the arrival of the one and of the other, as with twins.

According to Schopenhauer conceptions were the first in the field, and their immediate duty consisted in creating words; since the mind could not deal with ideas at will, could neither evoke them, grasp them, nor reject them, whilst no signs were attached to them.

To this Geiger objected. How could ideas be produced whilst no signs existed with which to represent them? Words came first, and thought, rendered possible by the development of language, followed; “language has created reason; before language, man was without reason.”[60]

Max Müller replied to both. How could there be a sign when there was nothing to represent? Conceptions and words, inseparable from the beginning, were produced on the same day; the day when man’s history begins; before that what was a fugitive impression and a vocal sound void of sense, became a conception. Max Müller adds: “If Geiger had said that with every new word there is more reason, or that every progress of reason is marked by a new word, he would have been right, for the growth of reason and language may be said to be coral-like, each shell is the product of life, and becomes in turn the support of new life.”[61]

The most important results obtained during the Middle Ages on these subjects find their representations in this discussion carried on by the three learned contemporaries. Max Müller’s point of view is one which reconciles the two diverse opinions.

Men still find themselves under the magic influence of the past after some thousands of years; the first words which our ancestors used in the midst of their ordinary occupations have not ceased to appear in our daily conversations, in our philosophical writings, and in the reports of scientific proceedings; it is impossible to speak of our family or social relations, of our affections, our ordinary obligations, our most sacred duties, our observance of laws, without having recourse to words and expressions, which represent the acts of linking or tying, those early activities of our ancestors. The chemist speaks of the affinity of the substances with which he is working; the poet and the devout believer when giving free scope to their highest aspirations do not find truer or loftier terms than links, chains, ties, for that which connects them with the Giver of all pure, sublime thoughts.

As it is possible in the present day to speak of delving into a question (creuser) and of racking our brains (creuser) when we puzzle over a conundrum; of linking one idea to another; of polishing our manners by the help of art and letters; of seeking to soften the heart of God by offerings (as if He were a mercenary Judge), of linking ourselves with others the better to accomplish a good work, of uniting in freeing ourselves from an undesirable opponent; it follows that our ancestors as they emerged from their condition of muteness found it necessary to dig (creuser) cabins for themselves, to polish stones, to weave and plait branches together, and to soften tough roots for their nourishment. The same words repeat themselves from time immemorial.

But how comes it that these words, which have remained the same outwardly, have so completely changed their meaning as exactly to adapt themselves to modern usage? We have been deceived by appearances. These words have not changed their meaning, but at first they were applied to tangible objects and visible acts, those which were the most necessary and the most usual in daily life at that time; and now these words are applied to intangible things, and invisible acts, the most necessary and usual in our present mental life.

Nor is this which follows less curious. This adaptation of the old words to modern usages could only have been accomplished on one condition, that we should forget many things, and be utterly oblivious to the original destination of these words; that we should put from before our eyes all images of caves, branches, stones and tough roots; and this condition we have fulfilled absolutely; the forgetfulness has been complete; no one suspects the source of these expressions; only a small number of men knows it, but these men are thoroughly aware that they are making use of the true primitive forms of the human language.

A difficulty to be avoided still remains. It might be said that, as it is the result of concerted action undertaken from a community of interest, that these images have become fixed in the memory, and that if the ideas and representations exercised so potent a spell on us, that we were compelled to use the words which can be traced back to the first period of language, does it not follow that we absolutely resemble each other, and that consequently we must renounce the idea of attributing the least individuality to ourselves? This is a great mistake. Each one of us gives to these representations of ideas that form towards which he is impelled by his own nature, his education, his environment. A man who has some knowledge of astronomy will look at the star-lit sky with quite another eye to that of the poet, who knows nothing of the subject but is struck with its inexpressible splendour. A landscape painter would see in a tree details of beauty which would quite escape one who admired it, but had never sought to draw it; a clever architect with one glance at a newly-built house could assign it a place either with the failures or with those houses which were a success, and this glance would sufficiently account for the murmured exclamation, “How gladly would I live in it!”

CHAPTER IX
A DECISIVE STEP

How is it that primitive man, provided with five senses which bring him into contact with the material world only, has found it possible to conceive the existence of an invisible world peopled with beings whom his eyes cannot see, nor his hands touch, nor his ears hear?

