So in Thermotics, the Science of Heat, Heat itself is the Positismus or Something of the Domain; and Cold the Negatismus or Correlative Nothing. Heat is, consequently, the analogue of Sound and Light; while Cold is the analogue of Silence and Darkness.
In respect to the Domain of Mind, Positive Mental Experience (Feelings, Thoughts, and Volitions, including self-consciousness) are the Positive Factor, the Something of Mentality. Inexperience, the lack of mental exercitation, hence Ignorance, is the Negative Factor, or Nothing. The Correspondential Relationship or Analogy existing between this Domain of the Universe and others already mentioned is testified to in a remarkable manner by our use of Language. We denominate the want of Feeling Cold or Frigidity—in respect to the Mind or the individual character. The absence of Thought and Knowledge, or, in other words, Intellectual Barrenness, is called Darkness or Obscurity of the Mind. While the lack of Will or Purpose in the Mind is said to be the absence of Tension or Strain (the great Musical term); and the Stillness or quiet hence resulting may be appropriately designated as the Silence of the Mind; Musical Silences being, as pointed out above, technically termed Rests.
With this superficial exhibition of the most radical aspect of the Echo of Idea or Repetition of Type which subsists between all the departments of the Universe, I pass to the more specific consideration of this Analogy as concerning the Domain of Thought and the Domain of Language.
Setting aside from our present consideration Silence, the Negative factor or Negatismus of Language, and fixing our attention upon Sound, the Positive factor or Positismus of Language, we discover it to be composed of two constituents, Vowels and Consonants.
The Vowel is the Substance, the Reality of Language, and the Consonant is the Form, the Limitation.
By Vowel sound is meant the free or unobstructed, and as such unlimited flow of the vocalized or sounding breath. Vowels are defined in the simplest way as those sounds which are uttered with the month open; as a (ah) in Father, o in roll, etc.
Consonants are, on the contrary, those sounds which are produced by the crack of commencing or by obstructing, breaking, or cutting off the sounding breath, by completely or partially closing the organs of speech; as, for instance, by closing the lips, as when we pronounce pie, by, my, etc.; or by pressing the point of the tongue against the gums and teeth, as when we say tie, die, etc.; or by lifting the body of the tongue against the hard palate or roof of the mouth, as when we give the k or hard g sound, as in rack, rag, or in any other similar way.
Consonants are, therefore, the breaks or limitations upon the otherwise unbroken and continuous vocality, voice, or vocalized breath. In other words, as already said, Vowel-Sound is the Elemental Substance, and Consonant-Sound the Elemental Form of Language, or Speech. (By Vowels and Consonants are here meant, the Reader should closely observe, Vowel-Sounds and Consonant-Sounds, as produced by the Organs of Speech, and as they address themselves to the Ear, distinguished and wholly apart from the letters or combinations of letters by which they are diversely represented to the Eye in different languages.)
By a valid but somewhat remote analogy, the Vowel-Sounds of Language may be regarded collectively as the Flesh, and the Consonant-Sounds as the Bone or Skeleton of the Lingual Structure. Flesh is an Analogue or Correspondential Equivalent of Substance. Bone or Skeleton, which gives outline or shape to the otherwise soft, collapsing, and lumpy flesh-mass of the Human or Animal Body, is an Analogue of Correspondential Equivalent of Limitation or Form; as the framework of a house is the shaping or form-giving factor or agent of the entire structure.
Vowel-Sounds are soft, fluent, changeful, and evanescent. One passes easily into another by slight deviations of pronunciation, resulting from trivial differences in National and Individual condition and culture; like the Flesh of the animal, which readily decays from the Bony Skeleton, while the last remains preserved for ages as a fossil. The Vowel-Sounds so readily lose their identity, that they are of slight importance to the Etymologist or Comparative Philologist, who is, in fact, dealing in the Paleontology of Language.