behaviour, whose gesticulations and other peculiarities were instinctively
imitated by them,--the 'king of men' who was their priest, almost their
God...But these are conjectures only: so little do we know of the origin
of language that the real scholar is indisposed to touch the subject at
all.
(2) There are other errors besides the figment of a primitive or original
language which it is time to leave behind us. We no longer divide
languages into synthetical and analytical, or suppose similarity of
structure to be the safe or only guide to the affinities of them. We do
not confuse the parts of speech with the categories of Logic. Nor do we
conceive languages any more than civilisations to be in a state of
dissolution; they do not easily pass away, but are far more tenacious of
life than the tribes by whom they are spoken. 'Where two or three are
gathered together,' they survive. As in the human frame, as in the state,
there is a principle of renovation as well as of decay which is at work in
all of them. Neither do we suppose them to be invented by the wit of man.
With few exceptions, e.g. technical words or words newly imported from a
foreign language, and the like, in which art has imitated nature, 'words
are not made but grow.' Nor do we attribute to them a supernatural origin.
The law which regulates them is like the law which governs the circulation
of the blood, or the rising of the sap in trees; the action of it is
uniform, but the result, which appears in the superficial forms of men and
animals or in the leaves of trees, is an endless profusion and variety.
The laws of vegetation are invariable, but no two plants, no two leaves of
the forest are precisely the same. The laws of language are invariable,
but no two languages are alike, no two words have exactly the same meaning.
No two sounds are exactly of the same quality, or give precisely the same
impression.
It would be well if there were a similar consensus about some other points
which appear to be still in dispute. Is language conscious or unconscious?
In speaking or writing have we present to our minds the meaning or the
sound or the construction of the words which we are using?--No more than
the separate drops of water with which we quench our thirst are present:
the whole draught may be conscious, but not the minute particles of which
it is made up: So the whole sentence may be conscious, but the several
words, syllables, letters are not thought of separately when we are
uttering them. Like other natural operations, the process of speech, when
most perfect, is least observed by us. We do not pause at each mouthful to
dwell upon the taste of it: nor has the speaker time to ask himself the
comparative merits of different modes of expression while he is uttering
them. There are many things in the use of language which may be observed
from without, but which cannot be explained from within. Consciousness
carries us but a little way in the investigation of the mind; it is not the
faculty of internal observation, but only the dim light which makes such
observation possible. What is supposed to be our consciousness of language
is really only the analysis of it, and this analysis admits of innumerable
degrees. But would it not be better if this term, which is so misleading,
and yet has played so great a part in mental science, were either banished
or used only with the distinct meaning of 'attention to our own minds,'
such as is called forth, not by familiar mental processes, but by the
interruption of them? Now in this sense we may truly say that we are not
conscious of ordinary speech, though we are commonly roused to attention by
the misuse or mispronunciation of a word. Still less, even in schools and
academies, do we ever attempt to invent new words or to alter the meaning
of old ones, except in the case, mentioned above, of technical or borrowed
words which are artificially made or imported because a need of them is
felt. Neither in our own nor in any other age has the conscious effort of
reflection in man contributed in an appreciable degree to the formation of
language. 'Which of us by taking thought' can make new words or
constructions? Reflection is the least of the causes by which language is
affected, and is likely to have the least power, when the linguistic
instinct is greatest, as in young children and in the infancy of nations.
A kindred error is the separation of the phonetic from the mental element
of language; they are really inseparable--no definite line can be drawn
between them, any more than in any other common act of mind and body. It
is true that within certain limits we possess the power of varying sounds
by opening and closing the mouth, by touching the palate or the teeth with
the tongue, by lengthening or shortening the vocal instrument, by greater
or less stress, by a higher or lower pitch of the voice, and we can
substitute one note or accent for another. But behind the organs of speech
and their action there remains the informing mind, which sets them in
motion and works together with them. And behind the great structure of
human speech and the lesser varieties of language which arise out of the
many degrees and kinds of human intercourse, there is also the unknown or
over-ruling law of God or nature which gives order to it in its infinite
greatness, and variety in its infinitesimal minuteness--both equally
inscrutable to us. We need no longer discuss whether philology is to be
classed with the Natural or the Mental sciences, if we frankly recognize
that, like all the sciences which are concerned with man, it has a double
aspect,--inward and outward; and that the inward can only be known through
the outward. Neither need we raise the question whether the laws of
language, like the other laws of human action, admit of exceptions. The
answer in all cases is the same--that the laws of nature are uniform,
though the consistency or continuity of them is not always perceptible to
us. The superficial appearances of language, as of nature, are irregular,
but we do not therefore deny their deeper uniformity. The comparison of
the growth of language in the individual and in the nation cannot be wholly
discarded, for nations are made up of individuals. But in this, as in the
other political sciences, we must distinguish between collective and
individual actions or processes, and not attribute to the one what belongs
to the other. Again, when we speak of the hereditary or paternity of a
language, we must remember that the parents are alive as well as the
children, and that all the preceding generations survive (after a manner)
in the latest form of it. And when, for the purposes of comparison, we
form into groups the roots or terminations of words, we should not forget
how casual is the manner in which their resemblances have arisen--they were
not first written down by a grammarian in the paradigms of a grammar and
learned out of a book, but were due to many chance attractions of sound or
of meaning, or of both combined. So many cautions have to be borne in
mind, and so many first thoughts to be dismissed, before we can proceed
safely in the path of philological enquiry. It might be well sometimes to
lay aside figures of speech, such as the 'root' and the 'branches,' the
'stem,' the 'strata' of Geology, the 'compounds' of Chemistry, 'the ripe
fruit of pronouns dropping from verbs' (see above), and the like, which are
always interesting, but are apt to be delusive. Yet such figures of speech
are far nearer the truth than the theories which attribute the invention
and improvement of language to the conscious action of the human
mind...Lastly, it is doubted by recent philologians whether climate can be
supposed to have exercised any influence worth speaking of on a language:
such a view is said to be unproven: it had better therefore not be
silently assumed.
