point. 'If we could always, or almost always, use likenesses, which are
the appropriate expressions, that would be the most perfect state of
language.' These words suggest a question of deeper interest than the
origin of language; viz. what is the ideal of language, how far by any
correction of their usages existing languages might become clearer and more
expressive than they are, more poetical, and also more logical; or whether
they are now finally fixed and have received their last impress from time
and authority.
On the whole, the Cratylus seems to contain deeper truths about language
than any other ancient writing. But feeling the uncertain ground upon
which he is walking, and partly in order to preserve the character of
Socrates, Plato envelopes the whole subject in a robe of fancy, and allows
his principles to drop out as if by accident.
II. What is the result of recent speculations about the origin and nature
of language? Like other modern metaphysical enquiries, they end at last in
a statement of facts. But, in order to state or understand the facts, a
metaphysical insight seems to be required. There are more things in
language than the human mind easily conceives. And many fallacies have to
be dispelled, as well as observations made. The true spirit of philosophy
or metaphysics can alone charm away metaphysical illusions, which are
always reappearing, formerly in the fancies of neoplatonist writers, now in
the disguise of experience and common sense. An analogy, a figure of
speech, an intelligible theory, a superficial observation of the
individual, have often been mistaken for a true account of the origin of
language.
Speaking is one of the simplest natural operations, and also the most
complex. Nothing would seem to be easier or more trivial than a few words
uttered by a child in any language. Yet into the formation of those words
have entered causes which the human mind is not capable of calculating.
They are a drop or two of the great stream or ocean of speech which has
been flowing in all ages. They have been transmitted from one language to
another; like the child himself, they go back to the beginnings of the
human race. How they originated, who can tell? Nevertheless we can
imagine a stage of human society in which the circle of men's minds was
narrower and their sympathies and instincts stronger; in which their organs
of speech were more flexible, and the sense of hearing finer and more
discerning; in which they lived more in company, and after the manner of
children were more given to express their feelings; in which 'they moved
all together,' like a herd of wild animals, 'when they moved at all.'
Among them, as in every society, a particular person would be more
sensitive and intelligent than the rest. Suddenly, on some occasion of
interest (at the approach of a wild beast, shall we say?), he first, they
following him, utter a cry which resounds through the forest. The cry is
almost or quite involuntary, and may be an imitation of the roar of the
animal. Thus far we have not speech, but only the inarticulate expression
of feeling or emotion in no respect differing from the cries of animals;
for they too call to one another and are answered. But now suppose that
some one at a distance not only hears the sound, but apprehends the
meaning: or we may imagine that the cry is repeated to a member of the
society who had been absent; the others act the scene over again when he
returns home in the evening. And so the cry becomes a word. The hearer in
turn gives back the word to the speaker, who is now aware that he has
acquired a new power. Many thousand times he exercises this power; like a
child learning to talk, he repeats the same cry again, and again he is
answered; he tries experiments with a like result, and the speaker and the
hearer rejoice together in their newly-discovered faculty. At first there
would be few such cries, and little danger of mistaking or confusing them.
For the mind of primitive man had a narrow range of perceptions and
feelings; his senses were microscopic; twenty or thirty sounds or gestures
would be enough for him, nor would he have any difficulty in finding them.
Naturally he broke out into speech--like the young infant he laughed and
babbled; but not until there were hearers as well as speakers did language
begin. Not the interjection or the vocal imitation of the object, but the
interjection or the vocal imitation of the object understood, is the first
rudiment of human speech.
After a while the word gathers associations, and has an independent
existence. The imitation of the lion's roar calls up the fears and hopes
of the chase, which are excited by his appearance. In the moment of
hearing the sound, without any appreciable interval, these and other latent
experiences wake up in the mind of the hearer. Not only does he receive an
impression, but he brings previous knowledge to bear upon that impression.
Necessarily the pictorial image becomes less vivid, while the association
of the nature and habits of the animal is more distinctly perceived. The
picture passes into a symbol, for there would be too many of them and they
would crowd the mind; the vocal imitation, too, is always in process of
being lost and being renewed, just as the picture is brought back again in
the description of the poet. Words now can be used more freely because
there are more of them. What was once an involuntary expression becomes
voluntary. Not only can men utter a cry or call, but they can communicate
and converse; they can not only use words, but they can even play with
them. The word is separated both from the object and from the mind; and
slowly nations and individuals attain to a fuller consciousness of
themselves.
Parallel with this mental process the articulation of sounds is gradually
becoming perfected. The finer sense detects the differences of them, and
begins, first to agglomerate, then to distinguish them. Times, persons,
places, relations of all kinds, are expressed by modifications of them.
The earliest parts of speech, as we may call them by anticipation, like the
first utterances of children, probably partook of the nature of
interjections and nouns; then came verbs; at length the whole sentence
appeared, and rhythm and metre followed. Each stage in the progress of
language was accompanied by some corresponding stage in the mind and
civilisation of man. In time, when the family became a nation, the wild
growth of dialects passed into a language. Then arose poetry and
literature. We can hardly realize to ourselves how much with each
improvement of language the powers of the human mind were enlarged; how the
inner world took the place of outer; how the pictorial or symbolical or
analogical word was refined into a notion; how language, fair and large and
free, was at last complete.
So we may imagine the speech of man to have begun as with the cries of
animals, or the stammering lips of children, and to have attained by
degrees the perfection of Homer and Plato. Yet we are far from saying that
this or any other theory of language is proved by facts. It is not
difficult to form an hypothesis which by a series of imaginary transitions
will bridge over the chasm which separates man from the animals.
