The avowed purpose of this essay was to demonstrate the thesis that the diversity of structure in languages is the necessary condition of the evolution of the human mind.[7-*]
In the establishment of this thesis he begins with a profound analysis of the nature of speech in general, and then proceeds to define the reciprocal influences which thought exerts upon it, it upon thought.
Portions of this work are extremely obscure even to those who are most familiar with his theories and style. This arises partly from the difficulty of the subject; partly because his anxiety to avoid dogmatic statements led him into vagueness of expression; and partly because in some cases he was uncertain of his ground. In spite of these blemishes, this essay remains the most suggestive work ever written on the philosophy of language.
§ 3. The Final Purpose of the Philosophy of Language.
Humboldt has been accused of being a metaphysician, and a scientific idealist.
It is true that he believed in an ideal perfection of language, to wit: that form of expression which would correspond throughout to the highest and clearest thinking. But it is evident from this simple statement that he did not expect to find it in any known or possible tongue. He distinctly says, that this ideal is too hypothetical to be used otherwise than as a stimulus to investigation; but as such it is indispensable to the linguist in the pursuit of his loftiest task—the estimate of the efforts of man to realize perfection of expression.[7-†]
There is nothing teleological in his philosophy; he even declines to admit that either the historian or the linguist has a right to set up a theory of progress or evolution; the duty of both is confined to deriving the completed meaning from the facts before them.[8-*] He merely insists that as the object of language is the expression of thought, certain forms of language are better adapted to this than others. What these are, why they are so, and how they react on the minds of the nations speaking them, are the questions he undertakes to answer, and which constitute the subject-matter with which the philosophy of language has to do.
Humboldt taught that in its highest sense this philosophy of language is one with the philosophy of history. The science of language misses its purpose unless it seeks its chief end in explaining the intellectual growth of the race.[8-†]
Each separate tongue is “a thought-world in tones” established between the minds of those who speak it and the objective world without.[8-‡] Each mirrors in itself the spirit of the nation to which it belongs. But it has also an earlier and independent origin; it is the product of the conceptions of antecedent generations, and thus exerts a formative and directive influence on the national mind, an influence, not slight, but more potent than that which the national mind exerts upon it.[8-‖]
So also every word has a double character, the one derived from its origin, the other from its history. The former is single, the latter is manifold.[8-§]