Between the birth of human reason and the invention of writing a long period of time elapsed; when the art of writing was followed by that of printing, man then printed all that he had thought and written, and at present we possess thousands of volumes which will inform us on all the truths and errors which have alternately illuminated and obscured the human mind.

Whoever would take the trouble to examine this mass of documents, and read those which furnish an approximate estimate of the mental activity of our primitive ancestors, will see that the human ego pursued science unconsciously long before scholars appeared, and applied the name of philosophers to themselves, because they had sought patiently and with many discussions, through thousands of centuries, to find the best way of arriving at the truth.

These ancestors of ours were of an enquiring turn of mind.

The appearance of religion amongst men is at the same time the most natural and the most supernatural fact in the history of humanity.

The greater number of philosophers have recognised that the tendency of the human mind to turn towards that which is outside the domain of the senses is as powerful in man as the desire of eating and drinking is in all living beings. The ancients acknowledged this to be a true sense, as irresistible as the rest of the operations of our external senses, and they have well named it sensus numinis—the consciousness of the divine. The desire of understanding the secrets with which the Unknown was invested naturally led to the investigation of the influence which these secrets might exercise on the destinies of mankind. Amongst certain peoples this gave birth to the art of divination. To this they abandoned themselves in all sincerity, not doubting that omnipotent beings would always be ready to make their will known to mortals.

The men of modern times have shown that they have the critical faculty more highly developed, and their investigations have dealt more with practical matters. In the eighteenth century, writers, historians and philosophers—Voltaire amongst the number—wishing to know how the phenomenon of mental religion appeared in the world, collected all the data to be obtained from travellers concerning savages; they found that without exception all believed in occult powers, as distinct from material or human forces, and doubted not the efficacy of certain magic arts in use amongst them to attract these powers to themselves, and to constrain them to act on their behalf. Judging by analogy these writers contend that primitive man, doubtless impressed by the alarming phenomena of nature, would make search for the unknown beings around him, whom the storms, the thunders and the lightnings obey, but these beings were invisible, consequently there must be an invisible world in communication with the visible or human world.

In this way were the beliefs of the present-day savages supposed to be those current at the dawn of religious conceptions of humanity.

The ignorance of a subject, of whatever nature, has never prevented the laying down of axioms concerning that subject. Towards the end of the eighteenth century some Portuguese navigators, who never embarked without providing themselves with talisman and amulet,—to protect them during their voyages,—which they called feitiços, seeing some negroes of the Gold Coast prostrating themselves with every appearance of reverence, before bones, stones, or the tails of some animals, concluded at once without further investigation that these were considered as divinities by the negroes; and on their return to their native land, they spread the report that savage races worshipped feitiços. This word feitiços corresponds to the Latin factitius, meaning that which is made by hand, as the amulets were which belonged to the Portuguese sailors. The well-known President de Brosses used the name and promulgated the idea, and without having set foot on countries inhabited by negroes, composed and published a book on their fetishes. In this manner the French language was enriched in 1760 by the new word fetish. All this seemed so natural and plausible that the word, and the idea of the adoration of fetishes became quite general; the theory of the worship of fetishes penetrated rapidly, and took deep root in the public mind, it found its way very readily into school books and manuals, and we were taught that the religion of savages consists solely in the worship of fetishes, and learned writers draw the conclusion that fetishism must necessarily have been the primitive religion of humanity.

With what readiness do well-instructed persons, no less than the ignorant, allow themselves to speak without sufficiently reflecting on what they say. In order to elevate material objects, of whatever kind, to the rank of divinities, it would be necessary previously to possess the concept of a divinity. Writers on religion speak of that as existing in primitive times which they seek to describe; they might as well say that primitive men mummified their dead before they had mûm or wax to embalm them with. Fetishism cannot be considered as absolutely primitive, seeing that from its nature it must presuppose the previous growth of the predicate God. This idea of De Brosses and his successors will remain for ever a striking anachronism in the history of religion.

The history of all primitive races opens with this note. “Man is conscious of a divine descent, though made from the dust of the earth; the Hindoo doubted it not, though he called Dyn his father, and Prithvi his mother; Plato knew it when he said the earth produced men, but that God formed them.”

