Review. Secondary parts of speech. which may be shortly described as the inferring of a particular conception from an universal or general: and even in the Enthymeme, which is an imperfect syllogism, the universal or general, if not expressed is understood. The inference may be made either from positive, or from hypothetical premises. Hence arises a further explanation of the use of moods in the verb. We assert a truth, not as actual, but as possible, and the consequence which we deduce becomes a contingency, necessarily following from the premises, but not necessarily true, because the premises themselves are not necessarily so. 47. Thus have I enumerated the three faculties which go to the making up of the reasoning power, and which are conception, assertion, and conclusion, answering to the simplex apprehensio, judicium, and discursus of the logicians. All continued exercise of reason resolves itself into a repeated exertion of these faculties; and the only difference is, that the truths produced by one conclusion serve to enlarge or improve the conceptions which are employed in framing other assertions and conclusions. 48. Hitherto I have had occasion to notice only those operations of the mind, as giving birth to the primary parts of speech, the noun and the verb, the substantive and the adjective, the pronoun and the participle, which are in most cultivated languages distinguished from the adverb, the conjunction, and the preposition, by being subject to inflection or change of form, either in the beginning, the middle, or the end of the words by which they are expressed. This latter circumstance, however, is merely accidental, and with respect to the essential difference of the adverb, conjunction, and preposition, from the other parts of speech before mentioned, I must repeat what I have before stated, that the mind contemplates truths at first in the mass, and then by reflection breaks down that mass into certain portions which again are subdivisible; so that, in asserting one truth, we cast as it were a rapid glance over the subordinate branches of which it is composed; as in viewing the whole beauty and proportion of the Apollo Belvidere, we see at once the graceful turn of the head, the animated advance of the arm, and the receding of the opposite foot; or as in contemplating the agonised frame of the Laocoon, the two sons, with the folds of the serpents which twine around them, occupy a secondary place in the imagination. When we come to develop these secondary parts of the composition, we find in them the same principles of unity and connexion, as in the general outline of the whole group and so it is with the subordinate parts of a sentence; which are, if we may use the expression, truths within truths, assertions within assertions. Thus even the long and flowing sentences of Milton's prose are each reducible either to an assertion, or at most to a conclusion, as their ground-work; but upon that ground-work are built many other assertions, which are assumed, though not formally stated as such. Each adverb, each conjunction, each preposition, contains such subordinate assertion, and of course involves a con ception; it is therefore true, that these parts of speech ultimately resolve themselves into nouns and verbs-ultimately, I say, but in the first glance and motion of the mind, as it were, they only appear in their secondary character, as helps and expletives to the principal words in the sentence. the Passions. 49. The passions must not be overlooked, in considering the mind Operation of in its relation to language. It often happens that an abruptness, a transposition, and that which might be called an irregularity, if we referred only to the operations of reason, become appropriate, and even necessary forms of speech, when the mind is under the influence of passion. The reasoning powers are then disturbed and imperfect: the emotions become inordinate, the will obtains a preternatural force, Hence arises the interjection, which some grammarians have refused to reckon among the parts of speech; but their refusal is vain: so long as there are men with human passions and affections, there will be interjections in their speech, words which stand out from the rest, very significant of emotion though not of conception, defying the ordinary rules of construction and arrangement, because such rules bear reference principally to the power of reason, which is suspended or superseded, whenever passion produces the animated and expressive interjection. Passion, too, has given birth to what we commonly (though not always very appropriately) call the imperative mood. When Esau says, "Bless me, even me also, "O my father!" we feel the earnestness of the prayer, widely different as it is from a command. Again, this same example shows us, that the vocative case of the noun is of similar origin. "O my father," is a strong expression of passion; but it is totally dissevered in construction from the enunciation of any truth, and has no immediate relation to any operation of reason. Many other forms and modes of speech take their character from passion; as may be particularly observed of the interrogative, so often the result of an eager desire to know the very fact, which, it may be, we fear and tremble to assert. 