Differences of kind may often be thus resolved into differences of degree.
But we must not assume that we have in this way discovered the true account
of them. Through what struggles the harmonious use of the organs of speech
was acquired; to what extent the conditions of human life were different;
how far the genius of individuals may have contributed to the discovery of
this as of the other arts, we cannot say: Only we seem to see that
language is as much the creation of the ear as of the tongue, and the
expression of a movement stirring the hearts not of one man only but of
many, 'as the trees of the wood are stirred by the wind.' The theory is
consistent or not inconsistent with our own mental experience, and throws
some degree of light upon a dark corner of the human mind.
In the later analysis of language, we trace the opposite and contrasted
elements of the individual and nation, of the past and present, of the
inward and outward, of the subject and object, of the notional and
relational, of the root or unchanging part of the word and of the changing
inflexion, if such a distinction be admitted, of the vowel and the
consonant, of quantity and accent, of speech and writing, of poetry and
prose. We observe also the reciprocal influence of sounds and conceptions
on each other, like the connexion of body and mind; and further remark that
although the names of objects were originally proper names, as the
grammarian or logician might call them, yet at a later stage they become
universal notions, which combine into particulars and individuals, and are
taken out of the first rude agglomeration of sounds that they may be
replaced in a higher and more logical order. We see that in the simplest
sentences are contained grammar and logic--the parts of speech, the Eleatic
philosophy and the Kantian categories. So complex is language, and so
expressive not only of the meanest wants of man, but of his highest
thoughts; so various are the aspects in which it is regarded by us. Then
again, when we follow the history of languages, we observe that they are
always slowly moving, half dead, half alive, half solid, half fluid; the
breath of a moment, yet like the air, continuous in all ages and
countries,--like the glacier, too, containing within them a trickling
stream which deposits debris of the rocks over which it passes. There were
happy moments, as we may conjecture, in the lives of nations, at which they
came to the birth--as in the golden age of literature, the man and the time
seem to conspire; the eloquence of the bard or chief, as in later times the
creations of the great writer who is the expression of his age, became
impressed on the minds of their countrymen, perhaps in the hour of some
crisis of national development--a migration, a conquest, or the like. The
picture of the word which was beginning to be lost, is now revived; the
sound again echoes to the sense; men find themselves capable not only of
expressing more feelings, and describing more objects, but of expressing
and describing them better. The world before the flood, that is to say,
the world of ten, twenty, a hundred thousand years ago, has passed away and
left no sign. But the best conception that we can form of it, though
imperfect and uncertain, is gained from the analogy of causes still in
action, some powerful and sudden, others working slowly in the course of
infinite ages. Something too may be allowed to 'the persistency of the
strongest,' to 'the survival of the fittest,' in this as in the other
realms of nature.
These are some of the reflections which the modern philosophy of language
suggests to us about the powers of the human mind and the forces and
influences by which the efforts of men to utter articulate sounds were
inspired. Yet in making these and similar generalizations we may note also
dangers to which we are exposed. (1) There is the confusion of ideas with
facts--of mere possibilities, and generalities, and modes of conception
with actual and definite knowledge. The words 'evolution,' 'birth,' 'law,'
development,' 'instinct,' 'implicit,' 'explicit,' and the like, have a
false clearness or comprehensiveness, which adds nothing to our knowledge.
The metaphor of a flower or a tree, or some other work of nature or art, is
often in like manner only a pleasing picture. (2) There is the fallacy of
resolving the languages which we know into their parts, and then imagining
that we can discover the nature of language by reconstructing them. (3)
There is the danger of identifying language, not with thoughts but with
ideas. (4) There is the error of supposing that the analysis of grammar
and logic has always existed, or that their distinctions were familiar to
Socrates and Plato. (5) There is the fallacy of exaggerating, and also of
diminishing the interval which separates articulate from inarticulate
language--the cries of animals from the speech of man--the instincts of
animals from the reason of man. (6) There is the danger which besets all
enquiries into the early history of man--of interpreting the past by the
present, and of substituting the definite and intelligible for the true but
dim outline which is the horizon of human knowledge.
The greatest light is thrown upon the nature of language by analogy. We
have the analogy of the cries of animals, of the songs of birds ('man, like
the nightingale, is a singing bird, but is ever binding up thoughts with
musical notes'), of music, of children learning to speak, of barbarous
nations in which the linguistic instinct is still undecayed, of ourselves
learning to think and speak a new language, of the deaf and dumb who have
words without sounds, of the various disorders of speech; and we have the
after-growth of mythology, which, like language, is an unconscious creation
of the human mind. We can observe the social and collective instincts of
animals, and may remark how, when domesticated, they have the power of
understanding but not of speaking, while on the other hand, some birds
which are comparatively devoid of intelligence, make a nearer approach to
articulate speech. We may note how in the animals there is a want of that
sympathy with one another which appears to be the soul of language. We can
compare the use of speech with other mental and bodily operations; for
speech too is a kind of gesture, and in the child or savage accompanied
with gesture. We may observe that the child learns to speak, as he learns
to walk or to eat, by a natural impulse; yet in either case not without a
power of imitation which is also natural to him--he is taught to read, but
he breaks forth spontaneously in speech. We can trace the impulse to bind
together the world in ideas beginning in the first efforts to speak and
