15649	----	Proofreading Team A Philosophicall ESSAY for the REUNION OF THE LANGUAGES, OR, the Art of Knowing all by the Mastery of one. OXFORD Printed by HEN: HALL for JAMES GOOD. 1675. The Printer to the READER. _Meeting by chance with this ingenuous offer, I thought it might not be improper since I found it in another dresse, to make it speak another Language too, which among the most creditable of Europe, hath not desisted from its claim to Antiquity: There are very few Nations but have, at sometime or other, laid in their pretences to a supremacy for their Language, and have boasted an assistance from unsuspected reason and Authority: But however variously the controversie hath been manag'd, the modesty, and ingenuity of this Author hath rendred, his designe more plausible, for having without any private regard (in such cases most usuall to the spruce and flourishing Air of his owne Native tongue) made that noble Language of the Romans the Basis of his project; And finding him throughout altogether free from prejudice and partiality, I thought an anteview of so excellent and usefull, a designe would not be unacceptable to the more ingenious part of the world, and that I ought not to neglect so faire an opportunity of recommending to their consideration that illustrious dialect, which as it is certainly of all others the most valuable, so to the shame of these modern ages, is either exceedingly impair'd or lost in its familiar uses among those who challenge the title of the _Beaux Esprits_ of the times. The aime therefore of this Projector being to facilitate and expedite the Mastery of this as well as others, its survey may possibly appear not altogether ungratefull if it be but in hopes to find this incouragement that we shall he able to reserve some number of years from our usually tædious application to its study for other eminent uses, and commence men & Schollers at a much easier rate and in an earlier age then now commonly practic'd; I should prevent the Author if I should entertaine you with any farther commendation of it then that he hath taken for his model the most creditable and plausible Language of the world. If at any time you divert your selfe with reading Novels; you will here meet with notions that are both Philosophicall and Airy, and in order to the maine designe for the most part purely scientifick and demonstrative; and after if all you shall think that you have not mispent your time by observing something that is either a usefull or pleasurable I shall have my designe and the Author the credit._ _Farewell._ * * * * * As the Knowledge of forreign Languages ought not to be reputed one of those vain and useless curiosities that serve only to amuse the mind, but is certainly conducive to a thousand different ends; so we ought not to think it strange if our age, which gives such æquall and secure judgement of the value of things shew more of passion then ever for it, notwithstanding all the difficulties that are pretended. I am of an opinion, that one cannot do the world a more acceptable piece of service, then to invent a certain and easie way to become universally acquainted with the Languages, and to quit a subject from those intrigues, in which the more knowing have at present involv'd it, either from a pure impotence to disingage it, or possibly from a fond desire of a freer breath of popular Air from those who are ordinarily most taken with what they least understand. This designe being only a proper entertainment for the most criticall of the Virtuoses, I am the more inclinable to expose to the public, the project and plain I have form'd, before I intirely abandon the whole to their censure; that I may at first anticipate all manner of reply, and take advantage from the lights of the most accomplisht and intelligent persons, if their zeale hath courage enough to make them willing to serve the world in their love and communication. _The Authors designe._ Most men being prepossest with two unjust prejudices against the nature of the Languages, th'one, that they have not all either resemblance or accord among them, the other, that they only depend upon the inconstancie of chance, and the whisling toyishness of custome, it might be thought no matter of extraordinary concernment, if one pretended to succeed in a study of this nature by the single efforts of the memory, without either the vivacitie of imagination, or the force of reason being interress'd. But being not very well perswaded of the agreeableness of this method, in direct opposition to it, I have fastn'd the whole designe in hand upon these two propositions: First, that _there is a certain accord between the Severall Languages:_ and that therefore they are attainable by comparison. Secondly, _they are unquestionably founded upon reason_, and therefore that must be made use of in their mutuall reference. It is upon these two foundations that I pretend to establish the true method of gaining a mastery of the Languages, making it appear to the world by a sensible experience that the mind can as easily make reflections upon words, as upon the things they represent: _Imagination_ and _Reason_ being the two faculties, that can reflect upon their objects, they both will appear in the present designe in their uses suitable to their nature, the effects of _Imagination_ shall be visible in the severall resemblances, and the inferences that are thence made; and it will be the worke of _Reason_ to reduce all to certain principles, upon which the argumentative part must relye. _The first part of the Designe._ For the easier exercise of Imagination, I shall acquaint you with a method that will appeare very naturall, by which insteed of considering the Languages precisely in themselves (as hitherto hath been usuall) they may be compar'd one with the other without much difficultie, and at the same time their accord, dependance, and mutuall relation, discover'd either from the resemblance of words, the proportion of their scope or compasse, and the conformity of their expressions. Tis true that this agreement, and relation is not a little obscur'd by the severall od constitutions of mens minds, that checque at, and satisfie themselves with the first, and naked appearance without any farther inquirie, but withall its presently, and easily perceiv'd by those who are happy enough, in a genius for such kind of Learning. Its something like the paradoxes Geometry proposeth upon the relation, and proportion of figures, where we are mus'd at the first draught, and there appeares so little likelihood in them that the unexperienc't would take them only for the tricks and whims of a melancholique brain; whereas an ingenuous Artist, from the most naturall, and simple notions gradually conducts the mind to a kind of insensible discovery of truth, and makes it see on a suddain what it could not expect, and that with such open assurances as quit that from all suspicion, which but now had scarce any face of truth. Knowing no other method then this, that may be proper to make new discoveries in the sciences I endeavour'd to make what use I could of it, so farr as my subject permitted; And since amidst the severall resemblances of the Languages, there are some so evident, as necessarily grance upon the most unobserving eye, I have so order'd my reflections, that by a reference to these, as models, I might by degrees arrive at the knowledge of the others, which although reserv'd, and sometimes more distanc't, yet are neither less certain, nor reall: not unlike the subalternate conclusions in speculation, which are not a jot the lesse true for being farther remov'd from their first principle. Thus tis that a Language with which we are already acquainted, either by the assistance of Art, or Conversation, leads us to an intimacy with those that were altogether unknown to us before, and that their relation redresseth the treachery of the memory in the close and juncture of one with the other. But that I may compasse this my designe with lesse trouble, my greatest care is to make choise of one Language as a rule to measure by, and a principle to reduce all the rest too: for to pretend to compare them immediately one with another, as some would have it, is to cherish confusion among those things that demand the most of order. The veneration that I have alwayes had for antiquity, made me think at first of ingaging for the _Hebrew_, as being (for ought we know) the earliest, the most noble, and most naturall Language of the world and that from which all others, in a manner, derive themselves. But it was not long before I began to consider, that this would directly crosse the first principles of my intended method, and appear a kind of indeavour to teach an unknown Language, by another, of which we have the most imperfect, and slender information of all. The kindnesse, and inclination I ought to have for my own Country, had almost perswaded me to rest my self there, and to make my native tongue the basis of this universall reduction but then the rest of the Europæan world (which I have no reason to slur or contemne) would have as ill resented the project, as we did it in the Germans, who would long agoe have challenged this honour to themselves. I had in the end no other course to take, but to throw myselfe upon the _Latine_, in which I luckily met with all the necessary conditions that did easily, and plausibly conduce to my design'd attempt. To say the truth _Aristotle_ himselfe, a man of a judgement in such things the most exact that ever was to take a _measure_ from, demanded but three qualifications, viz. _Universality_, _Certainty_, and _Proportion_; that it should be generally known to all those that are to make use of it in the quality of a measure, that it should be fixt, and determin'd in its selfe, and then that it should be proportion'd to all those things, to which it prescribes their bounds, all which characters do with advantage combine in the Latine, and that with such propriety that they cannot be attributed to any other without some sort of injustice; for the greatest part of the other Languages they are determind to the extent of a particular Kingdom or Country, the Latine hath no such disadvantage upon it. It is to speak properly the Language of Europe: Religion, and the Sciences have more enlarg'd its dominions, then all the conquests of the Romans; tis almost the common Idiom of the North, and universally knowne to persons of birth and education, who alone are presum'd to stand in need of the assistance of forraigne Languages. It disownes the common imperfection of others, which by nature being subject to change, cannot by consequence, serve for a certain determinate rule in all ages; and if it now survive through the large extent of its entertainment, it hath much the advantage of others, that are in a manner deceas'd to this that is fixt, and retaind by a well assur'd custome and if its being universally known allows all persons to share its uses, so its being steddy, and unalterable, secures it from all the uneven changes of time. As to its proportion, it in a manner keeps a mean between the Ancient and Modern Languages, it is neither altogether so pure as the one, nor so corrupt as the other, and so with the same ease is applicable to both; and in earnest is infinitely the most compendious, it being farre less trouble to passe from the mean to an extream, or from the extream to the mean, then to trace it from one extream to another. However this would seem incommodious beyond all redresse, to attempt to reduce all the Languages, either to the most ancient, or else to any one of the most modern, because in reality, the former have no more relation to the later, then these have with others of the same age, which have been as so many channels to derive Antiquity to us. Besides the Latin makes a friendly meeting between the Eastern, and Western Languages; as to the first alone it owes its birth and life, so the others do to it. It seems then no more difficult to attain the one, by streaming it up to the fountain, then to gain all the rest by making a like descent, by way of resemblance to what we observe in nature when we discern, as well the effect by the cause, as the cause by the effect. In one word, to make up all the differences that may arise about the supremacie of the Languages, I consider the Latin under three different regards, as the _daughter_ of the Languages of the _East_, as the _Mother_ of those in the _West_, and as the _Sister_ of the more _Northerne_. As it is abundantly copious, and rich, having been refind, and improv'd for more then 3000 years by an infinite variety of nations, with whose spoyls it is now invested, so it may have a very great number of resemblances, under which with little difficultie it will admit of a reference to all the rest. For in conclusion, to reduce all to the most refin'd, and polite Language, is not what I pretend to; the Barbarous stile of the ancient Romans will do me as much service, as the quaintnesse, and elegance of Cicero; the Latin of the declining Empire, since the irruptions of the Northern Nations, may be admitted into this designe to as good purpose, as the language of Augustus his time; any sense is the same of that of the _Sciences_, which makes one almost altogether distinct from what is common and vulgar; the proper names of Philosophy, naturall History, and Divinity, those of Physick, and the Mathematicks, of Arts, Law, and Commerce; the names of illustrious persons, people and places, of which History furnisheth us with a plausible account, will afford me no lesse assistance on this occasion, then the names of things that are most common. After having made choice of a Language in order to the design, I am in the next place to determine my self to a _certain number of them_, the reunion of which may be justly thought a modest and reasonable attempt; for as there are some, the knowledge of which will be of very little use; so I am obliged to prescribe some bounds to a designe that would lead me to something indetermin'd, and infinite, and withall I suspect the inlargement both of mind, and memory to compasse all; especially considering the consequence of some to be indifferent, neither that of Biscany, nor the lower Brettaigne should in my opinion much afflict any mans braine, nor do I believe that there are many more in the world interest for them, then there are for the dialect of Finland or Frizland, or the Barbarous jangling of the Negroes and Savages. In the choise that I was to make I could not but give the preference to those of the greatest credit and repute, _took some Prince_ (excuse the allusion) _who having laid his design to reunite all the Kingdomes of the world, began his conquest upon those Nations that were most formidable and renown'd, from an apprehension that the rest in a little time would be less able to make any opposition._ As I am not of an humour to attempt any thing without an incouragement from reason; or to give my selfe any trouble through a kind of caprice, purely to gratifie my curiositie; _Religion_, _State_, and the _Sciences_ are the _three grand rules_ from which I make a judgement what Languages are really the most important and noble; I have only therefore selected such as _Europe_ may use to the best advantage, either for the defence of the Church, the good of the State, the advancement of the Sciences, or the perfection of the most laudable Arts. It is for this end that I have entertained in my designe all the Languages that concerne Religion, and make a particular mention of such as furnish us with originall texts, and the most authentick translations of the Bible, being of no mean consequence towards the faithfull interpretation of our sacred Records, and the confirmation of the Articles of our Creed. I am in the next place obliged to find a place for such as concern and relate to State affaires, the most renowned Empires, Kingdomes, and warlike Nations, which may afford a suitable entertainment for all sorts of people, and withall very much conduce to the succesful management of forraigne businesse, the most important negotiations, Embassies, the transactions of war or peace, as well as the most hopefull designes of travellers. But above all I find myself concern'd for those that give us the most refin'd and polite discoveries of wit and Science, and have been cherisht and nurst up to our hands by the most knowing and ingenious of all Nations. I can hardly believe I shall meet with any inclinable to quarrell me for the number of 24. that I have thought on for my designe, since I presume it no easie matter for the most nicely curious to find a just occasion; and although there are none of them that are not unquestionably deriv'd from the same originall, it being no great difficulty to convince any well settled head, that in the propriety of speech there is but one mother Language: Yet to avoid confusion I distribute them all into 7. different orders, as they seem to carry an immediate reference to the Languages, which are the commonly suppos'd originals: such are in the opinion of the Learned the _Roman_, and the _Greec_, the _Teutonic_ and _Sclavonic_, the _Hebrew_, _Scythian_, and the _Persian_. The Roman Idioms are the _Italian_, _Spanish_ and _French_, which cannot now be unknowne to any but such as are shamefully ignorant; I may adde likewise the _Portuguese_, which although not very different from the _Castilian_, yet is not wanting in its owne particular beauties, and hath receiv'd no mean accession of use and honour from the conquests of its Kings in the most remote parts of the world. To the Greec I shall reduce its 3. principall relations, _viz_ the Literall Greec, such as we meet with in our old Classic Authors, the vulgar as it is commonly used since the declining age of the Empire at Constantinople, and the Coptique or Ægyptian, which is but a remainder of the famous government of the Ptolomies in Ægypt: for although in its idiome there be something yet remaining of an originall stamp, either in that its words seem to touch upon the auntient Language of the Pharaohs, or that its inflection no way resembles the Greec, yet the Empire of Alexander and his successors induc'd such a confusion, that the Greec hath almost got the better, and involv'd all the lesser remains of Antiquity. Under the Teutonic I comprehend the Almain or high German, the Flemmish or low Dutch, the English and the Danish, which is to this day entertain/'d in the most Northerne regions, and may give us some intimations of a clearer light then any besides, as having yet carefully secured some footsteps of the ancient Language. The Sclavonic is accompani'd with 3. more considerable dialects the true Sclavonic, the Polish, and Muscovitish, to which the valour of the Nations that speak them have brought more reputation then any other ingenious performances. The Hebrew hath no less then seven in its retinue, the pure Hebrew, such as we meet with in our Bible, the Language of the Rabbins and Talmudists, the Chaldee, the Syriaque, the Æthiopick or Abyssin, the Samaritan, and the Arabique, which in our age hath so inlarg'd its dominion, that its either spoke or understood in the three parts of the Old World Asia, Africa and Europe; and hath alone produc't such a prodigious number of books, that one would scarce believe how a Nation so famous for its exploits in warr should have so much leasure to attend to the improvement of learning. The Scythian hath two very illustrious dialects in its traine, the Turkish and lesser Tartarian, both which may serve in some measure to acquaint us what Languages are used in the North of Asia. The last is the Persian, which is not only universally priz'd in the Empire of the Sophy, but a common entertainment in the Court of the grand Seigneur, as well as in that of the Mogull, where it is hugely valued and esteem'd. As this reference of the Languages to one another would be to litle purpose, if the less qualifi'd and accomplisht were not capable of judging of it, since tis for them principally I am most concern'd, I believ'd therefore it would be necessary intirely to retrench all that strange variety of characters, whose od and fantasticall figures do strangely divert the imaginations of those, who are not well qualifi'd to conceive them. Neither do I intend to humour my selfe in that vaine kind of ostentation that some affect, to make this kind of writing one of that most mysterious parts of their learning, but have found out a method of expressing the sounds of all the distinguishing characters of each Language onely by the Roman, and that in a manner as easie and disingag'd as it is accurate and new; insomuch that the resemblances of words, which altogether disappear'd under those uncouth figures (which like a veile intercepted them from the less clarify'd eye) presently face the light, there being nothing left to interpose between them, and a closer consideration, which notwithstanding shall not acquit me from my designe of discovering an expedient to decypher with ease all those severall kinds of writing, and of fixing them upon the imagination in such a manner as without difficulty can admit of no confusion. After having remov'd this first obstruction, which hath so long imbroild and retarded the knowledge of the Languages, that I may with less trouble reduce them to their first principle, I shall run near the same course, that hath been successively taken in their removall, so farr as any history can informe us, upon which I principally lay the stresse and basis of my designe by producing such arguments from it, the force of which cannot plausibly be eluded. For I do not believe that any of the more curious will find fault with me for fastning the origine, and alliance of the Language upon the same bottome with the begining and first society of mankind, who are observed never to shift their Country, without having their Language to bear their Arms and Customes company. As I never thought fit to dispute it with the Learned, why they did not make use of the affinity of the Languages, which sometimes are of clearer notice to them to discover the the first rise of a people more remote, and with which they are lesse acquainted; So I hope I may be permitted to make what advantage I can of the first combinations and colonies to give a clearer light to the beginnings and connexion of the severall Tongues, there being something near the same, or a like proportion between both: as for instance, To make good the opinion of Dionysius Halicarnasseus, and Quintilian, who both pretend that the Latin tongue is no more then a Dialect of the Antient Greek, is but in plain and easie words to give an account of all the little settlements, and Plantations in Italy, which for some continuance of time was only inhabited by colonies from Greece. Upon what other terms I hardly understand this new project should be surprizing to any, it being not the meer effect of imagination, or an humorous Idea, neither will it much ingage any sort of people, but only such as can easily dislodge their prejudices when their owne lights shall assist in their conviction, and that from such assurances as shall be most free from suspicion, being faithfull deductions from the histories of the Colonies. But as it is impossible that the Languages should not be liable to severall alterations and mixtures from the different associations of people in severall removes, so neither is it to be believ'd that this was done all on a sudden; there seems to be a resemblance between the words that make up the Language and Travellers, who do not put off their accustom'd usages and manners so soon as they arrive at a new Country, neither are they naturaliz'd, but with time and by degrees become masters of the Air, humors, and qualities of the persons with whom they converse. Since then this corruption is but of a graduall and intensible growth, there is a necessitie, for its more certain discovery, of an orderly reflection upon the very first beginnings of the differences, being in the interim very sollicitous to prevent a false retreat that might either ingage me too farr, or else in some unluckie circumstances, from which it would be no little difficulty to retire. And this seems to be the only way that I could find out to scatter a certain Air and appearance of truth upon all that regard the present subject, which hath no farther a probability then what is given it from such a carefull mannagement, that shall suffer no pass from one extreame to the other without touching upon that mean which is as it were the time of communication between both, for it is from this chain of words and sequel of alterations that all the suitablenesse, and likelyhood of this present method principally depends. Although in reality there is no reason to doubt but that the French is a corruption of the Latine, I could not however very easily perswade my selfe that the word _dechoir_ should derive its selfe from _cadere_ of the Latines, if I did not perceive all its severall and distinct conveiances through the Alembic. They that first corrupted the Language of the _Romans_ instead of _cadere_ made use of _cader_, as the Italians do to this day, who commonly cut off the final vowels where they obseve them to follow Liquids. They that came after proceeded yet farther in their retrenchment, and from _cader_ form'd _caer_, as the Spaniards now use it, by taking away the letter _d_ according to their ordinary custome, when it is seated in the middle of words. There are another sort of people yet more sturdy and blunt in their formes of speech, who would say _Car_ or _Ker_ by a contraction of the two Vowels into one, as is observable among the Peasants of France, and those of Picardy, who retain very much of Antiquity, which seems to be agreeable with the manner of speech among the Ancient French, who delighted to shorten and contract their words as much as possible, that they might make up a Language altogether as free as their humour, some of the most remote of these would instead of _Ker_ pronounce _Cher_ by a change of that firm and surly letter into one more easy and soft as we yet find it Customary in the remains of some of the Ancient Romans, and then after all by the turn of a Vowel into a Dipthong, from _Cher_ is form'd _Choir_, which now begins to be out of date altho its Composit _dechoir_ be still of plausible and commendable use. Thus 'tis that _Cadere_, _Cader_, _Caer_, _Car_, _Ker_, _Cher_, _Choir_, and _Dechoir_ make up but one intire chain and connexion, yet all to very little purpose if any one of the degrees by chance should have been wanting. For this reason altho I consider every Language in its greatest perfection, yet for clearing its originall in rendring this sequel of words more open and palpable I have been oblidg'd to make numerous reflections upon the older forms of speech as well as Orthographie, by which a better discovery may be made of all the varieties that occure in pronunciation, as also of the severall medlies and Gibrish of the Provinces of Each Empire that speak the same Language, but most of them in a singular fashion. So that it is most certain that that Language which is most quaint and polite is very often the lesse pure and most debaucht, if we make an æquall judgment from its originall which is the most unquestionable rule: Upon which account the dialects of Province, Gascogne, Languedoc, and that which is known by the name of the Antient Gauls is infinitely lesse alter'd and distanc't from its original, then the Languages of the Court and Nobility, who take a pleasure in receding from the Latin: Those of Lombardy and Naples are for the most part lesse corrupt than these of Siena and Florence; Altho the Spaniards have a saying among them, that the Catalonian and that of Arragon is commonly more pure then the Castilian that is more Pompous. And not to spare the French more then the Spaniard, if they have reason to boast their Language to be the most refin'd and Polite of the world, yet their Neighbours might justly returne upon them, that of all the Dialects of the Latin, there is none more degenerate than theirs, forasmuch as its quaintness ariseth from its sweetnesse, so that it is not attainable without a strange descent from its principle. Thus _le Capo_ of the Italians, _le Cabo_, of the Spaniards, _le Cap_, of the old French and _le Kef_ of Picardy are all variously alterd from _Caput_ of the Latins, but none so much as _le Chef_ of the French, which notwithstanding claims the same Originall. But this is not all; as the resemblance and connexion of the Languages is not alwaies the same but depends more or lesse upon the communication of the Nations that speak them, So it's not necessary that this method should be invariable, it must admitt of alteration with its subjects, and accomodate it selfe to the diversity of Tongues. There is much more of Art requir'd to reduce those which only carry a resemblance in their words, and abundantly lesse for those which withall admitt of an analogie in inflexion, And Since the same words which allow of this accord may have it in severall distinct manners they are not all (if I may be permitted to say so) neither of Kin, nor alliance in the same degree; their relation is sometimes nearer, Sometimes at a greater distance, for we may by way of analogie discours at the same rate of the genealogie of words as we do of the degrees of consanguinity; for if the one sort be rang'd under the same Line either direct or Collaterall, the others admitt of a little deflection and do not exactly corespond; some are allied in the first, some in the 2d degree, some in advancing from the branches to the stock, others in a descent from that to the branches, in a word this accord is neither always immediate nor at all directly opposite. I add besides that as there are, some allied two or three ways and that since the first division have contracted new and closer relations, so I confesse there are others that content themselves with their Originall reference, and that have scarce any other agreement among them than what depends upon the common tie and union that they have with their first principle, which in reallity is no more then this famous Mother Tongue of which some make a mystery without well understanding what they say: For altho it hath subsisted in its selfe before the first confusion, yet we must not think of discoursing of it at the same rate, nor put our minds upon the harasse of receiving it. 'Tis no more now as some fondly imagaine a particular and distinct Language from others, so that there is but one way to regain it and reestablish it at least so far as is necessary for a compleat execution of my designe, and that is to make a judicious choice of all that is primitive and most simple among the Remains of the antient Language either by considering the first combinations of sounds or by a regard to the earnest ideas of the mind, that were apply'd to these sounds; to the end that we may referr thither by a sequel, all the essentiall and fundamentall words of each Language as to their fountaine; which admiting of divisions, runnes now in lesser streams which assume the names of Originalls; because they have their rise from that grand Source where the first inhabitants of the world ingrost all. So that it may be truly said of this Mother Tongue that it is in no sense a part as being really every where either in sums of its divisions or in its effects and dependances something like your vertues of the elements and the originall seeds of things, that Subsist not of themselves but in the mixtures that compose them. I shall possibly be wonderd at, that being able to accomplish all by this single method, I have not in the interim recours to it, when all other ways prove unserviceable; But after all, tho this method be perhaps more ingenuous and of a more profound speculation, it is not however the most naturall and compendious, be it never so refind'd or accomodate to my designe, and I hardly understand the reason why any man should affect a crooked and uncouth road to active at his purpose when the streight lyes before him. _The second part of the desine._ Comparison alone is not (in the opinion of some) sufficient to accomplish the present intention, however accurate it be; if it want the supports of _reason_, it may rationally be suspected for being more airy then solid, and without injustice the same character may be given to some of those unusuall Chances that sometimes produce the most surprizing effects. Besides altho the vivacity and force of imagination be easily admitted into the relations of the Languages, and leaves there forcible impressions, yet it neither warrants certitude, nor dislodgeth confusion; 'tis reason alone that establisheth the mind in its cognizances, and credits all its conceptions with order, tis that alone which perfects the combination of all their relations and agreements according to the naturall connexion which they have with the same principles on which they depend in Common. That which seems to be of greatest moment is that the principles be plausible and rationall and such as man may lay a stress on without suspicion or fear, and this is that which in a singular manner the principles of this Art challenge to themselves, being in my opinion infinitely more sensible then those which Philosophy proposeth under the characters of uncontroleable truths; I have therefore taken them all from the very natures of the subject of which I am treating _viz_: from the deflections and different regards under which the consideration of words may be manag'd; wch may last of all serve for an assurance, that chance hath not all that Empire and authority, that is given it over the Languages; and that it would be no great difficulty to make it appear, that in the Languages themselves there are well fram'd and solid reasons, for every thing that appears otherwise, and hath been hitherto suppos'd to be the bare effect of Caprice. It may be perceiv'd by the very effects themselves that it will make up a science fully demonstrative, and back't with such consequences, as may very well passe for compleat models in this kind: And above all the scope of its principles infinitely shortens the way without being at all oblig'd to make a descent to a thousand tædious and wearisome differences; which appear much better, and in a more elegant manner in their principles then in themselves, which is an incouragement for me to hope that a Language for the acquest of which we have formerly by a close application numbred severall years, will by this means be made the divertisement of some hours, or at most but some few days. Words being in the opinion of all men but significant sounds, they may be taken either as they are _Natural sounds_, or _arbitrary signs_, I would say, either as they are the proper effect of the motion of our organs, or as the lively representation of the thought of our minds. And since they make their passes from one Language to another they cannot well admit of any alteration in this their transit but in three respects; for whatsoever change be suppos'd it will necessarily fall out, either in the _sounds themselves_ that compose the words, or in _their significations_, or in their _different modifications_, and its from these three distinct regards that the generall principles have their rise, upon which I have fastn'd this new Systime of the Philosophie of the Languages. That I may make my procedure more justificable and artificiall, I examine with all exactnesse the different organs of the voice, the various motions of the muscles belonging to these organs, and the admirable concent and accord of those motions; and these I make use of to demonstratively explaine the precise number of all the simple sounds, that enter into the composition of the Languages, to discover the nature and proper pronunciation of these sounds, and by consequence to disclose their nearnesse and affinity, the resemblances of some, and the disproportion of others, their accord and opposition, their Sympathy and Antipathy, in a word, all their combinations and mixtures, their divisions and distinctions, their orders and severall degrees. From whence I conclude that all the astonishing and surprizing depravations and Corruptions that are met withall in the words that one Language borrows from another, in changing or in transposing, in adding or retrenching, have their basis in nature; which never attempts any thing but to the purpose, and with a sollicitous care, when to us it appears to have acted with an open and observable neglect. We may Study Nature upon the Latine it selfe which may serve as well for a model as it doth for a principle; It will in the first place acquaint us that the Vowels are almost accounted for nothing, for altho there are some of them that admitt of easie changes among themselves according as they are more open or reserv'd, we know neverthelesse that there are none of them but what may be absolutely shifted into the place of another of what kind soever, either immediately, or by succession and degrees. For a finall confirmation of this we have no more to doe but to make an easie comparison of the different derivative of the same word, the reference of these three _Cepa_; _incipio_ and _occupo_, to the Verb _Capio_ may serve for an instance, if we shall but grant the truth of this principle which the orientalists have always suppos'd, who form the greatest part of their words from the sole change of their Vowels. The same is not altogether allowable in relation to the Consonants, where we must not admitt indifferently all sorts of changes; the sole affinity of the Organs is that which must regulate almost all their varieties: the Labiall letters easily supplant one another but the Dentall or Linguall with more difficulty succeed them as being not of the same order; For as these consonants, M. B. P. V. F. make neer the same sound, which is modified by the divers force of the Air opening the lips after severall forms. So the Letters D. T. Z. S. ought to make an order by themselves, having a particular relation to the point of the tongue, which only by touching upon the teeth in various manners frames their pronunciation. But it is not a single and easie reflexion, that can absolutely determine whether two letters have resemblance and proportion, because there are some of them that being made up of the movements of severall organs, maybe differently alter'd according to their various resemblances, so the letter H. carrys not only the resemblance of a gutturall as it is pronounc'd by the assistance of the muscles of the throat, but also as an Aspiration besides the regard it hath to the whispers of the tongue, and the 6. Aspirates of the Lips, Teeth, and Palate. However if the precipitance or forwardnesse of any, hath by chance brought into use, other methods of altering sounds, as they have not so certain a foundation in reason, so neither can they be receiv'd within the Compas of this Art, at least being not establisht by a regular and constant analogie. From the sound of words, I passe to their _signification_, which in the same dialect may be call'd the soul of a word, as the sound is its body; to expresse it in other terms, then what seem to rellish the dry and unpleasant humour of the Pedant or Grammarian; I suppose that words being the expressions of our thoughts, and our thoughts the representations of objects, the different significations that are given to words, principally depend upon the various conceptions, that every Nation frames of the same objects, agreeable to what seems most neerly to concern it. This ingageth me to explaine the intire sequel, and naturall dependances of our Ideas, and the manner of their forming; of which the world hath yet receiv'd a very imperfect account. In order to this, you may understand what those objects are, of which we have proper Ideas, and what those are which we conceive by forreigne images, and that we do not name but in figurative terms; whence ariseth that alliance and resemblance of our Ideas, and why the greatest share of our words if refer'd to their first originall, are but metaphors which represent objects to us in such terms as are proper to another, with which it hath some agreement, or neere relation, and withall what are the grand principles of metaphors; either of Attribution or Proportion, that do not only make op the beauty, but almost the intire body of the Language. Our Ancestors that gave no names to things, but by a directing prudence, purposing to distinguish the works of Nature and Art, had an especiall regard to the naturall resemblance they had with any thing that was most known to them, and that was already distinguisht by its character, or to any one of their most prevailing properties, or to the principall action that distinguisht them from other beings. They made use of almost the same artifice, to impose names upon things more expressive of their properties, by considering them only with reference to their operations, of which they were the immediate principles. As for the operations, themselves being not æqually knowne, nor æqually obvious to sense they plac't the same subordination in the terms they made use of to represent them, that Nature hath establisht in our apprehensions and cognisances. There being therefore nothing in the world of which they could have fram'd a more distinct Idea, then of the _motion_ of bodies; which is obvious to all the senses, we must not wonder if considering Locall motion as the first and principall object of their knowledge, they afterwards gave no names to the Operations of each being, but such as seem'd to express some relation either to motion in generall, or to its different species, or to some one of its dependances such as are place, figure, situation, extention, Union and seperation, in a word to all the resemblances and agreements that in any way or kind relye upon motion. For if Modern Philosophy that Studies Nature by a closer application then formerly, pretend to a clear and evident explication of Naturall effects in the referring them all to the _Sole movement of matter_ as their true cause; there is much more reason that in order to the giveing an account of all that is to this day past among the Languages, we should have recours to such terms as are expressive of motion, since it is not to be doubted but that all others that are reducible, may be referr'd hither as to the first principle of their signfication. Besides motion is allow'd a far greater Scope and extent among the Languages then in Nature for 'tis to that we referr our most refin'd and spirituall conceptions I mean such as we frame of the operations of our souls and the propensions of our wills, So when we say that the mind or understanding applyes it self to think, to conceive, to discours, to explaine, to disimbroile, to disingage a businesse, to discover a truth; when we talke of troubles, aversions, of hurries and consternations of the soul, to expresse such actions as are most remote from sense, we make use of such Images as are corporeall in their first originall, although for the most part they have lost their proper significance to assume another that is purely figurative. 