Part 16 (1/2)

Let us take another word for cave, which is _cavea_ or _caverna_ Here again Ada that this naiven, was applied to one particular cave, and was afterwards extended to other caves But Leibniz would be equally right inthat in order to call even the first hollow _cavea_, it was necessary that the general idea of _hollow_ should have been formed in the mind, and should have received its vocal expression _cav_ Nay we o a step beyond, for _cavus_, or hollow, is a secondary, not a primary, idea

Before a cave was called _cavea_, a hollow thing, s hollow had passed before the eyes of , or a hole, called by the root _cav_? Because what had been hollowed out was intended at first as a place of safety and protection, as a cover; and it was called therefore by the root _ku_ or _sku_, which conveyed the idea of to cover(340) Hence the general idea of covering existed in the -places in rocks or trees, and it was not till an expression had thus been fraeneral, that caves in particular could be designated by the name of _cavea_ or hollows

Another forinally the same; a hole was called _koilon_ because it served as a cover But once so used _koilon_ came to mean a cave, a vaulted cave, a vault, and thus the heaven was called _clum_, the modern _ciel_, because it was looked upon as a vault or cover for the earth

It is the sainally one out of the , and that attribute, whether it be a quality or an action, is necessarily a general idea The word thus formed was in the first instance intended for one object only, though of course it was almost immediately extended to the whole class to which this object see When a word such as _rivus_, river, was first formed, no doubt it was intended for a certain river, and that river was called _rivus_, fro water Inriver or runner re to the dignity of an appellative Thus _Rhenus_, the Rhine,to one river, and could not be used as an appellative for others The Ganges is the Sanskrit _Ganga_, literally the Go-go; a word very well adapted for any majestic river, but in Sanskrit restricted to the one sacred streaain is the Sanskrit _Sindhu_, and ator, from _syand_, to sprinkle In this case, however, the proper narowth, but was used likewise as an appelative for any great stream

We have thus seen how the controversy about the _prinitu really known is the general It is through it that we know and naeneral idea can be predicated, and it is only in the third stage that these individual objects, thus known and naain the representatives of whole classes, and their names or proper names are raised into appellatives(341)

There is a petrified philosophy in language, and if we examine the most ancient word for name we find it is _naman_ in Sanskrit, _nona_ is dropped as in _natus_, son, for _gnatus_ _Nana, to know, and

And hoe know things? We perceive things by our senses, but our senses convey to us infors only But to _know_ is more than to feel, than to perceive, more than to remember, more than to co _knowing_ his _ his nize But to know a thing,if we are able to bring it, and any part of it, under eneral ideas We then say, not that we have a perception, but a conception, or that we have a general idea of a thing The facts of nature are perceived by our senses; the thoughts of nature, to borrow an expression of Oersted's, can be conceived by our reason only(342) Now the first step towards this real knowledge, a step which, however small in appearance, separates _, or the ing the individual under the general; and whatever we knohether empirically or scientifically, we know it only by eneral ideas Other animals have sensation, perception, memory, and, in a certain sense, intellect; but all these, in the anile objects only Man has sensation, perception, memory, intellect, and reason, and it is his reason only that is conversant with general ideas(343)

Through reason we not only stand a step above the brute creation: we belong to a different world We look down on our merely animal experience, on our sensations, perceptions, ourto us, but not as constituting our most inward and eternal self Our senses, our memory, our intellect, are like the lenses of a telescope But there is an eye that looks through them at the realities of the outer world, our own rational and self-conscious soul; a power as distinct from our perceptive faculties as the sun is froht, and warmth, and life

At the very point where man parts company with the brute world, at the first flash of reason as the enesis of language analyze any word you like, and you will find that it expresses a general idea peculiar to the individual to which the na of etter What is the iven to animals, such as cows and sheep, was _pasu_, the Latin _pecus_, which means _feeders_ _Animal_ itself is a later naain , like spirit from _spirare_, and was derived froives us _anila_, wind, in Sanskrit, and _anemos_, wind, in Greek _Ghost_, the German _Geist_, is based on the saust_, with _yeast_, and even with the hissing and boiling _geysers_ of Iceland _Soul_ is the Gothic _saivala_, and this is clearly related to another Gothic word, _saivs_,(344) which means the sea The sea was called _saivs_ from a root _si_ or _siv_, the Greek _seio_, to shake; it nant or running water The soul being called _saivala_, we see that it was originally conceived by the Teutonic nations as a sea within, heaving up and doith every breath, and reflecting heaven and earth on the mirror of the deep