On the banks of the Rhine, Tacitus listened to the war-songs of the Germans; they were to him in an unknown tongue. “It resembles the whisperings of birds,” he said, but added, “They are cries of valour,” and his ear caught the sound of two words which recurred frequently, “Tuisto Mannus!”

We now know what formed the basis of these songs; the Germans were celebrating their lineal ancestors under the names of Tuisto, and Mannus, his son. Tuisto appears to have been one form of Tiu, the Aryan god of light. Tacitus tells us that the Germans “called by the names of gods that hidden thing which they did not perceive except by reverence.”[62] Mannus, so the Germans considered, sprang from the earth, which they venerated as their mother-earth who before nourishing her children on its fruits first gave them life. This Mannus, grandson of the god of light, meant originally man.

Certain races living beyond the pale of organised religious systems having been interrogated have furnished the following information concerning their belief.

A very low race in India is supposed to worship the sun under the name of Chando or Cando; they declared to the missionaries who had settled amongst them that Chando had created the world. “How is that possible! Who then has created the sun itself?” They replied with “We do not mean the visible Chando, but an invisible one.”[63]

“Our god,” said the original natives of California to those who asked in what god they believed, “our god has neither father nor mother, and his origin is quite unknown. But he is present everywhere, he sees everything even at midnight, though himself invisible to human eyes. He is the friend of all good people, and he punishes the evil-doers.”

A Blackfoot Indian, when arguing with a Christian missionary, said: “There were two religions given by the Great Spirit, one in a book for the guidance of the white men, who, by following its teaching, will reach the white man’s heaven; the other is in the heads of the Indians, in the sky, rocks, rivers and mountains. And the red men who listen to God in nature, will hear his voice, and find at last the heaven beyond.”

These Indians consider that that external nature which to us is at the same time the veil and the revelation of the Divine, is sufficient to teach them so much concerning the Supreme Being that missionaries are superfluous.

Amongst those whose thoughts are occupied by the origin of religious perception in man, there exist several theories; the first, that the idea of infinity is a necessity to the mind of man, and that by enlarging the boundaries of space and of time, it arrives at that which is without space and without time. Thus may a true philosopher reason; but primitive man was no philosopher, and the infinite of philosophy had no existence for him. Another theory is that man is naturally endowed with religious instincts, which render him—alone of all living creatures—capable of perceiving the infinite in the invisible; but the nature of this innate instinct not being clearly defined, it is in vain that we try to explain one mystery by another. Others again affirm that religious impressions were the result of a supernatural revelation, but they seem vague with regard to the time in the life of humanity, to which people, and in what manner this came to pass. At the same time they draw attention to the fact that men have always arrived at conclusions rapidly, and, as they consider, without due reflection; one of these conclusions is that God is. Let us, for the sake of argument, replace the word man by the word intuitive sense or apprehension, and we shall understand why this intuitive sense renders it a superfluous task to make great researches as to the reasons of man’s decision that God is. This intuitive sense is wise, and utters at times great truths; but the philosophers who consider it their metier to seek for the reason of things are not content with what satisfies intuitive sense, and they act on their right.

In our days the religious problem is viewed from two sides. What is understood by these words—the conception of God? This is the question of questions; and the names of the writers on the subject, both philosophical and theological, are too numerous to give. It is a psychological and thought impelling study.

How did the idea of God first arise in the minds of primitive man? This is another question which few try and answer. It is a historical study.

This presentation of the problem is perhaps not calculated to inspire excitement or let loose agitating passions; and apparently the end of the nineteenth century will not witness the renewal of the philosophical debates on the subject which characterised the last half of the eighteenth.

Never either, before or since, has there been so much agitation, nor have men’s minds been so tossed by diverse currents. Many various theories were promulgated at the time, but opinions grouped themselves chiefly round two diametrically opposite schools of thought, towards one or the other of which they leaned.

According to Hume, Condillac and their adherents, matter alone exists; our understanding, our feelings, our will are only transformed sensations. This was pure materialism. Pure idealism was represented by Berkeley, who went so far as to deny the reality of matter; according to him the bodies making up the universe have no real existence; the true realities were God and the ideas He produced in us.