'Tis by their Principles I reduce to naturall reason all imaginable ways by which words alter their primitive signification to imbrace another, either more inlarg'd or reserv'd, or never so little diversifi'd either in Proportion or Alliance; for tis no easie matter for words to travell from one Country to another without meeting with the same casualties, that use to befall forreign Plants which, are seldome remov'd into a new soile, but degenerate and either lose some of their Native virtue, or acquire some new. But most people having met wich this generally proposall, to expresse at first appearance, what they think with as little trouble as is possible, it thence falls out that to ingrosse a great deal of sense in a few words, they scarce allow enough precisely to marke out the simple ideas of their minds, fitted out to all their severall resemblances, they that are most simple in themselves, are commonly compounds in their significations, neither is there any one of the least considerable, but what is diversify'd in each Language by a thousand different modifications. From thence proceed all the methods of inflexion, derivation, and composition that give being to the most subtle kind of Sophistry; all the species and forms of Nouns, Verbs, and particles that make up the oeconomy of a Language, together withall diversity of Numbers, Genders, Cases, tenses, Modes, and Persons which have more of Art than at first sight is imagin'd, for the Custome of Nations hath not only authoriz'd these inventions to vary the Cadence of words, but with an admirable facility to expresse all the deflexions, by which an Idea of the same object may be represented to our conceptions according as it admitts of a mixture of resemblances, which it may have either to its effects or Causes, or as it is related to the severall estates, wherein it subsists, to the differences of time or place, and to all the circumstances that may accompany it, either within or without us. As the more sensible differences of the Languages principally consist in all these modifications; so one of the greatest secrets of this Art is to know how choisly to select and distinguish, both in our ideas and in the words that expresse them, that which is principall and essentiall from what is purely accessory, subtly to difference the first ideas from the second, the second from the third, the simple from the Compound, the primitive and Originall signification from its dependences and references, its modifications and divers restrictions, in one word (if I may so expresse it) not to confound the habit with the person. For in a manner these modifications are the same words, that the habit is to the body; this new dresse that is given to forreign words to fitt them up alamode to the Country, for the most part time so disfigures them and renders them so obscure, that they impose as well upon our eyes as ears, and passe for origalls and Natives of the Country, although in reality they are borrow'd from our Neighbourhood, and sometime from beyond the seas. To make a secure judgement therefore of the originall, there remains nothing but to consider them all, naked and intirely disspoil'd of all that trompery that disguis'd them; and that this may be done with more safety we must follow them step by step in their travels, and espie out the different ranges they have taken and the habits they have shifted, to come thus vizarded and masqued to us. These are the most inlarg'd principles and infallible ways by which I discover this secret and misterious accord of the Languages which without doubt will appear so much the more admirable, as haveing been never to this hour been believ'd that they had any such close tie or relation: But these principles may be apply'd severall ways, and therefore least they should continue undermin'd, I make it appear by the sequel, what in particular must be done in each Language in conformity to its genius and proper Character. This is that which obligeth me to make an exact inquirie into the nature of those Languages I pretend to reduce, I do not content my selfe infallibly to take my draught either in the generall consent of nations, which are as often cheated in their Ideas they have of the Language of each Nation as they are commonly in its manners, or from the particular sentiments of the more knowing or Learned, who without any preoccupation of mind have studied their own Native Language with more then ordinary care. But to make all yet more certain, I principally form my examinations from the very history of the Languages, which is the most æquall rule we can take our measures from, in relation to the present designe. In order to this, 'tis necessary that we make reflexions upon the first beginnings of each Nation, and that from other memoires then such with which we are for the most part furnish't by the Criticks, and seriously to examine the continuall comerce it hath had with the most considerable of its neighbours, the wars, feuds and Leagues of its Governours with other Princes, the irruptions and invasions of Conquering Nations, that have corrupted its Language as they ingrost its spoils, the frequent Colonies that Conquerors have sent thither besides its voyages at Sea, and its traffick, with the most remote plantations, These are the more immediate causes of this confusion and mixture. It may perhaps withall be no mean pleasure to see the basis of each Language distinguisht from the changes and accessions of time or revolutions of State, what every Nation hath contributed of its owne to inrich it, what Religion, the Government and what Sciences have communicated to it, what it retains of Antiquity and what new acquests it hath made to retrieve its losses with advantage. Afterall, this is yet but the sceleton, or at most but the body of a Language, Its necessary that this rude, and indigested masse made up of so many different dialects should be animated by some secret spirit that should expand it selfe through all its parts and severall members, and reduce them to unity by communicating the same air to them, and that this Spirit or Soul should be the individuall principle of all the effects, and sensible changes, which make us easily distinguish one Language from another: The Temper, Humour, and Nature of a people, the dispositions of their minds, their genius and particular gusts, their more generall and forcible inclinations, their ordinary passions, and such singular qualities, by which one Nation is remarq'd and distinguisht from another, are the most evident signs to discover the true genius of a Language, because they are in reality the immediate causes and the very originalls after which I have copied all my draughts to compleat the present piece, which in my opinion is not wanting in something that is very Naturall, Besides this, the very manners and customes of Nations, their Laws and policy, and their publick transactions, both of peace and War, are things so universally known, that there is no need of any farther search, how to be able to judge by proportion of the genius, and characters of the Languages so securely, as by that of the people that speak them. But as the care of a Nation to improve and advance the Arts and Sciences and other kinds of good Learning, is that which contributes most to the perfection of its Language, So tis upon the manner in which its receiv'd, and the characters of its Authors, that I cheifly depend to determine, whether it be modest or imperious, whether it rellish more of a softnesse, sweetnesse, and delicacy, than of a certain Noble brisque and generous air, whether it incline more to the simplicity of Nature, or the subtile refinements of Art, whether it be polite to affectation, or betray a certain negligence which hath its graces too, as well as its measures of Art, and last of all whether it be not a little crampt in attempting to be too exact, or else better accomodate it selfe by its freedome from all restraint. Having discoverd the genius and proper character of each Language, I have fram'd the most perfect Idea that is possible, by way of analogie with the principles of the Platonists, with whose method I was always as much taken as I am dissatisfy'd with their doctrine. This Idea being unmasqued serves me in the sequell for a generall rule, to establish the true and proper reasons of all that passe for singular and remarqueable in each Language, either in relation to the choice, the mixture, and union of sounds, the force and significations of words, or the Air and manner of expression; For tis most certain that all these things are alter'd according to the genius of a people: So the Spaniards would distinguish themselves from other Nations by their haughtinesse, and affected gravity, and their words are easily understood by a certain pompous Air, that seems to border upon grandeur and Majesty: On the Contrary the Italians are the Nation of the world that seems to be most fond of its pleasure, and its naturall, that this softnesse should be communicated to their Language, and that all their words should breath nothing, but what is sweet, polite, and the most exact harmony; their compositions admitt of no sounds but such, as can flatter the Ear, they suffer not the concours of consonants, whose rudenesse may never so little offend the Organ, but they are extreamly in Love with Vowels, and often allow their sequences to make their pronunciation more sweet and delicate. For their signification, that they might mixe an accord with their energie, they have hardly any but what are more or lesse figurative, from a persuasion, that a Metaphor represents objects to the mind, in that most curious and diverting manner, and withall they are carefull to make choise of none, but such as represent the fairest images: They are no lesse sollicitous to diversifie their words by agreeable modifications, their inflexion hath very little uneasie in it, it is all of it æqually facile and gay; their diminutives are exceedingly rellishing, because there is something more than ordinarily pretty in them, they are rich in derivatives, and compounds, not only because their pronunciation is more harmonious, but also because they expresse themselves in a more naturall manner, In one word they banish every thing that may appear ingratefull, and are passionately in quest of all that may conduce to the Sweetnesse of their Language. My sense is much the same of other Languages, but because reason it selfe may be suspected by some, especially if at any time it appear too just or plausible, I was the rather concern'd so to order my instances, that besides the induction, I intended custome and experience should support reason, and reason should confirme experience, and withall the examples are so naturally chain'd with their principles, and all of them so distributed in their proper places, that without so much as making the least reflexion, I imperceptibly comprize all the fundamentall and essentiall words of each Language, being willing my selfe to draw all my conclusions from the principles I have mention'd, and to make all necessary inductions, without leaving any thing of trouble or disease to the reader, who in such cases is glad to be quitt from paines and inconvenience, I have some hopes, that a competition thus differently made up of History, reflexions and Criticismes supported by principles, deductions and examples may contribute something to the agreeableness of the designe, and sett off a subject that of itselfe is dry and knotty enough, without making it more unacceptable by that mean and disreputed method, that hath so much decry'd the Critiques, and ordinarily hath given a disgust to a science before it hath been allow'd the least consideration, besides that didacticque way, is by no means proper in the present case, for as there is little pleasure in being taken notice of under the character of a Scholler, so the only remedy is to contrive some way to come to the knowledge of things without lying under the suspicion of having a master. Thus you see in grosse and generall, the whole designe exprest in as few words as the brevity of the subject would permitt me; And However rationall it may be in it selfe yet it wants not its adversaryes; Some with a great deal of heat, plead that if this method acquiring the Languages, hath any thing in it that is Curious by way of speculation, it is however uselesse enough in relation to its practice, since _Custome_ and _Conversation_ only (say they) is the great Master of Language, and that we must intirely relye upon memory and the assiduity of constant and resolv'd industry. Others confesse that it hath in earnest its advantages, but doubt much of the possibility of its execution, hardly beleeving that the Languages have in good truth such an accord and resemblance as I suppose they have, or that there is a possibility for the witt of man now to discover it. By way of reply to the first, I confesse that one thing I wonder at, is that persons so knowing and ingenuous should so highly declare themselves against the judgement in favour of the memory, I have a very great regard to their qualitie and worth, but cannot submitt my selfe to their opinion, The only way (as I imagine) to Learn the Languages, and that in what number we please, to do it with ease without tædiousnesse, confusion, trouble and losse of time, and without the common hazard, of forgetting them with as much ease as we acquire them with difficulty, and to be master of them all in such a manner, as shall rellish nothing that is mean or not becomeing a Rationall man, is in one word, to attribute more to the judging and reflecting faculty then to the memory; for if the memory depend and relye only upon the reflexions of the judgement, we have no reason to expect much from its single Conduct, for however plausible it may appear, it will always be slow, limited, confus'd, and faithlesse; its action is not vigorous enough to take us off from those fatigues that distast our most likely enterprizes, and its efforts to weak and Languishing in a little time to execute a designe of so large a compasse as this; being so determin'd as it is, it is impossible it should reduce so great a number of Languages so distanc't in appearance one from another; If at any time it seem extraordinary in an action, its Species are soon displac't by their multitude, and when they are rang'd in the best order imaginable, they continue not so long without being either effact by those that supervene or disappearing of themselves, haveing nothing that can fixe and retaine them, So that the Languages being of so vast an extent, there is no reason that the memory alone should be confided to for their acquest, unlesse we could be content to sacrifice an infinite space of time to the Sole knowledge of words, which being so valuable as it ought to be to us, may be imployd with more discretion and successe, either towards the cognizance of things or the management of businesse. To satisfie others, I have nothing more at present to say to them but that if the designe shall appear to them at first sight either fantasticall or temerarious, the execution will soon justifie me, and perhaps convince them that it is not always rationall positively to passe a judgement upon any thing before a close and a narrow search, and that we ought not hastily to despaire of any thing; the gaining of which hath not been attempted all imaginable wayes. Last of all, as I do not beleeve my selfe to be deceiv'd in that which make up the grosse and main of the designe, so I do not expect that all that I shall advance in the sequel upon this connexion of the Languages, should be receiv'd by all for uncontrouleable truths, of which I my selfe am sufficiently perswaded; I am too well acquainted with the nature of truth to beleeve my selfe so succesfull as to have alwayes uncover'd that in the most imbroyld and the most doubtfull affaires of the world; yet I confesse that notwithstanding that great respect that is due to it, I have in some cases lesse regarded it when it did not appear to comply with the capacityes of ordinary men, persuading my selfe that conjecture well fram'd and adjusted by a plausible Air is more rellishing to ingenious persons, then an obscure and fainting truth, of which sort there is a very great number in the present subject. I propose then to the Learned, this new systeme of the Languages, not as an incontestable Thesis in all its parts but only as an Hypothesis, not altogether irrationall and which besides hath this particular advantage, that although it should be the falsest thing in the world in speculation, it may at least be allowable in the practice, And I hope to receive the same favour that persons (that were most obstinately resolv'd against his Hypothesis) granted Copernicus by their confession, that let it be never so false it is however the best accommodated to use and Astronomicall supputations. FINIS. * * * * * 
18818	----	[Transcriber's Note: The paragraph beginning "In _Ute_ the name for bear is _he seizes_" will only display correctly in Latin-1 file encoding. Everything else in the article should look exactly the same on all computers or text readers.] * * * * * SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION--BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY. J. W. Powell, Director. ON THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE, As Exhibited In The Specialization of the Grammatic Processes, the Differentiation of the Parts of Speech, and the Integration of the Sentence; From a Study of Indian Languages. By J. W. POWELL. * * * * * ON THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE * * * * * Possible ideas and thoughts are vast in number. A distinct word for every distinct idea and thought would require a vast vocabulary. The problem in language is to express many ideas and thoughts with comparatively few words. Again, in the evolution of any language, progress is from a condition where few ideas are expressed by a few words to a higher, where many ideas are expressed by the use of many words; but the number of all possible ideas or thoughts expressed is increased greatly out of proportion with the increase of the number of words. And still again, in all of those languages which have been most thoroughly studied, and by inference in all languages, it appears that the few original words used in any language remain as the elements for the greater number finally used. In the evolution of a language the introduction of absolutely new material is a comparatively rare phenomenon. The old material is combined and modified in many ways to form the new. How has the small stock of words found as the basis of a language been thus combined and modified? The way in which the old materials have been used gives rise to what will here be denominated THE GRAMMATIC PROCESSES. I.--THE PROCESS BY COMBINATION. Two or more words may be united to form a new one, or to perform the office of a new one, and four methods or stages of combination may be noted. _a._ By _juxtaposition_, where the two words are placed together and yet remain as distinct words. This method is illustrated in Chinese, where the words in the combination when taken alone seldom give a clew to their meaning when placed together. _b._ By _compounding_, where two words are made into one, in which case the original elements of the new word remain in an unmodified condition, as in _house-top_, _rain-bow_, _tell-tale_. _c._ By _agglutination_, in which case one or more of the elements entering into combination to form the new word is somewhat changed--the elements are fused together. Yet this modification is not so great as to essentially obscure the primitive words, as in _truthful_, where we easily recognize the original words _truth_ and _full_; and _holiday_, in which _holy_ and _day_ are recognized. _d._ By _inflection_. Here one or more of the elements entering into the compound has been so changed that it can scarcely be recognized. There is a constant tendency to economy in speech by which words are gradually shortened as they are spoken by generation after generation. In those words which are combinations of others there are certain elements that wear out more rapidly than others. Where some particular word is combined with many other different words the tendency to modify by wear this oft-used element is great. This is more especially the case where the combined word is used in certain categories of combinations, as where particular words are used to denote tense in the verb; thus, _did_ may be used in combination with a verb to denote past time until it is worn down to the sound of _d_. The same wear occurs where particular words are used to form cases in nouns, and a variety of illustrations might be given. These categories constitute conjugations and declensions, and for convenience such combinations may be called paradigmatic. Then the oft-repeated elements of paradigmatic combinations are apt to become excessively worn and modified, so that the primitive words or themes to which they are attached seem to be but slightly changed by the addition. Under these circumstances combination is called inflection. As a morphologic process, no well-defined plane of demarkation between these four methods of combination can be drawn, as one runs into another; but, in general, words may be said to be juxtaposed when two words being placed together the combination performs the function of a new word, while in form the two words remain separate. Words may be said to be compound when two or more words are combined to form one, no change being made in either. Words maybe said to be agglutinated when the elementary words are changed but slightly, _i.e._, only to the extent that their original forms are not greatly obscured; and words may be said to be inflected when in the combination the oft-repeated element or formative part has been so changed that its origin is obscured. These inflections are used chiefly in the paradigmatic combinations. In the preceding statement it has been assumed that there can be recognized, in these combinations of inflection, a theme or root, as it is sometimes called, and a formative element. The formative element is used with a great many different words to define or qualify them; that is, to indicate mode, tense, number, person, gender, etc., of verbs, nouns, and other parts of speech. When in a language juxtaposition is the chief method of combination, there may also be distinguished two kinds of elements, in some sense corresponding to themes and formative parts. The theme is a word the meaning of which is determined by the formative word placed by it; that is, the theme is a word having many radically different meanings; with which meaning it is to be understood is determined only by the formative word, which thus serves as its label. The ways in which the theme words are thus labeled by the formative word are very curious, but the subject cannot be entered into here. When words are combined by compounding, the formative elements cannot so readily be distinguished from the theme; nor for the purposes under immediate consideration can compounding be well separated from agglutination. When words are combined by agglutination, theme and formative part usually appear. The formative parts are affixes; and affixes may be divided into three classes, prefixes, suffixes, and infixes. These affixes are often called incorporated particles. In those Indian languages where combination is chiefly by agglutination, that is, by the use of affixes, _i.e._, incorporated particles, certain parts of the conjugation of the verb, especially those which denote gender, number, and person, are effected by the use of article pronouns; but in those languages where article pronouns are not found the verbs are inflected to accomplish the same part of their conjugation. Perhaps, when we come more fully to study the formative elements in these more highly inflected languages, we may discover in such elements greatly modified, _i.e._, worn out, incorporated pronouns. II.--THE PROCESS BY VOCALIC MUTATION. Here, in order to form a new word, one or more of the vowels of the old word are changed, as in _man--men_, where an _e_ is substituted for _a_; _ran--run_, where _u_ is substituted for _a_; _lead--led_, where _e_, with its proper sound, is substituted for _ea_ with its proper sound. This method is used to a very limited extent in English. When the history of the words in which it occurs is studied it is discovered to be but an instance of the wearing out of the different elements of combined words; but in the Hebrew this method prevails to a very large extent, and scholars have not yet been able to discover its origin in combination as they have in English. It may or may not have been an original grammatic process, but because of its importance in certain languages it has been found necessary to deal with it as a distinct and original process. III.--THE PROCESS BY INTONATION. In English, new words are not formed by this method, yet words are intoned for certain purposes, chiefly rhetorical. We use the rising intonation (or inflection, as it is usually called) to indicate that a question is asked, and various effects are given to speech by the various intonations of rhetoric. But this process is used in other languages to form new words with which to express new ideas. In Chinese eight distinct intonations are found, by the use of which one word may be made to express eight different ideas, or perhaps it is better to say that eight words may be made of one. IV.--THE PROCESS BY PLACEMENT. The place or position of a word may affect its significant use. Thus in English we say _John struck James_. By the position of those words to each other we know that John is the actor, and that James receives the action. By the grammatic processes language is organized. Organization postulates the differentiation of organs and their combination into integers. The integers of language are sentences, and their organs are the parts of speech. Linguistic organization, then, consists in the differentiation of the parts of speech and the integration of the sentence. For example, let us take the words _John_, _father_, and _love_. _John_ is the name of an individual; _love_ is the name of a mental action, and _father_ the name of a person. We put them together, John loves father, and they express a thought; _John_ becomes a noun, and is the subject of the sentence; _love_ becomes a verb, and is the predicant; _father_ a noun, and is the object; and we now have an organized sentence. A sentence requires parts of speech, and parts of speech are such because they are used as the organic elements of a sentence. The criteria of rank in languages are, first, grade of organization, _i.e._, the degree to which the grammatic processes and methods are specialized, and the parts of speech differentiated; second, sematologic content, that is, the body of thought which the language is competent to convey. The grammatic processes may be used for three purposes: First, for _derivation_, where a new word to express a new idea is made by combining two or more old words, or by changing the vowel of one word, or by changing the intonation of one word. Second, for _modification_, a word may be qualified or defined by the processes of combination, vocalic mutation or intonation. It should here be noted that the plane between derivation and qualification is not absolute. Third, for _relation_. When words as signs of ideas are used together to express thought, the relation of the words must be expressed by some means. In English the relation of words is expressed both by placement and combination, _i.e._, inflection for agreement. It should here be noted that paradigmatic inflections are used for two distinct purposes, qualification and relation. A word is qualified by inflection when the idea expressed by the inflection pertains to the idea expressed by the word inflected; thus a noun is qualified by inflection when its number and gender are expressed. A word is related by inflection when the office of the word in the sentence is pointed out thereby; thus, nouns are related by case inflections; verbs are related by inflections for gender, number, and person. All inflection for agreement is inflection for relation. In English, three of the grammatic processes are highly specialized. _Combination_ is used chiefly for derivation, but to some slight extent for qualification and relation in the paradigmatic categories. But its use in this manner as compared with many other languages has almost disappeared. _Vocalic mutation_ is used to a very limited extent and only by accident, and can scarcely be said to belong to the English language. _Intonation_ is used as a grammatic process only to a limited extent--simply to assist in forming the interrogative and imperative modes. Its use here is almost rhetorical; in all other cases it is purely rhetorical. _Placement_ is largely used in the language, and is highly specialized, performing the office of exhibiting the relations of words to each other in the sentence; _i.e._, it is used chiefly for syntactic relation. Thus one of the four processes does not belong to the English language; the others are highly specialized. The purposes for which the processes are used are _derivation_, _modification_, and _syntactic relation_. _Derivation_ is accomplished by combination. _Modification_ is accomplished by the differentiation of adjectives and adverbs, as words, phrases, and clauses. _Syntactic relation_ is accomplished by placement. Syntactic relation must not be confounded with the relation expressed by prepositions. Syntactic relation is the relation of the parts of speech to each other as integral parts of a sentence. Prepositions express relations of thought of another order. They relate words to each other as words. Placement relates words to each other as parts of speech. In the Indian tongues combination is used for all three purposes, performing the three different functions of derivation, modification, and relation. Placement, also, is used for relation, and for both lands of relation, syntactic and prepositional. With regard, then, to the processes and purposes for which they are used, we find in the Indian languages a low degree of specialization; processes are used for diverse purposes, and purposes are accomplished by diverse processes. DIFFERENTIATION OF THE PARTS OF SPEECH. It is next in order to consider to what degree the parts of speech are differentiated in Indian languages, as compared with English. Indian nouns are extremely connotive, that is, the name does more than simply denote the thing to which it belongs; in denoting the object it also assigns to it some quality or characteristic. Every object has many qualities and characteristics, and by describing but a part of these the true office of the noun is but imperfectly performed. A strictly denotive name expresses no one quality or character, but embraces all qualities and characters. In _Ute_ the name for bear is _he seizes_, or _the hugger_. In this case the verb is used for the noun, and in so doing the Indian names the bear by predicating one of his characteristics. Thus noun and verb are undifferentiated. In _Seneca_ the north is _the sun never goes there_, and this sentence may be used as adjective or noun; in such cases noun, adjective, verb, and adverb are found as one vocable or word, and the four parts of speech are undifferentiated. In the _Pavänt_ language a school-house is called _pó-kûnt-în-îñ-yî-kän_. The first part of the word, _pó-kûnt_, signifies _sorcery is practiced_, and is the name given by the Indians to any writing, from the fact that when they first learned of writing they supposed it to be a method of practicing sorcery; _în-îñ-yî_ is the verb signifying _to count_, and the meaning of the word has been extended so as to signify _to read_; _kän_ signifies wigwam, and is derived from the verb _küri_, _to stay_. Thus the name of the school-house literally signifies _a staying place where sorcery is counted_, or where papers are read. The _Pavänt_ in naming a school-house describes the purpose for which it is used. These examples illustrate the general characteristics of Indian nouns; they are excessively connotive; a simply denotive name is rarely found. In general their name-words predicate some attribute of the object named, and thus noun, adjective, and predicant are undifferentiated. In many Indian languages there is no separate word for _eye_, _hand_, _arm_, or other parts and organs of the body, but the word is found with an incorporated or attached pronoun signifying _my_ hand, _my_ eye; _your_ hand, _your_ eye; _his_ hand, _his_ eye, etc., as the case may be. If the Indian, in naming these parts, refers to his own body, he says _my_; if he refers to the body of the person to whom he is speaking, he says _your_, &c. If an Indian should find a detached foot thrown from the amputating-table of an army field hospital, he would say something like this: I have found somebody _his foot_. The linguistic characteristic is widely spread, though not universal. Thus the Indian has no command of a fully differentiated noun expressive of _eye_, _hand_, _arm_, or other parts and organs of the body. In the pronouns we often have the most difficult part of an Indian language. Pronouns are only to a limited extent independent words. Among the free pronouns the student must early learn to distinguish between the personal and the demonstrative. The demonstrative pronouns are more commonly used. The Indian is more accustomed to say _this_ person or thing, _that_ person or thing, than _he_, _she_, or _it_. Among the free personal pronouns the student may find an equivalent of the pronoun _I_, another signifying _I and you_; perhaps another signifying _I and he_, and one signifying _we, more than two_, including the speaker and those present; and another including the speaker and persons absent. He will also find personal pronouns in the second and third person, perhaps with singular, dual, and plural forms. To a large extent the pronouns are incorporated in the verbs as prefixes, infixes, or suffixes. In such cases we will call them article pronouns. These article pronouns point out with great particularity the person, number, and gender, both of subject and object, and sometimes of the indirect object. When the article pronouns are used the personal pronouns may or may not be used; but it is believed that the personal pronouns will always be found. Article pronouns may not always be found. In those languages which are characterized by them they are used alike when the subject and object nouns are expressed and when they are not. The student may at first find some difficulty with these article pronouns. Singular, dual, and plural forms will be found. Sometimes distinct incorporated particles will be used for subject and object, but often this will not be the case. If the subject only is expressed, one particle may be used; if the object only is expressed, another particle; but if subject and object are expressed an entirely different particle may stand for both. But it is in the genders of these article pronouns that the greatest difficulty may be found. The student must entirely free his mind of the idea that gender is simply a distinction of sex. In Indian tongues, genders are usually methods of classification primarily into animate and inanimate. The animate may be again divided into male and female, but this is rarely the case. Often by these genders all objects are classified by characteristics found in their attitudes or supposed constitution. Thus we may have the animate and inanimate, one or both, divided into the _standing_, the _sitting_, and the _lying_; or they may be divided into the _watery_, the _mushy_, the _earthy_, the _stony_, the _woody_, and the _fleshy_. The gender of these article pronouns has rarely been worked out in any language. The extent to which these classifications enter into the article pronouns is not well known. The subject requires more thorough study. These incorporated particles are here called _article_ pronouns. In the conjugation of the verb they take an important part, and have by some writers been called _transitions_. Besides pointing out with particularity the person, number, and gender or the subject and object, they perform the same offices that are usually performed by those inflections of the verb that occur to make them agree in gender, number, and person with the subject. In those Indian languages where the article pronouns are not found, and the personal pronouns only are used, the verb is usually inflected to agree with the subject or object, or both, in the same particulars. The article pronouns as they point out person, number, gender, and case of the subject and object, are not simple particles, but are to a greater or lesser extent compound; their component elements may be broken apart and placed in different parts of the verb. Again, the article pronoun in some languages may have its elements combined into a distinct word in such a manner that it will not be incorporated in the verb, but will be placed immediately before it. For this reason the term _article pronoun_ has been chosen rather than _attached pronoun_. The older term, _transition_, was given to them because of their analogy in function to verbal inflections. Thus the verb of an Indian language contains within itself incorporated article pronouns which point out with great particularity the gender, number, and person of the subject and object. In this manner verb, pronoun, and adjective are combined, and to this extent these parts of speech are undifferentiated. In some languages the article pronoun constitutes a distinct word, but whether free or incorporated it is a complex tissue of adjectives. Again, nouns sometimes contain particles within themselves to predicate possession, and to this extent nouns and verbs are undifferentiated. The verb is relatively of much greater importance in an Indian tongue than in a civilized language. To a large extent the pronoun is incorporated in the verb as explained above, and thus constitutes a part of its conjugation. Again, adjectives are used as intransitive verbs, as in most Indian languages there is no verb _to be_ used as a predicant or copula. Where in English we would say _the man is good_, the Indian would say _that man good_, using the adjective as an intransitive verb, _i.e._, as a predicant. If he desired to affirm it in the past tense, the intransitive verb _good_, would be inflected, or otherwise modified, to indicate the tense; and so, in like manner, all adjectives when used to predicate can be modified to indicate mode, tense, number, person, &c., as other intransitive verbs. Adverbs are used as intransitive verbs. In English we may say _he is there_; the Indian would say _that person there_ usually preferring the demonstrative to the personal pronoun. The adverb _there_ would, therefore, be used as a predicant or intransitive verb, and might be conjugated to denote different modes, tenses, numbers, persons, etc. Verbs will often receive adverbial qualifications by the use of incorporated particles, and, still further, verbs may contain within themselves adverbial limitations without our being able to trace such meanings to any definite particles or parts of the verb. Prepositions are intransitive verbs. In English we may say _the hat is on the table_; the Indian would say _that hat on table_; or he might change the order, and say _that hat table on_; but the preposition _on_ would be used as an intransitive verb to predicate, and may be conjugated. Prepositions may often be found as particles incorporated in verbs, and, still further, verbs may contain within themselves prepositional meanings without our being able to trace such meanings to any definite particles within the verb. But the verb connotes such ideas that something is needed to complete its meaning, that something being a limiting or qualifying word, phrase, or clause. Prepositions may be prefixed, infixed, or suffixed to nouns, _i.e._, they may be particles incorporated in nouns. Nouns may be used as intransitive verbs under the circumstances when in English we would use a noun as the complement of a sentence after the verb _to be_. The verb, therefore, often includes within itself subject, direct object, indirect object, qualifier, and relation-idea. Thus it is that the study of an Indian language is, to a large extent, the study of its verbs. Thus adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and nouns are used as intransitive verbs; and, to such extent, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, nouns and verbs are undifferentiated. From the remarks above, it will be seen that Indian verbs often include within themselves meanings which in English are expressed by adverbs and adverbial phrases and clauses. Thus the verb may express within itself direction, manner, instrument, and purpose, one or all, as the verb _to go_ may be represented by a word signifying _go home_; another, _go away from home_; another, _go to a place other than home_; another, _go from a place other than home_; one, _go from this place_, with reference to home; one, to _go up_; another, to _go down_; one, _go around_; and, perhaps, there will be a verb _go up hill_; another, _go up a valley_; another, _go up a river_, etc. Then we may have _to go on foot_, _to go on horseback_, _to go in a canoe_; still another, _to go for water_; another _for wood_, etc. Distinct words may be used for all these, or a fewer number used, and these varied by incorporated particles. In like manner, the English verb _to break_ may be represented by several words, each of which will indicate the manner of performing the act or the instrument with which it is done. Distinct words may be used, or a common word varied with incorporated particles. The verb _to strike_ may be represented by several words, signifying severally _to strike with the fist_, _to strike with a club_, _to strike with the open hand_, _to strike with a whip_, _to strike with a switch_, to strike with a flat instrument, etc. A common word may be used with incorporated particles or entirely different words used. Mode in an Indian tongue is a rather difficult subject. Modes analogous to those of civilized tongues are found, and many conditions and qualifications appear in the verb which in English and other civilized languages appear as adverbs, and adverbial phrases and clauses. No plane of separation can be drawn between such adverbial qualifications and true modes. Thus there may be a form of the verb, which shows that the speaker makes a declaration as certain, _i.e._, an _indicative_ mode; another which shows that the speaker makes a declaration with doubt, _i.e._, a _dubitative_ mode; another that he makes a declaration on hearsay, _i.e._, a _quotative_ mode; another form will be used in making a command, giving an _imperative_ mode; another in imploration, _i.e._, an _implorative_ mode; another form to denote permission, _i.e._, a _permissive_ mode; another in negation, _i.e._, a _negative_ mode; another form will be used to indicate that the action is simultaneous with some other action, _i.e._, a _simulative_ mode; another to denote desire or wish that something be done, _i.e._, a _desiderative_ mode; another that the action ought to be done, _i.e._, an _obligative_ mode; another that action is repetitive from time to time, _i.e._, a _frequentative_ mode; another that action is caused, _i.e._, a _causative_ mode, etc. These forms of the verb, which we are compelled to call modes, are of great number. Usually with each of them a particular modal particle or incorporated adverb will be used; but the particular particle which gives the qualified meaning may not always be discovered; and in one language a different word will be introduced, wherein another the same word will be used with an incorporated particle. It is stated above that incorporated particles may be used to indicate direction, manner, instrument, and purpose; in fact, any adverbial qualification whatever may be made by an incorporated particle instead of an adverb as a distinct word. No line of demarkation can be drawn between these adverbial particles and those mentioned above as modal particles. Indeed it seems best to treat all these forms of the verb arising from, incorporated particles as distinct modes. In this sense, then, an Indian language has a multiplicity of modes. It should be further remarked that in many cases these modal or adverbial