50. It is to be observed, that all the exercises of all the human Conclusion. faculties may be clear or obscure, distinct or confused. Our very consciousness may be that of mere dotage, our feelings may be blunted, our will wavering and undetermined, our conceptions vague, our assertions doubtful, our conclusions uncertain, our passions a chaos. It has been elsewhere said, that "the thousand nameless affections, and vague opinions, and slight accidents which pass by us ⚫ like the idle wind,' are gradations in the ascent from nothingness to infinity; these dreams and shadows, and bubbles of our nature, are a great part of its essence, and the chief portion of its harmony, and gradually acquire strength and firmness; and pass, by no perceptible steps, into rooted habits and distinctive characteristics." Still the channels in which the stream of mind flows, so long as it has any current, remain always the same: the mental faculties which we exercise, so long as we can exercise any, are subordinated to the same Gradations of Science. Universal Hence speech is, laws, and display themselves in the same manner. 51. The general view thus taken of the human mind, appeared to me to be indispensable toward a right understanding of the science of language; for as I consider language to be a signifying or showing forth of the mind, it would have been impossible for me to have rendered myself intelligible, in explaining the laws or modes of signification, had I not first stated what I understood to be the nature of the thing signified. 52. In different languages there are some things accidentally different, and some things essentially the same. It has been owing to accidental circumstances in the history of mankind, for instance, that the name of the Universal Creator, among the Jews, was Jehovah ; that it is in France Dieu, and in English GOD; and that the Latin words locum tenens came to be changed into the Italian word luogotenente, the French word lieutenant, and the English word, which we spell like the French, but pronounce leftenant. It is also by accident, that the word luogotenente signifies, in some parts of Italy, the civil magistrate of a small community; that in France and England the word lieutenant expresses a rank in the military and marine services; and that in Ireland it is applied to the viceroy, or chief representative of the sovereign. On the other hand it is owing to causes which exist more or less permanently in human nature, that in the sounds uttered as language by an Esquimaux, a Hottentot, or a Chinese, there are certain qualities common to them with the eloquent voices of a Cicero or a Demosthenes. Though their articulations vary in many respects, they all articulate; and the nations that whistled like birds, or hissed like serpents, never existed but in the inventions of the same sort of travellers, as those who told of Cynocephali and Cyclops, and of men who sheltered their whole body while they slept, by the shade of one enormous foot. Cicero or Demosthenes, Plato or Newton, Dante or Shakspeare, might express sublimer, bolder, clearer, lovelier thoughts than men of a common stamp, but they could only express them according to the laws by which every human mind must necessarily act in conceiving and uttering thought. Here then we arrive at Universal Grammar, at the pure science, which places this part of knowledge on an immoveable basis, renders it demonstrable and certain, and connects it with that TRUTH, which is one and uniform through all ages, and which rashness and ignorance perpetually assail, but can never subdue. 53. It is necessary to keep in view the distinction between Grammar and Universal Grammar, such as it is here described, and the Particular Grammar dis- Grammars of different nations, ancient and modern. The word Particular criminated. Grammar, taken in its most comprehensive sense, may be briefly de fined, the science of the relations of language considered as significant; or more accurately, the science of the relations, which the constituent parts of speech bear to each other in significant combination. Now, of those relations in any particular language, for instance the English, some are peculiar to that language, some are common to it with certain other languages, but not with all, and some are common to all languages. Every particular Grammar then has to do with all these three classes of relations; but Universal Grammar with the last only. It has been disputed whether Grammar be a science or an art. Universal Grammar is a science, Particular Grammar is an art; though like all other arts its foundations must be laid in science; and the science on which it rests is Universal Grammar. Universal 54. I am far from asserting that Universal Grammar has been Writers on hitherto so successfully cultivated, as to leave to future investigators Grammar. no hope of improving this science. Its principles have certainly been nowhere laid down with that happy and lucid order, which has rendered