Those who preserved their ancient beliefs were the most troubled, they began to ask themselves whether the foundations of their faith were solid, and they much desired to see certain problems solved. These thoughts had exercised the minds of the sages of India, the thinkers of Greece, the dreamers of Alexandria, and the divines and scholars of the Middle Ages. They were the old problems of the world, what we know of the Infinite, the questions of the beginning and end of our existence; the questions of the possibility of absolute certainty in the evidence of the senses, of reason or of faith.

How much was comprehended in these enquiries.

One hundred years previously, the cautious reasoner, Descartes, instead of asking “What do we know?” posed in its place the question, “How do we know?”

This was in fact a fundamental question which appealed to philosophers who followed Descartes, as of the utmost importance, and they also asked themselves, “After what manner does the human mind acquire what it knows?”

What is called Locke’s tenet, “Nihil est in intellectu quod non ante fuerit in sensu,” Leibnitz answered by “Nihil—nisi intellectus.” Noiré gives this sentiment a fresh turn by saying: “There is nothing in this plant that was not already in the soil, the water and the atmosphere, but that which causes this plant to be a plant.”

Condillac, who agreed with Locke, thus formulated his opinion: “Penser c’est sentir”; or, “In order to feel it is necessary to possess senses,” which is self-evident.

Nevertheless, this sentence scandalised some of the philosophers, they considered it degraded thought. It degraded thought only in Condillac’s mouth, since he and his school had previously taken out of sentir or sensation all that possessed the right to be called thought; but for those who admit that sensation is really impregnated with thought it is no degradation; it is then true to say that thought is sensation, in the same way as an oak-tree may be said to be the acorn; and a little reflection will show us that “the acorn is far more wonderful than the oak, and perceiving far more wonderful than thinking.” This was not acknowledged by some who disagreed as to the nature of reason and sensation; they considered the former a mysterious power that could only be a direct gift of the Creator, and the senses, to which we owe our perceptions, appeared so natural and simple, as not to require a scientific explanation.

If philosophers, such as Descartes and Leibnitz, succeeded in influencing certain enlightened spirits, their language was not understood by the general public; and Berkeley’s idealism when pushed to the extreme point, proved too abstract to counterbalance the sensualist doctrines; its language hardly penetrated beyond the inner circle of the experts dealing with the subject, whereas the writings of Locke, Condillac and Hume permeated all classes of society; everywhere the same questions were asked, and often unanswered amidst the maze of metaphysics, in which it would have been difficult to obtain a precise explanation of a science not yet clearly defined.

It is natural that reason after its high flight in pursuit of truth, frightened by the obstacles met in its ascent, and by the contradictions found in itself, should fall heavily to earth, exclaiming with Voltaire, “O metaphysics, we are as advanced as in the times of the Druids.” This same feeling of distrust towards proceedings which resulted only in hypothesis, was also expressed by Newton, who, recognising that philosophy moved nowhere so freely nor with such certainty as in the domain of facts, recently cried, “O physics, preserve me from metaphysics.”

“Towards the end of the eighteenth century the current public opinion had been decidedly in favour of materialism, but a reaction was slowly setting in in the minds of independent thinkers when Kant appeared”; he came so exactly in the nick of time that one almost doubts whether the tide was turning, or whether he turned the tide.

To sketch briefly the chief points in Kant’s system such as he has given us in his book called Critique of Pure Reason, is a rash proceeding; my object, which is to satisfy the imperious and more immediate wants of our moral being, could only be attained by ignoring the irradicable difficulties; this is excusable if we, unlearned members of society, are to form any idea of this same philosophy.

The technical terms which abound in philosophical works are useful in the exposition of a system, but rather the reverse for those who are striving to grasp its salient features; for understanding these terms partially only, or not understanding them at all, they are tempted to imagine that they take in the meaning; this leads to vague notions being entertained on a subject which is nevertheless earnestly studied. Generally I abstain from the use of esoteric terms, but Kant having coined fresh ones to express his ideas it behoves us to use his own formula. To paraphrase them so as to render them intelligible without multiplying them might only further obscure the sense, and yet, on the other hand, to enter freely into further developments would require a volume, and the end would be better served by going direct to Kant’s work. Hence the embarrassment I feel on approaching the subject.