particles are excessively worn, so that they may appear as additions or changes of simple vowel or consonant sounds. When incorporated particles are thus used, distinct adverbial words, phrases, or clauses may also be employed, and the idea expressed twice. In an Indian language it is usually found difficult to elaborate a system of tenses in paradigmatic form. Many tenses or time particles are found incorporated in verbs. Some of these time particles are excessively worn, and may appear rather as inflections than as incorporated particles. Usually rather distinct present, past, and future tenses are discovered; often a remote or ancient past, and less often an immediate future. But great specification of time in relation to the present and in relation to other time is usually found. It was seen above that adverbial particles cannot be separated from modal particles. In like manner tense particles cannot be separated from adverbial and modal particles. In an Indian language adverbs are differentiated only to a limited extent. Adverbial qualifications are found in the verb, and thus there are a multiplicity of modes and tenses, and no plane of demarcation can be drawn between mode and tense. From preceding statements it will appear that a verb in an Indian tongue may have incorporated with it a great variety of particles, which can be arranged in three general classes, _i.e._, pronominal, adverbial, and prepositional. The pronominal particles we have called article pronouns; they serve to point out a variety of characteristics in the subject, object, and indirect object of the verb. They thus subserve purposes which in English are subserved by differentiated adjectives as distinct parts of speech. They might, therefore, with some propriety, have been called adjective particles, but these elements perform another function; they serve the purpose which is usually called _agreement in language_; that is, they make the verb agree with the subject and object, and thus indicate the syntactic relation between subject, object, and verb. In this sense they might with propriety have been called relation particles, and doubtless this function was in mind when some of the older grammarians called them transitions. The adverbial particles perform the functions of voice, mode, and tense, together with many other functions that are performed in languages spoken by more highly civilized people by differentiated adverbs, adverbial phrases, and clauses. The prepositional particles perform the function of indicating a great variety of subordinate relations, like the prepositions used as distinct parts of speech in English. By the demonstrative function of some of the pronominal particles, they are closely related to adverbial particles, and adverbial particles are closely related to prepositional particles, so that it will be sometimes difficult to say of a particular particle whether it be pronominal or adverbial, and of another particular particle whether it be adverbial or prepositional. Thus the three classes of particles are not separated by absolute planes of demarkation. The use of these particles as parts of the verb; the use of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions as intransitive verbs; and the direct use of verbs as nouns, adjectives, and adverbs, make the study of an Indian tongue to a large extent the study of its verbs. To the extent that voice, mode, and tense are accomplished by the use of agglutinated particles or inflections, to that extent adverbs and verbs are undifferentiated. To the extent that adverbs are found as incorporated particles in verbs, the two parts of speech are undifferentiated. To the extent that prepositions are particles incorporated in the verb, prepositions and verbs are undifferentiated. To the extent that prepositions are affixed to nouns, prepositions and nouns are undifferentiated. In all these particulars it is seen that the Indian tongues belong to a very low type of organization. Various scholars have called attention to this feature by describing Indian languages as being holophrastic, polysynthetic, or synthetic. The term synthetic is perhaps the best, and may be used as synonymous with undifferentiated. Indian tongues, therefore, may be said to be highly synthetic in that their parts of speech are imperfectly differentiated. In these same particulars the English language is highly organized, as the parts of speech are highly differentiated. Yet the difference is one of degree, not of kind. To the extent in the English language that inflection is used for qualification, as for person, number, and gender of the noun and pronoun, and for mode and tense in the verb, to that extent the parts of speech are undifferentiated. But we have seen that inflection is used for this purpose to a very slight extent. There is yet in the English language one important differentiation which has been but partially accomplished. Verbs as usually considered are undifferentiated parts of speech; they are nouns and adjectives, one or both, and predicants. The predicant simple is a distinct part of speech. The English language has but one, the verb _to be_, and this is not always a pure predicant, for it sometimes contains within itself an adverbial element when it is conjugated for mode and tense, and a connective element when it is conjugated for agreement. With adjectives and nouns this verb is used as a predicant. In the passive voice also it is thus used, and the participles are nouns or adjectives. In what is sometimes called the progressive form of the active voice nouns and adjectives are differentiated in the participles, and the verb "to be" is used as a predicant. But in what is usually denominated the active voice of the verb, the English language has undifferentiated parts of speech. An examination of the history of the verb _to be_ in the English language exhibits the fact that it is coming more and more to be used as the predicant; and what is usually called the common form of the active voice is coming more and more to be limited in its use to special significations. The real active voice, indicative mode, present tense, first person, singular number, of the verb to eat, is _am eating_. The expression _I eat_, signifies _I am accustomed to eat_. So, if we consider the common form of the active voice throughout its entire conjugation, we discover that many of its forms are limited to special uses. Throughout the conjugation of the verb the auxiliaries are predicants, but these auxiliaries, to the extent that they are modified for mode, tense, number, and person, contain adverbial and connective elements. In like manner many of the lexical elements of the English language contain more than one part of speech: _To ascend_ is _to go up_; _to descend_ is _to go down_; and _to depart_ is _to go from_. Thus it is seen that the English language is also synthetic in that its parts of speech are not completely differentiated. The English, then, differs in this respect from an Indian language only in degree. In most Indian tongues no pure predicant has been differentiated, but in some the verb _to be_, or predicant, has been slightly developed, chiefly to affirm, existence in a place. It will thus be seen that by the criterion of organization Indian tongues are of very low grade. It need but to be affirmed that by the criterion of sematologic content Indian languages are of a very low grade. Therefore the frequently-expressed opinion that the languages of barbaric peoples have a more highly organized grammatic structure than the languages of civilized peoples has its complete refutation. It is worthy of remark that all paradigmatic inflection in a civilized tongue is a relic of its barbaric condition. When the parts of speech are fully differentiated and the process of placement fully specialized, so that the order of words in sentences has its full significance, no useful purpose is subserved by inflection. Economy in speech is the force by which its development has been accomplished, and it divides itself properly into economy of utterance and economy of thought. Economy of utterance has had to do with the phonic constitution of words; economy of thought has developed the sentence. All paradigmatic inflection requires unnecessary thought. In the clause _if he was here_, _if_ fully expresses the subjunctive condition, and it is quite unnecessary to express it a second time by using another form of the verb _to be_. And so the people who are using the English language are deciding, for the subjunctive form is rapidly becoming obsolete with the long list of paradigmatic forms which have disappeared. Every time the pronoun _he_, _she_, or _it_ is used it is necessary to think of the sex of its antecedent, though in its use there is no reason why sex should be expressed, say, one time in ten thousand. If one pronoun non-expressive of gender were used instead of the three, with three gender adjectives, then in nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine cases the speaker would be relieved of the necessity of an unnecessary thought, and in the one case an adjective would fully express it. But when these inflections are greatly multiplied, as they are in the Indian languages, alike with the Greek and Latin, the speaker is compelled in the choice of a word to express his idea to think of a multiplicity of things which have no connection with that which he wishes to express. A _Ponka_ Indian, in saying that a man killed a rabbit, would have to say the man, he, one, animate, standing, in the nominative case, purposely killed, by shooting an arrow, the rabbit, he, the one, animate, sitting, in the objective case; for the form of a verb to kill would have to be selected, and the verb changes its form by inflection and incorporated particles to denote person, number, and gender as animate or inanimate, and gender as standing, sitting, or lying, and case; and the form of the verb would also express whether the killing was done accidentally or purposely, and whether it was by shooting or by some other process, and, if by shooting, whether by bow and arrow, or with a gun; and the form of the verb would in like manner have to express all of these things relating to the object; that is, the person, number, gender, and case of the object; and from the multiplicity of paradigmatic forms of the verb to kill this particular one would have to be selected. Perhaps one time in a million it would be the purpose to express all of these particulars, and in that case the Indian would have the whole expression in one compact word, but in the nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine cases all of these particulars would have to be thought of in the selection of the form of the verb, when no valuable purpose would be accomplished thereby. In the development of the English, as well as the French and German, linguistic evolution has not been in vain. Judged by these criteria, the English stands alone in the highest rank; but as a written language, in the way in which its alphabet is used, the English has but emerged from a barbaric condition. INDEX. Page Adjective, The, in Indian tongues 10 Adverbial particles 13 Adverbs in Indian tongues 10, 11, 13 Agglutination in language 4 Article pronouns in Indian languages 9, 10 Combination in Indian tongues 7 in language, Process of, 3, 7 Comparison, of English with Indian 15 Compounding in language 3 Connotation of Indian nouns 8 Derivation, how accomplished 7 Differentiation of parts of speech 8 Evolution of language 3 Gender in Indian languages 9 Grammatic processes, agglutination 4 ----, combination 3 ----, compounding 3 ----, inflection 4 ----, intonation 6 ----, juxtaposition 3 ----, placement 7, 8 ----, vocalic mutation 5 Indian tongues, Relative position of 15 Inflection in English language 14 in language 4 ----, Paradigmatic 7, 15 Juxtaposition in language 3 Language, Evolution of 3-16 ----, Processes of 3-8 Modal particles 13 Mode in Indian tongues 12 Modification, how accomplished 7 Mutation, Vocalic 5 Nouns in Indian tongues 11 Paradigmatic inflection 7, 15 Particles, Adverbial 13 ----, Modal 13 ----, Pronominal 13 ----, Tense 13 Placement, Process of 6-8 Prepositions in Indian tongues 11 Processes of language 3-8 Pronominal particles 13 Pronouns in Indian languages 9 Speech, Differentiation of parts of 8 Syntactic relation, how accomplished 7 Tense in Indian tongues 12 particles 13 Verbs in English language 14 in Indian tongues 10, 11 Vocalic mutation in language, Process of 5 
1616	----	CRATYLUS By Plato Translated by Benjamin Jowett INTRODUCTION. The Cratylus has always been a source of perplexity to the student of Plato. While in fancy and humour, and perfection of style and metaphysical originality, this dialogue may be ranked with the best of the Platonic writings, there has been an uncertainty about the motive of the piece, which interpreters have hitherto not succeeded in dispelling. We need not suppose that Plato used words in order to conceal his thoughts, or that he would have been unintelligible to an educated contemporary. In the Phaedrus and Euthydemus we also find a difficulty in determining the precise aim of the author. Plato wrote satires in the form of dialogues, and his meaning, like that of other satirical writers, has often slept in the ear of posterity. Two causes may be assigned for this obscurity: 1st, the subtlety and allusiveness of this species of composition; 2nd, the difficulty of reproducing a state of life and literature which has passed away. A satire is unmeaning unless we can place ourselves back among the persons and thoughts of the age in which it was written. Had the treatise of Antisthenes upon words, or the speculations of Cratylus, or some other Heracleitean of the fourth century B.C., on the nature of language been preserved to us; or if we had lived at the time, and been 'rich enough to attend the fifty-drachma course of Prodicus,' we should have understood Plato better, and many points which are now attributed to the extravagance of Socrates' humour would have been found, like the allusions of Aristophanes in the Clouds, to have gone home to the sophists and grammarians of the day. For the age was very busy with philological speculation; and many questions were beginning to be asked about language which were parallel to other questions about justice, virtue, knowledge, and were illustrated in a similar manner by the analogy of the arts. Was there a correctness in words, and were they given by nature or convention? In the presocratic philosophy mankind had been striving to attain an expression of their ideas, and now they were beginning to ask themselves whether the expression might not be distinguished from the idea? They were also seeking to distinguish the parts of speech and to enquire into the relation of subject and predicate. Grammar and logic were moving about somewhere in the depths of the human soul, but they were not yet awakened into consciousness and had not found names for themselves, or terms by which they might be expressed. Of these beginnings of the study of language we know little, and there necessarily arises an obscurity when the surroundings of such a work as the Cratylus are taken away. Moreover, in this, as in most of the dialogues of Plato, allowance has to be made for the character of Socrates. For the theory of language can only be propounded by him in a manner which is consistent with his own profession of ignorance. Hence his ridicule of the new school of etymology is interspersed with many declarations 'that he knows nothing,' 'that he has learned from Euthyphro,' and the like. Even the truest things which he says are depreciated by himself. He professes to be guessing, but the guesses of Plato are better than all the other theories of the ancients respecting language put together. The dialogue hardly derives any light from Plato's other writings, and still less from Scholiasts and Neoplatonist writers. Socrates must be interpreted from himself, and on first reading we certainly have a difficulty in understanding his drift, or his relation to the two other interlocutors in the dialogue. Does he agree with Cratylus or with Hermogenes, and is he serious in those fanciful etymologies, extending over more than half the dialogue, which he seems so greatly to relish? Or is he serious in part only; and can we separate his jest from his earnest?--Sunt bona, sunt quaedum mediocria, sunt mala plura. Most of them are ridiculously bad, and yet among them are found, as if by accident, principles of philology which are unsurpassed in any ancient writer, and even in advance of any philologer of the last century. May we suppose that Plato, like Lucian, has been amusing his fancy by writing a comedy in the form of a prose dialogue? And what is the final result of the enquiry? Is Plato an upholder of the conventional theory of language, which he acknowledges to be imperfect? or does he mean to imply that a perfect language can only be based on his own theory of ideas? Or if this latter explanation is refuted by his silence, then in what relation does his account of language stand to the rest of his philosophy? Or may we be so bold as to deny the connexion between them? (For the allusion to the ideas at the end of the dialogue is merely intended to show that we must not put words in the place of things or realities, which is a thesis strongly insisted on by Plato in many other passages)...These are some of the first thoughts which arise in the mind of the reader of the Cratylus. And the consideration of them may form a convenient introduction to the general subject of the dialogue. We must not expect all the parts of a dialogue of Plato to tend equally to some clearly-defined end. His idea of literary art is not the absolute proportion of the whole, such as we appear to find in a Greek temple or statue; nor should his works be tried by any such standard. They have often the beauty of poetry, but they have also the freedom of conversation. 'Words are more plastic than wax' (Rep.), and may be moulded into any form. He wanders on from one topic to another, careless of the unity of his work, not fearing any 'judge, or spectator, who may recall him to the point' (Theat.), 'whither the argument blows we follow' (Rep.). To have determined beforehand, as in a modern didactic treatise, the nature and limits of the subject, would have been fatal to the spirit of enquiry or discovery, which is the soul of the dialogue...These remarks are applicable to nearly all the works of Plato, but to the Cratylus and Phaedrus more than any others. See Phaedrus, Introduction. There is another aspect under which some of the dialogues of Plato may be more truly viewed:--they are dramatic sketches of an argument. We have found that in the Lysis, Charmides, Laches, Protagoras, Meno, we arrived at no conclusion--the different sides of the argument were personified in the different speakers; but the victory was not distinctly attributed to any of them, nor the truth wholly the property of any. And in the Cratylus we have no reason to assume that Socrates is either wholly right or wholly wrong, or that Plato, though he evidently inclines to him, had any other aim than that of personifying, in the characters of Hermogenes, Socrates, and Cratylus, the three theories of language which are respectively maintained by them. The two subordinate persons of the dialogue, Hermogenes and Cratylus, are at the opposite poles of the argument. But after a while the disciple of the Sophist and the follower of Heracleitus are found to be not so far removed from one another as at first sight appeared; and both show an inclination to accept the third view which Socrates interposes between them. First, Hermogenes, the poor brother of the rich Callias, expounds the doctrine that names are conventional; like the names of slaves, they may be given and altered at pleasure. This is one of those principles which, whether applied to society or language, explains everything and nothing. For in all things there is an element of convention; but the admission of this does not help us to understand the rational ground or basis in human nature on which the convention proceeds. Socrates first of all intimates to Hermogenes that his view of language is only a part of a sophistical whole, and ultimately tends to abolish the distinction between truth and falsehood. Hermogenes is very ready to throw aside the sophistical tenet, and listens with a sort of half admiration, half belief, to the speculations of Socrates. Cratylus is of opinion that a name is either a true name or not a name at all. He is unable to conceive of degrees of imitation; a word is either the perfect expression of a thing, or a mere inarticulate sound (a fallacy which is still prevalent among theorizers about the origin of language). He is at once a philosopher and a sophist; for while wanting to rest language on an immutable basis, he would deny the possibility of falsehood. He is inclined to derive all truth from language, and in language he sees reflected the philosophy of Heracleitus. His views are not like those of Hermogenes, hastily taken up, but are said to be the result of mature consideration, although he is described as still a young man. With a tenacity characteristic of the Heracleitean philosophers, he clings to the doctrine of the flux. (Compare Theaet.) Of the real Cratylus we know nothing, except that he is recorded by Aristotle to have been the friend or teacher of Plato; nor have we any proof that he resembled the likeness of him in Plato any more than the Critias of Plato is like the real Critias, or the Euthyphro in this dialogue like the other Euthyphro, the diviner, in the dialogue which is called after him. Between these two extremes, which have both of them a sophistical character, the view of Socrates is introduced, which is in a manner the union of the two. Language is conventional and also natural, and the true conventional-natural is the rational. It is a work not of chance, but of art; the dialectician is the artificer of words, and the legislator gives authority to them. They are the expressions or imitations in sound of things. In a sense, Cratylus is right in saying that things have by nature names; for nature is not opposed either to art or to law. But vocal imitation, like any other copy, may be imperfectly executed; and in this way an element of chance or convention enters in. There is much which is accidental or exceptional in language. Some words have had their original meaning so obscured, that they require to be helped out by convention. But still the true name is that which has a natural meaning. Thus nature, art, chance, all combine in the formation of language. And the three views respectively propounded by Hermogenes, Socrates, Cratylus, may be described as the conventional, the artificial or rational, and the natural. The view of Socrates is the meeting-point of the other two, just as conceptualism is the meeting-point of nominalism and realism. We can hardly say that Plato was aware of the truth, that 'languages are not made, but grow.' But still, when he says that 'the legislator made language with the dialectician standing on his right hand,' we need not infer from this that he conceived words, like coins, to be issued from the mint of the State. The creator of laws and of social life is naturally regarded as the creator of language, according to Hellenic notions, and the philosopher is his natural advisor. We are not to suppose that the legislator is performing any extraordinary function; he is merely the Eponymus of the State, who prescribes rules for the dialectician and for all other artists. According to a truly Platonic mode of approaching the subject, language, like virtue in the Republic, is examined by the analogy of the arts. Words are works of art which may be equally made in different materials, and are well made when they have a meaning. Of the process which he thus describes, Plato had probably no very definite notion. But he means to express generally that language is the product of intelligence, and that languages belong to States and not to individuals. A better conception of language could not have been formed in Plato's age, than that which he attributes to Socrates. Yet many persons have thought that the mind of Plato is more truly seen in the vague realism of Cratylus. This misconception has probably arisen from two causes: first, the desire to bring Plato's theory of language into accordance with the received doctrine of the Platonic ideas; secondly, the impression created by Socrates himself, that he is not in earnest, and is only indulging the fancy of the hour. 1. We shall have occasion to show more at length, in the Introduction to future dialogues, that the so-called Platonic ideas are only a semi-mythical form, in which he attempts to realize abstractions, and that they are replaced in his later writings by a rational theory of psychology. (See introductions to the Meno and the Sophist.) And in the Cratylus he gives a general account of the nature and origin of language, in which Adam Smith, Rousseau, and other writers of the last century, would have substantially agreed. At the end of the dialogue, he speaks as in the Symposium and Republic of absolute beauty and good; but he never supposed that they were capable of being embodied in words. Of the names of the ideas, he would have said, as he says of the names of the Gods, that we know nothing. Even the realism of Cratylus is not based upon the ideas of Plato, but upon the flux of Heracleitus. Here, as in the Sophist and Politicus, Plato expressly draws attention to the want of agreement in words and things. Hence we are led to infer, that the view of Socrates is not the less Plato's own, because not based upon the ideas; 2nd, that Plato's theory of language is not inconsistent with the rest of his philosophy. 2. We do not deny that Socrates is partly in jest and partly in earnest. He is discoursing in a high-flown vein, which may be compared to the 'dithyrambics of the Phaedrus.' They are mysteries of which he is speaking, and he professes a kind of ludicrous fear of his imaginary wisdom. When he is arguing out of Homer, about the names of Hector's son, or when he describes himself as inspired or maddened by Euthyphro, with whom he has been sitting from the early dawn (compare Phaedrus and Lysias; Phaedr.) and expresses his intention of yielding to the illusion to-day, and to-morrow he will go to a priest and be purified, we easily see that his words are not to be taken seriously. In this part of the dialogue his dread of committing impiety, the pretended derivation of his wisdom from another, the extravagance of some of his etymologies, and, in general, the manner in which the fun, fast and furious, vires acquirit eundo, remind us strongly of the Phaedrus. The jest is a long one, extending over more than half the dialogue. But then, we remember that the Euthydemus is a still longer jest, in which the irony is preserved to the very end. There he is parodying the ingenious follies of early logic; in the Cratylus he is ridiculing the fancies of a new school of sophists and grammarians. The fallacies of the Euthydemus are still retained at the end of our logic books; and the etymologies of the Cratylus have also found their way into later writers. Some of these are not much worse than the conjectures of Hemsterhuis, and other critics of the last century; but this does not prove that they are serious. For Plato is in advance of his age in his conception of language, as much as he is in his conception of mythology. (Compare Phaedrus.) When the fervour of his etymological enthusiasm has abated, Socrates ends, as he has begun, with a rational explanation of language. Still he preserves his 'know nothing' disguise, and himself declares his first notions about names to be reckless and ridiculous. Having explained compound words by resolving them into their original elements, he now proceeds to analyse simple words into the letters of which they are composed. The Socrates who 'knows nothing,' here passes into the teacher, the dialectician, the arranger of species. There is nothing in this part of the dialogue which is either weak or extravagant. Plato is a supporter of the Onomatopoetic theory of language; that is to say, he supposes words to be formed by the imitation of ideas in sounds; he also recognises the effect of time, the influence of foreign languages, the desire of euphony, to be formative principles; and he admits a certain element of chance. But he gives no imitation in all this that he is preparing the way for the construction of an ideal language. Or that he has any Eleatic speculation to oppose to the Heracleiteanism of Cratylus. The theory of language which is propounded in the Cratylus is in accordance with the later phase of the philosophy of Plato, and would have been regarded by him as in the main true. The dialogue is also a satire on the philological fancies of the day. Socrates in pursuit of his vocation as a detector of false knowledge, lights by accident on the truth. He is guessing, he is dreaming; he has heard, as he says in the Phaedrus, from another: no one is more surprised than himself at his own discoveries. And yet some of his best remarks, as for example his view of the derivation of Greek words from other languages, or of the permutations of letters, or again, his observation that in speaking of the Gods we are only speaking of our names of them, occur among these flights of humour. We can imagine a character having a profound insight into the nature of men and things, and yet hardly dwelling upon them seriously; blending inextricably sense and nonsense; sometimes enveloping in a blaze of jests the most serious matters, and then again allowing the truth to peer through; enjoying the flow of his own humour, and puzzling mankind by an ironical exaggeration of their absurdities. Such were Aristophanes and Rabelais; such, in a different style, were Sterne, Jean Paul, Hamann,--writers who sometimes become unintelligible through the extravagance of their fancies. Such is the character which Plato intends to depict in some of his dialogues as the Silenus Socrates; and through this medium we have to receive our theory of language. There remains a difficulty which seems to demand a more exact answer: In what relation does the satirical or etymological portion of the dialogue stand to the serious? Granting all that can be said about the provoking irony of Socrates, about the parody of Euthyphro, or Prodicus, or Antisthenes, how does the long catalogue of etymologies furnish any answer to the question of Hermogenes, which is evidently the main thesis of the dialogue: What is the truth, or correctness, or principle of names? After illustrating the nature of correctness by the analogy of the arts, and then, as in the Republic, ironically appealing to the authority of the Homeric poems, Socrates shows that the truth or correctness of names can only be ascertained by an appeal to etymology. The truth of names is to be found in the analysis of their elements. But why does he admit etymologies which are absurd, based on Heracleitean fancies, fourfold interpretations of words, impossible unions and separations of syllables and letters? 1. The answer to this difficulty has been already anticipated in part: Socrates is not a dogmatic teacher, and therefore he puts on this wild and fanciful disguise, in order that the truth may be permitted to appear: 2. as Benfey remarks, an erroneous example may illustrate a principle of language as well as a true one: 3. many of these etymologies, as, for example, that of dikaion, are indicated, by the manner in which Socrates speaks of them, to have been current in his own age: 4. the philosophy of language had not made such progress as would have justified Plato in propounding real derivations. Like his master Socrates, he saw through the hollowness of the incipient sciences of the day, and tries to move in a circle apart from them, laying down the conditions under which they are to be pursued, but, as in the Timaeus, cautious and tentative, when he is speaking of actual phenomena. To have made etymologies seriously, would have seemed to him like the interpretation of the myths in the Phaedrus, the task 'of a not very fortunate individual, who had a great deal of time on his hands.' The irony of Socrates places him above and beyond the errors of his contemporaries. The Cratylus is full of humour and satirical touches: the inspiration which comes from Euthyphro, and his prancing steeds, the light admixture of quotations from Homer, and the spurious dialectic which is applied to them; the jest about the fifty-drachma course of Prodicus, which is declared on the best authority, viz. his own, to be a complete education in grammar and rhetoric; the double explanation of the name Hermogenes, either as 'not being in luck,' or 'being no speaker;' the dearly-bought wisdom of Callias, the Lacedaemonian whose name was 'Rush,' and, above all, the pleasure which Socrates expresses in his own dangerous discoveries, which 'to-morrow he will purge away,' are truly humorous. While delivering a lecture on the philosophy of language, Socrates is also satirizing the endless fertility of the human mind in spinning arguments out of nothing, and employing the most trifling and fanciful analogies in support of a theory. Etymology in ancient as in modern times was a favourite recreation; and Socrates makes merry at the expense of the etymologists. The simplicity of Hermogenes, who is ready to believe anything that he is told, heightens the effect. Socrates in his genial and ironical mood hits right and left at his adversaries: Ouranos is so called apo tou oran ta ano, which, as some philosophers say, is the way to have a pure mind; the sophists are by a fanciful explanation converted into heroes; 'the givers of names were like some philosophers who fancy that the earth goes round because their heads are always going round.' There is a great deal of 'mischief' lurking in the following: 'I found myself in greater perplexity about justice than I was before I began to learn;' 'The rho in katoptron must be the addition of some one who cares nothing about truth, but thinks only of putting the mouth into shape;' 'Tales and falsehoods have generally to do with the Tragic and goatish life, and tragedy is the place of them.' Several philosophers and sophists are mentioned by name: first, Protagoras and Euthydemus are assailed; then the interpreters of Homer, oi palaioi Omerikoi (compare Arist. Met.) and the Orphic poets are alluded to by the way; then he discovers a hive of wisdom in the philosophy of Heracleitus;--the doctrine of the flux is contained in the word ousia (= osia the pushing principle), an anticipation of Anaxagoras is found in psuche and selene. Again, he ridicules the arbitrary methods of pulling out and putting in letters which were in vogue among the philologers of his time; or slightly scoffs at contemporary religious beliefs. Lastly, he is impatient of hearing from the half-converted Cratylus the doctrine that falsehood can neither be spoken, nor uttered, nor addressed; a piece of sophistry attributed to Gorgias, which reappears in the Sophist. And he proceeds to demolish, with no less delight than he had set up, the Heracleitean theory of language. In the latter part of the dialogue Socrates becomes more serious, though he does not lay aside but rather aggravates his banter of the Heracleiteans, whom here, as in the Theaetetus, he delights to ridicule. What was the origin of this enmity we can hardly determine:--was it due to the natural dislike which may be supposed to exist between the 'patrons of the flux' and the 'friends of the ideas' (Soph.)? or is it to be attributed to the indignation which Plato felt at having wasted his time upon 'Cratylus and the doctrines of Heracleitus' in the days of his youth? Socrates, touching on some of the characteristic difficulties of early Greek philosophy, endeavours to show Cratylus that imitation may be partial or imperfect, that a knowledge of things is higher than a knowledge of names, and that there can be no knowledge if all things are in a state of transition. But Cratylus, who does not easily apprehend the argument from common sense, remains unconvinced, and on the whole inclines to his former opinion. Some profound philosophical remarks are scattered up and down, admitting of an application not only to language but to knowledge generally; such as the assertion that 'consistency is no test of truth:' or again, 'If we are over-precise about words, truth will say "too late" to us as to the belated traveller in Aegina.' The place of the dialogue in the series cannot be determined with certainty. The style and subject, and the treatment of the character of Socrates, have a close resemblance to the earlier dialogues, especially to the Phaedrus and Euthydemus. The manner in which the ideas are spoken of at the end of the dialogue, also indicates a comparatively early date. The imaginative element is still in full vigour; the Socrates of the Cratylus is the Socrates of the Apology and Symposium, not yet Platonized; and he describes, as in the Theaetetus, the philosophy of Heracleitus by 'unsavoury' similes--he cannot believe that the world is like 'a leaky vessel,' or 'a man who has a running at the nose'; he attributes the flux of the world to the swimming in some folks' heads. On the other hand, the relation of thought to language is omitted here, but is treated of in the Sophist. These grounds are not sufficient to enable us to arrive at a precise conclusion. But we shall not be far wrong in placing the Cratylus about the middle, or at any rate in the first half, of the series. Cratylus, the Heracleitean philosopher, and Hermogenes, the brother of Callias, have been arguing about names; the former maintaining that they are natural, the latter that they are conventional. Cratylus affirms that his own is a true name, but will not allow that the name of Hermogenes is equally true. Hermogenes asks Socrates to explain to him what Cratylus means; or, far rather, he would like to know, What Socrates himself thinks about the truth or correctness of names? Socrates replies, that hard is knowledge, and the nature of names is a considerable part of knowledge: he has never been to hear the fifty-drachma course of Prodicus; and having only attended the single-drachma course, he is not competent to give an opinion on such matters. When Cratylus denies that Hermogenes is a true name, he supposes him to mean that he is not a true son of Hermes, because he is never in luck. But he would like to have an open council and to hear both sides. Hermogenes is of opinion that there is no principle in names; they may be changed, as we change the names of slaves, whenever we please, and the altered name is as good as the original one. You mean to say, for instance, rejoins Socrates, that if I agree to call a man a horse, then a man will be rightly called a horse by me, and a man by the rest of the world? But, surely, there is in words a true and a false, as there are true and false propositions. If a whole proposition be true or false, then the parts of a proposition may be true or false, and the least parts as well as the greatest; and the least parts are names, and therefore names may be true or false. Would Hermogenes maintain that anybody may give a name to anything, and as many names as he pleases; and would all these names be always true at the time of giving them? Hermogenes replies that this is the only way in which he can conceive that names are correct; and he appeals to the practice of different nations, and of the different Hellenic tribes, in confirmation of his view. Socrates asks, whether the things differ as the words which represent them differ:--Are we to maintain with Protagoras, that what appears is? Hermogenes has always been puzzled about this, but acknowledges, when he is pressed by Socrates, that there are a few very good men in the world, and a great many very bad; and the very good are the wise, and the very bad are the foolish; and this is not mere appearance but reality. Nor is he disposed to say with Euthydemus, that all things equally and always belong to all men; in that case, again, there would be no distinction between bad and good men. But then, the only remaining possibility is, that all things have their several distinct natures, and are independent of our notions about them. And not only things, but actions, have distinct natures, and are done by different processes. There is a natural way of cutting or burning, and a natural instrument with which men cut or burn, and any other way will fail;--this is true of all actions. And speaking is a kind of action, and naming is a kind of speaking, and we must name according to a natural process, and with a proper instrument. We cut with a knife, we pierce with an awl, we weave with a shuttle, we name with a name. And as a shuttle separates the warp from the woof, so a name distinguishes the natures of things. The weaver will use the shuttle well,--that is, like a weaver; and the teacher will use the name well,--that is, like a teacher. The shuttle will be made by the carpenter; the awl by the smith or skilled person. But who makes a name? Does not the law give names, and does not the teacher receive them from the legislator? He is the skilled person who makes them, and of all skilled workmen he is the rarest. But how does the carpenter make or repair the shuttle, and to what will he look? Will he not look at the ideal which he has in his mind? And as the different kinds of work differ, so ought the instruments which make them to differ. The several kinds of shuttles ought to answer in material and form to the several kinds of webs. And the legislator ought to know the different materials and forms of which names are made in Hellas and other countries. But who is to be the judge of the proper form? The judge of shuttles is the weaver who uses them; the judge of lyres is the player of the lyre; the judge of ships is the pilot. And will not the judge who is able to direct the legislator in his work of naming, be he who knows how to use the names--he who can ask and answer questions--in short, the dialectician? The pilot directs the carpenter how to make the rudder, and the dialectician directs the legislator how he is to impose names; for to express the ideal forms of things in syllables and letters is not the easy task, Hermogenes, which you imagine. 'I should be more readily persuaded, if you would show me this natural correctness of names.' Indeed I cannot; but I see that you have advanced; for you now admit that there is a correctness of names, and that not every one can give a name. But what is the nature of this correctness or truth, you must learn from the Sophists, of whom your brother Callias has bought his reputation for wisdom rather dearly; and since they require to be paid, you, having no money, had better learn from him at second-hand. 