The Sanskrit name for love is _smara_; it is derived from _smar_, to recollect; and the salish _smart_

If the serpent is called in Sanskrit _sarpa_, it is because it was conceived under the general idea of creeping, an idea expressed by the word _srip_ But the serpent was also called _ahi_ in Sanskrit, in Greek _echis_ or _echidna_, in Latin _anguis_ This name is derived from quite a different root and idea The root is _ah_ in Sanskrit, or _anh_, which ether, to choke, to throttle Here the distinguishi+ng , and _ahi_ eneral idea of throttler It is a curious root this _anh_, and it still lives in several o_, _anxi_, _anctuor_, suffocation But _angor_ meant not only quinsy or conifies anguish or anxiety The two adjectives _angustus_, narrow, and _anxius_, uneasy, both come from the same source In Greek the root retained its natural and ys_, near, and _echis_, serpent, throttler But in Sanskrit it was chosen with great truth as the proper name of sin Evil no doubt presented itself under various aspects to the human mind, and its names are many; but none so expressive as those derived from our root, _anh_, to throttle _Anhas_ in Sanskrit inally throttling,-the consciousness of sin being like the grasp of the assassin on the throat of his victim All who have seen and contemplated the statue of Laokoon and his sons, with the serpent coiled round them from head to foot, may realize what those ancients felt and sahen they called sin _anhas_, or the throttler This _anhas_ is the saos_, sin In Gothic the sais_, in the sense of _fear_, and from the sa_, in _ugly_ The English _anguish_ is frooscia_, a corruption of the Latin _angustiae_, a strait

And how did those early thinkers and frauish between eneral idea did they connect with the first conception of themselves? The Latin word _homo_, the French _l'homme_, which has been reduced to _on_ in _on dit_, is derived from the same root which we have in _humus_, the soil, _humilis_, hu made of the dust of the earth(346)

Another ancient word for man was the Sanskrit _marta_,(347) the Greek _brotos_, the Latin _mortalis_ (a secondary derivative), our own _mortal_

_Marta_ means ”he who dies,” and it is re, and dying, this should have been chosen as the distinguishi+ng name for man Those early poets would hardly have called thes as immortal

There is a third name for man which means simply the thinker, and this, the true title of our race, still lives in the name of _man_ _Ma_ in Sanskrit means to measure, from which you remember we had the name of moon _Man_, a derivative root, inally thinker, then man In the later Sanskrit we find derivatives, such as _ man In Gothic we find both _man_, and _mannisks_, the modern German _mann_ and _mensch_

There were many s in ancient languages Any feature that struck the observing mind as peculiarly characteristic could be ht, the warolden, the preserver, the destroyer, the wolf, the lion, the heavenly eye, the father of light and life Hence that superabundance of synonyle for life_ carried on a these words, which led to the destruction of the less strong, the less happy, the less fertile words, and ended in the triunized and proper nae On a very small scale this process of _natural selection_, or, as it would better be called, _elies, that is to say, even in languages so old and full of years as English and French

What it was at the first burst of dialects we can only gather from such isolated cases as when Von Ha to the cainally a predicate, that nans of individual conceptions, are all, without exception, derived froeneral ideas, is one of the e It was known before that language is the distinguishi+ng characteristic of eneral ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes; but that these tere only different expressions of the same fact was not known till the theory of roots had been established as preferable to the theories both of Onoh our modern philosophy did not know it, the ancient poets and frae is _logos_, but _logos_ on_ was chosen as the name, and the most proper name, for brute No anie and thought are inseparable Words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts without words are nothing To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud The word is the thought incarnate

And now I am afraid I have but a few minutes left to explain the last question of all in our science, naht? How did roots becoeneral ideas? Hoas the abstract idea ofby _, _sad_ sitting, _da_ giving, _?