'Natural selection' and the 'survival of the fittest' have been applied in
the field of philology, as well as in the other sciences which are
concerned with animal and vegetable life. And a Darwinian school of
philologists has sprung up, who are sometimes accused of putting words in
the place of things. It seems to be true, that whether applied to language
or to other branches of knowledge, the Darwinian theory, unless very
precisely defined, hardly escapes from being a truism. If by 'the natural
selection' of words or meanings of words or by the 'persistence and
survival of the fittest' the maintainer of the theory intends to affirm
nothing more than this--that the word 'fittest to survive' survives, he
adds not much to the knowledge of language. But if he means that the word
or the meaning of the word or some portion of the word which comes into use
or drops out of use is selected or rejected on the ground of economy or
parsimony or ease to the speaker or clearness or euphony or expressiveness,
or greater or less demand for it, or anything of this sort, he is affirming
a proposition which has several senses, and in none of these senses can be
assisted to be uniformly true. For the laws of language are precarious,
and can only act uniformly when there is such frequency of intercourse
among neighbours as is sufficient to enforce them. And there are many
reasons why a man should prefer his own way of speaking to that of others,
unless by so doing he becomes unintelligible. The struggle for existence
among words is not of that fierce and irresistible kind in which birds,
beasts and fishes devour one another, but of a milder sort, allowing one
usage to be substituted for another, not by force, but by the persuasion,
or rather by the prevailing habit, of a majority. The favourite figure, in
this, as in some other uses of it, has tended rather to obscure than
explain the subject to which it has been applied. Nor in any case can the
struggle for existence be deemed to be the sole or principal cause of
changes in language, but only one among many, and one of which we cannot
easily measure the importance. There is a further objection which may be
urged equally against all applications of the Darwinian theory. As in
animal life and likewise in vegetable, so in languages, the process of
change is said to be insensible: sounds, like animals, are supposed to
pass into one another by imperceptible gradation. But in both cases the
newly-created forms soon become fixed; there are few if any vestiges of the
intermediate links, and so the better half of the evidence of the change is
wanting.
(3) Among the incumbrances or illusions of language may be reckoned many
of the rules and traditions of grammar, whether ancient grammar or the
corrections of it which modern philology has introduced. Grammar, like
law, delights in definition: human speech, like human action, though very
far from being a mere chaos, is indefinite, admits of degrees, and is
always in a state of change or transition. Grammar gives an erroneous
conception of language: for it reduces to a system that which is not a
system. Its figures of speech, pleonasms, ellipses, anacolutha, pros to
semainomenon, and the like have no reality; they do not either make
conscious expressions more intelligible or show the way in which they have
arisen; they are chiefly designed to bring an earlier use of language into
conformity with the later. Often they seem intended only to remind us that
great poets like Aeschylus or Sophocles or Pindar or a great prose writer
like Thucydides are guilty of taking unwarrantable liberties with
grammatical rules; it appears never to have occurred to the inventors of
them that these real 'conditores linguae Graecae' lived in an age before
grammar, when 'Greece also was living Greece.' It is the anatomy, not the
physiology of language, which grammar seeks to describe: into the idiom
and higher life of words it does not enter. The ordinary Greek grammar
gives a complete paradigm of the verb, without suggesting that the double
or treble forms of Perfects, Aorists, etc. are hardly ever contemporaneous.
It distinguishes Moods and Tenses, without observing how much of the nature
of one passes into the other. It makes three Voices, Active, Passive, and
Middle, but takes no notice of the precarious existence and uncertain
character of the last of the three. Language is a thing of degrees and
relations and associations and exceptions: grammar ties it up in fixed
rules. Language has many varieties of usage: grammar tries to reduce them
to a single one. Grammar divides verbs into regular and irregular: it
does not recognize that the irregular, equally with the regular, are
subject to law, and that a language which had no exceptions would not be a
natural growth: for it could not have been subjected to the influences by
which language is ordinarily affected. It is always wanting to describe
ancient languages in the terms of a modern one. It has a favourite fiction
that one word is put in the place of another; the truth is that no word is
ever put for another. It has another fiction, that a word has been
omitted: words are omitted because they are no longer needed; and the
omission has ceased to be observed. The common explanation of kata or some
other preposition 'being understood' in a Greek sentence is another fiction
of the same kind, which tends to disguise the fact that under cases were
comprehended originally many more relations, and that prepositions are used
only to define the meaning of them with greater precision. These instances
are sufficient to show the sort of errors which grammar introduces into
language. We are not considering the question of its utility to the
beginner in the study. Even to him the best grammar is the shortest and
that in which he will have least to unlearn. It may be said that the
explanations here referred to are already out of date, and that the study
of Greek grammar has received a new character from comparative philology.