'Well, but I have just given up Protagoras, and I should be inconsistent in going to learn of him.' Then if you reject him you may learn of the poets, and in particular of Homer, who distinguishes the names given by Gods and men to the same things, as in the verse about the river God who fought with Hephaestus, 'whom the Gods call Xanthus, and men call Scamander;' or in the lines in which he mentions the bird which the Gods call 'Chalcis,' and men 'Cymindis;' or the hill which men call 'Batieia,' and the Gods 'Myrinna's Tomb.' Here is an important lesson; for the Gods must of course be right in their use of names. And this is not the only truth about philology which may be learnt from Homer. Does he not say that Hector's son had two names-- 'Hector called him Scamandrius, but the others Astyanax'? Now, if the men called him Astyanax, is it not probable that the other name was conferred by the women? And which are more likely to be right--the wiser or the less wise, the men or the women? Homer evidently agreed with the men: and of the name given by them he offers an explanation;--the boy was called Astyanax ('king of the city'), because his father saved the city. The names Astyanax and Hector, moreover, are really the same,--the one means a king, and the other is 'a holder or possessor.' For as the lion's whelp may be called a lion, or the horse's foal a foal, so the son of a king may be called a king. But if the horse had produced a calf, then that would be called a calf. Whether the syllables of a name are the same or not makes no difference, provided the meaning is retained. For example; the names of letters, whether vowels or consonants, do not correspond to their sounds, with the exception of epsilon, upsilon, omicron, omega. The name Beta has three letters added to the sound--and yet this does not alter the sense of the word, or prevent the whole name having the value which the legislator intended. And the same may be said of a king and the son of a king, who like other animals resemble each other in the course of nature; the words by which they are signified may be disguised, and yet amid differences of sound the etymologist may recognise the same notion, just as the physician recognises the power of the same drugs under different disguises of colour and smell. Hector and Astyanax have only one letter alike, but they have the same meaning; and Agis (leader) is altogether different in sound from Polemarchus (chief in war), or Eupolemus (good warrior); but the two words present the same idea of leader or general, like the words Iatrocles and Acesimbrotus, which equally denote a physician. The son succeeds the father as the foal succeeds the horse, but when, out of the course of nature, a prodigy occurs, and the offspring no longer resembles the parent, then the names no longer agree. This may be illustrated by the case of Agamemnon and his son Orestes, of whom the former has a name significant of his patience at the siege of Troy; while the name of the latter indicates his savage, man-of-the-mountain nature. Atreus again, for his murder of Chrysippus, and his cruelty to Thyestes, is rightly named Atreus, which, to the eye of the etymologist, is ateros (destructive), ateires (stubborn), atreotos (fearless); and Pelops is o ta pelas oron (he who sees what is near only), because in his eagerness to win Hippodamia, he was unconscious of the remoter consequences which the murder of Myrtilus would entail upon his race. The name Tantalus, if slightly changed, offers two etymologies; either apo tes tou lithou talanteias, or apo tou talantaton einai, signifying at once the hanging of the stone over his head in the world below, and the misery which he brought upon his country. And the name of his father, Zeus, Dios, Zenos, has an excellent meaning, though hard to be understood, because really a sentence which is divided into two parts (Zeus, Dios). For he, being the lord and king of all, is the author of our being, and in him all live: this is implied in the double form, Dios, Zenos, which being put together and interpreted is di on ze panta. There may, at first sight, appear to be some irreverence in calling him the son of Cronos, who is a proverb for stupidity; but the meaning is that Zeus himself is the son of a mighty intellect; Kronos, quasi koros, not in the sense of a youth, but quasi to katharon kai akeraton tou nou--the pure and garnished mind, which in turn is begotten of Uranus, who is so called apo tou oran ta ano, from looking upwards; which, as philosophers say, is the way to have a pure mind. The earlier portion of Hesiod's genealogy has escaped my memory, or I would try more conclusions of the same sort. 'You talk like an oracle.' I caught the infection from Euthyphro, who gave me a long lecture which began at dawn, and has not only entered into my ears, but filled my soul, and my intention is to yield to the inspiration to-day; and to-morrow I will be exorcised by some priest or sophist. 'Go on; I am anxious to hear the rest.' Now that we have a general notion, how shall we proceed? What names will afford the most crucial test of natural fitness? Those of heroes and ordinary men are often deceptive, because they are patronymics or expressions of a wish; let us try gods and demi-gods. Gods are so called, apo tou thein, from the verb 'to run;' because the sun, moon, and stars run about the heaven; and they being the original gods of the Hellenes, as they still are of the Barbarians, their name is given to all Gods. The demons are the golden race of Hesiod, and by golden he means not literally golden, but good; and they are called demons, quasi daemones, which in old Attic was used for daimones--good men are well said to become daimones when they die, because they are knowing. Eros (with an epsilon) is the same word as eros (with an eta): 'the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair;' or perhaps they were a species of sophists or rhetoricians, and so called apo tou erotan, or eirein, from their habit of spinning questions; for eirein is equivalent to legein. I get all this from Euthyphro; and now a new and ingenious idea comes into my mind, and, if I am not careful, I shall be wiser than I ought to be by to-morrow's dawn. My idea is, that we may put in and pull out letters at pleasure and alter the accents (as, for example, Dii philos may be turned into Diphilos), and we may make words into sentences and sentences into words. The name anthrotos is a case in point, for a letter has been omitted and the accent changed; the original meaning being o anathron a opopen--he who looks up at what he sees. Psuche may be thought to be the reviving, or refreshing, or animating principle--e anapsuchousa to soma; but I am afraid that Euthyphro and his disciples will scorn this derivation, and I must find another: shall we identify the soul with the 'ordering mind' of Anaxagoras, and say that psuche, quasi phuseche = e phusin echei or ochei?--this might easily be refined into psyche. 'That is a more artistic etymology.' After psuche follows soma; this, by a slight permutation, may be either = (1) the 'grave' of the soul, or (2) may mean 'that by which the soul signifies (semainei) her wishes.' But more probably, the word is Orphic, and simply denotes that the body is the place of ward in which the soul suffers the penalty of sin,--en o sozetai. 'I should like to hear some more explanations of the names of the Gods, like that excellent one of Zeus.' The truest names of the Gods are those which they give themselves; but these are unknown to us. Less true are those by which we propitiate them, as men say in prayers, 'May he graciously receive any name by which I call him.' And to avoid offence, I should like to let them know beforehand that we are not presuming to enquire about them, but only about the names which they usually bear. Let us begin with Hestia. What did he mean who gave the name Hestia? 'That is a very difficult question.' O, my dear Hermogenes, I believe that there was a power of philosophy and talk among the first inventors of names, both in our own and in other languages; for even in foreign words a principle is discernible. Hestia is the same with esia, which is an old form of ousia, and means the first principle of things: this agrees with the fact that to Hestia the first sacrifices are offered. There is also another reading--osia, which implies that 'pushing' (othoun) is the first principle of all things. And here I seem to discover a delicate allusion to the flux of Heracleitus--that antediluvian philosopher who cannot walk twice in the same stream; and this flux of his may accomplish yet greater marvels. For the names Cronos and Rhea cannot have been accidental; the giver of them must have known something about the doctrine of Heracleitus. Moreover, there is a remarkable coincidence in the words of Hesiod, when he speaks of Oceanus, 'the origin of Gods;' and in the verse of Orpheus, in which he describes Oceanus espousing his sister Tethys. Tethys is nothing more than the name of a spring--to diattomenon kai ethoumenon. Poseidon is posidesmos, the chain of the feet, because you cannot walk on the sea--the epsilon is inserted by way of ornament; or perhaps the name may have been originally polleidon, meaning, that the God knew many things (polla eidos): he may also be the shaker, apo tou seiein,--in this case, pi and delta have been added. Pluto is connected with ploutos, because wealth comes out of the earth; or the word may be a euphemism for Hades, which is usually derived apo tou aeidous, because the God is concerned with the invisible. But the name Hades was really given him from his knowing (eidenai) all good things. Men in general are foolishly afraid of him, and talk with horror of the world below from which no one may return. The reason why his subjects never wish to come back, even if they could, is that the God enchains them by the strongest of spells, namely by the desire of virtue, which they hope to obtain by constant association with him. He is the perfect and accomplished Sophist and the great benefactor of the other world; for he has much more than he wants there, and hence he is called Pluto or the rich. He will have nothing to do with the souls of men while in the body, because he cannot work his will with them so long as they are confused and entangled by fleshly lusts. Demeter is the mother and giver of food--e didousa meter tes edodes. Here is erate tis, or perhaps the legislator may have been thinking of the weather, and has merely transposed the letters of the word aer. Pherephatta, that word of awe, is pheretapha, which is only an euphonious contraction of e tou pheromenou ephaptomene,--all things are in motion, and she in her wisdom moves with them, and the wise God Hades consorts with her--there is nothing very terrible in this, any more than in the her other appellation Persephone, which is also significant of her wisdom (sophe). Apollo is another name, which is supposed to have some dreadful meaning, but is susceptible of at least four perfectly innocent explanations. First, he is the purifier or purger or absolver (apolouon); secondly, he is the true diviner, Aplos, as he is called in the Thessalian dialect (aplos = aplous, sincere); thirdly, he is the archer (aei ballon), always shooting; or again, supposing alpha to mean ama or omou, Apollo becomes equivalent to ama polon, which points to both his musical and his heavenly attributes; for there is a 'moving together' alike in music and in the harmony of the spheres. The second lambda is inserted in order to avoid the ill-omened sound of destruction. The Muses are so called--apo tou mosthai. The gentle Leto or Letho is named from her willingness (ethelemon), or because she is ready to forgive and forget (lethe). Artemis is so called from her healthy well-balanced nature, dia to artemes, or as aretes istor; or as a lover of virginity, aroton misesasa. One of these explanations is probably true,--perhaps all of them. Dionysus is o didous ton oinon, and oinos is quasi oionous because wine makes those think (oiesthai) that they have a mind (nous) who have none. The established derivation of Aphrodite dia ten tou athrou genesin may be accepted on the authority of Hesiod. Again, there is the name of Pallas, or Athene, which we, who are Athenians, must not forget. Pallas is derived from armed dances--apo tou pallein ta opla. For Athene we must turn to the allegorical interpreters of Homer, who make the name equivalent to theonoe, or possibly the word was originally ethonoe and signified moral intelligence (en ethei noesis). Hephaestus, again, is the lord of light--o tou phaeos istor. This is a good notion; and, to prevent any other getting into our heads, let us go on to Ares. He is the manly one (arren), or the unchangeable one (arratos). Enough of the Gods; for, by the Gods, I am afraid of them; but if you suggest other words, you will see how the horses of Euthyphro prance. 'Only one more God; tell me about my godfather Hermes.' He is ermeneus, the messenger or cheater or thief or bargainer; or o eirein momenos, that is, eiremes or ermes--the speaker or contriver of speeches. 'Well said Cratylus, then, that I am no son of Hermes.' Pan, as the son of Hermes, is speech or the brother of speech, and is called Pan because speech indicates everything--o pan menuon. He has two forms, a true and a false; and is in the upper part smooth, and in the lower part shaggy. He is the goat of Tragedy, in which there are plenty of falsehoods. 'Will you go on to the elements--sun, moon, stars, earth, aether, air, fire, water, seasons, years?' Very good: and which shall I take first? Let us begin with elios, or the sun. The Doric form elios helps us to see that he is so called because at his rising he gathers (alizei) men together, or because he rolls about (eilei) the earth, or because he variegates (aiolei = poikillei) the earth. Selene is an anticipation of Anaxagoras, being a contraction of selaenoneoaeia, the light (selas) which is ever old and new, and which, as Anaxagoras says, is borrowed from the sun; the name was harmonized into selanaia, a form which is still in use. 'That is a true dithyrambic name.' Meis is so called apo tou meiousthai, from suffering diminution, and astron is from astrape (lightning), which is an improvement of anastrope, that which turns the eyes inside out. 'How do you explain pur n udor?' I suspect that pur, which, like udor n kuon, is found in Phrygian, is a foreign word; for the Hellenes have borrowed much from the barbarians, and I always resort to this theory of a foreign origin when I am at a loss. Aer may be explained, oti airei ta apo tes ges; or, oti aei rei; or, oti pneuma ex autou ginetai (compare the poetic word aetai). So aither quasi aeitheer oti aei thei peri ton aera: ge, gaia quasi genneteira (compare the Homeric form gegaasi); ora (with an omega), or, according to the old Attic form ora (with an omicron), is derived apo tou orizein, because it divides the year; eniautos and etos are the same thought--o en eauto etazon, cut into two parts, en eauto and etazon, like di on ze into Dios and Zenos. 'You make surprising progress.' True; I am run away with, and am not even yet at my utmost speed. 'I should like very much to hear your account of the virtues. What principle of correctness is there in those charming words, wisdom, understanding, justice, and the rest?' To explain all that will be a serious business; still, as I have put on the lion's skin, appearances must be maintained. My opinion is, that primitive men were like some modern philosophers, who, by always going round in their search after the nature of things, become dizzy; and this phenomenon, which was really in themselves, they imagined to take place in the external world. You have no doubt remarked, that the doctrine of the universal flux, or generation of things, is indicated in names. 'No, I never did.' Phronesis is only phoras kai rou noesis, or perhaps phoras onesis, and in any case is connected with pheresthai; gnome is gones skepsis kai nomesis; noesis is neou or gignomenon esis; the word neos implies that creation is always going on--the original form was neoesis; sophrosune is soteria phroneseos; episteme is e epomene tois pragmasin--the faculty which keeps close, neither anticipating nor lagging behind; sunesis is equivalent to sunienai, sumporeuesthai ten psuche, and is a kind of conclusion--sullogismos tis, akin therefore in idea to episteme; sophia is very difficult, and has a foreign look--the meaning is, touching the motion or stream of things, and may be illustrated by the poetical esuthe and the Lacedaemonian proper name Sous, or Rush; agathon is ro agaston en te tachuteti,--for all things are in motion, and some are swifter than others: dikaiosune is clearly e tou dikaiou sunesis. The word dikaion is more troublesome, and appears to mean the subtle penetrating power which, as the lovers of motion say, preserves all things, and is the cause of all things, quasi diaion going through--the letter kappa being inserted for the sake of euphony. This is a great mystery which has been confided to me; but when I ask for an explanation I am thought obtrusive, and another derivation is proposed to me. Justice is said to be o kaion, or the sun; and when I joyfully repeat this beautiful notion, I am answered, 'What, is there no justice when the sun is down?' And when I entreat my questioner to tell me his own opinion, he replies, that justice is fire in the abstract, or heat in the abstract; which is not very intelligible. Others laugh at such notions, and say with Anaxagoras, that justice is the ordering mind. 'I think that some one must have told you this.' And not the rest? Let me proceed then, in the hope of proving to you my originality. Andreia is quasi anpeia quasi e ano roe, the stream which flows upwards, and is opposed to injustice, which clearly hinders the principle of penetration; arren and aner have a similar derivation; gune is the same as gone; thelu is derived apo tes theles, because the teat makes things flourish (tethelenai), and the word thallein itself implies increase of youth, which is swift and sudden ever (thein and allesthai). I am getting over the ground fast: but much has still to be explained. There is techne, for instance. This, by an aphaeresis of tau and an epenthesis of omicron in two places, may be identified with echonoe, and signifies 'that which has mind.' 'A very poor etymology.' Yes; but you must remember that all language is in process of change; letters are taken in and put out for the sake of euphony, and time is also a great alterer of words. For example, what business has the letter rho in the word katoptron, or the letter sigma in the word sphigx? The additions are often such that it is impossible to make out the original word; and yet, if you may put in and pull out, as you like, any name is equally good for any object. The fact is, that great dictators of literature like yourself should observe the rules of moderation. 'I will do my best.' But do not be too much of a precisian, or you will paralyze me. If you will let me add mechane, apo tou mekous, which means polu, and anein, I shall be at the summit of my powers, from which elevation I will examine the two words kakia and arete. The first is easily explained in accordance with what has preceded; for all things being in a flux, kakia is to kakos ion. This derivation is illustrated by the word deilia, which ought to have come after andreia, and may be regarded as o lian desmos tes psuches, just as aporia signifies an impediment to motion (from alpha not, and poreuesthai to go), and arete is euporia, which is the opposite of this--the everflowing (aei reousa or aeireite), or the eligible, quasi airete. You will think that I am inventing, but I say that if kakia is right, then arete is also right. But what is kakon? That is a very obscure word, to which I can only apply my old notion and declare that kakon is a foreign word. Next, let us proceed to kalon, aischron. The latter is doubtless contracted from aeischoroun, quasi aei ischon roun. The inventor of words being a patron of the flux, was a great enemy to stagnation. Kalon is to kaloun ta pragmata--this is mind (nous or dianoia); which is also the principle of beauty; and which doing the works of beauty, is therefore rightly called the beautiful. The meaning of sumpheron is explained by previous examples;--like episteme, signifying that the soul moves in harmony with the world (sumphora, sumpheronta). Kerdos is to pasi kerannumenon--that which mingles with all things: lusiteloun is equivalent to to tes phoras luon to telos, and is not to be taken in the vulgar sense of gainful, but rather in that of swift, being the principle which makes motion immortal and unceasing; ophelimon is apo tou ophellein--that which gives increase: this word, which is Homeric, is of foreign origin. Blaberon is to blamton or boulomenon aptein tou rou--that which injures or seeks to bind the stream. The proper word would be boulapteroun, but this is too much of a mouthful--like a prelude on the flute in honour of Athene. The word zemiodes is difficult; great changes, as I was saying, have been made in words, and even a small change will alter their meaning very much. The word deon is one of these disguised words. You know that according to the old pronunciation, which is especially affected by the women, who are great conservatives, iota and delta were used where we should now use eta and zeta: for example, what we now call emera was formerly called imera; and this shows the meaning of the word to have been 'the desired one coming after night,' and not, as is often supposed, 'that which makes things gentle' (emera). So again, zugon is duogon, quasi desis duein eis agogen--(the binding of two together for the purpose of drawing.) Deon, as ordinarily written, has an evil sense, signifying the chain (desmos) or hindrance of motion; but in its ancient form dion is expressive of good, quasi diion, that which penetrates or goes through all. Zemiodes is really demiodes, and means that which binds motion (dounti to ion): edone is e pros ten onrsin teinousa praxis--the delta is an insertion: lupe is derived apo tes dialuseos tou somatos: ania is from alpha and ienai, to go: algedon is a foreign word, and is so called apo tou algeinou: odune is apo tes enduseos tes lupes: achthedon is in its very sound a burden: chapa expresses the flow of soul: terpsis is apo tou terpnou, and terpnon is properly erpnon, because the sensation of pleasure is likened to a breath (pnoe) which creeps (erpei) through the soul: euphrosune is named from pheresthai, because the soul moves in harmony with nature: epithumia is e epi ton thumon iousa dunamis: thumos is apo tes thuseos tes psuches: imeros--oti eimenos pei e psuche: pothos, the desire which is in another place, allothi pou: eros was anciently esros, and so called because it flows into (esrei) the soul from without: doxa is e dioxis tou eidenai, or expresses the shooting from a bow (toxon). The latter etymology is confirmed by the words boulesthai, boule, aboulia, which all have to do with shooting (bole): and similarly oiesis is nothing but the movement (oisis) of the soul towards essence. Ekousion is to eikon--the yielding--anagke is e an agke iousa, the passage through ravines which impede motion: aletheia is theia ale, divine motion. Pseudos is the opposite of this, implying the principle of constraint and forced repose, which is expressed under the figure of sleep, to eudon; the psi is an addition. Onoma, a name, affirms the real existence of that which is sought after--on ou masma estin. On and ousia are only ion with an iota broken off; and ouk on is ouk ion. 'And what are ion, reon, doun?' One way of explaining them has been already suggested--they may be of foreign origin; and possibly this is the true answer. But mere antiquity may often prevent our recognizing words, after all the complications which they have undergone; and we must remember that however far we carry back our analysis some ultimate elements or roots will remain which can be no further analyzed. For example; the word agathos was supposed by us to be a compound of agastos and thoos, and probably thoos may be further resolvable. But if we take a word of which no further resolution seems attainable, we may fairly conclude that we have reached one of these original elements, and the truth of such a word must be tested by some new method. Will you help me in the search? All names, whether primary or secondary, are intended to show the nature of things; and the secondary, as I conceive, derive their significance from the primary. But then, how do the primary names indicate anything? And let me ask another question,--If we had no faculty of speech, how should we communicate with one another? Should we not use signs, like the deaf and dumb? The elevation of our hands would mean lightness--heaviness would be expressed by letting them drop. The running of any animal would be described by a similar movement of our own frames. The body can only express anything by imitation; and the tongue or mouth can imitate as well as the rest of the body. But this imitation of the tongue or voice is not yet a name, because people may imitate sheep or goats without naming them. What, then, is a name? In the first place, a name is not a musical, or, secondly, a pictorial imitation, but an imitation of that kind which expresses the nature of a thing; and is the invention not of a musician, or of a painter, but of a namer. And now, I think that we may consider the names about which you were asking. The way to analyze them will be by going back to the letters, or primary elements of which they are composed. First, we separate the alphabet into classes of letters, distinguishing the consonants, mutes, vowels, and semivowels; and when we have learnt them singly, we shall learn to know them in their various combinations of two or more letters; just as the painter knows how to use either a single colour, or a combination of colours. And like the painter, we may apply letters to the expression of objects, and form them into syllables; and these again into words, until the picture or figure--that is, language--is completed. Not that I am literally speaking of ourselves, but I mean to say that this was the way in which the ancients framed language. And this leads me to consider whether the primary as well as the secondary elements are rightly given. I may remark, as I was saying about the Gods, that we can only attain to conjecture of them. But still we insist that ours is the true and only method of discovery; otherwise we must have recourse, like the tragic poets, to a Deus ex machina, and say that God gave the first names, and therefore they are right; or that the barbarians are older than we are, and that we learnt of them; or that antiquity has cast a veil over the truth. Yet all these are not reasons; they are only ingenious excuses for having no reasons. I will freely impart to you my own notions, though they are somewhat crude:--the letter rho appears to me to be the general instrument which the legislator has employed to express all motion or kinesis. (I ought to explain that kinesis is just iesis (going), for the letter eta was unknown to the ancients; and the root, kiein, is a foreign form of ienai: of kinesis or eisis, the opposite is stasis). This use of rho is evident in the words tremble, break, crush, crumble, and the like; the imposer of names perceived that the tongue is most agitated in the pronunciation of this letter, just as he used iota to express the subtle power which penetrates through all things. The letters phi, psi, sigma, zeta, which require a great deal of wind, are employed in the imitation of such notions as shivering, seething, shaking, and in general of what is windy. The letters delta and tau convey the idea of binding and rest in a place: the lambda denotes smoothness, as in the words slip, sleek, sleep, and the like. But when the slipping tongue is detained by the heavier sound of gamma, then arises the notion of a glutinous clammy nature: nu is sounded from within, and has a notion of inwardness: alpha is the expression of size; eta of length; omicron of roundness, and therefore there is plenty of omicron in the word goggulon. That is my view, Hermogenes, of the correctness of names; and I should like to hear what Cratylus would say. 'But, Socrates, as I was telling you, Cratylus mystifies me; I should like to ask him, in your presence, what he means by the fitness of names?' To this appeal, Cratylus replies 'that he cannot explain so important a subject all in a moment.' 'No, but you may "add little to little," as Hesiod says.' Socrates here interposes his own request, that Cratylus will give some account of his theory. Hermogenes and himself are mere sciolists, but Cratylus has reflected on these matters, and has had teachers. Cratylus replies in the words of Achilles: '"Illustrious Ajax, you have spoken in all things much to my mind," whether Euthyphro, or some Muse inhabiting your own breast, was the inspirer.' Socrates replies, that he is afraid of being self-deceived, and therefore he must 'look fore and aft,' as Homer remarks. Does not Cratylus agree with him that names teach us the nature of things? 'Yes.' And naming is an art, and the artists are legislators, and like artists in general, some of them are better and some of them are worse than others, and give better or worse laws, and make better or worse names. Cratylus cannot admit that one name is better than another; they are either true names, or they are not names at all; and when he is asked about the name of Hermogenes, who is acknowledged to have no luck in him, he affirms this to be the name of somebody else. Socrates supposes him to mean that falsehood is impossible, to which his own answer would be, that there has never been a lack of liars. Cratylus presses him with the old sophistical argument, that falsehood is saying that which is not, and therefore saying nothing;--you cannot utter the word which is not. Socrates complains that this argument is too subtle for an old man to understand: Suppose a person addressing Cratylus were to say, Hail, Athenian Stranger, Hermogenes! would these words be true or false? 'I should say that they would be mere unmeaning sounds, like the hammering of a brass pot.' But you would acknowledge that names, as well as pictures, are imitations, and also that pictures may give a right or wrong representation of a man or woman:--why may not names then equally give a representation true and right or false and wrong? Cratylus admits that pictures may give a true or false representation, but denies that names can. Socrates argues, that he may go up to a man and say 'this is year picture,' and again, he may go and say to him 'this is your name'--in the one case appealing to his sense of sight, and in the other to his sense of hearing;--may he not? 'Yes.' Then you will admit that there is a right or a wrong assignment of names, and if of names, then of verbs and nouns; and if of verbs and nouns, then of the sentences which are made up of them; and comparing nouns to pictures, you may give them all the appropriate sounds, or only some of them. And as he who gives all the colours makes a good picture, and he who gives only some of them, a bad or imperfect one, but still a picture; so he who gives all the sounds makes a good name, and he who gives only some of them, a bad or imperfect one, but a name still. The artist of names, that is, the legislator, may be a good or he may be a bad artist. 'Yes, Socrates, but the cases are not parallel; for if you subtract or misplace a letter, the name ceases to be a name.' Socrates admits that the number 10, if an unit is subtracted, would cease to be 10, but denies that names are of this purely quantitative nature. Suppose that there are two objects--Cratylus and the image of Cratylus; and let us imagine that some God makes them perfectly alike, both in their outward form and in their inner nature and qualities: then there will be two Cratyluses, and not merely Cratylus and the image of Cratylus. But an image in fact always falls short in some degree of the original, and if images are not exact counterparts, why should names be? if they were, they would be the doubles of their originals, and indistinguishable from them; and how ridiculous would this be! Cratylus admits the truth of Socrates' remark. But then Socrates rejoins, he should have the courage to acknowledge that letters may be wrongly inserted in a noun, or a noun in a sentence; and yet the noun or the sentence may retain a meaning. Better to admit this, that we may not be punished like the traveller in Egina who goes about at night, and that Truth herself may not say to us, 'Too late.' And, errors excepted, we may still affirm that a name to be correct must have proper letters, which bear a resemblance to the thing signified. I must remind you of what Hermogenes and I were saying about the letter rho accent, which was held to be expressive of motion and hardness, as lambda is of smoothness;--and this you will admit to be their natural meaning. But then, why do the Eritreans call that skleroter which we call sklerotes? We can understand one another, although the letter rho accent is not equivalent to the letter s: why is this? You reply, because the two letters are sufficiently alike for the purpose of expressing motion. Well, then, there is the letter lambda; what business has this in a word meaning hardness? 'Why, Socrates, I retort upon you, that we put in and pull out letters at pleasure.' And the explanation of this is custom or agreement: we have made a convention that the rho shall mean s and a convention may indicate by the unlike as well as by the like. How could there be names for all the numbers unless you allow that convention is used? Imitation is a poor thing, and has to be supplemented by convention, which is another poor thing; although I agree with you in thinking that the most perfect form of language is found only where there is a perfect correspondence of sound and meaning. But let me ask you what is the use and force of names? 'The use of names, Socrates, is to inform, and he who knows names knows things.' Do you mean that the discovery of names is the same as the discovery of things? 'Yes.' But do you not see that there is a degree of deception about names? He who first gave names, gave them according to his conception, and that may have been erroneous. 'But then, why, Socrates, is language so consistent? all words have the same laws.' Mere consistency is no test of truth. In geometrical problems, for example, there may be a flaw at the beginning, and yet the conclusion may follow consistently. And, therefore, a wise man will take especial care of first principles. But are words really consistent; are there not as many terms of praise which signify rest as which signify motion? There is episteme, which is connected with stasis, as mneme is with meno. Bebaion, again, is the expression of station and position; istoria is clearly descriptive of the stopping istanai of the stream; piston indicates the cessation of motion; and there are many words having a bad sense, which are connected with ideas of motion, such as sumphora, amartia, etc.: amathia, again, might be explained, as e ama theo iontos poreia, and akolasia as e akolouthia tois pragmasin. Thus the bad names are framed on the same principle as the good, and other examples might be given, which would favour a theory of rest rather than of motion. 'Yes; but the greater number of words express motion.' Are we to count them, Cratylus; and is correctness of names to be determined by the voice of a majority? Here is another point: we were saying that the legislator gives names; and therefore we must suppose that he knows the things which he names: but how can he have learnt things from names before there were any names? 'I believe, Socrates, that some power more than human first gave things their names, and that these were necessarily true names.' Then how came the giver of names to contradict himself, and to make some names expressive of rest, and others of motion? 'I do not suppose that he did make them both.' Then which did he make--those which are expressive of rest, or those which are expressive of motion?...But if some names are true and others false, we can only decide between them, not by counting words, but by appealing to things. And, if so, we must allow that things may be known without names; for names, as we have several times admitted, are the images of things; and the higher knowledge is of things, and is not to be derived from names; and though I do not doubt that the inventors of language gave names, under the idea that all things are in a state of motion and flux, I believe that they were mistaken; and that having fallen into a whirlpool themselves, they are trying to drag us after them. For is there not a true beauty and a true good, which is always beautiful and always good? Can the thing beauty be vanishing away from us while the words are yet in our mouths? And they could not be known by any one if they are always passing away--for if they are always passing away, the observer has no opportunity of observing their state. Whether the doctrine of the flux or of the eternal nature be the truer, is hard to determine. But no man of sense will put himself, or the education of his mind, in the power of names: he will not condemn himself to be an unreal thing, nor will he believe that everything is in a flux like the water in a leaky vessel, or that the world is a man who has a running at the nose. This doctrine may be true, Cratylus, but is also very likely to be untrue; and therefore I would have you reflect while you are young, and find out the truth, and when you know come and tell me. 'I have thought, Socrates, and after a good deal of thinking I incline to Heracleitus.' Then another day, my friend, you shall give me a lesson. 'Very good, Socrates, and I hope that you will continue to study these things yourself.' ***** We may now consider (I) how far Plato in the Cratylus has discovered the true principles of language, and then (II) proceed to compare modern speculations respecting the origin and nature of language with the anticipations of his genius. I. (1) Plato is aware that language is not the work of chance; nor does he deny that there is a natural fitness in names. He only insists that this natural fitness shall be intelligibly explained. But he has no idea that language is a natural organism. He would have heard with surprise that languages are the common work of whole nations in a primitive or semi-barbarous age. How, he would probably have argued, could men devoid of art have contrived a structure of such complexity? No answer could have been given to this question, either in ancient or in modern times, until the nature of primitive antiquity had been thoroughly studied, and the instincts of man had been shown to exist in greater force, when his state approaches more nearly to that of children or animals. The philosophers of the last century, after their manner, would have vainly endeavoured to trace the process by which proper names were converted into common, and would have shown how the last effort of abstraction invented prepositions and auxiliaries. The theologian would have proved that language must have had a divine origin, because in childhood, while the organs are pliable, the intelligence is wanting, and when the intelligence is able to frame conceptions, the organs are no longer able to express them. Or, as others have said: Man is man because he has the gift of speech; and he could not have invented that which he is. But this would have been an 'argument too subtle' for Socrates, who rejects the theological account of the origin of language 'as an excuse for not giving a reason,' which he compares to the introduction of the 'Deus ex machina' by the tragic poets when they have to solve a difficulty; thus anticipating many modern controversies in which the primary agency of the divine Being is confused with the secondary cause; and God is assumed to have worked a miracle in order to fill up a lacuna in human knowledge. (Compare Timaeus.) Neither is Plato wrong in supposing that an element of design and art enters into language. The creative power abating is supplemented by a mechanical process. 