Euclid's Elements, for above two thousand years, a text-book in geometry. Much, however, has been done. The ancient Greek and Latin writers have traced all the principal paths of the labyrinth, and elegant edifices of science have been raised in modern times by such writers as SANCTIUS, VOSSIUS, the writers of PORT ROYAL, and the learned and amiable HARRIS. These grammarians, as well as those who in the middle ages cultivated the Arabic and its kindred dialects, and those whose disquisitions on Indian Philology have been laid open to us by recent discoveries, all agree in founding the science of Grammar on that of the mental operations. modern 55. Recent authors have rashly called in question the utility of these Fallacies of learned labours. It is not to be denied, that the many new sources writers. of information opened to us in modern times, the numerous dialects, barbarous and polished, which we have the means of studying, the progress of the same language through many successive ages, which we are enabled historically to trace, and, in short, the extended sphere of our experimental investigations in language, may have served to correct some errors and oversights even in our scientific views of Universal Grammar. But if the ancients failed (as they generally did fail) in what regards the history of language, some modern writers have much more lamentably failed in what regards its science. Instead of founding language on the mind, they most preposterously found the mind on language. "The business of the mind (says one) as far as it concerns language, is very simple: it extends no further than to receive impressions, that is, to have sensations, or feelings. What are called its operations, are merely the operations of language." Another says: "We cannot distinguish our sensations, but by attaching to them signs which represent and characterise them. This is what made Condillac say, that we cannot think at all without the help of language. I repeat it, without signs there exists neither * Diversions of Purley, vol. i. p. 70. Origin of Words. Sensations, how distinguished. Active operation of the Mind. thought, nor perhaps even, to speak properly, any true sensation. In order to distinguish a sensation, we must compare it with a different sensation: now their relation cannot be expressed in our mind, unless by an artificial sign, since it is not a direct sensation." * 56. It is somewhat difficult to deal seriously with phrases so incoherent. But let us ask, what can be meant by "the operations of language?" Every operation must have an operator; and it is the operator that causes the operation, and not the contrary. It is not the amputation that causes the surgeon, but the surgeon that performs the amputation. It is not the furrow that directs the ploughman ; but the ploughman who guiding his plough gives shape to the furrow. True it is, that every person who uses a word is not its inventor; but somebody must have invented it. True also it is, that an individual may have many thoughts which never would have entered his mind, had they not been first excited in it by words: he might never have thought of such a place as Timbuctoo, or such an animal as the Ornithorhynchus, had he not read or heard of them; but the name of the place or of the animal did not start into existence of itself. was imposed by some person, and for some reason existing in that person's mind. It 57. Again, it sounds absurd to say that we cannot distinguish our sensations otherwise than by attaching signs to them. A burnt child dreads the fire because he has felt the sensation of burning, and not because somebody may have spoken of it in his hearing by the word burnt, or brulé, or brugiato. Still more absurd is it to say that without a sign there exists neither sensation nor thought. And as to the concluding assertion, that the relation between two sensations cannot be expressed in the mind except by an artificial sign, it seems to be altogether unintelligible. 58. The chief ground of these inconsistencies is an incapacity or unwillingness on the part of their authors to view the human mind as anything more than an inert mass, receiving impressions from external objects, and returning them back, with some modification, perhaps, from the structure of the mental machine, but purely mechanical ; such, for instance, as the light of a candle might undergo, if thrown on a reflector of many facets. But- Cúm ventum ad verum est, sensus, moresque repugnant. The practical testimony of all human conduct is against this theory. *"On ne distingue les sensations qu'en leur attachant des signes, qui les représentent et les caractérisent. Voilà ce qui fait dire à CONDILLAC, qu'on ne pense point sans le secours des langues. Je le répète, sans signes il n'existe ni pensée. ni peutêtre même, à proprement parler, de véritable sensation. Pour distinguer une sensation il faut la comparer avec une sensation differente: or, leur rapport ne peut être exprimé dans notre esprit que par un signe artificiel, puisque ce n'est pas une sensation direct,"-CABANIS. Rapports du Physique et du Morale de l'Homme, vol. i. p. 72. |