I shall try to answer as briefly as possible The 400 or 500 roots which remain as the constituent elee are not interjections, nor are they imitations They are _phonetic types_ produced by a power inherent in huh with Plato we should add that, e say by nature, we mean by the hand of God(349) There is a lahich runs through nearly the whole of nature, that everything which is struck rings Each substance has its peculiar ring We can tell the more or less perfect structure of ive

Gold rings differently fros differently fro to the nature of each percussion

It was the saanized of nature's works(350) Man, in his primitive and perfect state, was not only endowed, like the brute, with the power of expressing his sensations by interjections, and his perceptions by ono more articulate expression to the rational conceptions of hisIt was an instinct, an instinct of the mind as irresistible as any other instinct

So far as language is the production of that instinct, it belongs to the realm of nature Man loses his instincts as he ceases to want them His senses become fainter when, as in the case of scent, they becoave to each conception, as it thrilled for the first tih the brain, a phonetic expression, became extinct when its object was fulfilled The number of these _phonetic types_ , and it was only through the same process of _natural elimination_ which we observed in the early history of words, that clusters of roots, radually reduced to one definite type Instead of deriving language from nine roots, like Dr Murray,(351) or from _one_ root, a feat actually accomplished by a Dr Schmidt,(352) we must suppose that the first settlee was preceded by a period of unrestrained growth,-the spring of speech-to be followed by many an autumn

With the process of elimination, or natural selection, the historical elee However primitive the Chinese es, its roots or words have clearly passed through a long process of s of a merely traditional character even in Chinese The rule that in a simple sentence the first word is the subject, the second the verb, the third the object, is a traditional rule It is by tradition only that _ngo gin_, in Chinese, nifies uish between _full_ and _e predicative, the latter corresponding to our particles whichof full roots and determine their relation to each other It is only by tradition that roots becoinally full whether predicative or demonstrative, and the fact that empty roots in Chinese cannot always be traced back to their full prototypes shows that even the h successive periods of growth Chinese coinally full words, just as Sanskrit grainally substantial But we eneral principle, and must be prepared to find as many fanciful derivations in Chinese as in Sanskrit The fact, again, that all roots in Chinese are no longer capable of being employed at pleasure, either as substantives, or verbs, or adjectives, is another proof that, even in this rowth _Fu_ is father, _mu_ is mother; _fu mu_ parents; but neither _fu_ nor _inal predicative sense The ah which even so sie as Chinese must have passed is to be found in the cos attached to each; a result which could only have been obtained by that constant struggle which has been so well described in natural history as the struggle for life

But although this sifting of roots, and still more the subsequent co of nature or natural instincts, it is still less, asin a former Lecture, the effect of deliberate or premeditated art, in the sense in which, for instance, a picture of Raphael or a sy, or bird, and another to express heap, then the joining together of the two to express many birds, or birds in the plural, is the natural effect of the synthetic power of the hue, of the power of putting two and two together So, and that the real mystery to be solved is how the s as one Into those depths we cannot follow Other philosophers ilutinative and inflectional language is, like the first formation of roots, the result of a natural instinct Thus Professor Heyse(354) e must be explained by the philosophers as _necessary_ evolutions, founded in the very essence of hurowth of language, and we can understand and explain all that is the result of that growth But we cannot undertake to prove that all that is in language is so by necessity, and could not have been otherwise When we have, as in Chinese, two such words as _kiai_ and _tu_, both expressing a heap, an assembly, a quantity, then we may perfectly understand why either the one or the other should have been used to form the plural But if one of the two becomes fixed and traditional, while the other becoister the fact as historical, but no philosophy on earth will explain its absolute necessity We can perfectly understand hoith two such roots as _kuo_, e_, middle, the Chinese should have for_, in the empire But to say that this was the only way to express this conception is an assertion contradicted both by fact and reason We saw the various ways in which the future can be forible and equally possible, but not one of the_ is I; hence _ng ?ao_, I will The sa ?ao ?iu_, I will go, the first ger ?ao ?iu_ was the necessary form of the future in Chinese would introduce a fatalise which rests on no authority whatever The building up of language is not like the building of the cells in a beehive, nor is it like the building of St Peter's by Michael Angelo It is the result of innu to certain laws, and leaving in the end the result of their combined efforts freed from all that proved superfluous or useless Froin_, in kiai_, to the perfect graible as the result of the two principles of grohich we considered in our second Lecture