How far the growth of language was affected by external circumstances,—as, for instance, by the impress of individual minds, by the aristocracy or even autocracy of philosophic bodies, by the influence of sex, by the variations of climate, by the convulsions of history, by the slow change of religious or political convictions, and even by the laws of euphony and organisation, we may consider hereafter; but we must first of all enter on two very interesting preliminary inquiries, viz., 1, How did words first come to be accepted as signs at all? and, 2, By what processes did men hit upon the words themselves? Or, to put the questions differently: 1, How did various modulations of the human voice acquire any significance by being connected with outward or inward phenomena? and, 2, What special causes led in special cases to the choice of some particular modulations rather than of any other?
I am well aware that these questions may appear ridiculous to any one who is entirely unaccustomed to these branches of inquiry; and they may possibly be inclined to set the whole matter at rest by a dogmatism or a jeer. They will say perhaps:
“Here babbling Insight shouts in Nature’s ears
His last conundrum of the orbs and spheres;
There Self-inspection sucks his little thumb,
With ‘Whence am I?’ and ‘Wherefore did I come?’”[61]
With readers of such a temperament it is idle to reason, nor do we expect that, while the world lasts, ignorance will cease to take itself for knowledge, and denounce what it cannot understand. To others we will merely say that these inquiries have occupied, and are still occupying in an increasing degree, some of the most profound and sober intellects in Europe, and that (in the words of Plato) ‘wise men do not usually talk nonsense.’
With this remark, let us proceed to our first question: How came sounds—mere vibrations of the atmosphere—to be accepted as signs, i.e. to be used as words?
But (as one inquiry leads us back, perpetually, to another, even until “all things end in a mystery”), we must here again pause for a moment to ask what is a word? So vast an amount has been written in answer to this inquiry, that it is obviously impossible to do more than state the conclusion[62] we adopt, with a mere hint as to the ground on which we adopt it.
Horne Tooke maintained that words are “the names of things,” a definition most obviously inadequate; others have called them “the pictures of ideas,”[63] and although this definition is not without its value, yet the systematic perversion of the word “idea,” renders it insufficient. Harris devotes a chapter to establishing the definition that “Words are the symbols of ideas, both general and particular; yet, of the general, primarily, essentially, and immediately; of the particular only secondly, accidentally, and mediately.” But this is very questionable and cumbrous; and, on the whole, we believe that no better definition can be given than that of the late Mr. Garnett,[64] that words represent “conceptions founded on perceptions,” or “that words express the relations of things.” They do not and cannot express “an intrinsic meaning, constituting them the counterparts and equivalents of thought. They are nothing more, and can be nothing more, than signs of relations, and it is a contradiction in terms to affirm that a relation can be inherent.” “Our knowledge of beings,” says M. Peisse,[65] “is purely indirect, limited, relative; it does not reach to the beings themselves in their absolute reality and essences, but only to their accidents, their modes, their relations, their limitations, their differences, their qualities; all which are manners of conceiving and knowing, which not only do not impart to knowledge the absolute character which some persons attribute to it, but even positively exclude it. Matter (or existence, the object of sensible perception), only falls within the sphere of our knowledge through its qualities; mind only by its modifications; and these qualities and modifications are all that can be comprehended and expressed in the object. The object itself, considered absolutely, remains out of the reach of all perception.” It is an obvious inference that, as we can only talk of what we know, and as we can only know the relations of things, words are the medium of expressing (not the nature of things, which is incognisable), but the observed relations between things. They are revelations not of the outward, but of the inward,—not of the universe, but of the thoughts of man.