Think only of language, the work of other people, not of ourselves, which we pick up at random in our race through life. Does not every word we use require careful examination and revision? It is not enough to say that language assists our thoughts or colors them, or possibly obscures them. No language and thought are indivisible. It was not from poverty of expression that the Greeks called reason and language by the same word, λόγος. It was because they knew that, though we may distinguish between thought and speech, as we distinguish between force and function, it is as impossible to tear the one by violence away from the other as it is to separate the concave side of a lens from its convex side. This is something to learn and to understand, for, if, properly understood, will it supply the key to most of our intellectual puzzles, and serve as the safest thread through the whole labyrinth of philosophy.
“It is evident,” as Hobbes remarks,[14] “that truth and falsity have no place but amongst such living creatures as use speech. For though some brute creatures, looking upon the image of a man in a glass, may be affected with it, as if it were the man himself, and for this reason fear it or fawn upon it in vain; yet they do not apprehend it as true or false, but only as like; and in this they are not deceived. Wherefore, as men owe all their true ratiocination to the right understanding of speech, so also they owe their errors to the misunderstanding of the same; and as all the ornaments of philosophy proceed only from man, so from man also is derived the ugly absurdity of false opinion. For speech has something in it like to a spider's web (as it was said of old of Solon's laws), for by contexture of words tender and delicate wits are ensnared or stopped, but strong wits break easily through them.”
Let me illustrate my meaning by at least one instance.
Among the words which have proved spider's webs, ensnaring even the greatest intellects of the world from Aristotle down to Leibniz, the terms genus, species, and individual occupy a very prominent place. The opposition of Aristotle to Plato, of the Nominalists to the Realists, of Leibniz to Locke, of Herbart to Hegel, turns on the true meaning of these words. At school, of course, all we can do is to teach the received meaning of genus and species; and if a boy can trace these terms back to Aristotle's γένος and εἶδος, and show in what sense that philosopher used them, every examiner would be satisfied.
But the time comes when we have to act as our [pg 033] own examiners, and when we have to give an account to ourselves of such words as genus and species. Some people write, indeed, as if they had seen a species and a genus walking about in broad daylight; but a little consideration will show us that these words express subjective concepts, and that, if the whole world were silent, there would never have been a thought of a genus or a species. There are languages in which we look in vain for corresponding words; and if we had been born in the atmosphere of such a language, these terms and thoughts would not exist for us. They came to us, directly or indirectly, from Aristotle. But Aristotle did not invent them, he only defined them in his own way, so that, for instance, according to him, all living beings would constitute a genus, men a species, and Sokrates an individual.
No one would say that Aristotle had not a perfect right to define these terms, if those who use them in his sense would only always remember that they are thinking the thoughts of Aristotle, and not their own. The true way to shake off the fetters of old words, and to learn to think our own thoughts, is to follow them up from century to century, to watch their development, and in the end to bring ourselves face to face with those who first found and framed both words and thoughts. If we do this with genus and species, we shall find that the words which Aristotle defined—viz., γένος and εἶδος—had originally a very different and far more useful application than that which he gave to them. γένος, genus, meant generation, and comprehended such living beings only as were believed to have a common origin, however they might differ in outward appearance, as, for instance, [pg 034] the spaniel and the bloodhound, or, according to Darwin, the ape and the man. εἶδος, or species, on the contrary, meant appearance, and comprehended all such things as had the same form or appearance, whether they had a common origin or not, as if we were to speak of a species of four-footed, two-footed, horned, winged, or blue animals.
That two such concepts, as we have here explained, had a natural justification we may best learn from the fact that exactly the same thoughts found expression in Sanskrit. There, too, we find gâti, generation, used in the sense of genus, and opposed to âkriti, appearance, used in the sense of species.
So long as these two words or thoughts were used independently (much as we now speak of a genealogical as independent of a morphological classification) no harm could accrue. A family, for instance, might be called a γένος, the gens or clan was a γένος, the nation (gnatio) was a γένος, the whole human kith and kin was a γένος; in fact, all that was descended from common ancestors was a true γένος. There is no obscurity of thought in this.
On the other side, taking εἶδος or species in its original sense, one man might be said to be like another in his εἶδος or appearance. An ape, too, might quite truly be said to have the same εἶδος or species or appearance as a man, without any prejudice as to their common origin. People might also speak of different εἴδη or forms or classes of things, such as different kinds of metals, or tools, or armor, without committing themselves in the least to any opinion as to their common descent.
Often it would happen that things belonging to the same εἶδος, such as the white man and the negro, [pg 035] differed in their εἶδος or appearance; often also that things belonged to the same εἶδος, such as eatables, differed in their γένος, as, for instance, meat and vegetables.