Chapter III. On The Origin Of Synonymes.
Section I.
First Source of Synonymes the Metaphorical Character of Human Language in its Infancy. Even modern Languages metaphorical or descriptive, as regards the Names of Substances recently known to Man. Progressive Change from a metaphorical to a conventional Character displayed by more Modern compared to more Ancient Languages. Illustration from the Sanscrit Words for “The Sun.”
But not only may the dispersion of Synonymes be referred to influences of which the active agency still continues; it will appear that the first Origin of the numerous Synonymes which Human Language presents may also be explained by means of causes still in operation!
Human Language, in its infancy, was descriptive or metaphorical. Nouns, or names of objects, were expressive of some of their dominant or most conspicuous qualities. Hence, inasmuch as in different individuals, and in the same individual at different times, the faculty of Imagination is affected by various characteristics, a great diversity of descriptive terms were generally devised for the same objects, and these, as their primitive metaphorical meanings were insensibly forgotten, gradually lapsed into arbitrary or conventional Nouns. That this is a correct explanation of the origin of a [pg 095] large portion of the Synonymes in which Human Tongues abound, will be apparent from an examination of two venerable Oriental Languages, the Hebrew and the Sanscrit, which indisputably display through their whole structure a metaphorical or pictorial character.
The same truth is confirmed by facts within the range of our actual experience—facts that suggest reflections of high interest!
Several thousand years have passed away since man first became acquainted with the most prominent and familiar of those objects with which he is surrounded. For these objects he has inherited from his remote ancestors names which he learns in infancy, and which relieve him from the task of inventing anew appropriate designations. But though Nature presents no new features, the progress of Science has in modern times revealed a few new substances unknown to our forefathers, which have served at intervals to call forth the exercise of the same inventive powers by which language was originally constructed! Now if we examine the names that were originally conferred on the various chemical substances which have been brought to light in our own and in the last generation, we shall arrive at the instructive result that these names almost wholly consist of descriptive terms, representing either some of their most obvious properties, or the various conclusions formed by different philosophers on the subject of their nature and composition.[87] Further, we shall [pg 096] find that many of these new substances gave rise, in the first instance, to numerous descriptive terms! That these terms were for some time used concurrently! That subsequently a portion of them fell into disuse! That finally the remainder gradually lost the descriptive significations at first attached to them, and acquired the character of mere arbitrary or conventional names!
Hence it is evident, and most assuredly it is a result of the highest interest, that the native and permanent tendencies of the Human mind itself distinctly point to the conclusion that language must originally have been descriptive or metaphorical! Hence, also, we derive a vivid illustration of the sameness of those tendencies, as exhibited both in the latest and in the earliest ages of the world, in the trains of thought excited by new objects in the minds of the Philosophers of modern days, and in those of the simple forefathers of the Human Race, whose
“Souls proud Science never taught to stray