Are we obliged by our theory respecting the origin of language to accept any of these conclusions? Must we say, with Condillac, that “science is only a well-constructed language?” or with M. Destutt de Tracy, that “thought[193] is sensation?” or (to go back to the cradle of these materialist imaginings), must we believe, with the old sophist, that “man[194] is the measure of all things?” that there is no eternal right or truth? that justice and turpitude are the result not of divine instinct, but of association, habit, custom, convention? Must all morality be founded, with Occam,[195] on the result of an arbitrary decree? and must we believe, with Horne Tooke, that truth is simply and purely relative, since its derivation is supposed to imply that it is merely what one “troweth?”
To establish such conclusions was the direct object of Horne Tooke in his “Diversions of Purley,”[196] and it is astonishing that he should have met with such complete success. A certain Dutchman[197] had preceded him in the same line of argument; abusing the fact that the terms of theology, morals, and metaphysics, are originally derived from material images, he turned theology and the Christian faith into ridicule in a little Dutch dictionary, in which he gave to words, not such definitions as usage demands, but such as seemed to carry a malignant inference drawn from the original meaning; and since he had shown marks of impiety elsewhere, they say that he was punished for it in the Raspel-Huyss.
Far different was the acceptance given to the “Diversions of Purley,” which to this day is praised and quoted, although a recent philologist has not scrupled to affirm that Tooke’s “alluring[198] speculations will not bear the light of advancing knowledge, and it is hardly too much to say that there is not a sound etymology in the work.” No one has done more to overthrow his baseless fabric than the late Mr. Garnett,[199] in an article on English Lexicography, who has shown in particular that the details of his much-vaunted analysis of the particles may be contested more often than admitted, and indeed that his theory contains very little that can be safely relied upon. Tooke seems to have been led to his system by the conjecture that “if” is equivalent to “gif,” an imperative of the verb “to give;” but as the cognate forms in other languages prove that this particle has no connection whatever either with the verb “to give” or with any other verb (a fact which was proved by Dr. Jamieson in his Scottish Dictionary), “any system founded on this basis is a mere castle in the air.” “According to Plutarch,” says Mr. Garnett, “the Delphian EI supported the tripod of truth; we fear that Tooke’s if imperative led him into a labyrinth of error.”
Again, let us take the etymology by which Tooke endeavours to explode the common notion of truth. He assumes that the word ‘truth’ is merely a contraction of “troweth,” and that “trow” simply denotes to think or believe. The inferences are as follows: “Truth[200] supposes mankind; for whom and by whom alone the word is formed, and to whom alone it is applicable. If no man, then no truth. There is no such thing as eternal, immutable, everlasting truth, unless mankind, such as they are at present, be also eternal, immutable, and everlasting. Two persons may contradict each other, and yet both speak truth, for the truth of one person may be opposite to the truth of another.” Here we are removed at once from the solid basis of certainty and conviction to the shifting deserts and treacherous waves of conjecture and doubt; and the etymologist would reduce morality and religion to shadowy superstructures built upon moving and trembling sands. Even if the derivation were admissible we should reject the conclusion, but the etymology is as erroneous as the inference drawn from it is dangerous and false. Mr. Garnett, with infinitely more probability, derives truth “from the Sanskrit dhru, to be established—fixum esse; whence dhruwa, certain, i.e., established; German, trauen, to rely, trust; treu, faithful, true; Anglo-Saxon, treow—treowth (fides); English, true; truth. To these we may add Gothic, triggons; Icelandic, trygge; (fidus, securus, tutus): all from the same root, and all conveying the same idea of stability or security. Truth, therefore, neither means what is thought nor what is said, but that which is permanent, stable, and is and ought to be relied upon, because, upon sufficient data, it is capable of being demonstrated or shown to exist. If we admit this explanation, Tooke’s assertions ... become Vox et præterea nihil. In all inquiries after truth, the question is, not what people, who may or may not be competent to form an opinion, think or believe, but what grounds they have for believing it.”[201]
The question how mind can be affected by matter has in all ages been a problem of philosophy. Descartes accounted for it by occasional causes; Leibnitz, by pre-established harmony; Malebranche, by a vision of all things in God; Kant, by the existence of innate ideas. However the question be resolved, it is closely analogous to the question, ‘how can things immaterial[202] and unsubstantial like thought and conception be represented, and for all practical purposes adequately represented by things physical, i.e., by pulsations and modifications of the ambient air?’
Idealism denies the existence of an external world, and obtrudes on us in its stead “a world of spectres and apparitions;” materialism denies us the possession of any ideas but those which we have derived from sense, and thus deprives us of all belief in an eternal and pre-existing truth; between the two we lose alike “the starry heaven above, and the moral law within.” But neither of these systems can derive any real support from the phenomena of language, which indeed in no way affect the considerations they involve. For if confessedly our words have nothing to tell us, and can tell us nothing about the world of phenomena, and yet the common sense of mankind forces us to believe in the existence of that outer world, then it can be no argument against the existence of noumena, i.e., against the existence of eternal ideas and necessary truths, that the words which we apply to our conceptions of immaterial entities are borrowed from the analogy which those conceptions offer to the objects surrounding us in the world of sense. “When we impose on a phenomenon of the physical order a moral denomination, we do not thereby spiritualise matter; and because we assign a physical denomination to a moral phenomenon, we do not materialise spirit. Let us not from these appellations, more or less inexact, draw conclusions either as to the nature of our ideas or the essence of things.”[203]
Even if it were possible that we could invent names for each separate particle of matter in the material universe, we should know nothing of any one particle except that it causes (or, perhaps, we ought to say no more than that it is) a modification of ourselves; and yet we believe that there is a non-ego entirely and wholly independent of the ego, though it may in no way resemble our notions respecting it. Why then may we not equally believe in the independent absolute existence of ideas which correspond to our terms,—truth and justice, goodness and beauty, space and time?
A shower falls while the sun is shining, and we are conscious of a sensation which presents to us an arch shining with the divided perfection of seven-fold light to which we have given the name Rainbow. But what does the name teach us of the thing itself? It is not even a name for the thing itself, but only for the effect it produces upon us; indeed for us, the very existence of the object is its perception, “its esse is percipi.” Not only is the coloured arch a phenomenon existing merely for us and our visual sense, but the very raindrops are only empirical phenomena, and “their[204] round shape—nay, even the space in which they are formed, are nothing in themselves but a mere modification or principle of our sensuous intuition; with all this, however, the object itself remains to us completely unknown.” We cannot even say that our conception of the object is in any way like the object itself: can pain, for instance, resemble the pricking of a pin? Such language, as Bp. Berkeley showed long ago, is a mere contradiction in terms; for “an idea can be like nothing but an idea; a colour or figure can be like nothing but another colour or figure. I appeal to any one whether it be sense to assert that a colour is like something which is invisible; hard or soft, like something which is intangible.”