'Languages are not made but grow,' but they are made as well as grow; bursting into life like a plant or a flower, they are also capable of being trained and improved and engrafted upon one another. The change in them is effected in earlier ages by musical and euphonic improvements, at a later stage by the influence of grammar and logic, and by the poetical and literary use of words. They develope rapidly in childhood, and when they are full grown and set they may still put forth intellectual powers, like the mind in the body, or rather we may say that the nobler use of language only begins when the frame-work is complete. The savage or primitive man, in whom the natural instinct is strongest, is also the greatest improver of the forms of language. He is the poet or maker of words, as in civilised ages the dialectician is the definer or distinguisher of them. The latter calls the second world of abstract terms into existence, as the former has created the picture sounds which represent natural objects or processes. Poetry and philosophy--these two, are the two great formative principles of language, when they have passed their first stage, of which, as of the first invention of the arts in general, we only entertain conjecture. And mythology is a link between them, connecting the visible and invisible, until at length the sensuous exterior falls away, and the severance of the inner and outer world, of the idea and the object of sense, becomes complete. At a later period, logic and grammar, sister arts, preserve and enlarge the decaying instinct of language, by rule and method, which they gather from analysis and observation. (2) There is no trace in any of Plato's writings that he was acquainted with any language but Greek. Yet he has conceived very truly the relation of Greek to foreign languages, which he is led to consider, because he finds that many Greek words are incapable of explanation. Allowing a good deal for accident, and also for the fancies of the conditores linguae Graecae, there is an element of which he is unable to give an account. These unintelligible words he supposes to be of foreign origin, and to have been derived from a time when the Greeks were either barbarians, or in close relations to the barbarians. Socrates is aware that this principle is liable to great abuse; and, like the 'Deus ex machina,' explains nothing. Hence he excuses himself for the employment of such a device, and remarks that in foreign words there is still a principle of correctness, which applies equally both to Greeks and barbarians. (3) But the greater number of primary words do not admit of derivation from foreign languages; they must be resolved into the letters out of which they are composed, and therefore the letters must have a meaning. The framers of language were aware of this; they observed that alpha was adapted to express size; eta length; omicron roundness; nu inwardness; rho accent rush or roar; lambda liquidity; gamma lambda the detention of the liquid or slippery element; delta and tau binding; phi, psi, sigma, xi, wind and cold, and so on. Plato's analysis of the letters of the alphabet shows a wonderful insight into the nature of language. He does not expressively distinguish between mere imitation and the symbolical use of sound to express thought, but he recognises in the examples which he gives both modes of imitation. Gesture is the mode which a deaf and dumb person would take of indicating his meaning. And language is the gesture of the tongue; in the use of the letter rho accent, to express a rushing or roaring, or of omicron to express roundness, there is a direct imitation; while in the use of the letter alpha to express size, or of eta to express length, the imitation is symbolical. The use of analogous or similar sounds, in order to express similar analogous ideas, seems to have escaped him. In passing from the gesture of the body to the movement of the tongue, Plato makes a great step in the physiology of language. He was probably the first who said that 'language is imitative sound,' which is the greatest and deepest truth of philology; although he is not aware of the laws of euphony and association by which imitation must be regulated. He was probably also the first who made a distinction between simple and compound words, a truth second only in importance to that which has just been mentioned. His great insight in one direction curiously contrasts with his blindness in another; for he appears to be wholly unaware (compare his derivation of agathos from agastos and thoos) of the difference between the root and termination. But we must recollect that he was necessarily more ignorant than any schoolboy of Greek grammar, and had no table of the inflexions of verbs and nouns before his eyes, which might have suggested to him the distinction. (4) Plato distinctly affirms that language is not truth, or 'philosophie une langue bien faite.' At first, Socrates has delighted himself with discovering the flux of Heracleitus in language. But he is covertly satirising the pretence of that or any other age to find philosophy in words; and he afterwards corrects any erroneous inference which might be gathered from his experiment. For he finds as many, or almost as many, words expressive of rest, as he had previously found expressive of motion. And even if this had been otherwise, who would learn of words when he might learn of things? There is a great controversy and high argument between Heracleiteans and Eleatics, but no man of sense would commit his soul in such enquiries to the imposers of names...In this and other passages Plato shows that he is as completely emancipated from the influence of 'Idols of the tribe' as Bacon himself. The lesson which may be gathered from words is not metaphysical or moral, but historical. They teach us the affinity of races, they tell us something about the association of ideas, they occasionally preserve the memory of a disused custom; but we cannot safely argue from them about right and wrong, matter and mind, freedom and necessity, or the other problems of moral and metaphysical philosophy. For the use of words on such subjects may often be metaphorical, accidental, derived from other languages, and may have no relation to the contemporary state of thought and feeling. Nor in any case is the invention of them the result of philosophical reflection; they have been commonly transferred from matter to mind, and their meaning is the very reverse of their etymology. Because there is or is not a name for a thing, we cannot argue that the thing has or has not an actual existence; or that the antitheses, parallels, conjugates, correlatives of language have anything corresponding to them in nature. There are too many words as well as too few; and they generalize the objects or ideas which they represent. The greatest lesson which the philosophical analysis of language teaches us is, that we should be above language, making words our servants, and not allowing them to be our masters. Plato does not add the further observation, that the etymological meaning of words is in process of being lost. If at first framed on a principle of intelligibility, they would gradually cease to be intelligible, like those of a foreign language, he is willing to admit that they are subject to many changes, and put on many disguises. He acknowledges that the 'poor creature' imitation is supplemented by another 'poor creature,'--convention. But he does not see that 'habit and repute,' and their relation to other words, are always exercising an influence over them. Words appear to be isolated, but they are really the parts of an organism which is always being reproduced. They are refined by civilization, harmonized by poetry, emphasized by literature, technically applied in philosophy and art; they are used as symbols on the border-ground of human knowledge; they receive a fresh impress from individual genius, and come with a new force and association to every lively-minded person. They are fixed by the simultaneous utterance of millions, and yet are always imperceptibly changing;--not the inventors of language, but writing and speaking, and particularly great writers, or works which pass into the hearts of nations, Homer, Shakespear, Dante, the German or English Bible, Kant and Hegel, are the makers of them in later ages. They carry with them the faded recollection of their own past history; the use of a word in a striking and familiar passage gives a complexion to its use everywhere else, and the new use of an old and familiar phrase has also a peculiar power over us. But these and other subtleties of language escaped the observation of Plato. He is not aware that the languages of the world are organic structures, and that every word in them is related to every other; nor does he conceive of language as the joint work of the speaker and the hearer, requiring in man a faculty not only of expressing his thoughts but of understanding those of others. On the other hand, he cannot be justly charged with a desire to frame language on artificial principles. Philosophers have sometimes dreamed of a technical or scientific language, in words which should have fixed meanings, and stand in the same relation to one another as the substances which they denote. But there is no more trace of this in Plato than there is of a language corresponding to the ideas; nor, indeed, could the want of such a language be felt until the sciences were far more developed. Those who would extend the use of technical phraseology beyond the limits of science or of custom, seem to forget that freedom and suggestiveness and the play of association are essential characteristics of language. The great master has shown how he regarded pedantic distinctions of words or attempts to confine their meaning in the satire on Prodicus in the Protagoras. (5) In addition to these anticipations of the general principles of philology, we may note also a few curious observations on words and sounds. 'The Eretrians say sklerotes for skleroter;' 'the Thessalians call Apollo Amlos;' 'The Phrygians have the words pur, udor, kunes slightly changed;' 'there is an old Homeric word emesato, meaning "he contrived";' 'our forefathers, and especially the women, who are most conservative of the ancient language, loved the letters iota and delta; but now iota is changed into eta and epsilon, and delta into zeta; this is supposed to increase the grandeur of the sound.' Plato was very willing to use inductive arguments, so far as they were within his reach; but he would also have assigned a large influence to chance. Nor indeed is induction applicable to philology in the same degree as to most of the physical sciences. For after we have pushed our researches to the furthest point, in language as in all the other creations of the human mind, there will always remain an element of exception or accident or free-will, which cannot be eliminated. The question, 'whether falsehood is impossible,' which Socrates characteristically sets aside as too subtle for an old man (compare Euthyd.), could only have arisen in an age of imperfect consciousness, which had not yet learned to distinguish words from things. Socrates replies in effect that words have an independent existence; thus anticipating the solution of the mediaeval controversy of Nominalism and Realism. He is aware too that languages exist in various degrees of perfection, and that the analysis of them can only be carried to a certain 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 culminating in philosophy. But there remains an element which cannot be explained, or even adequately described. We can understand how man creates or constructs consciously and by design; and see, if we do not understand, how nature, by a law, calls into being an organised structure. But the intermediate organism which stands between man and nature, which is the work of mind yet unconscious, and in which mind and matter seem to meet, and mind unperceived to herself is really limited by all other minds, is neither understood nor seen by us, and is with reluctance admitted to be a fact. Language is an aspect of man, of nature, and of nations, the transfiguration of the world in thought, the meeting-point of the physical and mental sciences, and also the mirror in which they are reflected, present at every moment to the individual, and yet having a sort of eternal or universal nature. When we analyze our own mental processes, we find words everywhere in every degree of clearness and consistency, fading away in dreams and more like pictures, rapidly succeeding one another in our waking thoughts, attaining a greater distinctness and consecutiveness in speech, and a greater still in writing, taking the place of one another when we try to become emancipated from their influence. For in all processes of the mind which are conscious we are talking to ourselves; the attempt to think without words is a mere illusion,--they are always reappearing when we fix our thoughts. And speech is not a separate faculty, but the expression of all our faculties, to which all our other powers of expression, signs, looks, gestures, lend their aid, of which the instrument is not the tongue only, but more than half the human frame. The minds of men are sometimes carried on to think of their lives and of their actions as links in a chain of causes and effects going back to the beginning of time. A few have seemed to lose the sense of their own individuality in the universal cause or nature. In like manner we might think of the words which we daily use, as derived from the first speech of man, and of all the languages in the world, as the expressions or varieties of a single force or life of language of which the thoughts of men are the accident. Such a conception enables us to grasp the power and wonder of languages, and is very natural to the scientific philologist. For he, like the metaphysician, believes in the reality of that which absorbs his own mind. Nor do we deny the enormous influence which language has exercised over thought. Fixed words, like fixed ideas, have often governed the world. But in such representations we attribute to language too much the nature of a cause, and too little of an effect,--too much of an absolute, too little of a relative character,--too much of an ideal, too little of a matter-of-fact existence. Or again, we may frame a single abstract notion of language of which all existent languages may be supposed to be the perversion. But we must not conceive that this logical figment had ever a real existence, or is anything more than an effort of the mind to give unity to infinitely various phenomena. There is no abstract language 'in rerum natura,' any more than there is an abstract tree, but only languages in various stages of growth, maturity, and decay. Nor do other logical distinctions or even grammatical exactly correspond to the facts of language; for they too are attempts to give unity and regularity to a subject which is partly irregular. We find, however, that there are distinctions of another kind by which this vast field of language admits of being mapped out. There is the distinction between biliteral and triliteral roots, and the various inflexions which accompany them; between the mere mechanical cohesion of sounds or words, and the 'chemical' combination of them into a new word; there is the distinction between languages which have had a free and full development of their organisms, and languages which have been stunted in their growth,--lamed in their hands or feet, and never able to acquire afterwards the powers in which they are deficient; there is the distinction between synthetical languages like Greek and Latin, which have retained their inflexions, and analytical languages like English or French, which have lost them. Innumerable as are the languages and dialects of mankind, there are comparatively few classes to which they can be referred. Another road through this chaos is provided by the physiology of speech. The organs of language are the same in all mankind, and are only capable of uttering a certain number of sounds. Every man has tongue, teeth, lips, palate, throat, mouth, which he may close or open, and adapt in various ways; making, first, vowels and consonants; and secondly, other classes of letters. The elements of all speech, like the elements of the musical scale, are few and simple, though admitting of infinite gradations and combinations. Whatever slight differences exist in the use or formation of these organs, owing to climate or the sense of euphony or other causes, they are as nothing compared with their agreement. Here then is a real basis of unity in the study of philology, unlike that imaginary abstract unity of which we were just now speaking. Whether we regard language from the psychological, or historical, or physiological point of view, the materials of our knowledge are inexhaustible. The comparisons of children learning to speak, of barbarous nations, of musical notes, of the cries of animals, of the song of birds, increase our insight into the nature of human speech. Many observations which would otherwise have escaped us are suggested by them. But they do not explain why, in man and in man only, the speaker met with a response from the hearer, and the half articulate sound gradually developed into Sanscrit and Greek. They hardly enable us to approach any nearer the secret of the origin of language, which, like some of the other great secrets of nature,--the origin of birth and death, or of animal life,--remains inviolable. That problem is indissolubly bound up with the origin of man; and if we ever know more of the one, we may expect to know more of the other. (Compare W. Humboldt, 'Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues;' M. Muller, 'Lectures on the Science of Language;' Steinthal, 'Einleitung in die Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft.') ***** It is more than sixteen years since the preceding remarks were written, which with a few alterations have now been reprinted. During the interval the progress of philology has been very great. More languages have been compared; the inner structure of language has been laid bare; the relations of sounds have been more accurately discriminated; the manner in which dialects affect or are affected by the literary or principal form of a language is better understood. Many merely verbal questions have been eliminated; the remains of the old traditional methods have died away. The study has passed from the metaphysical into an historical stage. Grammar is no longer confused with language, nor the anatomy of words and sentences with their life and use. Figures of speech, by which the vagueness of theories is often concealed, have been stripped off; and we see language more as it truly was. The immensity of the subject is gradually revealed to us, and the reign of law becomes apparent. Yet the law is but partially seen; the traces of it are often lost in the distance. For languages have a natural but not a perfect growth; like other creations of nature into which the will of man enters, they are full of what we term accident and irregularity. And the difficulties of the subject become not less, but greater, as we proceed--it is one of those studies in which we seem to know less as we know more; partly because we are no longer satisfied with the vague and superficial ideas of it which prevailed fifty years ago; partly also because the remains of the languages with which we are acquainted always were, and if they are still living, are, in a state of transition; and thirdly, because there are lacunae in our knowledge of them which can never be filled up. Not a tenth, not a hundredth part of them has been preserved. Yet the materials at our disposal are far greater than any individual can use. Such are a few of the general reflections which the present state of philology calls up. (1) Language seems to be composite, but into its first elements the philologer has never been able to penetrate. However far he goes back, he never arrives at the beginning; or rather, as in Geology or in Astronomy, there is no beginning. He is too apt to suppose that by breaking up the existing forms of language into their parts he will arrive at a previous stage of it, but he is merely analyzing what never existed, or is never known to have existed, except in a composite form. He may divide nouns and verbs into roots and inflexions, but he has no evidence which will show that the omega of tupto or the mu of tithemi, though analogous to ego, me, either became pronouns or were generated out of pronouns. To say that 'pronouns, like ripe fruit, dropped out of verbs,' is a misleading figure of speech. Although all languages have some common principles, there is no primitive form or forms of language known to us, or to be reasonably imagined, from which they are all descended. No inference can be drawn from language, either for or against the unity of the human race. Nor is there any proof that words were ever used without any relation to each other. Whatever may be the meaning of a sentence or a word when applied to primitive language, it is probable that the sentence is more akin to the original form than the word, and that the later stage of language is the result rather of analysis than of synthesis, or possibly is a combination of the two. Nor, again, are we sure that the original process of learning to speak was the same in different places or among different races of men. It may have been slower with some, quicker with others. Some tribes may have used shorter, others longer words or cries: they may have been more or less inclined to agglutinate or to decompose them: they may have modified them by the use of prefixes, suffixes, infixes; by the lengthening and strengthening of vowels or by the shortening and weakening of them, by the condensation or rarefaction of consonants. But who gave to language these primeval laws; or why one race has triliteral, another biliteral roots; or why in some members of a group of languages b becomes p, or d, t, or ch, k; or why two languages resemble one another in certain parts of their structure and differ in others; or why in one language there is a greater development of vowels, in another of consonants, and the like--are questions of which we only 'entertain conjecture.' We must remember the length of time that has elapsed since man first walked upon the earth, and that in this vast but unknown period every variety of language may have been in process of formation and decay, many times over. (Compare Plato, Laws):-- 'ATHENIAN STRANGER: And what then is to be regarded as the origin of government? Will not a man be able to judge best from a point of view in which he may behold the progress of states and their transitions to good and evil? CLEINIAS: What do you mean? ATHENIAN STRANGER: I mean that he might watch them from the point of view of time, and observe the changes which take place in them during infinite ages. CLEINIAS: How so? ATHENIAN STRANGER: Why, do you think that you can reckon the time which has elapsed since cities first existed and men were citizens of them? CLEINIAS: Hardly. ATHENIAN STRANGER: But you are quite sure that it must be vast and incalculable? CLEINIAS: No doubt. ATHENIAN STRANGER: And have there not been thousands and thousands of cities which have come into being and perished during this period? And has not every place had endless forms of government, and been sometimes rising, and at other times falling, and again improving or waning?' Aristot. Metaph.:-- 'And if a person should conceive the tales of mythology to mean only that men thought the gods to be the first essences of things, he would deem the reflection to have been inspired and would consider that, whereas probably every art and part of wisdom had been DISCOVERED AND LOST MANY TIMES OVER, such notions were but a remnant of the past which has survived to our day.') It can hardly be supposed that any traces of an original language still survive, any more than of the first huts or buildings which were constructed by man. Nor are we at all certain of the relation, if any, in which the greater families of languages stand to each other. The influence of individuals must always have been a disturbing element. Like great writers in later times, there may have been many a barbaric genius who taught the men of his tribe to sing or speak, showing them by example how to continue or divide their words, charming their souls with rhythm and accent and intonation, finding in familiar objects the expression of their confused fancies--to whom the whole of language might in truth be said to be a figure of speech. One person may have introduced a new custom into the formation or pronunciation of a word; he may have been imitated by others, and the custom, or form, or accent, or quantity, or rhyme which he introduced in a single word may have become the type on which many other words or inflexions of words were framed, and may have quickly ran through a whole language. For like the other gifts which nature has bestowed upon man, that of speech has been conveyed to him through the medium, not of the many, but of the few, who were his 'law-givers'--'the legislator with the dialectician standing on his right hand,' in Plato's striking image, who formed the manners of men and gave them customs, whose voice and look and 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. This is true; but it is also true that the traditional grammar has still a great hold on the mind of the student. Metaphysics are even more troublesome than the figments of grammar, because they wear the appearance of philosophy and there is no test to which they can be subjected. They are useful in so far as they give us an insight into the history of the human mind and the modes of thought which have existed in former ages; or in so far as they furnish wider conceptions of the different branches of knowledge and of their relation to one another. But they are worse than useless when they outrun experience and abstract the mind from the observation of facts, only to envelope it in a mist of words. Some philologers, like Schleicher, have been greatly influenced by the philosophy of Hegel; nearly all of them to a certain extent have fallen under the dominion of physical science. Even Kant himself thought that the first principles of philosophy could be elicited from the analysis of the proposition, in this respect falling short of Plato. Westphal holds that there are three stages of language: (1) in which things were characterized independently, (2) in which they were regarded in relation to human thought, and (3) in relation to one another. But are not such distinctions an anachronism? for they imply a growth of abstract ideas which never existed in early times. Language cannot be explained by Metaphysics; for it is prior to them and much more nearly allied to sense. It is not likely that the meaning of the cases is ultimately resolvable into relations of space and time. Nor can we suppose the conception of cause and effect or of the finite and infinite or of the same and other to be latent in language at a time when in their abstract form they had never entered into the mind of man...If the science of Comparative Philology had possessed 'enough of Metaphysics to get rid of Metaphysics,' it would have made far greater progress. (4) Our knowledge of language is almost confined to languages which are fully developed. They are of several patterns; and these become altered by admixture in various degrees,--they may only borrow a few words from one another and retain their life comparatively unaltered, or they may meet in a struggle for existence until one of the two is overpowered and retires from the field. They attain the full rights and dignity of language when they acquire the use of writing and have a literature of their own; they pass into dialects and grow out of them, in proportion as men are isolated or united by locality or occupation. The common language sometimes reacts upon the dialects and imparts to them also a literary character. The laws of language can be best discerned in the great crises of language, especially in the transitions from ancient to modern forms of them, whether in Europe or Asia. Such changes are the silent notes of the world's history; they mark periods of unknown length in which war and conquest were running riot over whole continents, times of suffering too great to be endured by the human race, in which the masters became subjects and the subject races masters, in which driven by necessity or impelled by some instinct, tribes or nations left their original homes and but slowly found a resting-place. Language would be the greatest of all historical monuments, if it could only tell us the history of itself. (5) There are many ways in which we may approach this study. The simplest of all is to observe our own use of language in conversation or in writing, how we put words together, how we construct and connect sentences, what are the rules of accent and rhythm in verse or prose, the formation and composition of words, the laws of euphony and sound, the affinities of letters, the mistakes to which we are ourselves most liable of spelling or pronunciation. We may compare with our own language some other, even when we have only a slight knowledge of it, such as French or German. Even a little Latin will enable us to appreciate the grand difference between ancient and modern European languages. In the child learning to speak we may note the inherent strength of language, which like 'a mountain river' is always forcing its way out. We may witness the delight in imitation and repetition, and some of the laws by which sounds pass into one another. We may learn something also from the falterings of old age, the searching for words, and the confusion of them with one another, the forgetfulness of proper names (more commonly than of other words because they are more isolated), aphasia, and the like. There are philological lessons also to be gathered from nicknames, from provincialisms, from the slang of great cities, from the argot of Paris (that language of suffering and crime, so pathetically described by Victor Hugo), from the imperfect articulation of the deaf and dumb, from the jabbering of animals, from the analysis of sounds in relation to the organs of speech. The phonograph affords a visible evidence of the nature and divisions of sound; we may be truly said to know what we can manufacture. Artificial languages, such as that of Bishop Wilkins, are chiefly useful in showing what language is not. The study of any foreign language may be made also a study of Comparative Philology. There are several points, such as the nature of irregular verbs, of indeclinable parts of speech, the influence of euphony, the decay or loss of inflections, the elements of syntax, which may be examined as well in the history of our own language as of any other. A few well-selected questions may lead the student at once into the heart of the mystery: such as, Why are the pronouns and the verb of existence generally more irregular than any other parts of speech? Why is the number of words so small in which the sound is an echo of the sense? Why does the meaning of words depart so widely from their etymology? Why do substantives often differ in meaning from the verbs to which they are related, adverbs from adjectives? Why do words differing in origin coalesce in the same sound though retaining their differences of meaning? Why are some verbs impersonal? Why are there only so many parts of speech, and on what principle are they divided? These are a few crucial questions which give us an insight from different points of view into the true nature of language. (6) Thus far we have been endeavouring to strip off from language the false appearances in which grammar and philology, or the love of system generally, have clothed it. We have also sought to indicate the sources of our knowledge of it and the spirit in which we should approach it, we may now proceed to consider some of the principles or natural laws which have created or modified it. i. The first and simplest of all the principles of language, common also to the animals, is imitation. The lion roars, the wolf howls in the solitude of the forest: they are answered by similar cries heard from a distance. The bird, too, mimics the voice of man and makes answer to him. Man tells to man the secret place in which he is hiding himself; he remembers and repeats the sound which he has heard. The love of imitation becomes a passion and an instinct to him. Primitive men learnt to speak from one another, like a child from its mother or nurse. They learnt of course a rudimentary, half-articulate language, the cry or song or speech which was the expression of what we now call human thoughts and feelings. We may still remark how much greater and more natural the exercise of the power is in the use of language than in any other process or action of the human mind. ii. Imitation provided the first material of language: but it was 'without form and void.' During how many years or hundreds or thousands of years the imitative or half-articulate stage continued there is no possibility of determining. But we may reasonably conjecture that there was a time when the vocal utterance of man was intermediate between what we now call language and the cry of a bird or animal. Speech before language was a rudis indigestaque materies, not yet distributed into words and sentences, in which the cry of fear or joy mingled with more definite sounds recognized by custom as the expressions of things or events. It was the principle of analogy which introduced into this 'indigesta moles' order and measure. It was Anaxagoras' omou panta chremata, eita nous elthon diekosmese: the light of reason lighted up all things and at once began to arrange them. In every sentence, in every word and every termination of a word, this power of forming relations to one another was contained. There was a proportion of sound to sound, of meaning to meaning, of meaning to sound. The cases and numbers of nouns, the persons, tenses, numbers of verbs, were generally on the same or nearly the same pattern and had the same meaning. The sounds by which they were expressed were rough-hewn at first; after a while they grew more refined--the natural laws of euphony began to affect them. The rules of syntax are likewise based upon analogy. Time has an analogy with space, arithmetic with geometry. Not only in musical notes, but in the quantity, quality, accent, rhythm of human speech, trivial or serious, there is a law of proportion. As in things of beauty, as in all nature, in the composition as well as in the motion of all things, there is a similarity of relations by which they are held together. It would be a mistake to suppose that the analogies of language are always uniform: there may be often a choice between several, and sometimes one and sometimes another will prevail. In Greek there are three declensions of nouns; the forms of cases in one of them may intrude upon another. Similarly verbs in -omega and -mu iota interchange forms of tenses, and the completed paradigm of the verb is often made up of both. The same nouns may be partly declinable and partly indeclinable, and in some of their cases may have fallen out of use. Here are rules with exceptions; they are not however really exceptions, but contain in themselves indications of other rules. Many of these interruptions or variations of analogy occur in pronouns or in the verb of existence of which the forms were too common and therefore too deeply imbedded in language entirely to drop out. The same verbs in the same meaning may sometimes take one case, sometimes another. The participle may also have the character of an adjective, the adverb either of an adjective or of a preposition. These exceptions are as regular as the rules, but the causes of them are seldom known to us. Language, like the animal and vegetable worlds, is everywhere intersected by the lines of analogy. Like number from which it seems to be derived, the principle of analogy opens the eyes of men to discern the similarities and differences of things, and their relations to one another. At first these are such as lie on the surface only; after a time they are seen by men to reach farther down into the nature of things. Gradually in language they arrange themselves into a sort of imperfect system; groups of personal and case endings are placed side by side. The fertility of language produces many more than are wanted; and the superfluous ones are utilized by the assignment to them of new meanings. The vacuity and the superfluity are thus partially compensated by each other. It must be remembered that in all the languages which have a literature, certainly in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, we are not at the beginning but almost at the end of the linguistic process; we have reached a time when the verb and the noun are nearly perfected, though in no language did they completely perfect themselves, because for some unknown reason the motive powers of languages seem to have ceased when they were on the eve of completion: they became fixed or crystallized in an imperfect form either from the influence of writing and literature, or because no further differentiation of them was required for the intelligibility of language. So not without admixture and confusion and displacement and contamination of sounds and the meanings of words, a lower stage of language passes into a higher. Thus far we can see and no further. When we ask the reason why this principle of analogy prevails in all the vast domain of language, there is no answer to the question; or no other answer but this, that there are innumerable ways in which, like number, analogy permeates, not only language, but the whole world, both visible and intellectual. We know from experience that it does not (a) arise from any conscious act of reflection that the accusative of a Latin noun in 'us' should end in 'um;' nor (b) from any necessity of being understood,--much less articulation would suffice for this; nor (c) from greater convenience or expressiveness of particular sounds. Such notions were certainly far enough away from the mind of primitive man. We may speak of a latent instinct, of a survival of the fittest, easiest, most euphonic, most economical of breath, in the case of one of two competing sounds; but these expressions do not add anything to our knowledge. We may try to grasp the infinity of language either under the figure of a limitless plain divided into countries and districts by natural boundaries, or of a vast river eternally flowing whose origin is concealed from us; we may apprehend partially the laws by which speech is regulated: but we do not know, and we seem as if we should never know, any more than in the parallel case of the origin of species, how vocal sounds received life and grew, and in the form of languages came to be distributed over the earth. iii. Next in order to analogy in the formation of language or even prior to it comes the principle of onomatopea, which is itself a kind of analogy or similarity of sound and meaning. In by far the greater number of words it has become disguised and has disappeared; but in no stage of language is it entirely lost. It belongs chiefly to early language, in which words were few; and its influence grew less and less as time went on. To the ear which had a sense of harmony it became a barbarism which disturbed the flow and equilibrium of discourse; it was an excrescence which had to be cut out, a survival which needed to be got rid of, because it was out of keeping with the rest. It remained for the most part only as a formative principle, which used words and letters not as crude imitations of other natural sounds, but as symbols of ideas which were naturally associated with them. It received in another way a new character; it affected not so much single words, as larger portions of human speech. It regulated the juxtaposition of sounds and the cadence of sentences. It was the music, not of song, but of speech, in prose as well as verse. The old onomatopea of primitive language was refined into an onomatopea of a higher kind, in which it is no longer true to say that a particular sound corresponds to a motion or action of man or beast or movement of nature, but that in all the higher uses of language the sound is the echo of the sense, especially in poetry, in which beauty and expressiveness are given to human thoughts by the harmonious composition of the words, syllables, letters, accents, quantities, rhythms, rhymes, varieties and contrasts of all sorts. The poet with his 'Break, break, break' or his e pasin nekuessi kataphthimenoisin anassein or his 'longius ex altoque sinum trahit,' can produce a far finer music than any crude imitations of things or actions in sound, although a letter or two having this imitative power may be a lesser element of beauty in such passages. The same subtle sensibility, which adapts the word to the thing, adapts the sentence or cadence to the general meaning or spirit of the passage. This is the higher onomatopea which has banished the cruder sort as unworthy to have a place in great languages and literatures. We can see clearly enough that letters or collocations of letters do by various degrees of strength or weakness, length or shortness, emphasis or pitch, become the natural expressions of the finer parts of human feeling or thought. And not only so, but letters themselves have a significance; as Plato observes that the letter rho accent is expressive of motion, the letters delta and tau of binding and rest, the letter lambda of smoothness, nu of inwardness, the letter eta of length, the letter omicron of roundness. These were often combined so as to form composite notions, as for example in tromos (trembling), trachus (rugged), thrauein (crush), krouein (strike), thruptein (break), pumbein (whirl),--in all which words we notice a parallel composition of sounds in their English equivalents. Plato also remarks, as we remark, that the onomatopoetic principle is far from prevailing uniformly, and further that no explanation of language consistently corresponds with any system of philosophy, however great may be the light which language throws upon the nature of the mind. Both in Greek and English we find groups of words such as string, swing, sling, spring, sting, which are parallel to one another and may be said to derive their vocal effect partly from contrast of letters, but in which it is impossible to assign a precise amount of meaning to each of the expressive and onomatopoetic letters. A few of them are directly imitative, as for example the omega in oon, which represents the round form of the egg by the figure of the mouth: or bronte (thunder), in which the fulness of the sound of the word corresponds to the thing signified by it; or bombos (buzzing), of which the first syllable, as in its English equivalent, has the meaning of a deep sound. We may observe also (as we see in the case of the poor stammerer) that speech has the co-operation of the whole body and may be often assisted or half expressed by gesticulation. A sound or word is not the work of the vocal organs only; nearly the whole of the upper part of the human frame, including head, chest, lungs, have a share in creating it; and it may be accompanied by a movement of the eyes, nose, fingers, hands, feet which contributes to the effect of it. The principle of onomatopea has fallen into discredit, partly because it has been supposed to imply an actual manufacture of words out of syllables and letters, like a piece of joiner's work,--a theory of language which is more and more refuted by facts, and more and more going out of fashion with philologians; and partly also because the traces of onomatopea in separate words become almost obliterated in the course of ages. The poet of language cannot put in and pull out letters, as a painter might insert or blot out a shade of colour to give effect to his picture. It would be ridiculous for him to alter any received form of a word in order to render it more expressive of the sense. He can only select, perhaps out of some dialect, the form which is already best adapted to his purpose. The true onomatopea is not a creative, but a formative principle, which in the later stage of the history of language ceases to act upon individual words; but still works through the collocation of them in the sentence or paragraph, and the adaptation of every word, syllable, letter to one another and to the rhythm of the whole passage. iv. Next, under a distinct head, although not separable from the preceding, may be considered the differentiation of languages, i.e. the manner in which differences of meaning and form have arisen in them. Into their first creation we have ceased to enquire: it is their aftergrowth with which we are now concerned. How did the roots or substantial portions of words become modified or inflected? and how did they receive separate meanings? First we remark that words are attracted by the sounds and senses of other words, so that they form groups of nouns and verbs analogous in sound and sense to one another, each noun or verb putting forth inflexions, generally of two or three patterns, and with exceptions. We do not say that we know how sense became first allied to sound; but we have no difficulty in ascertaining how the sounds and meanings of words were in time parted off or differentiated. (1) The chief causes which regulate the variations of sound are (a) double or differing analogies, which lead sometimes to one form, sometimes to another (b) euphony, by which is meant chiefly the greater pleasure to the ear and the greater facility to the organs of speech which is given by a new formation or pronunciation of a word (c) the necessity of finding new expressions for new classes or processes of things. We are told that changes of sound take place by innumerable gradations until a whole tribe or community or society find themselves acquiescing in a new pronunciation or use of language. Yet no one observes the change, or is at all aware that in the course of a lifetime he and his contemporaries have appreciably varied their intonation or use of words. On the other hand, the necessities of language seem to require that the intermediate sounds or meanings of words should quickly become fixed or set and not continue in a state of transition. The process of settling down is aided by the organs of speech and by the use of writing and printing. (2) The meaning of words varies because ideas vary or the number of things which is included under them or with which they are associated is increased. A single word is thus made to do duty for many more things than were formerly expressed by it; and it parts into different senses when the classes of things or ideas which are represented by it are themselves different and distinct. A figurative use of a word may easily pass into a new sense: a new meaning caught up by association may become more important than all the rest. The good or neutral sense of a word, such as Jesuit, Puritan, Methodist, Heretic, has been often converted into a bad one by the malevolence of party spirit. Double forms suggest different meanings and are often used to express them; and the form or accent of a word has been not unfrequently altered when there is a difference of meaning. The difference of gender in nouns is utilized for the same reason. New meanings of words push themselves into the vacant spaces of language and retire when they are no longer needed. Language equally abhors vacancy and superfluity. But the remedial measures by which both are eliminated are not due to any conscious action of the human mind; nor is the force exerted by them constraining or necessary. (7) We have shown that language, although subject to laws, is far from being of an exact and uniform nature. We may now speak briefly of the faults of language. They may be compared to the faults of Geology, in which different strata cross one