The Origin of Thought and Speech

by M. Moncalm

Whilst searching increasingly for what he had not yet found, man had mastered two ideas, those of law, and the beyond or the infinite, though not understanding the accurate meaning of these words; on these two points his mind was at rest. These two possessions once acquired could not be taken from him; in Aditi—which is limitless—could be found a home for things which had no bounds, and it could furnish an answer to all questions; and Rita, the order which rules the movements of the celestial bodies, is at the same time an incentive and a promise. A violent convulsion of nature may have alarmed the hearts of men, but the thought occurs to them, “This cannot last always.”[78]

“Sun and moon move in regular succession—that we may see, Indra, and believe.”[79]

Without fear there could have been no hope, without hope there could have been no faith.

[Śraddhâ], an ancient Aryan word used before the dispersion of the various members of the family, is the same as the Latin Credo. Where the Romans said credidi the Brahmans said [śraddadhau]; where the Romans said creditum, the Brahmans said [śraddhitam]. The germ of the faculty of faith, therefore, must have existed in the earliest strata of thought and language, since without the first glimpses of faith in the soul, there could have been no word for “to believe.”

As auxiliary verbs were lacking at first, the early Aryans found it very difficult to say of a thing that it is or is not; but they possessed the root as, which originally meant to breathe, and its simplest derivation was as-u—breath. Man having discovered in all the natural phenomena an activity resembling his own, said of the moon that it measures, of the river that it runs, of the sun that it rises and sets; thus each of these had certain activities peculiar to itself. Was there nothing common to all? Doubtless, since an action can be found which is shared equally by man and all animals, the act of breathing is common to all, so that our fathers when wishing to affirm that something existed said that it breathed.

Man turns his gaze from the things that surround him to himself; he feels superior to the physical phenomena, to the rivers, to the mountains. He possesses another nature to that of the sun, of the stars. He has discovered something in himself that is more than his body. What is it? how is he to name it? He saw his father or his mother, who had formerly been in every respect like himself, prostrate, without motion, without speech. What had happened? What was it that had left them? Knowing the root as, and its derivative as-u, he called it from the first breath, then spirit, which originally meant nothing more than the air absorbed by the lungs, from which it is exhaled as breath. Nothing constrained our ancestors to believe that because they had seen their parents die and their bodies decay, it must follow that what had hitherto animated them was now annihilated. This notion may have entered the brain of a philosopher, but man in his primitive simplicity, though doubtless terrified at the sight of death, would naturally incline to the belief that what he had known and loved, and had called by the names of father and mother, must still exist somewhere, although not in the body. The breath had not been seen to decay. What had become of it? Various answers were given to this question, at divers times and in divers countries. They were all equally probable; no objections could be made to them, but neither was there proof; they are beyond the reach of proof. “The best answer was perhaps that contained in the most ancient Greek language and mythology, that the souls had gone to the house of the Invisible, of Aides. No one has ever said anything truer.”

From the depths of the eastern sky Aditi arises each morning. To the eyes of the ancient seers the dawn seemed to open the gates of another world into which they begged to enter—into the abode of the gods. We can understand that as the sun and all the solar deities rise from the east, Aditi was said to be the mother of Mitra, Vishnu, Savitar, and Varuna. Another conception also arose, that the east being the abode of the bright gods, would also become the home of those parents and friends who died, “the blessed departed who would join the company of the gods that they might be transferred to the east.”[80] Aditi thus embodied the mystery of life and death; and was the “Mot de l’Énigme” of our existence. All the theogony and primitive philosophy of the Aryan were concentrated in the dawn. Those souls who participate with Aditi in the “birthplace of the Immortals” sometimes share the worship offered by their children who are still on the earth. One off-shoot of this ancient worship still survives, and the popularity of the festival of the 1st of November in certain countries testifies that the homage rendered to the memory of the dead is a necessity of the human heart. And certainly those whom we are accustomed to speak of as dead are most surely living. The rishis desired to contemplate their faces, and one of them, speaking for all, cried: “Who will give us back to the great Aditi, that I may see father and mother?”[81]

All peoples have desired to know which part of the human body is the seat of the soul and of life; the dictionaries of all languages, whether spoken by civilised or uncivilised people, show that the words blood, heart, chest, reins and breath have all been used to indicate the seat of life, soul, thought, and the affections. Amongst the Maoris, the words used for the internal organs mean at the same time the heart, and the centre of joy and sorrow; the seat of conscience and of desires and the will; it is strange that the brain, which we often look upon as the cradle of thought, is not found in the psychological nomenclature of the ancient world. The expression which we find in the Bible, “The blood is the life,” and in other languages besides Hebrew, inspired many religious and superstitious acts. It is singular that in one of the dialects spoken in the south of India, Tamil, the word used for soul has the sense of leaper or dancer; these are efforts to express that which moves within us. We are here not amongst learned metaphysicians, but concerned with simple children of nature; but the greatest philosophers have at no time more clearly defined the soul than by describing it as that which moves of itself, but is not moved.

Our language is so rich in abstract terms, derived from a small number of concrete words, that we are not aware how often we use the old material words to express purely mental states or conditions; for instance we speak of taking things to heart, or learning verses by heart, without thinking of the heart that beats within our breasts.

Fire has always occupied a prominent position in the imagination of all people, of all nations; but with the exception of the Hindoos none have left traditions which enable us to transport ourselves to the simplest beginnings of the fire upon the hearth, and nothing more. Heracleitus already mentions fire as everlasting or immortal, and the “origin of all things, a higher conception than that of the gods of the populace whom Heracleitus tolerated, though he did not believe in them. ‘Neither one of the gods,’ he declares, ‘nor of men has made this world, ... it always was and will be, ever-living fire, catching forms and consuming them.’”[82] Heracleitus imagined that he knew what was fire; but the rishis speak with less assurance; at first they express their astonishment at the appearance of fire, it is one of the physical apparitions which impressed them the most, although of all the devas fire seemed the one most readily known, since it had its dwelling with men, it was within reach of the hand, could be touched, but as it burnt the fingers the experiment was only made once. Although seen so near at hand fire remained a great enigma; our ancestors could not understand how it could unite in itself at the same time such good and such destructive qualities. It warmed the members numbed by cold, at night it lighted the hut as if the sun were in it, yet at times it destroyed suddenly whole forests; it seemed everywhere; when the thunder rolled, fire escaped from a dark cloud like a flash; it appeared as a spark when two flints were struck or two branches of wood rubbed together; but its chief characteristic was its excessive mobility, nothing in nature could compare with the velocity of its movements.