Or, again, let us take the Sanskrit root dhu, to move about, to agitate. A list of the derivatives from this root in various Indo-European languages would fill several pages, but we will only supply one or two. First, then, we get the verbs θύω and θύνω, to rush, or move violently, with their derivatives, as θύελλα, a storm; θύννος, a thunny-fish (from its rapid, darting motion); θύσανος, a waving, fluttering tassel; θυιὰς, a bacchanal; θύρσος, the shaken thyrsus, or ivy-wreathed wand, the symbol of Bacchic frenzy; θορεῖν, to leap; θοῦρος, impetuous; ἀθύρω, to play; and among many others, θυμὸς, the mind, from the same property which struck the poet, in saying—
How swift is the glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight
E’en the tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-speeding arrows of light!
From the same root we get θύω, to sacrifice, from the striking aspect of the rising and curling fumes, when the victim lay burning on the altar; θύμος, thyme, from the use made of that herb in fumigations; fumus, smoke; θυμέλη, the altar in the centre of the orchestra; and many more. Lastly, we may mention the curious word θοάζειν, which is used in the apparently contradictory senses of “to move hastily,” and “to sit.”[145]
The curious phenomenon presented by the latter word, of the same root serving for two directly opposite meanings, is one worthy of the greatest attention; and we believe that it has first been definitely noticed by modern philologists. “Contrast,” says Archdeacon Hare, “is a kind of relation;” and the suggestion of contrarieties may even be regarded as a primary law of the association of ideas. It is this principle which accounts for the apparently strange fact that opposite conditions are expressed by the same root slightly modified. Thus, to select some of the instances collected by Dr. Donaldson,[146] our own word “dear” has the two meanings of “prized,” because you have it, and “expensive,” because you want it; and “fast” has the opposite senses of “fixed” and “rapid.” Similarly, χρεία in Greek means both “use” and “need”; and λάω means both “to wish” and “to take;” while aio, αὐδάω, and καλέω, “I speak,” or “call,” are singularly like ἀΐω, audio, and κλύω, “I hear.”[147]
Another instance of the same peculiarity arises from the different objective or subjective relations which any phenomenon may present, some of which relations may be strongly contrasted; e.g., a “key” might derive its name either from opening or shutting. Thus, to adopt some of the cases mentioned by Mr. Garnett,[148] the numeral one gives rise to compounds of apparently opposite signification. From the Irish aon, “one,” we have aonach, “a waste,” and also “an assembly;” aontugadh, celibacy, and aontumadh, marriage. The Latin unicus implies singularity, but unitas implies association. “The concord of this discord is easily found, if we consider that the term one may either refer to one as an individual, or in the sense of an aggregate.” Similarly, it is not difficult to explain the apparent anomaly that σχόλη means both “school” and “leisure,” and that “lee” has very different acceptations in lee-side and lee-shore. Other examples might easily be found, all tending to prove that “as rays of light may be reflected and refracted in all possible ways from their primary direction, so the meaning of a word may be deflected from its original bearing in a variety of manners; and consequently we cannot well reach the primitive force of the term unless we know the precise gradations through which it has gone.”
It has been proved, then, in this chapter, that a few onomatopœic roots would give a sufficient basis on which to rear the largest superstructure of language, and we have shown how in some cases an imitative origin may be discovered even in words which might have been expected to defy analysis. Into the methods adopted in this rich variety of applications we must inquire more closely in the following chapter, but we must here remark that, as it was by the association of ideas that even the most heterogeneous and contrary relations were expressed by the same root, so the words themselves tend powerfully to establish new points of association, and to facilitate the astonishing rapidity of thought. By the aid of verbal signs we exercise an enormous power over all our faculties, for in repeating the sign we are enabled by the personal activity of our will to recall the image which it represents, and submit that image to our control.[149] Our sensations, transformed into thought, come and go at our bidding, and we extend and multiply them without limit.