another or meet at an angle, or mix with one another either by slow transitions or by violent convulsions, leaving many lacunae which can be no longer filled up, and often becoming so complex that no true explanation of them can be given. So in language there are the cross influences of meaning and sound, of logic and grammar, of differing analogies, of words and the inflexions of words, which often come into conflict with each other. The grammarian, if he were to form new words, would make them all of the same pattern according to what he conceives to be the rule, that is, the more common usage of language. The subtlety of nature goes far beyond art, and it is complicated by irregularity, so that often we can hardly say that there is a right or wrong in the formation of words. For almost any formation which is not at variance with the first principles of language is possible and may be defended. The imperfection of language is really due to the formation and correlation of words by accident, that is to say, by principles which are unknown to us. Hence we see why Plato, like ourselves unable to comprehend the whole of language, was constrained to 'supplement the poor creature imitation by another poor creature convention.' But the poor creature convention in the end proves too much for all the rest: for we do not ask what is the origin of words or whether they are formed according to a correct analogy, but what is the usage of them; and we are compelled to admit with Hermogenes in Plato and with Horace that usage is the ruling principle, 'quem penes arbitrium est, et jus et norma loquendi.' (8) There are two ways in which a language may attain permanence or fixity. First, it may have been embodied in poems or hymns or laws, which may be repeated for hundreds, perhaps for thousands of years with a religious accuracy, so that to the priests or rhapsodists of a nation the whole or the greater part of a language is literally preserved; secondly, it may be written down and in a written form distributed more or less widely among the whole nation. In either case the language which is familiarly spoken may have grown up wholly or in a great measure independently of them. (1) The first of these processes has been sometimes attended by the result that the sound of the words has been carefully preserved and that the meaning of them has either perished wholly, or is only doubtfully recovered by the efforts of modern philology. The verses have been repeated as a chant or part of a ritual, but they have had no relation to ordinary life or speech. (2) The invention of writing again is commonly attributed to a particular epoch, and we are apt to think that such an inestimable gift would have immediately been diffused over a whole country. But it may have taken a long time to perfect the art of writing, and another long period may have elapsed before it came into common use. Its influence on language has been increased ten, twenty or one hundred fold by the invention of printing. Before the growth of poetry or the invention of writing, languages were only dialects. So they continued to be in parts of the country in which writing was not used or in which there was no diffusion of literature. In most of the counties of England there is still a provincial style, which has been sometimes made by a great poet the vehicle of his fancies. When a book sinks into the mind of a nation, such as Luther's Bible or the Authorized English Translation of the Bible, or again great classical works like Shakspere or Milton, not only have new powers of expression been diffused through a whole nation, but a great step towards uniformity has been made. The instinct of language demands regular grammar and correct spelling: these are imprinted deeply on the tablets of a nation's memory by a common use of classical and popular writers. In our own day we have attained to a point at which nearly every printed book is spelt correctly and written grammatically. (9) Proceeding further to trace the influence of literature on language we note some other causes which have affected the higher use of it: such as (1) the necessity of clearness and connexion; (2) the fear of tautology; (3) the influence of metre, rhythm, rhyme, and of the language of prose and verse upon one another; (4) the power of idiom and quotation; (5) the relativeness of words to one another. It has been usual to depreciate modern languages when compared with ancient. The latter are regarded as furnishing a type of excellence to which the former cannot attain. But the truth seems to be that modern languages, if through the loss of inflections and genders they lack some power or beauty or expressiveness or precision which is possessed by the ancient, are in many other respects superior to them: the thought is generally clearer, the connexion closer, the sentence and paragraph are better distributed. The best modern languages, for example English or French, possess as great a power of self-improvement as the Latin, if not as the Greek. Nor does there seem to be any reason why they should ever decline or decay. It is a popular remark that our great writers are beginning to disappear: it may also be remarked that whenever a great writer appears in the future he will find the English language as perfect and as ready for use as in the days of Shakspere or Milton. There is no reason to suppose that English or French will ever be reduced to the low level of Modern Greek or of Mediaeval Latin. The wide diffusion of great authors would make such a decline impossible. Nor will modern languages be easily broken up by amalgamation with each other. The distance between them is too wide to be spanned, the differences are too great to be overcome, and the use of printing makes it impossible that one of them should ever be lost in another. The structure of the English language differs greatly from that of either Latin or Greek. In the two latter, especially in Greek, sentences are joined together by connecting particles. They are distributed on the right hand and on the left by men, de, alla, kaitoi, kai de and the like, or deduced from one another by ara, de, oun, toinun and the like. In English the majority of sentences are independent and in apposition to one another; they are laid side by side or slightly connected by the copula. But within the sentence the expression of the logical relations of the clauses is closer and more exact: there is less of apposition and participial structure. The sentences thus laid side by side are also constructed into paragraphs; these again are less distinctly marked in Greek and Latin than in English. Generally French, German, and English have an advantage over the classical languages in point of accuracy. The three concords are more accurately observed in English than in either Greek or Latin. On the other hand, the extension of the familiar use of the masculine and feminine gender to objects of sense and abstract ideas as well as to men and animals no doubt lends a nameless grace to style which we have a difficulty in appreciating, and the possible variety in the order of words gives more flexibility and also a kind of dignity to the period. Of the comparative effect of accent and quantity and of the relation between them in ancient and modern languages we are not able to judge. Another quality in which modern are superior to ancient languages is freedom from tautology. No English style is thought tolerable in which, except for the sake of emphasis, the same words are repeated at short intervals. Of course the length of the interval must depend on the character of the word. Striking words and expressions cannot be allowed to reappear, if at all, except at the distance of a page or more. Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions may or rather must recur in successive lines. It seems to be a kind of impertinence to the reader and strikes unpleasantly both on the mind and on the ear that the same sounds should be used twice over, when another word or turn of expression would have given a new shade of meaning to the thought and would have added a pleasing variety to the sound. And the mind equally rejects the repetition of the word and the use of a mere synonym for it,--e.g. felicity and happiness. The cultivated mind desires something more, which a skilful writer is easily able to supply out of his treasure-house. The fear of tautology has doubtless led to the multiplications of words and the meanings of words, and generally to an enlargement of the vocabulary. It is a very early instinct of language; for ancient poetry is almost as free from tautology as the best modern writings. The speech of young children, except in so far as they are compelled to repeat themselves by the fewness of their words, also escapes from it. When they grow up and have ideas which are beyond their powers of expression, especially in writing, tautology begins to appear. In like manner when language is 'contaminated' by philosophy it is apt to become awkward, to stammer and repeat itself, to lose its flow and freedom. No philosophical writer with the exception of Plato, who is himself not free from tautology, and perhaps Bacon, has attained to any high degree of literary excellence. To poetry the form and polish of language is chiefly to be attributed; and the most critical period in the history of language is the transition from verse to prose. At first mankind were contented to express their thoughts in a set form of words having a kind of rhythm; to which regularity was given by accent and quantity. But after a time they demanded a greater degree of freedom, and to those who had all their life been hearing poetry the first introduction of prose had the charm of novelty. The prose romances into which the Homeric Poems were converted, for a while probably gave more delight to the hearers or readers of them than the Poems themselves, and in time the relation of the two was reversed: the poems which had once been a necessity of the human mind became a luxury: they were now superseded by prose, which in all succeeding ages became the natural vehicle of expression to all mankind. Henceforward prose and poetry formed each other. A comparatively slender link between them was also furnished by proverbs. We may trace in poetry how the simple succession of lines, not without monotony, has passed into a complicated period, and how in prose, rhythm and accent and the order of words and the balance of clauses, sometimes not without a slight admixture of rhyme, make up a new kind of harmony, swelling into strains not less majestic than those of Homer, Virgil, or Dante. One of the most curious and characteristic features of language, affecting both syntax and style, is idiom. The meaning of the word 'idiom' is that which is peculiar, that which is familiar, the word or expression which strikes us or comes home to us, which is more readily understood or more easily remembered. It is a quality which really exists in infinite degrees, which we turn into differences of kind by applying the term only to conspicuous and striking examples of words or phrases which have this quality. It often supersedes the laws of language or the rules of grammar, or rather is to be regarded as another law of language which is natural and necessary. The word or phrase which has been repeated many times over is more intelligible and familiar to us than one which is rare, and our familiarity with it more than compensates for incorrectness or inaccuracy in the use of it. Striking expressions also which have moved the hearts of nations or are the precious stones and jewels of great authors partake of the nature of idioms: they are taken out of the sphere of grammar and are exempt from the proprieties of language. Every one knows that we often put words together in a manner which would be intolerable if it were not idiomatic. We cannot argue either about the meaning of words or the use of constructions that because they are used in one connexion they will be legitimate in another, unless we allow for this principle. We can bear to have words and sentences used in new senses or in a new order or even a little perverted in meaning when we are quite familiar with them. Quotations are as often applied in a sense which the author did not intend as in that which he did. The parody of the words of Shakspere or of the Bible, which has in it something of the nature of a lie, is far from unpleasing to us. The better known words, even if their meaning be perverted, are more agreeable to us and have a greater power over us. Most of us have experienced a sort of delight and feeling of curiosity when we first came across or when we first used for ourselves a new word or phrase or figure of speech. There are associations of sound and of sense by which every word is linked to every other. One letter harmonizes with another; every verb or noun derives its meaning, not only from itself, but from the words with which it is associated. Some reflection of them near or distant is embodied in it. In any new use of a word all the existing uses of it have to be considered. Upon these depends the question whether it will bear the proposed extension of meaning or not. According to the famous expression of Luther, 'Words are living creatures, having hands and feet.' When they cease to retain this living power of adaptation, when they are only put together like the parts of a piece of furniture, language becomes unpoetical, in expressive, dead. Grammars would lead us to suppose that words have a fixed form and sound. Lexicons assign to each word a definite meaning or meanings. They both tend to obscure the fact that the sentence precedes the word and that all language is relative. (1) It is relative to its own context. Its meaning is modified by what has been said before and after in the same or in some other passage: without comparing the context we are not sure whether it is used in the same sense even in two successive sentences. (2) It is relative to facts, to time, place, and occasion: when they are already known to the hearer or reader, they may be presupposed; there is no need to allude to them further. (3) It is relative to the knowledge of the writer and reader or of the speaker and hearer. Except for the sake of order and consecutiveness nothing ought to be expressed which is already commonly or universally known. A word or two may be sufficient to give an intimation to a friend; a long or elaborate speech or composition is required to explain some new idea to a popular audience or to the ordinary reader or to a young pupil. Grammars and dictionaries are not to be despised; for in teaching we need clearness rather than subtlety. But we must not therefore forget that there is also a higher ideal of language in which all is relative--sounds to sounds, words to words, the parts to the whole--in which besides the lesser context of the book or speech, there is also the larger context of history and circumstances. The study of Comparative Philology has introduced into the world a new science which more than any other binds up man with nature, and distant ages and countries with one another. It may be said to have thrown a light upon all other sciences and upon the nature of the human mind itself. The true conception of it dispels many errors, not only of metaphysics and theology, but also of natural knowledge. Yet it is far from certain that this newly-found science will continue to progress in the same surprising manner as heretofore; or that even if our materials are largely increased, we shall arrive at much more definite conclusions than at present. Like some other branches of knowledge, it may be approaching a point at which it can no longer be profitably studied. But at any rate it has brought back the philosophy of language from theory to fact; it has passed out of the region of guesses and hypotheses, and has attained the dignity of an Inductive Science. And it is not without practical and political importance. It gives a new interest to distant and subject countries; it brings back the dawning light from one end of the earth to the other. Nations, like individuals, are better understood by us when we know something of their early life; and when they are better understood by us, we feel more kindly towards them. Lastly, we may remember that all knowledge is valuable for its own sake; and we may also hope that a deeper insight into the nature of human speech will give us a greater command of it and enable us to make a nobler use of it. (Compare again W. Humboldt, 'Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues;' M. Muller, 'Lectures on the Science of Language;' Steinthal, 'Einleitung in die Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft:' and for the latter part of the Essay, Delbruck, 'Study of Language;' Paul's 'Principles of the History of Language:' to the latter work the author of this Essay is largely indebted.) CRATYLUS By Plato Translated by Benjamin Jowett PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Hermogenes, Cratylus. HERMOGENES: Suppose that we make Socrates a party to the argument? CRATYLUS: If you please. HERMOGENES: I should explain to you, Socrates, that our friend Cratylus has been arguing about names; he says that they are natural and not conventional; not a portion of the human voice which men agree to use; but that there is a truth or correctness in them, which is the same for Hellenes as for barbarians. Whereupon I ask him, whether his own name of Cratylus is a true name or not, and he answers 'Yes.' And Socrates? 'Yes.' Then every man's name, as I tell him, is that which he is called. To this he replies--'If all the world were to call you Hermogenes, that would not be your name.' And when I am anxious to have a further explanation he is ironical and mysterious, and seems to imply that he has a notion of his own about the matter, if he would only tell, and could entirely convince me, if he chose to be intelligible. Tell me, Socrates, what this oracle means; or rather tell me, if you will be so good, what is your own view of the truth or correctness of names, which I would far sooner hear. SOCRATES: Son of Hipponicus, there is an ancient saying, that 'hard is the knowledge of the good.' And the knowledge of names is a great part of knowledge. If I had not been poor, I might have heard the fifty-drachma course of the great Prodicus, which is a complete education in grammar and language--these are his own words--and then I should have been at once able to answer your question about the correctness of names. But, indeed, I have only heard the single-drachma course, and therefore, I do not know the truth about such matters; I will, however, gladly assist you and Cratylus in the investigation of them. When he declares that your name is not really Hermogenes, I suspect that he is only making fun of you;--he means to say that you are no true son of Hermes, because you are always looking after a fortune and never in luck. But, as I was saying, there is a good deal of difficulty in this sort of knowledge, and therefore we had better leave the question open until we have heard both sides. HERMOGENES: I have often talked over this matter, both with Cratylus and others, and cannot convince myself that there is any principle of correctness in names other than convention and agreement; any name which you give, in my opinion, is the right one, and if you change that and give another, the new name is as correct as the old--we frequently change the names of our slaves, and the newly-imposed name is as good as the old: for there is no name given to anything by nature; all is convention and habit of the users;--such is my view. But if I am mistaken I shall be happy to hear and learn of Cratylus, or of any one else. SOCRATES: I dare say that you may be right, Hermogenes: let us see;--Your meaning is, that the name of each thing is only that which anybody agrees to call it? HERMOGENES: That is my notion. SOCRATES: Whether the giver of the name be an individual or a city? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: Well, now, let me take an instance;--suppose that I call a man a horse or a horse a man, you mean to say that a man will be rightly called a horse by me individually, and rightly called a man by the rest of the world; and a horse again would be rightly called a man by me and a horse by the world:--that is your meaning? HERMOGENES: He would, according to my view. SOCRATES: But how about truth, then? you would acknowledge that there is in words a true and a false? HERMOGENES: Certainly. SOCRATES: And there are true and false propositions? HERMOGENES: To be sure. SOCRATES: And a true proposition says that which is, and a false proposition says that which is not? HERMOGENES: Yes; what other answer is possible? SOCRATES: Then in a proposition there is a true and false? HERMOGENES: Certainly. SOCRATES: But is a proposition true as a whole only, and are the parts untrue? HERMOGENES: No; the parts are true as well as the whole. SOCRATES: Would you say the large parts and not the smaller ones, or every part? HERMOGENES: I should say that every part is true. SOCRATES: Is a proposition resolvable into any part smaller than a name? HERMOGENES: No; that is the smallest. SOCRATES: Then the name is a part of the true proposition? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: Yes, and a true part, as you say. HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And is not the part of a falsehood also a falsehood? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: Then, if propositions may be true and false, names may be true and false? HERMOGENES: So we must infer. SOCRATES: And the name of anything is that which any one affirms to be the name? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And will there be so many names of each thing as everybody says that there are? and will they be true names at the time of uttering them? HERMOGENES: Yes, Socrates, I can conceive no correctness of names other than this; you give one name, and I another; and in different cities and countries there are different names for the same things; Hellenes differ from barbarians in their use of names, and the several Hellenic tribes from one another. SOCRATES: But would you say, Hermogenes, that the things differ as the names differ? and are they relative to individuals, as Protagoras tells us? For he says that man is the measure of all things, and that things are to me as they appear to me, and that they are to you as they appear to you. Do you agree with him, or would you say that things have a permanent essence of their own? HERMOGENES: There have been times, Socrates, when I have been driven in my perplexity to take refuge with Protagoras; not that I agree with him at all. SOCRATES: What! have you ever been driven to admit that there was no such thing as a bad man? HERMOGENES: No, indeed; but I have often had reason to think that there are very bad men, and a good many of them. SOCRATES: Well, and have you ever found any very good ones? HERMOGENES: Not many. SOCRATES: Still you have found them? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And would you hold that the very good were the very wise, and the very evil very foolish? Would that be your view? HERMOGENES: It would. SOCRATES: But if Protagoras is right, and the truth is that things are as they appear to any one, how can some of us be wise and some of us foolish? HERMOGENES: Impossible. SOCRATES: And if, on the other hand, wisdom and folly are really distinguishable, you will allow, I think, that the assertion of Protagoras can hardly be correct. For if what appears to each man is true to him, one man cannot in reality be wiser than another. HERMOGENES: He cannot. SOCRATES: Nor will you be disposed to say with Euthydemus, that all things equally belong to all men at the same moment and always; for neither on his view can there be some good and others bad, if virtue and vice are always equally to be attributed to all. HERMOGENES: There cannot. SOCRATES: But if neither is right, and things are not relative to individuals, and all things do not equally belong to all at the same moment and always, they must be supposed to have their own proper and permanent essence: they are not in relation to us, or influenced by us, fluctuating according to our fancy, but they are independent, and maintain to their own essence the relation prescribed by nature. HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that you have said the truth. SOCRATES: Does what I am saying apply only to the things themselves, or equally to the actions which proceed from them? Are not actions also a class of being? HERMOGENES: Yes, the actions are real as well as the things. SOCRATES: Then the actions also are done according to their proper nature, and not according to our opinion of them? In cutting, for example, we do not cut as we please, and with any chance instrument; but we cut with the proper instrument only, and according to the natural process of cutting; and the natural process is right and will succeed, but any other will fail and be of no use at all. HERMOGENES: I should say that the natural way is the right way. SOCRATES: Again, in burning, not every way is the right way; but the right way is the natural way, and the right instrument the natural instrument. HERMOGENES: True. SOCRATES: And this holds good of all actions? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And speech is a kind of action? HERMOGENES: True. SOCRATES: And will a man speak correctly who speaks as he pleases? Will not the successful speaker rather be he who speaks in the natural way of speaking, and as things ought to be spoken, and with the natural instrument? Any other mode of speaking will result in error and failure. HERMOGENES: I quite agree with you. SOCRATES: And is not naming a part of speaking? for in giving names men speak. HERMOGENES: That is true. SOCRATES: And if speaking is a sort of action and has a relation to acts, is not naming also a sort of action? HERMOGENES: True. SOCRATES: And we saw that actions were not relative to ourselves, but had a special nature of their own? HERMOGENES: Precisely. SOCRATES: Then the argument would lead us to infer that names ought to be given according to a natural process, and with a proper instrument, and not at our pleasure: in this and no other way shall we name with success. HERMOGENES: I agree. SOCRATES: But again, that which has to be cut has to be cut with something? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And that which has to be woven or pierced has to be woven or pierced with something? HERMOGENES: Certainly. SOCRATES: And that which has to be named has to be named with something? HERMOGENES: True. SOCRATES: What is that with which we pierce? HERMOGENES: An awl. SOCRATES: And with which we weave? HERMOGENES: A shuttle. SOCRATES: And with which we name? HERMOGENES: A name. SOCRATES: Very good: then a name is an instrument? HERMOGENES: Certainly. SOCRATES: Suppose that I ask, 'What sort of instrument is a shuttle?' And you answer, 'A weaving instrument.' HERMOGENES: Well. SOCRATES: And I ask again, 'What do we do when we weave?'--The answer is, that we separate or disengage the warp from the woof. HERMOGENES: Very true. SOCRATES: And may not a similar description be given of an awl, and of instruments in general? HERMOGENES: To be sure. SOCRATES: And now suppose that I ask a similar question about names: will you answer me? Regarding the name as an instrument, what do we do when we name? HERMOGENES: I cannot say. SOCRATES: Do we not give information to one another, and distinguish things according to their natures? HERMOGENES: Certainly we do. SOCRATES: Then a name is an instrument of teaching and of distinguishing natures, as the shuttle is of distinguishing the threads of the web. HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And the shuttle is the instrument of the weaver? HERMOGENES: Assuredly. SOCRATES: Then the weaver will use the shuttle well--and well means like a weaver? and the teacher will use the name well--and well means like a teacher? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And when the weaver uses the shuttle, whose work will he be using well? HERMOGENES: That of the carpenter. SOCRATES: And is every man a carpenter, or the skilled only? HERMOGENES: Only the skilled. SOCRATES: And when the piercer uses the awl, whose work will he be using well? HERMOGENES: That of the smith. SOCRATES: And is every man a smith, or only the skilled? HERMOGENES: The skilled only. SOCRATES: And when the teacher uses the name, whose work will he be using? HERMOGENES: There again I am puzzled. SOCRATES: Cannot you at least say who gives us the names which we use? HERMOGENES: Indeed I cannot. SOCRATES: Does not the law seem to you to give us them? HERMOGENES: Yes, I suppose so. SOCRATES: Then the teacher, when he gives us a name, uses the work of the legislator? HERMOGENES: I agree. SOCRATES: And is every man a legislator, or the skilled only? HERMOGENES: The skilled only. SOCRATES: Then, Hermogenes, not every man is able to give a name, but only a maker of names; and this is the legislator, who of all skilled artisans in the world is the rarest. HERMOGENES: True. SOCRATES: And how does the legislator make names? and to what does he look? Consider this in the light of the previous instances: to what does the carpenter look in making the shuttle? Does he not look to that which is naturally fitted to act as a shuttle? HERMOGENES: Certainly. SOCRATES: And suppose the shuttle to be broken in making, will he make another, looking to the broken one? or will he look to the form according to which he made the other? HERMOGENES: To the latter, I should imagine. SOCRATES: Might not that be justly called the true or ideal shuttle? HERMOGENES: I think so. SOCRATES: And whatever shuttles are wanted, for the manufacture of garments, thin or thick, of flaxen, woollen, or other material, ought all of them to have the true form of the shuttle; and whatever is the shuttle best adapted to each kind of work, that ought to be the form which the maker produces in each case. HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And the same holds of other instruments: when a man has discovered the instrument which is naturally adapted to each work, he must express this natural form, and not others which he fancies, in the material, whatever it may be, which he employs; for example, he ought to know how to put into iron the forms of awls adapted by nature to their several uses? HERMOGENES: Certainly. SOCRATES: And how to put into wood forms of shuttles adapted by nature to their uses? HERMOGENES: True. SOCRATES: For the several forms of shuttles naturally answer to the several kinds of webs; and this is true of instruments in general. HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: Then, as to names: ought not our legislator also to know how to put the true natural name of each thing into sounds and syllables, and to make and give all names with a view to the ideal name, if he is to be a namer in any true sense? And we must remember that different legislators will not use the same syllables. For neither does every smith, although he may be making the same instrument for the same purpose, make them all of the same iron. The form must be the same, but the material may vary, and still the instrument may be equally good of whatever iron made, whether in Hellas or in a foreign country;--there is no difference. HERMOGENES: Very true. SOCRATES: And the legislator, whether he be Hellene or barbarian, is not therefore to be deemed by you a worse legislator, provided he gives the true and proper form of the name in whatever syllables; this or that country makes no matter. HERMOGENES: Quite true. SOCRATES: But who then is to determine whether the proper form is given to the shuttle, whatever sort of wood may be used? the carpenter who makes, or the weaver who is to use them? HERMOGENES: I should say, he who is to use them, Socrates. SOCRATES: And who uses the work of the lyre-maker? Will not he be the man who knows how to direct what is being done, and who will know also whether the work is being well done or not? HERMOGENES: Certainly. SOCRATES: And who is he? HERMOGENES: The player of the lyre. SOCRATES: And who will direct the shipwright? HERMOGENES: The pilot. SOCRATES: And who will be best able to direct the legislator in his work, and will know whether the work is well done, in this or any other country? Will not the user be the man? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And this is he who knows how to ask questions? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And how to answer them? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And him who knows how to ask and answer you would call a dialectician? HERMOGENES: Yes; that would be his name. SOCRATES: Then the work of the carpenter is to make a rudder, and the pilot has to direct him, if the rudder is to be well made. HERMOGENES: True. SOCRATES: And the work of the legislator is to give names, and the dialectician must be his director if the names are to be rightly given? HERMOGENES: That is true. SOCRATES: Then, Hermogenes, I should say that this giving of names can be no such light matter as you fancy, or the work of light or chance persons; and Cratylus is right in saying that things have names by nature, and that not every man is an artificer of names, but he only who looks to the name which each thing by nature has, and is able to express the true forms of things in letters and syllables. HERMOGENES: I cannot answer you, Socrates; but I find a difficulty in changing my opinion all in a moment, and I think that I should be more readily persuaded, if you would show me what this is which you term the natural fitness of names. SOCRATES: My good Hermogenes, I have none to show. Was I not telling you just now (but you have forgotten), that I knew nothing, and proposing to share the enquiry with you? But now that you and I have talked over the matter, a step has been gained; for we have discovered that names have by nature a truth, and that not every man knows how to give a thing a name. HERMOGENES: Very good. SOCRATES: And what is the nature of this truth or correctness of names? That, if you care to know, is the next question. HERMOGENES: Certainly, I care to know. SOCRATES: Then reflect. HERMOGENES: How shall I reflect? SOCRATES: The true way is to have the assistance of those who know, and you must pay them well both in money and in thanks; these are the Sophists, of whom your brother, Callias, has--rather dearly--bought the reputation of wisdom. But you have not yet come into your inheritance, and therefore you had better go to him, and beg and entreat him to tell you what he has learnt from Protagoras about the fitness of names. HERMOGENES: But how inconsistent should I be, if, whilst repudiating Protagoras and his truth ('Truth' was the title of the book of Protagoras; compare Theaet.), I were to attach any value to what he and his book affirm! SOCRATES: Then if you despise him, you must learn of Homer and the poets. HERMOGENES: And where does Homer say anything about names, and what does he say? SOCRATES: He often speaks of them; notably and nobly in the places where he distinguishes the different names which Gods and men give to the same things. Does he not in these passages make a remarkable statement about the correctness of names? For the Gods must clearly be supposed to call things by their right and natural names; do you not think so? HERMOGENES: Why, of course they call them rightly, if they call them at all. But to what are you referring? SOCRATES: Do you not know what he says about the river in Troy who had a single combat with Hephaestus? 'Whom,' as he says, 'the Gods call Xanthus, and men call Scamander.' HERMOGENES: I remember. SOCRATES: Well, and about this river--to know that he ought to be called Xanthus and not Scamander--is not that a solemn lesson? Or about the bird which, as he says, 'The Gods call Chalcis, and men Cymindis:' to be taught how much more correct the name Chalcis is than the name Cymindis--do you deem that a light matter? Or about Batieia and Myrina? (Compare Il. 'The hill which men call Batieia and the immortals the tomb of the sportive Myrina.') And there are many other observations of the same kind in Homer and other poets. Now, I think that this is beyond the understanding of you and me; but the names of Scamandrius and Astyanax, which he affirms to have been the names of Hector's son, are more within the range of human faculties, as I am disposed to think; and what the poet means by correctness may be more readily apprehended in that instance: you will remember I dare say the lines to which I refer? (Il.) HERMOGENES: I do. SOCRATES: Let me ask you, then, which did Homer think the more correct of the names given to Hector's son--Astyanax or Scamandrius? HERMOGENES: I do not know. SOCRATES: How would you answer, if you were asked whether the wise or the unwise are more likely to give correct names? HERMOGENES: I should say the wise, of course. SOCRATES: And are the men or the women of a city, taken as a class, the wiser? HERMOGENES: I should say, the men. SOCRATES: And Homer, as you know, says that the Trojan men called him Astyanax (king of the city); but if the men called him Astyanax, the other name of Scamandrius could only have been given to him by the women. HERMOGENES: That may be inferred. SOCRATES: And must not Homer have imagined the Trojans to be wiser than their wives? HERMOGENES: To be sure. SOCRATES: Then he must have thought Astyanax to be a more correct name for the boy than Scamandrius? HERMOGENES: Clearly. SOCRATES: And what is the reason of this? Let us consider:--does he not himself suggest a very good reason, when he says, 'For he alone defended their city and long walls'? This appears to be a good reason for calling the son of the saviour king of the city which his father was saving, as Homer observes. HERMOGENES: I see. SOCRATES: Why, Hermogenes, I do not as yet see myself; and do you? HERMOGENES: No, indeed; not I. SOCRATES: But tell me, friend, did not Homer himself also give Hector his name? HERMOGENES: What of that? SOCRATES: The name appears to me to be very nearly the same as the name of Astyanax--both are Hellenic; and a king (anax) and a holder (ektor) have nearly the same meaning, and are both descriptive of a king; for a man is clearly the holder of that of which he is king; he rules, and owns, and holds it. But, perhaps, you may think that I am talking nonsense; and indeed I believe that I myself did not know what I meant when I imagined that I had found some indication of the opinion of Homer about the correctness of names. HERMOGENES: I assure you that I think otherwise, and I believe you to be on the right track. SOCRATES: There is reason, I think, in calling the lion's whelp a lion, and the foal of a horse a horse; I am speaking only of the ordinary course of nature, when an animal produces after his kind, and not of extraordinary births;--if contrary to nature a horse have a calf, then I should not call that a foal but a calf; nor do I call any inhuman birth a man, but only a natural birth. And the same may be said of trees and other things. Do you agree with me? HERMOGENES: Yes, I agree. SOCRATES: Very good. But you had better watch me and see that I do not play tricks with you. For on the same principle the son of a king is to be called a king. And whether the syllables of the name are the same or not the same, makes no difference, provided the meaning is retained; nor does the addition or subtraction of a letter make any difference so long as the essence of the thing remains in possession of the name and appears in it. HERMOGENES: What do you mean? SOCRATES: A very simple matter. I may illustrate my meaning by the names of letters, which you know are not the same as the letters themselves with the exception of the four epsilon, upsilon, omicron, omega; the names of the rest, whether vowels or consonants, are made up of other letters which we add to them; but so long as we introduce the meaning, and there can be no mistake, the name of the letter is quite correct. Take, for example, the letter beta--the addition of eta, tau, alpha, gives no offence, and does not prevent the whole name from having the value which the legislator intended--so well did he know how to give the letters names. HERMOGENES: I believe you are right. SOCRATES: And may not the same be said of a king? a king will often be the son of a king, the good son or the noble son of a good or noble sire; and similarly the offspring of every kind, in the regular course of nature, is like the parent, and therefore has the same name. Yet the syllables may be disguised until they appear different to the ignorant person, and he may not recognize them, although they are the same, just as any one of us would not recognize the same drugs under different disguises of colour and smell, although to the physician, who regards the power of them, they are the same, and he is not put out by the addition; and in like manner the etymologist is not put out by the addition or transposition or subtraction of a letter or two, or indeed by the change of all the letters, for this need not interfere with the meaning. As was just now said, the names of Hector and Astyanax have only one letter alike, which is tau, and yet they have the same meaning. And how little in common with the letters of their names has Archepolis (ruler of the city)--and yet the meaning is the same. And there are many other names which just mean 'king.' Again, there are several names for a general, as, for example, Agis (leader) and Polemarchus (chief in war) and Eupolemus (good warrior); and others which denote a physician, as Iatrocles (famous healer) and Acesimbrotus (curer of mortals); and there are many others which might be cited, differing in their syllables and letters, but having the same meaning. Would you not say so? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: The same names, then, ought to be assigned to those who follow in the course of nature? