Words are the factors of speech and the highest development of that faculty. A word may be composed of one or more sounds so articulated as to preclude any interval of time between the utterance of any two of them, as "tune," in which the sounds appear to overlap and blend into each other. A single word may signify more than a single thing, and sometimes will suggest to the mind a category or group of connected thoughts, as "eat" or "telegraph," and such is the value of many of our words. This is especially true of words which combine two roots; but such a combination is usually found only in the higher types of human speech. But in these higher types words bear such relations to each other that we cannot well convey a complete idea with a single word; and hence it is that in the modes of expression used by man, each separate statement consists of two or more words bearing certain relations to each other, and these are often qualified by other words of less importance. This redundancy is due to the higher and more complex modes of thought used by man; and it is on such a state of facts that we have founded that branch of science called grammar, which would be of little use among those forms which occupy the planes of life inferior to man, and it is found of little use among the lower tribes of man, where it does not exist in any written form. Grammar does not make language, but serves as a kind of anchor by which the dialects of human speech are somewhat unified and made more stable; and to this is due in some measure the fact that savage tongues and dialects are more susceptible to change in their structure, while the phonetic basis upon which they rest remains the same.
GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC
In the more refined tongues of human speech, we go beyond that code of laws called grammar and amplify them into rhetoric. This branch of the science of speech could find no place among the lower types, as the words are few from which they may select; and so exact and arbitrary is the meaning of each one, and so uniform the relations, that no great variety of expression can be made with such a limited vocabulary. Their eloquence is in their brevity of speech. But while the types of speech used by the lower primates occupy a plane so low in the scale, they are as truly speech as the vocal organs that produce the sounds are truly vocal organs. Life is life, in what form soever it is found. It is not less real in the mollusc than in the man. The same is true of emotion, of thought, of expression, and of speech. Life, emotion, thought, expression, and speech began in embryo, and have developed co-ordinately with all the faculties possessed by man. They are as dependent upon each other as matter is on force, and as inseparable as light from energy. Speech is the physical manifestation of which thought is the ultimate force; it is a spoke in the chariot-wheels of consciousness; it is the body of which thought is the soul.
CHAPTER XX.
Life and Consciousness—Consciousness and Emotion—Emotion and Thought—Thought and Expression—Expression and Speech—The Vocal Organs and Sound—Speech in City and Country—Music, Passions, and Taste—Life and Reason.
At the beginning of life there is a consciousness which is not more feeble than is the life with which it is associated; and as that spark of life kindles into a flame, so that spark of consciousness kindles into the "ego," and nowhere can a line be drawn at which it may be said "here consciousness first intercepted life." But as the living form develops organs and members, through the agency of the vital force, whatever that may be, so consciousness develops into desires, emotion and thought. Where shall the line be drawn which separates these attributes? Standing in the centre, we look around and see the horizon touching the plain on every side, and this appears to us as a great circle, the centre of which is always occupied by the observer, and from our standpoint we imagine that everything between us and that horizon must be that distance from the centre; but as we move our point of view from place to place, we move the circle with us, and yet we cannot find the boundary line which marks this circle at any time. In a manner not unlike this we pass from centre to centre of the circles of life, and carry with us the circle, so that at no one point do we ever appear to be much closer to the horizon than we were at any other point.
LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS
The classification of genera and species is in a great degree arbitrary; but much less so than are these abstract characters of life and mind. There is nowhere a line at which emotion stops and thought begins; there is nowhere a line at which thought stops and expression begins; there is nowhere a line at which expression stops and speech begins. These blend into each other so that only by comparing the extremes can we discern a difference.
The tenets of metaphysics have heretofore been made to harmonise with the tenets of theology, and hence it is that we have learned to follow the laws laid down by others and not to think for ourselves. It has been as much a heresy to gainsay the dogmas of science as those of religion until recently; and even now the tender-footed doctors guard their theories with a vigilance and jealousy worthy of the angel that guarded the gates of Eden.