How is it that philosophers of the mental calibre possessed by Locke, Hume and Berkeley—whose minds follow so closely the progress of the perception of general ideas—did not question how it was that terms which were applicable to these ideas could equally well be applied to particular things? What was the origin of the word man that it could be as suitable for Paul or James as for many men, in fact the whole human race? This is a fact about which philosophers do not appear to have troubled themselves, and which the science of language alone can explain.
In the time of our primitive ancestors human knowledge was evolved gradually from what was confused and vague, before arriving at what was deemed settled and distinct. Man’s vocabulary was small, substantives were rare; that which we now understand by garden, courtyard, field, habitation, was merged into one and the same conception, and would be expressed by one vocable, of which the modern equivalent is enclosure; the word serpent designated all creatures that crawled, the word fruit implied all that could be eaten, the word man all who could think; each name was a general term expressive of a general idea.
We may remember that the Sanscrit word sar, to run, which was at first used for rivers in general, became a particular name; a demonstrative element joined to the verb, changing it into sarit, run here, sufficed at once to turn it into an intelligible phrase, and the name of a particular river. In order to form the word man-u-s, man, the constructors of language combined the root man, measurer, thinker, in its secondary form man-u, with the suffix s, which gives the meaning think-here. This was at first not of general application, but as it could be repeated any number of times and referred each time to different persons, who could each be named thinker-here, it became a general term. We thus see that the name manus was from the beginning something more than a mere conventional sign applied to a particular person as are all proper names. It was a predicative name, that is applicable to all possessing the same attributes, viz., of being able to think, and capable of the same act, that of thinking.
This discovery was followed by another not less unexpected. When examining the oldest word for name, which in Sanscrit is nâman, in Greek onoma, in Latin nomen, we find that it dates from a time when the Sanscrit, Greek and Latin languages were all one; consequently the English name and the German Name are not as we supposed, words invented by the ancient Saxons, but they already existed before the separation of Teutonic idioms from their elder brothers.
After some further steps our contemporary philologists discovered the sources whence proceeded this Sanscrit nâman; it is formed of the root nâ, originally gnâ, to know, joined to a suffix which generally expresses an instrument, a means; nâman is the representative of gnâman, which we recognise in the Latin cognomen, the consonant g being dropped as in natus, son, which was formerly gnatus. This word name had at first a much more extended meaning than that of a simple arbitrary sign applied “to what we call a thing.” The constructors of the word were aware of a fact of which consciousness was afterwards lost, and which the learned ignored during all the supervening centuries—viz., that all names, far from being mere conventional signs used to distinguish one thing from another, were meant to express what it was possible to know of a thing; and that a name thus places us in a position really to be cognisant of a thing. A natural insight taught the early framers of our language a truth only acquired by us after interminable researches, such as Hegel expresses when saying, “We think in words,” and which we find again in this somewhat tautological expression “nominibus noscimus” = “tel nom, telle notion.”
The fact that names, which are signs not of things, but of particular concepts, are all derived from general ideas, is one of the most fruitful discoveries of the science of language; since it not only expresses the truth which has been stated below, that language and the capability of forming general ideas separate man from the animals, but also a second truth that these two phenomena are two sides of the same truth. This explains the reason why the science of language rejects equally the interjectional theory and the mimetic, but accepts the final elements of language, those roots which all contain concepts.
The name man, which we all apply to ourselves, is a title of nobility to which none other can compare. It is the direct issue of man, which in its turn came from mâ, to measure, this gave mâs, moon, to the Sanscrit language. The word man contains in itself the kernel of subtle thought; if we connect the word with the celestial body that helps us to measure our time, we do not therefore necessarily invest the moon with a living and thinking personality; it is sufficient to consider that if our ancestors conceived of it as measuring the nights and days, they had in themselves the capabilities with which they invested the words they created.
We must also notice that the creators of this name having connected it with the loftiest thing of which they could conceive—thought—did not stop there; the sight of what was lowest—the dust—inspired them with another name, homo = earth-born; this Latin word having the same source as humus = the soil. Our fathers also gave themselves a third name, which was brotos in Greek, mortalis in Latin, and marta—the dying—in Sanscrit; they could hardly have applied the word mortal to themselves if they had not at the same time believed in other beings who did not die.
And this strange fact has come to pass, that on our planet there existed in former days men—simple mortals as they were—who manipulated thought, incorporating it with language, the only domain in which it can exist; then these marvellous men so entirely eclipsed themselves, and passed out of our ken, that their posterity do not recognise them under their modest garb of anonymity; for their work though still living through thousands of centuries, is so unrecognised that men ask themselves, “Why is it not possible to think apart from words?”
Thus we acknowledge the profound wisdom of the conceptions of our ancestors; but their understanding worked unequally, on certain points it was very advanced, but on others behindhand.