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And what of those who follow out of the course of nature, and are prodigies? for example, when a good and religious man has an irreligious son, he ought to bear the name not of his father, but of the class to which he belongs, just as in the case which was before supposed of a horse foaling a calf. HERMOGENES: Quite true. SOCRATES: Then the irreligious son of a religious father should be called irreligious? HERMOGENES: Certainly. SOCRATES: He should not be called Theophilus (beloved of God) or Mnesitheus (mindful of God), or any of these names: if names are correctly given, his should have an opposite meaning. HERMOGENES: Certainly, Socrates. SOCRATES: Again, Hermogenes, there is Orestes (the man of the mountains) who appears to be rightly called; whether chance gave the name, or perhaps some poet who meant to express the brutality and fierceness and mountain wildness of his hero's nature. HERMOGENES: That is very likely, Socrates. SOCRATES: And his father's name is also according to nature. HERMOGENES: Clearly. SOCRATES: Yes, for as his name, so also is his nature; Agamemnon (admirable for remaining) is one who is patient and persevering in the accomplishment of his resolves, and by his virtue crowns them; and his continuance at Troy with all the vast army is a proof of that admirable endurance in him which is signified by the name Agamemnon. I also think that Atreus is rightly called; for his murder of Chrysippus and his exceeding cruelty to Thyestes are damaging and destructive to his reputation--the name is a little altered and disguised so as not to be intelligible to every one, but to the etymologist there is no difficulty in seeing the meaning, for whether you think of him as ateires the stubborn, or as atrestos the fearless, or as ateros the destructive one, the name is perfectly correct in every point of view. And I think that Pelops is also named appropriately; for, as the name implies, he is rightly called Pelops who sees what is near only (o ta pelas oron). HERMOGENES: How so? SOCRATES: Because, according to the tradition, he had no forethought or foresight of all the evil which the murder of Myrtilus would entail upon his whole race in remote ages; he saw only what was at hand and immediate,--or in other words, pelas (near), in his eagerness to win Hippodamia by all means for his bride. Every one would agree that the name of Tantalus is rightly given and in accordance with nature, if the traditions about him are true. HERMOGENES: And what are the traditions? SOCRATES: Many terrible misfortunes are said to have happened to him in his life--last of all, came the utter ruin of his country; and after his death he had the stone suspended (talanteia) over his head in the world below--all this agrees wonderfully well with his name. You might imagine that some person who wanted to call him Talantatos (the most weighted down by misfortune), disguised the name by altering it into Tantalus; and into this form, by some accident of tradition, it has actually been transmuted. The name of Zeus, who is his alleged father, has also an excellent meaning, although hard to be understood, because really like a sentence, which is divided into two parts, for some call him Zena, and use the one half, and others who use the other half call him Dia; the two together signify the nature of the God, and the business of a name, as we were saying, is to express the nature. For there is none who is more the author of life to us and to all, than the lord and king of all. Wherefore we are right in calling him Zena and Dia, which are one name, although divided, meaning the God through whom all creatures always have life (di on zen aei pasi tois zosin uparchei). There is an irreverence, at first sight, in calling him son of Cronos (who is a proverb for stupidity), and we might rather expect Zeus to be the child of a mighty intellect. Which is the fact; for this is the meaning of his father's name: Kronos quasi Koros (Choreo, to sweep), not in the sense of a youth, but signifying to chatharon chai acheraton tou nou, the pure and garnished mind (sc. apo tou chorein). He, as we are informed by tradition, was begotten of Uranus, rightly so called (apo tou oran ta ano) from looking upwards; which, as philosophers tell us, is the way to have a pure mind, and the name Uranus is therefore correct. If I could remember the genealogy of Hesiod, I would have gone on and tried more conclusions of the same sort on the remoter ancestors of the Gods,--then I might have seen whether this wisdom, which has come to me all in an instant, I know not whence, will or will not hold good to the end. HERMOGENES: You seem to me, Socrates, to be quite like a prophet newly inspired, and to be uttering oracles. SOCRATES: Yes, Hermogenes, and I believe that I caught the inspiration from the great Euthyphro of the Prospaltian deme, who gave me a long lecture which commenced at dawn: he talked and I listened, and his wisdom and enchanting ravishment has not only filled my ears but taken possession of my soul, and to-day I shall let his superhuman power work and finish the investigation of names--that will be the way; but to-morrow, if you are so disposed, we will conjure him away, and make a purgation of him, if we can only find some priest or sophist who is skilled in purifications of this sort. HERMOGENES: With all my heart; for am very curious to hear the rest of the enquiry about names. SOCRATES: Then let us proceed; and where would you have us begin, now that we have got a sort of outline of the enquiry? Are there any names which witness of themselves that they are not given arbitrarily, but have a natural fitness? The names of heroes and of men in general are apt to be deceptive because they are often called after ancestors with whose names, as we were saying, they may have no business; or they are the expression of a wish like Eutychides (the son of good fortune), or Sosias (the Saviour), or Theophilus (the beloved of God), and others. But I think that we had better leave these, for there will be more chance of finding correctness in the names of immutable essences;--there ought to have been more care taken about them when they were named, and perhaps there may have been some more than human power at work occasionally in giving them names. HERMOGENES: I think so, Socrates. SOCRATES: Ought we not to begin with the consideration of the Gods, and show that they are rightly named Gods? HERMOGENES: Yes, that will be well. SOCRATES: My notion would be something of this sort:--I suspect that the sun, moon, earth, stars, and heaven, which are still the Gods of many barbarians, were the only Gods known to the aboriginal Hellenes. Seeing that they were always moving and running, from their running nature they were called Gods or runners (Theous, Theontas); and when men became acquainted with the other Gods, they proceeded to apply the same name to them all. Do you think that likely? HERMOGENES: I think it very likely indeed. SOCRATES: What shall follow the Gods? HERMOGENES: Must not demons and heroes and men come next? SOCRATES: Demons! And what do you consider to be the meaning of this word? Tell me if my view is right. HERMOGENES: Let me hear. SOCRATES: You know how Hesiod uses the word? HERMOGENES: I do not. SOCRATES: Do you not remember that he speaks of a golden race of men who came first? HERMOGENES: Yes, I do. SOCRATES: He says of them-- 'But now that fate has closed over this race They are holy demons upon the earth, Beneficent, averters of ills, guardians of mortal men.' (Hesiod, Works and Days.) HERMOGENES: What is the inference? SOCRATES: What is the inference! Why, I suppose that he means by the golden men, not men literally made of gold, but good and noble; and I am convinced of this, because he further says that we are the iron race. HERMOGENES: That is true. SOCRATES: And do you not suppose that good men of our own day would by him be said to be of golden race? HERMOGENES: Very likely. SOCRATES: And are not the good wise? HERMOGENES: Yes, they are wise. SOCRATES: And therefore I have the most entire conviction that he called them demons, because they were daemones (knowing or wise), and in our older Attic dialect the word itself occurs. Now he and other poets say truly, that when a good man dies he has honour and a mighty portion among the dead, and becomes a demon; which is a name given to him signifying wisdom. And I say too, that every wise man who happens to be a good man is more than human (daimonion) both in life and death, and is rightly called a demon. HERMOGENES: Then I rather think that I am of one mind with you; but what is the meaning of the word 'hero'? (Eros with an eta, in the old writing eros with an epsilon.) SOCRATES: I think that there is no difficulty in explaining, for the name is not much altered, and signifies that they were born of love. HERMOGENES: What do you mean? SOCRATES: Do you not know that the heroes are demigods? HERMOGENES: What then? SOCRATES: All of them sprang either from the love of a God for a mortal woman, or of a mortal man for a Goddess; think of the word in the old Attic, and you will see better that the name heros is only a slight alteration of Eros, from whom the heroes sprang: either this is the meaning, or, if not this, then they must have been skilful as rhetoricians and dialecticians, and able to put the question (erotan), for eirein is equivalent to legein. And therefore, as I was saying, in the Attic dialect the heroes turn out to be rhetoricians and questioners. All this is easy enough; the noble breed of heroes are a tribe of sophists and rhetors. But can you tell me why men are called anthropoi?--that is more difficult. HERMOGENES: No, I cannot; and I would not try even if I could, because I think that you are the more likely to succeed. SOCRATES: That is to say, you trust to the inspiration of Euthyphro. HERMOGENES: Of course. SOCRATES: Your faith is not vain; for at this very moment a new and ingenious thought strikes me, and, if I am not careful, before to-morrow's dawn I shall be wiser than I ought to be. Now, attend to me; and first, remember that we often put in and pull out letters in words, and give names as we please and change the accents. Take, for example, the word Dii Philos; in order to convert this from a sentence into a noun, we omit one of the iotas and sound the middle syllable grave instead of acute; as, on the other hand, letters are sometimes inserted in words instead of being omitted, and the acute takes the place of the grave. HERMOGENES: That is true. SOCRATES: The name anthropos, which was once a sentence, and is now a noun, appears to be a case just of this sort, for one letter, which is the alpha, has been omitted, and the acute on the last syllable has been changed to a grave. HERMOGENES: What do you mean? SOCRATES: I mean to say that the word 'man' implies that other animals never examine, or consider, or look up at what they see, but that man not only sees (opope) but considers and looks up at that which he sees, and hence he alone of all animals is rightly anthropos, meaning anathron a opopen. HERMOGENES: May I ask you to examine another word about which I am curious? SOCRATES: Certainly. HERMOGENES: I will take that which appears to me to follow next in order. You know the distinction of soul and body? SOCRATES: Of course. HERMOGENES: Let us endeavour to analyze them like the previous words. SOCRATES: You want me first of all to examine the natural fitness of the word psuche (soul), and then of the word soma (body)? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: If I am to say what occurs to me at the moment, I should imagine that those who first used the name psuche meant to express that the soul when in the body is the source of life, and gives the power of breath and revival (anapsuchon), and when this reviving power fails then the body perishes and dies, and this, if I am not mistaken, they called psyche. But please stay a moment; I fancy that I can discover something which will be more acceptable to the disciples of Euthyphro, for I am afraid that they will scorn this explanation. What do you say to another? HERMOGENES: Let me hear. SOCRATES: What is that which holds and carries and gives life and motion to the entire nature of the body? What else but the soul? HERMOGENES: Just that. SOCRATES: And do you not believe with Anaxagoras, that mind or soul is the ordering and containing principle of all things? HERMOGENES: Yes; I do. SOCRATES: Then you may well call that power phuseche which carries and holds nature (e phusin okei, kai ekei), and this may be refined away into psuche. HERMOGENES: Certainly; and this derivation is, I think, more scientific than the other. SOCRATES: It is so; but I cannot help laughing, if I am to suppose that this was the true meaning of the name. HERMOGENES: But what shall we say of the next word? SOCRATES: You mean soma (the body). HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: That may be variously interpreted; and yet more variously if a little permutation is allowed. For some say that the body is the grave (sema) of the soul which may be thought to be buried in our present life; or again the index of the soul, because the soul gives indications to (semainei) the body; probably the Orphic poets were the inventors of the name, and they were under the impression that the soul is suffering the punishment of sin, and that the body is an enclosure or prison in which the soul is incarcerated, kept safe (soma, sozetai), as the name soma implies, until the penalty is paid; according to this view, not even a letter of the word need be changed. HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that we have said enough of this class of words. But have we any more explanations of the names of the Gods, like that which you were giving of Zeus? I should like to know whether any similar principle of correctness is to be applied to them. SOCRATES: Yes, indeed, Hermogenes; and there is one excellent principle which, as men of sense, we must acknowledge,--that of the Gods we know nothing, either of their natures or of the names which they give themselves; but we are sure that the names by which they call themselves, whatever they may be, are true. And this is the best of all principles; and the next best is to say, as in prayers, that we will call them by any sort or kind of names or patronymics which they like, because we do not know of any other. That also, I think, is a very good custom, and one which I should much wish to observe. Let us, then, if you please, in the first place announce to them that we are not enquiring about them; we do not presume that we are able to do so; but we are enquiring about the meaning of men in giving them these names,--in this there can be small blame. HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that you are quite right, and I would like to do as you say. SOCRATES: Shall we begin, then, with Hestia, according to custom? HERMOGENES: Yes, that will be very proper. SOCRATES: What may we suppose him to have meant who gave the name Hestia? HERMOGENES: That is another and certainly a most difficult question. SOCRATES: My dear Hermogenes, the first imposers of names must surely have been considerable persons; they were philosophers, and had a good deal to say. HERMOGENES: Well, and what of them? SOCRATES: They are the men to whom I should attribute the imposition of names. Even in foreign names, if you analyze them, a meaning is still discernible. For example, that which we term ousia is by some called esia, and by others again osia. Now that the essence of things should be called estia, which is akin to the first of these (esia = estia), is rational enough. And there is reason in the Athenians calling that estia which participates in ousia. For in ancient times we too seem to have said esia for ousia, and this you may note to have been the idea of those who appointed that sacrifices should be first offered to estia, which was natural enough if they meant that estia was the essence of things. Those again who read osia seem to have inclined to the opinion of Heracleitus, that all things flow and nothing stands; with them the pushing principle (othoun) is the cause and ruling power of all things, and is therefore rightly called osia. Enough of this, which is all that we who know nothing can affirm. Next in order after Hestia we ought to consider Rhea and Cronos, although the name of Cronos has been already discussed. But I dare say that I am talking great nonsense. HERMOGENES: Why, Socrates? SOCRATES: My good friend, I have discovered a hive of wisdom. HERMOGENES: Of what nature? SOCRATES: Well, rather ridiculous, and yet plausible. HERMOGENES: How plausible? SOCRATES: I fancy to myself Heracleitus repeating wise traditions of antiquity as old as the days of Cronos and Rhea, and of which Homer also spoke. HERMOGENES: How do you mean? SOCRATES: Heracleitus is supposed to say that all things are in motion and nothing at rest; he compares them to the stream of a river, and says that you cannot go into the same water twice. HERMOGENES: That is true. SOCRATES: Well, then, how can we avoid inferring that he who gave the names of Cronos and Rhea to the ancestors of the Gods, agreed pretty much in the doctrine of Heracleitus? Is the giving of the names of streams to both of them purely accidental? Compare the line in which Homer, and, as I believe, Hesiod also, tells of 'Ocean, the origin of Gods, and mother Tethys (Il.--the line is not found in the extant works of Hesiod.).' And again, Orpheus says, that 'The fair river of Ocean was the first to marry, and he espoused his sister Tethys, who was his mother's daughter.' You see that this is a remarkable coincidence, and all in the direction of Heracleitus. HERMOGENES: I think that there is something in what you say, Socrates; but I do not understand the meaning of the name Tethys. SOCRATES: Well, that is almost self-explained, being only the name of a spring, a little disguised; for that which is strained and filtered (diattomenon, ethoumenon) may be likened to a spring, and the name Tethys is made up of these two words. HERMOGENES: The idea is ingenious, Socrates. SOCRATES: To be sure. But what comes next?--of Zeus we have spoken. HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: Then let us next take his two brothers, Poseidon and Pluto, whether the latter is called by that or by his other name. HERMOGENES: By all means. SOCRATES: Poseidon is Posidesmos, the chain of the feet; the original inventor of the name had been stopped by the watery element in his walks, and not allowed to go on, and therefore he called the ruler of this element Poseidon; the epsilon was probably inserted as an ornament. Yet, perhaps, not so; but the name may have been originally written with a double lamda and not with a sigma, meaning that the God knew many things (Polla eidos). And perhaps also he being the shaker of the earth, has been named from shaking (seiein), and then pi and delta have been added. Pluto gives wealth (Ploutos), and his name means the giver of wealth, which comes out of the earth beneath. People in general appear to imagine that the term Hades is connected with the invisible (aeides) and so they are led by their fears to call the God Pluto instead. HERMOGENES: And what is the true derivation? SOCRATES: In spite of the mistakes which are made about the power of this deity, and the foolish fears which people have of him, such as the fear of always being with him after death, and of the soul denuded of the body going to him (compare Rep.), my belief is that all is quite consistent, and that the office and name of the God really correspond. HERMOGENES: Why, how is that? SOCRATES: I will tell you my own opinion; but first, I should like to ask you which chain does any animal feel to be the stronger? and which confines him more to the same spot,--desire or necessity? HERMOGENES: Desire, Socrates, is stronger far. SOCRATES: And do you not think that many a one would escape from Hades, if he did not bind those who depart to him by the strongest of chains? HERMOGENES: Assuredly they would. SOCRATES: And if by the greatest of chains, then by some desire, as I should certainly infer, and not by necessity? HERMOGENES: That is clear. SOCRATES: And there are many desires? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And therefore by the greatest desire, if the chain is to be the greatest? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And is any desire stronger than the thought that you will be made better by associating with another? HERMOGENES: Certainly not. SOCRATES: And is not that the reason, Hermogenes, why no one, who has been to him, is willing to come back to us? Even the Sirens, like all the rest of the world, have been laid under his spells. Such a charm, as I imagine, is the God able to infuse into his words. And, according to this view, he is the perfect and accomplished Sophist, and the great benefactor of the inhabitants of the other world; and even to us who are upon earth he sends from below exceeding blessings. For he has much more than he wants down there; wherefore he is called Pluto (or the rich). Note also, that he will have nothing to do with men while they are in the body, but only when the soul is liberated from the desires and evils of the body. Now there is a great deal of philosophy and reflection in that; for in their liberated state he can bind them with the desire of virtue, but while they are flustered and maddened by the body, not even father Cronos himself would suffice to keep them with him in his own far-famed chains. HERMOGENES: There is a deal of truth in what you say. SOCRATES: Yes, Hermogenes, and the legislator called him Hades, not from the unseen (aeides)--far otherwise, but from his knowledge (eidenai) of all noble things. HERMOGENES: Very good; and what do we say of Demeter, and Here, and Apollo, and Athene, and Hephaestus, and Ares, and the other deities? SOCRATES: Demeter is e didousa meter, who gives food like a mother; Here is the lovely one (erate)--for Zeus, according to tradition, loved and married her; possibly also the name may have been given when the legislator was thinking of the heavens, and may be only a disguise of the air (aer), putting the end in the place of the beginning. You will recognize the truth of this if you repeat the letters of Here several times over. People dread the name of Pherephatta as they dread the name of Apollo,--and with as little reason; the fear, if I am not mistaken, only arises from their ignorance of the nature of names. But they go changing the name into Phersephone, and they are terrified at this; whereas the new name means only that the Goddess is wise (sophe); for seeing that all things in the world are in motion (pheromenon), that principle which embraces and touches and is able to follow them, is wisdom. And therefore the Goddess may be truly called Pherepaphe (Pherepapha), or some name like it, because she touches that which is in motion (tou pheromenon ephaptomene), herein showing her wisdom. And Hades, who is wise, consorts with her, because she is wise. They alter her name into Pherephatta now-a-days, because the present generation care for euphony more than truth. There is the other name, Apollo, which, as I was saying, is generally supposed to have some terrible signification. Have you remarked this fact? HERMOGENES: To be sure I have, and what you say is true. SOCRATES: But the name, in my opinion, is really most expressive of the power of the God. HERMOGENES: How so? SOCRATES: I will endeavour to explain, for I do not believe that any single name could have been better adapted to express the attributes of the God, embracing and in a manner signifying all four of them,--music, and prophecy, and medicine, and archery. HERMOGENES: That must be a strange name, and I should like to hear the explanation. SOCRATES: Say rather an harmonious name, as beseems the God of Harmony. In the first place, the purgations and purifications which doctors and diviners use, and their fumigations with drugs magical or medicinal, as well as their washings and lustral sprinklings, have all one and the same object, which is to make a man pure both in body and soul. HERMOGENES: Very true. SOCRATES: And is not Apollo the purifier, and the washer, and the absolver from all impurities? HERMOGENES: Very true. SOCRATES: Then in reference to his ablutions and absolutions, as being the physician who orders them, he may be rightly called Apolouon (purifier); or in respect of his powers of divination, and his truth and sincerity, which is the same as truth, he may be most fitly called Aplos, from aplous (sincere), as in the Thessalian dialect, for all the Thessalians call him Aplos; also he is aei Ballon (always shooting), because he is a master archer who never misses; or again, the name may refer to his musical attributes, and then, as in akolouthos, and akoitis, and in many other words the alpha is supposed to mean 'together,' so the meaning of the name Apollo will be 'moving together,' whether in the poles of heaven as they are called, or in the harmony of song, which is termed concord, because he moves all together by an harmonious power, as astronomers and musicians ingeniously declare. And he is the God who presides over harmony, and makes all things move together, both among Gods and among men. And as in the words akolouthos and akoitis the alpha is substituted for an omicron, so the name Apollon is equivalent to omopolon; only the second lambda is added in order to avoid the ill-omened sound of destruction (apolon). Now the suspicion of this destructive power still haunts the minds of some who do not consider the true value of the name, which, as I was saying just now, has reference to all the powers of the God, who is the single one, the everdarting, the purifier, the mover together (aplous, aei Ballon, apolouon, omopolon). The name of the Muses and of music would seem to be derived from their making philosophical enquiries (mosthai); and Leto is called by this name, because she is such a gentle Goddess, and so willing (ethelemon) to grant our requests; or her name may be Letho, as she is often called by strangers--they seem to imply by it her amiability, and her smooth and easy-going way of behaving. Artemis is named from her healthy (artemes), well-ordered nature, and because of her love of virginity, perhaps because she is a proficient in virtue (arete), and perhaps also as hating intercourse of the sexes (ton aroton misesasa). He who gave the Goddess her name may have had any or all of these reasons. HERMOGENES: What is the meaning of Dionysus and Aphrodite? SOCRATES: Son of Hipponicus, you ask a solemn question; there is a serious and also a facetious explanation of both these names; the serious explanation is not to be had from me, but there is no objection to your hearing the facetious one; for the Gods too love a joke. Dionusos is simply didous oinon (giver of wine), Didoinusos, as he might be called in fun,--and oinos is properly oionous, because wine makes those who drink, think (oiesthai) that they have a mind (noun) when they have none. The derivation of Aphrodite, born of the foam (aphros), may be fairly accepted on the authority of Hesiod. HERMOGENES: Still there remains Athene, whom you, Socrates, as an Athenian, will surely not forget; there are also Hephaestus and Ares. SOCRATES: I am not likely to forget them. HERMOGENES: No, indeed. SOCRATES: There is no difficulty in explaining the other appellation of Athene. HERMOGENES: What other appellation? SOCRATES: We call her Pallas. HERMOGENES: To be sure. SOCRATES: And we cannot be wrong in supposing that this is derived from armed dances. For the elevation of oneself or anything else above the earth, or by the use of the hands, we call shaking (pallein), or dancing. HERMOGENES: That is quite true. SOCRATES: Then that is the explanation of the name Pallas? HERMOGENES: Yes; but what do you say of the other name? SOCRATES: Athene? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: That is a graver matter, and there, my friend, the modern interpreters of Homer may, I think, assist in explaining the view of the ancients. For most of these in their explanations of the poet, assert that he meant by Athene 'mind' (nous) and 'intelligence' (dianoia), and the maker of names appears to have had a singular notion about her; and indeed calls her by a still higher title, 'divine intelligence' (Thou noesis), as though he would say: This is she who has the mind of God (Theonoa);--using alpha as a dialectical variety for eta, and taking away iota and sigma (There seems to be some error in the MSS. The meaning is that the word theonoa = theounoa is a curtailed form of theou noesis, but the omitted letters do not agree.). Perhaps, however, the name Theonoe may mean 'she who knows divine things' (Theia noousa) better than others. Nor shall we be far wrong in supposing that the author of it wished to identify this Goddess with moral intelligence (en ethei noesin), and therefore gave her the name ethonoe; which, however, either he or his successors have altered into what they thought a nicer form, and called her Athene. HERMOGENES: But what do you say of Hephaestus? SOCRATES: Speak you of the princely lord of light (Phaeos istora)? HERMOGENES: Surely. SOCRATES: Ephaistos is Phaistos, and has added the eta by attraction; that is obvious to anybody. HERMOGENES: That is very probable, until some more probable notion gets into your head. SOCRATES: To prevent that, you had better ask what is the derivation of Ares. HERMOGENES: What is Ares? SOCRATES: Ares may be called, if you will, from his manhood (arren) and manliness, or if you please, from his hard and unchangeable nature, which is the meaning of arratos: the latter is a derivation in every way appropriate to the God of war. HERMOGENES: Very true. SOCRATES: And now, by the Gods, let us have no more of the Gods, for I am afraid of them; ask about anything but them, and thou shalt see how the steeds of Euthyphro can prance. HERMOGENES: Only one more God! I should like to know about Hermes, of whom I am said not to be a true son. Let us make him out, and then I shall know whether there is any meaning in what Cratylus says. SOCRATES: I should imagine that the name Hermes has to do with speech, and signifies that he is the interpreter (ermeneus), or messenger, or thief, or liar, or bargainer; all that sort of thing has a great deal to do with language; as I was telling you, the word eirein is expressive of the use of speech, and there is an often-recurring Homeric word emesato, which means 'he contrived'--out of these two words, eirein and mesasthai, the legislator formed the name of the God who invented language and speech; and we may imagine him dictating to us the use of this name: 'O my friends,' says he to us, 'seeing that he is the contriver of tales or speeches, you may rightly call him Eirhemes.' And this has been improved by us, as we think, into Hermes. Iris also appears to have been called from the verb 'to tell' (eirein), because she was a messenger. HERMOGENES: Then I am very sure that Cratylus was quite right in saying that I was no true son of Hermes (Ermogenes), for I am not a good hand at speeches. SOCRATES: There is also reason, my friend, in Pan being the double-formed son of Hermes. HERMOGENES: How do you make that out? SOCRATES: You are aware that speech signifies all things (pan), and is always turning them round and round, and has two forms, true and false? HERMOGENES: Certainly. SOCRATES: Is not the truth that is in him the smooth or sacred form which dwells above among the Gods, whereas falsehood dwells among men below, and is rough like the goat of tragedy; for tales and falsehoods have generally to do with the tragic or goatish life, and tragedy is the place of them? HERMOGENES: Very true. SOCRATES: Then surely Pan, who is the declarer of all things (pan) and the perpetual mover (aei polon) of all things, is rightly called aipolos (goat-herd), he being the two-formed son of Hermes, smooth in his upper part, and rough and goatlike in his lower regions. And, as the son of Hermes, he is speech or the brother of speech, and that brother should be like brother is no marvel. But, as I was saying, my dear Hermogenes, let us get away from the Gods. HERMOGENES: From these sort of Gods, by all means, Socrates. But why should we not discuss another kind of Gods--the sun, moon, stars, earth, aether, air, fire, water, the seasons, and the year? SOCRATES: You impose a great many tasks upon me. Still, if you wish, I will not refuse. HERMOGENES: You will oblige me. SOCRATES: How would you have me begin? Shall I take first of all him whom you mentioned first--the sun? HERMOGENES: Very good. SOCRATES: The origin of the sun will probably be clearer in the Doric form, for the Dorians call him alios, and this name is given to him because when he rises he gathers (alizoi) men together or because he is always rolling in his course (aei eilein ion) about the earth; or from aiolein, of which the meaning is the same as poikillein (to variegate), because he variegates the productions of the earth. HERMOGENES: But what is selene (the moon)? SOCRATES: That name is rather unfortunate for Anaxagoras. HERMOGENES: How so? SOCRATES: The word seems to forestall his recent discovery, that the moon receives her light from the sun. HERMOGENES: Why do you say so? SOCRATES: The two words selas (brightness) and phos (light) have much the same meaning? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: This light about the moon is always new (neon) and always old (enon), if the disciples of Anaxagoras say truly. For the sun in his revolution always adds new light, and there is the old light of the previous month. HERMOGENES: Very true. SOCRATES: The moon is not unfrequently called selanaia. HERMOGENES: True. SOCRATES: And as she has a light which is always old and always new (enon neon aei) she may very properly have the name selaenoneoaeia; and this when hammered into shape becomes selanaia. HERMOGENES: A real dithyrambic sort of name that, Socrates. But what do you say of the month and the stars? SOCRATES: Meis (month) is called from meiousthai (to lessen), because suffering diminution; the name of astra (stars) seems to be derived from astrape, which is an improvement on anastrope, signifying the upsetting of the eyes (anastrephein opa). HERMOGENES: What do you say of pur (fire) and udor (water)? SOCRATES: I am at a loss how to explain pur; either the muse of Euthyphro has deserted me, or there is some very great difficulty in the word. Please, however, to note the contrivance which I adopt whenever I am in a difficulty of this sort. HERMOGENES: What is it? SOCRATES: I will tell you; but I should like to know first whether you can tell me what is the meaning of the pur? HERMOGENES: Indeed I cannot. SOCRATES: Shall I tell you what I suspect to be the true explanation of this and several other words?--My belief is that they are of foreign origin. For the Hellenes, especially those who were under the dominion of the barbarians, often borrowed from them. HERMOGENES: What is the inference? SOCRATES: Why, you know that any one who seeks to demonstrate the fitness of these names according to the Hellenic language, and not according to the language from which the words are derived, is rather likely to be at fault. HERMOGENES: Yes, certainly. SOCRATES: Well then, consider whether this pur is not foreign; for the word is not easily brought into relation with the Hellenic tongue, and the Phrygians may be observed to have the same word slightly changed, just as they have udor (water) and kunes (dogs), and many other words. HERMOGENES: That is true. SOCRATES: Any violent interpretations of the words should be avoided; for something to say about them may easily be found. And thus I get rid of pur and udor. Aer (air), Hermogenes, may be explained as the element which raises (airei) things from the earth, or as ever flowing (aei rei), or because the flux of the air is wind, and the poets call the winds 'air-blasts,' (aetai); he who uses the term may mean, so to speak, air-flux (aetorroun), in the sense of wind-flux (pneumatorroun); and because this moving wind may be expressed by either term he employs the word air (aer = aetes rheo). Aither (aether) I should interpret as aeitheer; this may be correctly said, because this element is always running in a flux about the air (aei thei peri tou aera reon). The meaning of the word ge (earth) comes out better when in the form of gaia, for the earth may be truly called 'mother' (gaia, genneteira), as in the language of Homer (Od.) gegaasi means gegennesthai. HERMOGENES: Good. SOCRATES: What shall we take next? HERMOGENES: There are orai (the seasons), and the two names of the year, eniautos and etos. SOCRATES: The orai should be spelt in the old Attic way, if you desire to know the probable truth about them; they are rightly called the orai because they divide (orizousin) the summers and winters and winds and the fruits of the earth. The words eniautos and etos appear to be the same,--'that which brings to light the plants and growths of the earth in their turn, and passes them in review within itself (en eauto exetazei)': this is broken up into two words, eniautos from en eauto, and etos from etazei, just as the original name of Zeus was divided into Zena and Dia; and the whole proposition means that his power of reviewing from within is one, but has two names, two words etos and eniautos being thus formed out of a single proposition. HERMOGENES: Indeed, Socrates, you make surprising progress. SOCRATES: I am run away with. HERMOGENES: Very true. SOCRATES: But am not yet at my utmost speed. HERMOGENES: I should like very much to know, in the next place, how you would explain the virtues. What principle of correctness is there in those charming words--wisdom, understanding, justice, and the rest of them? SOCRATES: That is a tremendous class of names which you are disinterring; still, as I have put on the lion's skin, I must not be faint of heart; and I suppose that I must consider the meaning of wisdom (phronesis) and understanding (sunesis), and judgment (gnome), and knowledge (episteme), and all those other charming words, as you call them? HERMOGENES: Surely, we must not leave off until we find out their meaning. SOCRATES: By the dog of Egypt I have a not bad notion which came into my head only this moment: I believe that the primeval givers of names were undoubtedly like too many of our modern philosophers, who, in their search after the nature of things, are always getting dizzy from constantly going round and round, and then they imagine that the world is going round and round and moving in all directions; and this appearance, which arises out of their own internal condition, they suppose to be a reality of nature; they think that there is nothing stable or permanent, but only flux and motion, and that the world is always full of every sort of motion and change. The consideration of the names which I mentioned has led me into making this reflection. HERMOGENES: How is that, Socrates? SOCRATES: Perhaps you did not observe that in the names which have been just cited, the motion or flux or generation of things is most surely indicated. HERMOGENES: No, indeed, I never thought of it. SOCRATES: Take the first of those which you mentioned; clearly that is a name indicative of motion. HERMOGENES: What was the name? SOCRATES: Phronesis (wisdom), which may signify phoras kai rhou noesis (perception of motion and flux), or perhaps phoras onesis (the blessing of motion), but is at any rate connected with pheresthai (motion); gnome (judgment), again, certainly implies the ponderation or consideration (nomesis) of generation, for to ponder is the same as to consider; or, if you would rather, here is noesis, the very word just now mentioned, which is neou esis (the desire of the new); the word neos implies that the world is always in process of creation. The giver of the name wanted to express this longing of the soul, for the original name was neoesis, and not noesis; but eta took the place of a double epsilon. The word sophrosune is the salvation (soteria) of that wisdom (phronesis) which we were just now considering. Epioteme (knowledge) is akin to this, and indicates that the soul which is good for anything follows (epetai) the motion of things, neither anticipating them nor falling behind them; wherefore the word should rather be read as epistemene, inserting epsilon nu. Sunesis (understanding) may be regarded in like manner as a kind of conclusion; the word is derived from sunienai (to go along with), and, like epistasthai (to know), implies the progression of the soul in company with the nature of things. Sophia (wisdom) is very dark, and appears not to be of native growth; the meaning is, touching the motion or stream of things. You must remember that the poets, when they speak of the commencement of any rapid motion, often use the word esuthe (he rushed); and there was a famous Lacedaemonian who was named Sous (Rush), for by this word the Lacedaemonians signify rapid motion, and the touching (epaphe) of motion is expressed by sophia, for all things are supposed to be in motion. Good (agathon) is the name which is given to the admirable (agasto) in nature; for, although all things move, still there are degrees of motion; some are swifter, some slower; but there are some things which are admirable for their swiftness, and this admirable part of nature is called agathon. Dikaiosune (justice) is clearly dikaiou sunesis (understanding of the just); but the actual word dikaion is more difficult: men are only agreed to a certain extent about justice, and then they begin to disagree. For those who suppose all things to be in motion conceive the greater part of nature to be a mere receptacle; and they say that there is a penetrating power which passes through all this, and is the instrument of creation in all, and is the subtlest and swiftest element; for if it were not the subtlest, and a power which none can keep out, and also the swiftest, passing by other things as if they were standing still, it could not penetrate through the moving universe. And this element, which superintends all things and pierces (diaion) all, is rightly called dikaion; the letter k is only added for the sake of euphony. Thus far, as I was saying, there is a general agreement about the nature of justice; but I, Hermogenes, being an enthusiastic disciple, have been told in a mystery that the justice of which I am speaking is also the cause of the world: now a cause is that because of which anything is created; and some one comes and whispers in my ear that justice is rightly so called because partaking of the nature of the cause, and I begin, after hearing what he has said, to interrogate him gently: 'Well, my excellent friend,' say I, 'but if all this be true, I still want to know what is justice.' Thereupon they think that I ask tiresome questions, and am leaping over the barriers, and have been already sufficiently answered, and they try to satisfy me with one derivation after another, and at length they quarrel. For one of them says that justice is the sun, and that he only is the piercing (diaionta) and burning (kaonta) element which is the guardian of nature. And when I joyfully repeat this beautiful notion, I am answered by the satirical remark, 'What, is there no justice in the world when the sun is down?' And when I earnestly beg my questioner to tell me his own honest opinion, he says, 'Fire in the abstract'; but this is not very intelligible. Another says, 'No, not fire in the abstract, but the abstraction of heat in the fire.' Another man professes to laugh at all this, and says, as Anaxagoras says, that justice is mind, for mind, as they say, has absolute power, and mixes with nothing, and orders all things, and passes through all things. At last, my friend, I find myself in far greater perplexity about the nature of justice than I was before I began to learn. But still I am of opinion that the name, which has led me into this digression, was given to justice for the reasons which I have mentioned. HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that you are not improvising now; you must have heard this from some one else. SOCRATES: And not the rest? HERMOGENES: Hardly. SOCRATES: Well, then, let me go on in the hope of making you believe in the originality of the rest. What remains after justice? I do not think that we have as yet discussed courage (andreia),--injustice (adikia), which is obviously nothing more than a hindrance to the penetrating principle (diaiontos), need not be considered. Well, then, the name of andreia seems to imply a battle;--this battle is in the world of existence, and according to the doctrine of flux is only the counterflux (enantia rhon): if you extract the delta from andreia, the name at once signifies the thing, and you may clearly understand that andreia is not the stream opposed to every stream, but only to that which is contrary to justice, for otherwise courage would not have been praised. The words arren (male) and aner (man) also contain a similar allusion to the same principle of the upward flux (te ano rhon). Gune (woman) I suspect to be the same word as goun (birth): thelu (female) appears to be partly derived from thele (the teat), because the teat is like rain, and makes things flourish (tethelenai). HERMOGENES: That is surely probable. SOCRATES: Yes; and the very word thallein (to flourish) seems to figure the growth of youth, which is swift and sudden ever. And this is expressed by the legislator in the name, which is a compound of thein (running), and allesthai (leaping). Pray observe how I gallop away when I get on smooth ground. There are a good many names generally thought to be of importance, which have still to be explained. HERMOGENES: True. SOCRATES: There is the meaning of the word techne (art), for example. HERMOGENES: Very true. SOCRATES: That may be identified with echonoe, and expresses the possession of mind: you have only to take away the tau and insert two omichrons, one between the chi and nu, and another between the nu and eta. HERMOGENES: That is a very shabby etymology. SOCRATES: Yes, my dear friend; but then you know that the original names have been long ago buried and disguised by people sticking on and stripping off letters for the sake of euphony, and twisting and bedizening them in all sorts of ways: and time too may have had a share in the change. Take, for example, the word katoptron; why is the letter rho inserted? This must surely be the addition of some one who cares nothing about the truth, but thinks only of putting the mouth into shape. And the additions are often such that at last no human being can possibly make out the original meaning of the word. Another example is the word sphigx, sphiggos, which ought properly to be phigx, phiggos, and there are other examples. HERMOGENES: That is quite true, Socrates. SOCRATES: And yet, if you are permitted to put in and pull out any letters which you please, names will be too easily made, and any name may be adapted to any object. HERMOGENES: True. SOCRATES: Yes, that is true. And therefore a wise dictator, like yourself, should observe the laws of moderation and probability. HERMOGENES: Such is my desire. SOCRATES: And mine, too, Hermogenes. But do not be too much of a precisian, or 'you will unnerve me of my strength (Iliad.).' When you have allowed me to add mechane (contrivance) to techne (art) I shall be at the top of my bent, for I conceive mechane to be a sign of great accomplishment--anein; for mekos has the meaning of greatness, and these two, mekos and anein, make up the word mechane. But, as I was saying, being now at the top of my bent, I should like to consider the meaning of the two words arete (virtue) and kakia (vice); arete I do not as yet understand, but kakia is transparent, and agrees with the principles which preceded, for all things being in a flux (ionton), kakia is kakos ion (going badly); and this evil motion when existing in the soul has the general name of kakia, or vice, specially appropriated to it. The meaning of kakos ienai may be further illustrated by the use of deilia (cowardice), which ought to have come after andreia, but was forgotten, and, as I fear, is not the only word which has been passed over. Deilia signifies that the soul is bound with a strong chain (desmos), for lian means strength, and therefore deilia expresses the greatest and strongest bond of the soul; and aporia (difficulty) is an evil of the same nature (from a (alpha) not, and poreuesthai to go), like anything else which is an impediment to motion and movement. Then the word kakia appears to mean kakos ienai, or going badly, or limping and halting; of which the consequence is, that the soul becomes filled with vice. And if kakia is the name of this sort of thing, arete will be the opposite of it, signifying in the first place ease of motion, then that the stream of the good soul is unimpeded, and has therefore the attribute of ever flowing without let or hindrance, and is therefore called arete, or, more correctly, aeireite (ever-flowing), and may perhaps have had another form, airete (eligible), indicating that nothing is more eligible than virtue, and this has been hammered into arete. I daresay that you will deem this to be another invention of mine, but I think that if the previous word kakia was right, then arete is also right. HERMOGENES: But what is the meaning of kakon, which has played so great a part in your previous discourse? SOCRATES: That is a very singular word about which I can hardly form an opinion, and therefore I must have recourse to my ingenious device. HERMOGENES: What device? SOCRATES: The device of a foreign origin, which I shall give to this word also. HERMOGENES: Very likely you are right; but suppose that we leave these words and endeavour to see the rationale of kalon and aischron. SOCRATES: The meaning of aischron is evident, being only aei ischon roes (always preventing from flowing), and this is in accordance with our former derivations. For the name-giver was a great enemy to stagnation of all sorts, and hence he gave the name aeischoroun to that which hindered the flux (aei ischon roun), and that is now beaten together into aischron. HERMOGENES: But what do you say of kalon? SOCRATES: That is more obscure; yet the form is only due to the quantity, and has been changed by altering omicron upsilon into omicron. HERMOGENES: What do you mean? SOCRATES: This name appears to denote mind. HERMOGENES: How so? SOCRATES: Let me ask you what is the cause why anything has a name; is not the principle which imposes the name the cause? HERMOGENES: Certainly. SOCRATES: And must not this be the mind of Gods, or of men, or of both? