LANGUAGE.
Teaching, which in the common sense of the word is the suggestion of thoughts by words, is not the kindergartner's special work, but the a priori process of drawing out into the individual consciousness of a child those latent powers whose free activity gives him conscious relations, first, with his kind; secondly, with material nature, including his own body; and, thirdly, with God. He is unconsciously in this threefold relation already, but to become conscious of these relations severally, in his own growth builds up the human understanding, which is not born with him like his sensibility and force of will. The human understanding, a creation in time of the free will, creates language as the element of a life not shared with animals; an intellectual life using the symbolism of nature as a means of intercommunication, and which is correspondent and bearing a relation to its creator, man, similar to the relation of the material universe to God, being in both instances an image, as in a mirror, of what is necessary and immutable in the self-consciousness, though without entity itself. Hence, as the material universe expresses the wisdom of God, human languages express the imperfect wisdom of man. Language is the element in which the intellectual nature makes a sphere wherein to live and move and have its being. What breath is to the material body, making man alive in nature, language is to the social body, making it alive in history.
A word is both spiritual and material, being an articulate form of the voice which, as Gœthe has happily said, is the nearest spiritual of our bodily powers, taking significance from the articulating organs, which are symbolical, like everything else in material nature, which, as I said before, is but an image, as reflected in a mirror, without absolute entity, but bearing witness of an entity progressively apprehended by the finite spirits of men, who are the children of the Infinite Spirit inheriting creative power forevermore.
The inarticulate sound of the voice is the scream of pain or the shout of joy, mutually intelligible to all human hearts; and this aerial basis of language continues to be more or less intelligible to all souls, when modulated as in poetry into melody and rhythm by emotion and character. The first human language was, perhaps, music of the deepest character, of which phase there is historic trace in the spoken Chinese, which has been perishing for ages on the lips of a nation whose origin is lost in the depths of antiquity. This spoken language is monosyllabic, and even the initial consonant often only a semivowel, while the whole word takes its significance from the tone of the vowel; thus lu in a low tone would have one meaning, lu in the tone of a musical third another meaning, and so on as the tone ascends through the octave. The inception of such a language implies an original equipoise of a brain not yet despoiled of its first vigor through moral delinquency which is incident to the freedom to will of a finite spirit, and consequently the Chinese language was inevitably lost. It would be interesting to enquire if those rare individuals among the Chinese who are expert in the spoken Chinese, are not of finest musical temperament.
Not till after thinking had begun could articulation by the organs of speech begin. Thinking is the free individual act which associates the mind's activity and the sensibility of the heart with material things, and must precede the use of words.
A time comes to every intelligent child when it wonders how words should express thoughts. Victorious analysis has never yet penetrated the whole mystery of language to the complete satisfaction of men, though I think philologists and metaphysicians are on the way to it, and have reached some fundamental facts. For instance, that insignificant sounds and articulations could not make significant words, and that vocal sounds (vowels) get their meaning from feeling, while articulations get theirs from the symbolism of the organs of speech.
The organs of speech are, first, the throat,—as the guttural organ is called in English because through it we take our food and send forth our voice,—is out of sight, covered up, hidden, the central point where the voice starts; secondly, the lips, which are obvious, movable, parallel; thirdly, our teeth, against which the voice strikes, are hard, stiff, and dead in comparison with the flexible lips, and the tongue which connects all together, the voice rolling over it and hardly articulated. Hence the hard c and g, and the rough aspirate h are factors in all words signifying the beginning of self-originating motion (observe go and kick, or cause to go), the causal, the central, covered, hidden; while the labials, p, b, f, v, are factors in all words expressing obviously moving phenomena; and the dentals, d, t, s, z, found in words expressive of stiff, hard, dead phenomena (the word death is all but identical with the word teeth); separation and number being expressed by s and z, which are made by throwing the vocal breath out between the separated teeth. The liquids r and l, r being also a factor of words expressing indefinite beginning, (as original, auroral, arise, etc.) are made by the voice moving over the tongue more or less energetically, to express movements whose difference of energy is exemplified in the words fry and fly, grow and glow, M closes the lips without preventing the continuous sound of the voice from being heard; and n, negating limitation by throwing the breath (or voice) out at the nose, symbolize respectively the positive and negative aspects of Infinity.
Of course I am giving only a hint in order to define what I mean when I say significant words are not made out of insignificant sounds, and that articulated sounds get their meaning from the symbolism of the organs of speech.
The historical origin of language is lost in the depths of antiquity, when the human race was yet in that equipoise of mind, heart, and self-activity, which in the process of evolution is only progressively recovered by the free agent, it being the office of education to restore it.
The infant (that is, the non-speaking child) in vision of the Eternal, only gradually becomes aware of the succession of time. For, as Mr. Emerson sings in his Sphinx song,—