[266] Pp. 281, 282, note.
[267] Ursprung der Sprache, s. 65. For the original German, see the passage as previously quoted on page 273, note.
[268] As pointed out in a previous chapter, curious ambiguity attaches to this term. For, as used in biology, it means the hitherto undifferentiated, while in psychology and elsewhere a “generalization” means the synthetically integrated. But, as psychologists never speak of ideas as “generalized,” I here use the word in its biological sense. See also above, pp. 277-280.
[269] Ursprung der Sprache, s. 69, 70.
[270] Bleek entertains no doubt on this point.
[271] Compare also close of Chapter VII. (pp. 138-144), where the children mentioned by Dr. Hale are shown to have adopted the syntax of gesture-language in their spontaneously devised spoken language.
[272] Chapter VI., pp. 114-120.
[273] Sign-Language, &c., p. 284. On page 352, this writer further supplies a most interesting comparison between gesture and spoken language as both are used by the North American Indians—showing that the syntax in the two cases is identical.
[274] Whitney, Encyclo. Brit., loc. cit., p. 770. It is interesting to note that the psychological importance of this principle was clearly enunciated by Locke:—“It may lead us a little towards the original of all our notions and knowledge, if we remark how great a dependence our words have on common sensible ideas; and how those which are made use of to stand for actions and notions quite removed from sense, have their rise from thence, and from obvious sensible ideas are transferred to more abstruse significations, and made to stand for ideas that come out under the cognizance of our senses” (Human Understanding, iii. i. 5).
[275] Whitney, Encyclo. Brit., p. 770. See also Nodier, Notions de Linguistique, p. 39; Garnett, Essays, p. 89; Grimm, Gesch. d. d. Sprache, s. 56 et seq.; Pott, Metaphern vom Leben, &c., Zeitschr. fur Vergl. Sprachf. Jahrg., ii., heft 2; Heyse, System, &c., s. 97; and Farrar, Origin of Language, 130; Chapters on Language, pp. 67, 133, 204-246. He refers to the above, and quotes the following passages from Emerson and Carlyle:—“As the limestone of the Continent consists of infinite masses of shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images and tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin” (Essays on the Poets). “Language is the flesh-garment of Thought. I said that Imagination wore this flesh-garment; and does she not? Metaphors are her stuff. Examine Language. What, if you except a few primitive elements of natural sound, what is it all but metaphors recognized as such, or no longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colourless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the flesh-garment of Language—then are metaphors its muscles, its tissues, and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for: is not your very attention a stretching-to?” (Sartor Resartus, ch. x.).