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: Is not mind that which called (kalesan) things by their names, and is not mind the beautiful (kalon)? HERMOGENES: That is evident. SOCRATES: And are not the works of intelligence and mind worthy of praise, and are not other works worthy of blame? HERMOGENES: Certainly. SOCRATES: Physic does the work of a physician, and carpentering does the works of a carpenter? HERMOGENES: Exactly. SOCRATES: And the principle of beauty does the works of beauty? HERMOGENES: Of course. SOCRATES: And that principle we affirm to be mind? HERMOGENES: Very true. SOCRATES: Then mind is rightly called beauty because she does the works which we recognize and speak of as the beautiful? HERMOGENES: That is evident. SOCRATES: What more names remain to us? HERMOGENES: There are the words which are connected with agathon and kalon, such as sumpheron and lusiteloun, ophelimon, kerdaleon, and their opposites. SOCRATES: The meaning of sumpheron (expedient) I think that you may discover for yourself by the light of the previous examples,--for it is a sister word to episteme, meaning just the motion (pora) of the soul accompanying the world, and things which are done upon this principle are called sumphora or sumpheronta, because they are carried round with the world. HERMOGENES: That is probable. SOCRATES: Again, cherdaleon (gainful) is called from cherdos (gain), but you must alter the delta into nu if you want to get at the meaning; for this word also signifies good, but in another way; he who gave the name intended to express the power of admixture (kerannumenon) and universal penetration in the good; in forming the word, however, he inserted a delta instead of a nu, and so made kerdos. HERMOGENES: Well, but what is lusiteloun (profitable)? SOCRATES: I suppose, Hermogenes, that people do not mean by the profitable the gainful or that which pays (luei) the retailer, but they use the word in the sense of swift. You regard the profitable (lusiteloun), as that which being the swiftest thing in existence, allows of no stay in things and no pause or end of motion, but always, if there begins to be any end, lets things go again (luei), and makes motion immortal and unceasing: and in this point of view, as appears to me, the good is happily denominated lusiteloun--being that which looses (luon) the end (telos) of motion. Ophelimon (the advantageous) is derived from ophellein, meaning that which creates and increases; this latter is a common Homeric word, and has a foreign character. HERMOGENES: And what do you say of their opposites? SOCRATES: Of such as are mere negatives I hardly think that I need speak. HERMOGENES: Which are they? SOCRATES: The words axumphoron (inexpedient), anopheles (unprofitable), alusiteles (unadvantageous), akerdes (ungainful). HERMOGENES: True. SOCRATES: I would rather take the words blaberon (harmful), zemiodes (hurtful). HERMOGENES: Good. SOCRATES: The word blaberon is that which is said to hinder or harm (blaptein) the stream (roun); blapton is boulomenon aptein (seeking to hold or bind); for aptein is the same as dein, and dein is always a term of censure; boulomenon aptein roun (wanting to bind the stream) would properly be boulapteroun, and this, as I imagine, is improved into blaberon. HERMOGENES: You bring out curious results, Socrates, in the use of names; and when I hear the word boulapteroun I cannot help imagining that you are making your mouth into a flute, and puffing away at some prelude to Athene. SOCRATES: That is the fault of the makers of the name, Hermogenes; not mine. HERMOGENES: Very true; but what is the derivation of zemiodes? SOCRATES: What is the meaning of zemiodes?--let me remark, Hermogenes, how right I was in saying that great changes are made in the meaning of words by putting in and pulling out letters; even a very slight permutation will sometimes give an entirely opposite sense; I may instance the word deon, which occurs to me at the moment, and reminds me of what I was going to say to you, that the fine fashionable language of modern times has twisted and disguised and entirely altered the original meaning both of deon, and also of zemiodes, which in the old language is clearly indicated. HERMOGENES: What do you mean? SOCRATES: I will try to explain. You are aware that our forefathers loved the sounds iota and delta, especially the women, who are most conservative of the ancient language, but now they change iota into eta or epsilon, and delta into zeta; this is supposed to increase the grandeur of the sound. HERMOGENES: How do you mean? SOCRATES: For example, in very ancient times they called the day either imera or emera (short e), which is called by us emera (long e). HERMOGENES: That is true. SOCRATES: Do you observe that only the ancient form shows the intention of the giver of the name? of which the reason is, that men long for (imeirousi) and love the light which comes after the darkness, and is therefore called imera, from imeros, desire. HERMOGENES: Clearly. SOCRATES: But now the name is so travestied that you cannot tell the meaning, although there are some who imagine the day to be called emera because it makes things gentle (emera different accents). HERMOGENES: Such is my view. SOCRATES: And do you know that the ancients said duogon and not zugon? HERMOGENES: They did so. SOCRATES: And zugon (yoke) has no meaning,--it ought to be duogon, which word expresses the binding of two together (duein agoge) for the purpose of drawing;--this has been changed into zugon, and there are many other examples of similar changes. HERMOGENES: There are. SOCRATES: Proceeding in the same train of thought I may remark that the word deon (obligation) has a meaning which is the opposite of all the other appellations of good; for deon is here a species of good, and is, nevertheless, the chain (desmos) or hinderer of motion, and therefore own brother of blaberon. HERMOGENES: Yes, Socrates; that is quite plain. SOCRATES: Not if you restore the ancient form, which is more likely to be the correct one, and read dion instead of deon; if you convert the epsilon into an iota after the old fashion, this word will then agree with other words meaning good; for dion, not deon, signifies the good, and is a term of praise; and the author of names has not contradicted himself, but in all these various appellations, deon (obligatory), ophelimon (advantageous), lusiteloun (profitable), kerdaleon (gainful), agathon (good), sumpheron (expedient), euporon (plenteous), the same conception is implied of the ordering or all-pervading principle which is praised, and the restraining and binding principle which is censured. And this is further illustrated by the word zemiodes (hurtful), which if the zeta is only changed into delta as in the ancient language, becomes demiodes; and this name, as you will perceive, is given to that which binds motion (dounti ion). HERMOGENES: What do you say of edone (pleasure), lupe (pain), epithumia (desire), and the like, Socrates? SOCRATES: I do not think, Hermogenes, that there is any great difficulty about them--edone is e (eta) onesis, the action which tends to advantage; and the original form may be supposed to have been eone, but this has been altered by the insertion of the delta. Lupe appears to be derived from the relaxation (luein) which the body feels when in sorrow; ania (trouble) is the hindrance of motion (alpha and ienai); algedon (distress), if I am not mistaken, is a foreign word, which is derived from aleinos (grievous); odune (grief) is called from the putting on (endusis) sorrow; in achthedon (vexation) 'the word too labours,' as any one may see; chara (joy) is the very expression of the fluency and diffusion of the soul (cheo); terpsis (delight) is so called from the pleasure creeping (erpon) through the soul, which may be likened to a breath (pnoe) and is properly erpnoun, but has been altered by time into terpnon; eupherosune (cheerfulness) and epithumia explain themselves; the former, which ought to be eupherosune and has been changed euphrosune, is named, as every one may see, from the soul moving (pheresthai) in harmony with nature; epithumia is really e epi ton thumon iousa dunamis, the power which enters into the soul; thumos (passion) is called from the rushing (thuseos) and boiling of the soul; imeros (desire) denotes the stream (rous) which most draws the soul dia ten esin tes roes--because flowing with desire (iemenos), and expresses a longing after things and violent attraction of the soul to them, and is termed imeros from possessing this power; pothos (longing) is expressive of the desire of that which is not present but absent, and in another place (pou); this is the reason why the name pothos is applied to things absent, as imeros is to things present; eros (love) is so called because flowing in (esron) from without; the stream is not inherent, but is an influence introduced through the eyes, and from flowing in was called esros (influx) in the old time when they used omicron for omega, and is called eros, now that omega is substituted for omicron. But why do you not give me another word? HERMOGENES: What do you think of doxa (opinion), and that class of words? SOCRATES: Doxa is either derived from dioxis (pursuit), and expresses the march of the soul in the pursuit of knowledge, or from the shooting of a bow (toxon); the latter is more likely, and is confirmed by oiesis (thinking), which is only oisis (moving), and implies the movement of the soul to the essential nature of each thing--just as boule (counsel) has to do with shooting (bole); and boulesthai (to wish) combines the notion of aiming and deliberating--all these words seem to follow doxa, and all involve the idea of shooting, just as aboulia, absence of counsel, on the other hand, is a mishap, or missing, or mistaking of the mark, or aim, or proposal, or object. HERMOGENES: You are quickening your pace now, Socrates. SOCRATES: Why yes, the end I now dedicate to God, not, however, until I have explained anagke (necessity), which ought to come next, and ekousion (the voluntary). Ekousion is certainly the yielding (eikon) and unresisting--the notion implied is yielding and not opposing, yielding, as I was just now saying, to that motion which is in accordance with our will; but the necessary and resistant being contrary to our will, implies error and ignorance; the idea is taken from walking through a ravine which is impassable, and rugged, and overgrown, and impedes motion--and this is the derivation of the word anagkaion (necessary) an agke ion, going through a ravine. But while my strength lasts let us persevere, and I hope that you will persevere with your questions. HERMOGENES: Well, then, let me ask about the greatest and noblest, such as aletheia (truth) and pseudos (falsehood) and on (being), not forgetting to enquire why the word onoma (name), which is the theme of our discussion, has this name of onoma. SOCRATES: You know the word maiesthai (to seek)? HERMOGENES: Yes;--meaning the same as zetein (to enquire). SOCRATES: The word onoma seems to be a compressed sentence, signifying on ou zetema (being for which there is a search); as is still more obvious in onomaston (notable), which states in so many words that real existence is that for which there is a seeking (on ou masma); aletheia is also an agglomeration of theia ale (divine wandering), implying the divine motion of existence; pseudos (falsehood) is the opposite of motion; here is another ill name given by the legislator to stagnation and forced inaction, which he compares to sleep (eudein); but the original meaning of the word is disguised by the addition of psi; on and ousia are ion with an iota broken off; this agrees with the true principle, for being (on) is also moving (ion), and the same may be said of not being, which is likewise called not going (oukion or ouki on = ouk ion). HERMOGENES: You have hammered away at them manfully; but suppose that some one were to say to you, what is the word ion, and what are reon and doun?--show me their fitness. SOCRATES: You mean to say, how should I answer him? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: One way of giving the appearance of an answer has been already suggested. HERMOGENES: What way? SOCRATES: To say that names which we do not understand are of foreign origin; and this is very likely the right answer, and something of this kind may be true of them; but also the original forms of words may have been lost in the lapse of ages; names have been so twisted in all manner of ways, that I should not be surprised if the old language when compared with that now in use would appear to us to be a barbarous tongue. HERMOGENES: Very likely. SOCRATES: Yes, very likely. But still the enquiry demands our earnest attention and we must not flinch. For we should remember, that if a person go on analysing names into words, and enquiring also into the elements out of which the words are formed, and keeps on always repeating this process, he who has to answer him must at last give up the enquiry in despair. HERMOGENES: Very true. SOCRATES: And at what point ought he to lose heart and give up the enquiry? Must he not stop when he comes to the names which are the elements of all other names and sentences; for these cannot be supposed to be made up of other names? The word agathon (good), for example, is, as we were saying, a compound of agastos (admirable) and thoos (swift). And probably thoos is made up of other elements, and these again of others. But if we take a word which is incapable of further resolution, then we shall be right in saying that we have at last reached a primary element, which need not be resolved any further. HERMOGENES: I believe you to be in the right. SOCRATES: And suppose the names about which you are now asking should turn out to be primary elements, must not their truth or law be examined according to some new method? HERMOGENES: Very likely. SOCRATES: Quite so, Hermogenes; all that has preceded would lead to this conclusion. And if, as I think, the conclusion is true, then I shall again say to you, come and help me, that I may not fall into some absurdity in stating the principle of primary names. HERMOGENES: Let me hear, and I will do my best to assist you. SOCRATES: I think that you will acknowledge with me, that one principle is applicable to all names, primary as well as secondary--when they are regarded simply as names, there is no difference in them. HERMOGENES: Certainly not. SOCRATES: All the names that we have been explaining were intended to indicate the nature of things. HERMOGENES: Of course. SOCRATES: And that this is true of the primary quite as much as of the secondary names, is implied in their being names. HERMOGENES: Surely. SOCRATES: But the secondary, as I conceive, derive their significance from the primary. HERMOGENES: That is evident. SOCRATES: Very good; but then how do the primary names which precede analysis show the natures of things, as far as they can be shown; which they must do, if they are to be real names? And here I will ask you a question: Suppose that we had no voice or tongue, and wanted to communicate with one another, should we not, like the deaf and dumb, make signs with the hands and head and the rest of the body? HERMOGENES: There would be no choice, Socrates. SOCRATES: We should imitate the nature of the thing; the elevation of our hands to heaven would mean lightness and upwardness; heaviness and downwardness would be expressed by letting them drop to the ground; if we were describing the running of a horse, or any other animal, we should make our bodies and their gestures as like as we could to them. HERMOGENES: I do not see that we could do anything else. SOCRATES: We could not; for by bodily imitation only can the body ever express anything. HERMOGENES: Very true. SOCRATES: And when we want to express ourselves, either with the voice, or tongue, or mouth, the expression is simply their imitation of that which we want to express. HERMOGENES: It must be so, I think. SOCRATES: Then a name is a vocal imitation of that which the vocal imitator names or imitates? HERMOGENES: I think so. SOCRATES: Nay, my friend, I am disposed to think that we have not reached the truth as yet. HERMOGENES: Why not? SOCRATES: Because if we have we shall be obliged to admit that the people who imitate sheep, or cocks, or other animals, name that which they imitate. HERMOGENES: Quite true. SOCRATES: Then could I have been right in what I was saying? HERMOGENES: In my opinion, no. But I wish that you would tell me, Socrates, what sort of an imitation is a name? SOCRATES: In the first place, I should reply, not a musical imitation, although that is also vocal; nor, again, an imitation of what music imitates; these, in my judgment, would not be naming. Let me put the matter as follows: All objects have sound and figure, and many have colour? HERMOGENES: Certainly. SOCRATES: But the art of naming appears not to be concerned with imitations of this kind; the arts which have to do with them are music and drawing? HERMOGENES: True. SOCRATES: Again, is there not an essence of each thing, just as there is a colour, or sound? And is there not an essence of colour and sound as well as of anything else which may be said to have an essence? HERMOGENES: I should think so. SOCRATES: Well, and if any one could express the essence of each thing in letters and syllables, would he not express the nature of each thing? HERMOGENES: Quite so. SOCRATES: The musician and the painter were the two names which you gave to the two other imitators. What will this imitator be called? HERMOGENES: I imagine, Socrates, that he must be the namer, or name-giver, of whom we are in search. SOCRATES: If this is true, then I think that we are in a condition to consider the names ron (stream), ienai (to go), schesis (retention), about which you were asking; and we may see whether the namer has grasped the nature of them in letters and syllables in such a manner as to imitate the essence or not. HERMOGENES: Very good. SOCRATES: But are these the only primary names, or are there others? HERMOGENES: There must be others. SOCRATES: So I should expect. But how shall we further analyse them, and where does the imitator begin? Imitation of the essence is made by syllables and letters; ought we not, therefore, first to separate the letters, just as those who are beginning rhythm first distinguish the powers of elementary, and then of compound sounds, and when they have done so, but not before, they proceed to the consideration of rhythms? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: Must we not begin in the same way with letters; first separating the vowels, and then the consonants and mutes (letters which are neither vowels nor semivowels), into classes, according to the received distinctions of the learned; also the semivowels, which are neither vowels, nor yet mutes; and distinguishing into classes the vowels themselves? And when we have perfected the classification of things, we shall give them names, and see whether, as in the case of letters, there are any classes to which they may be all referred (cf. Phaedrus); and hence we shall see their natures, and see, too, whether they have in them classes as there are in the letters; and when we have well considered all this, we shall know how to apply them to what they resemble--whether one letter is used to denote one thing, or whether there is to be an admixture of several of them; just, as in painting, the painter who wants to depict anything sometimes uses purple only, or any other colour, and sometimes mixes up several colours, as his method is when he has to paint flesh colour or anything of that kind--he uses his colours as his figures appear to require them; and so, too, we shall apply letters to the expression of objects, either single letters when required, or several letters; and so we shall form syllables, as they are called, and from syllables make nouns and verbs; and thus, at last, from the combinations of nouns and verbs arrive at language, large and fair and whole; and as the painter made a figure, even so shall we make speech by the art of the namer or the rhetorician, or by some other art. Not that I am literally speaking of ourselves, but I was carried away--meaning to say that this was the way in which (not we but) the ancients formed language, and what they put together we must take to pieces in like manner, if we are to attain a scientific view of the whole subject, and we must see whether the primary, and also whether the secondary elements are rightly given or not, for if they are not, the composition of them, my dear Hermogenes, will be a sorry piece of work, and in the wrong direction. HERMOGENES: That, Socrates, I can quite believe. SOCRATES: Well, but do you suppose that you will be able to analyse them in this way? for I am certain that I should not. HERMOGENES: Much less am I likely to be able. SOCRATES: Shall we leave them, then? or shall we seek to discover, if we can, something about them, according to the measure of our ability, saying by way of preface, as I said before of the Gods, that of the truth about them we know nothing, and do but entertain human notions of them. And in this present enquiry, let us say to ourselves, before we proceed, that the higher method is the one which we or others who would analyse language to any good purpose must follow; but under the circumstances, as men say, we must do as well as we can. What do you think? HERMOGENES: I very much approve. SOCRATES: That objects should be imitated in letters and syllables, and so find expression, may appear ridiculous, Hermogenes, but it cannot be avoided--there is no better principle to which we can look for the truth of first names. Deprived of this, we must have recourse to divine help, like the tragic poets, who in any perplexity have their gods waiting in the air; and must get out of our difficulty in like fashion, by saying that 'the Gods gave the first names, and therefore they are right.' This will be the best contrivance, or perhaps that other notion may be even better still, of deriving them from some barbarous people, for the barbarians are older than we are; or we may say that antiquity has cast a veil over them, which is the same sort of excuse as the last; for all these are not reasons but only ingenious excuses for having no reasons concerning the truth of words. And yet any sort of ignorance of first or primitive names involves an ignorance of secondary words; for they can only be explained by the primary. Clearly then the professor of languages should be able to give a very lucid explanation of first names, or let him be assured he will only talk nonsense about the rest. Do you not suppose this to be true? HERMOGENES: Certainly, Socrates. SOCRATES: My first notions of original names are truly wild and ridiculous, though I have no objection to impart them to you if you desire, and I hope that you will communicate to me in return anything better which you may have. HERMOGENES: Fear not; I will do my best. SOCRATES: In the first place, the letter rho appears to me to be the general instrument expressing all motion (kinesis). But I have not yet explained the meaning of this latter word, which is just iesis (going); for the letter eta was not in use among the ancients, who only employed epsilon; and the root is kiein, which is a foreign form, the same as ienai. And the old word kinesis will be correctly given as iesis in corresponding modern letters. Assuming this foreign root kiein, and allowing for the change of the eta and the insertion of the nu, we have kinesis, which should have been kieinsis or eisis; and stasis is the negative of ienai (or eisis), and has been improved into stasis. Now the letter rho, as I was saying, appeared to the imposer of names an excellent instrument for the expression of motion; and he frequently uses the letter for this purpose: for example, in the actual words rein and roe he represents motion by rho; also in the words tromos (trembling), trachus (rugged); and again, in words such as krouein (strike), thrauein (crush), ereikein (bruise), thruptein (break), kermatixein (crumble), rumbein (whirl): of all these sorts of movements he generally finds an expression in the letter R, because, as I imagine, he had observed that the tongue was most agitated and least at rest in the pronunciation of this letter, which he therefore used in order to express motion, just as by the letter iota he expresses the subtle elements which pass through all things. This is why he uses the letter iota as imitative of motion, ienai, iesthai. And there is another class of letters, phi, psi, sigma, and xi, of which the pronunciation is accompanied by great expenditure of breath; these are used in the imitation of such notions as psuchron (shivering), xeon (seething), seiesthai, (to be shaken), seismos (shock), and are always introduced by the giver of names when he wants to imitate what is phusodes (windy). He seems to have thought that the closing and pressure of the tongue in the utterance of delta and tau was expressive of binding and rest in a place: he further observed the liquid movement of lambda, in the pronunciation of which the tongue slips, and in this he found the expression of smoothness, as in leios (level), and in the word oliothanein (to slip) itself, liparon (sleek), in the word kollodes (gluey), and the like: the heavier sound of gamma detained the slipping tongue, and the union of the two gave the notion of a glutinous clammy nature, as in glischros, glukus, gloiodes. The nu he observed to be sounded from within, and therefore to have a notion of inwardness; hence he introduced the sound in endos and entos: alpha he assigned to the expression of size, and nu of length, because they are great letters: omicron was the sign of roundness, and therefore there is plenty of omicron mixed up in the word goggulon (round). Thus did the legislator, reducing all things into letters and syllables, and impressing on them names and signs, and out of them by imitation compounding other signs. That is my view, Hermogenes, of the truth of names; but I should like to hear what Cratylus has more to say. HERMOGENES: But, Socrates, as I was telling you before, Cratylus mystifies me; he says that there is a fitness of names, but he never explains what is this fitness, so that I cannot tell whether his obscurity is intended or not. Tell me now, Cratylus, here in the presence of Socrates, do you agree in what Socrates has been saying about names, or have you something better of your own? and if you have, tell me what your view is, and then you will either learn of Socrates, or Socrates and I will learn of you. CRATYLUS: Well, but surely, Hermogenes, you do not suppose that you can learn, or I explain, any subject of importance all in a moment; at any rate, not such a subject as language, which is, perhaps, the very greatest of all. HERMOGENES: No, indeed; but, as Hesiod says, and I agree with him, 'to add little to little' is worth while. And, therefore, if you think that you can add anything at all, however small, to our knowledge, take a little trouble and oblige Socrates, and me too, who certainly have a claim upon you. SOCRATES: I am by no means positive, Cratylus, in the view which Hermogenes and myself have worked out; and therefore do not hesitate to say what you think, which if it be better than my own view I shall gladly accept. And I should not be at all surprized to find that you have found some better notion. For you have evidently reflected on these matters and have had teachers, and if you have really a better theory of the truth of names, you may count me in the number of your disciples. CRATYLUS: You are right, Socrates, in saying that I have made a study of these matters, and I might possibly convert you into a disciple. But I fear that the opposite is more probable, and I already find myself moved to say to you what Achilles in the 'Prayers' says to Ajax,-- 'Illustrious Ajax, son of Telamon, lord of the people, You appear to have spoken in all things much to my mind.' And you, Socrates, appear to me to be an oracle, and to give answers much to my mind, whether you are inspired by Euthyphro, or whether some Muse may have long been an inhabitant of your breast, unconsciously to yourself. SOCRATES: Excellent Cratylus, I have long been wondering at my own wisdom; I cannot trust myself. And I think that I ought to stop and ask myself What am I saying? for there is nothing worse than self-deception--when the deceiver is always at home and always with you--it is quite terrible, and therefore I ought often to retrace my steps and endeavour to 'look fore and aft,' in the words of the aforesaid Homer. And now let me see; where are we? Have we not been saying that the correct name indicates the nature of the thing:--has this proposition been sufficiently proven? CRATYLUS: Yes, Socrates, what you say, as I am disposed to think, is quite true. SOCRATES: Names, then, are given in order to instruct? CRATYLUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And naming is an art, and has artificers? CRATYLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And who are they? CRATYLUS: The legislators, of whom you spoke at first. SOCRATES: And does this art grow up among men like other arts? Let me explain what I mean: of painters, some are better and some worse? CRATYLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: The better painters execute their works, I mean their figures, better, and the worse execute them worse; and of builders also, the better sort build fairer houses, and the worse build them worse. CRATYLUS: True. SOCRATES: And among legislators, there are some who do their work better and some worse? CRATYLUS: No; there I do not agree with you. SOCRATES: Then you do not think that some laws are better and others worse? CRATYLUS: No, indeed. SOCRATES: Or that one name is better than another? CRATYLUS: Certainly not. SOCRATES: Then all names are rightly imposed? CRATYLUS: Yes, if they are names at all. SOCRATES: Well, what do you say to the name of our friend Hermogenes, which was mentioned before:--assuming that he has nothing of the nature of Hermes in him, shall we say that this is a wrong name, or not his name at all? CRATYLUS: I should reply that Hermogenes is not his name at all, but only appears to be his, and is really the name of somebody else, who has the nature which corresponds to it. SOCRATES: And if a man were to call him Hermogenes, would he not be even speaking falsely? For there may be a doubt whether you can call him Hermogenes, if he is not. CRATYLUS: What do you mean? SOCRATES: Are you maintaining that falsehood is impossible? For if this is your meaning I should answer, that there have been plenty of liars in all ages. CRATYLUS: Why, Socrates, how can a man say that which is not?--say something and yet say nothing? For is not falsehood saying the thing which is not? SOCRATES: Your argument, friend, is too subtle for a man of my age. But I should like to know whether you are one of those philosophers who think that falsehood may be spoken but not said? CRATYLUS: Neither spoken nor said. SOCRATES: Nor uttered nor addressed? For example: If a person, saluting you in a foreign country, were to take your hand and say: 'Hail, Athenian stranger, Hermogenes, son of Smicrion'--these words, whether spoken, said, uttered, or addressed, would have no application to you but only to our friend Hermogenes, or perhaps to nobody at all? CRATYLUS: In my opinion, Socrates, the speaker would only be talking nonsense. SOCRATES: Well, but that will be quite enough for me, if you will tell me whether the nonsense would be true or false, or partly true and partly false:--which is all that I want to know. CRATYLUS: I should say that he would be putting himself in motion to no purpose; and that his words would be an unmeaning sound like the noise of hammering at a brazen pot. SOCRATES: But let us see, Cratylus, whether we cannot find a meeting-point, for you would admit that the name is not the same with the thing named? CRATYLUS: I should. SOCRATES: And would you further acknowledge that the name is an imitation of the thing? CRATYLUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And you would say that pictures are also imitations of things, but in another way? CRATYLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: I believe you may be right, but I do not rightly understand you. Please to say, then, whether both sorts of imitation (I mean both pictures or words) are not equally attributable and applicable to the things of which they are the imitation. CRATYLUS: They are. SOCRATES: First look at the matter thus: you may attribute the likeness of the man to the man, and of the woman to the woman; and so on? CRATYLUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And conversely you may attribute the likeness of the man to the woman, and of the woman to the man? CRATYLUS: Very true. SOCRATES: And are both modes of assigning them right, or only the first? CRATYLUS: Only the first. SOCRATES: That is to say, the mode of assignment which attributes to each that which belongs to them and is like them? CRATYLUS: That is my view. SOCRATES: Now then, as I am desirous that we being friends should have a good understanding about the argument, let me state my view to you: the first mode of assignment, whether applied to figures or to names, I call right, and when applied to names only, true as well as right; and the other mode of giving and assigning the name which is unlike, I call wrong, and in the case of names, false as well as wrong. CRATYLUS: That may be true, Socrates, in the case of pictures; they may be wrongly assigned; but not in the case of names--they must be always right. SOCRATES: Why, what is the difference? May I not go to a man and say to him, 'This is your picture,' showing him his own likeness, or perhaps the likeness of a woman; and when I say 'show,' I mean bring before the sense of sight. CRATYLUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And may I not go to him again, and say, 'This is your name'?--for the name, like the picture, is an imitation. May I not say to him--'This is your name'? and may I not then bring to his sense of hearing the imitation of himself, when I say, 'This is a man'; or of a female of the human species, when I say, 'This is a woman,' as the case may be? Is not all that quite possible? CRATYLUS: I would fain agree with you, Socrates; and therefore I say, Granted. SOCRATES: That is very good of you, if I am right, which need hardly be disputed at present. But if I can assign names as well as pictures to objects, the right assignment of them we may call truth, and the wrong assignment of them falsehood. Now if there be such a wrong assignment of names, there may also be a wrong or inappropriate assignment of verbs; and if of names and verbs then of the sentences, which are made up of them. What do you say, Cratylus? CRATYLUS: I agree; and think that what you say is very true. SOCRATES: And further, primitive nouns may be compared to pictures, and in pictures you may either give all the appropriate colours and figures, or you may not give them all--some may be wanting; or there may be too many or too much of them--may there not? CRATYLUS: Very true. SOCRATES: And he who gives all gives a perfect picture or figure; and he who takes away or adds also gives a picture or figure, but not a good one. CRATYLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: In like manner, he who by syllables and letters imitates the nature of things, if he gives all that is appropriate will produce a good image, or in other words a name; but if he subtracts or perhaps adds a little, he will make an image but not a good one; whence I infer that some names are well and others ill made. CRATYLUS: That is true. SOCRATES: Then the artist of names may be sometimes good, or he may be bad? CRATYLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And this artist of names is called the legislator? CRATYLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Then like other artists the legislator may be good or he may be bad; it must surely be so if our former admissions hold good? CRATYLUS: Very true, Socrates; but the case of language, you see, is different; for when by the help of grammar we assign the letters alpha or beta, or any other letters to a certain name, then, if we add, or subtract, or misplace a letter, the name which is written is not only written wrongly, but not written at all; and in any of these cases becomes other than a name. SOCRATES: But I doubt whether your view is altogether correct, Cratylus. CRATYLUS: How so? SOCRATES: I believe that what you say may be true about numbers, which must be just what they are, or not be at all; for example, the number ten at once becomes other than ten if a unit be added or subtracted, and so of any other number: but this does not apply to that which is qualitative or to anything which is represented under an image. I should say rather that the image, if expressing in every point the entire reality, would no longer be an image. Let us suppose the existence of two objects: one of them shall be Cratylus, and the other the image of Cratylus; and we will suppose, further, that some God makes not only a representation such as a painter would make of your outward form and colour, but also creates an inward organization like yours, having the same warmth and softness; and into this infuses motion, and soul, and mind, such as you have, and in a word copies all your qualities, and places them by you in another form; would you say that this was Cratylus and the image of Cratylus, or that there were two Cratyluses? CRATYLUS: I should say that there were two Cratyluses. SOCRATES: Then you see, my friend, that we must find some other principle of truth in images, and also in names; and not insist that an image is no longer an image when something is added or subtracted. Do you not perceive that images are very far from having qualities which are the exact counterpart of the realities which they represent? CRATYLUS: Yes, I see. SOCRATES: But then how ridiculous would be the effect of names on things, if they were exactly the same with them! For they would be the doubles of them, and no one would be able to determine which were the names and which were the realities. CRATYLUS: Quite true. SOCRATES: Then fear not, but have the courage to admit that one name may be correctly and another incorrectly given; and do not insist that the name shall be exactly the same with the thing; but allow the occasional substitution of a wrong letter, and if of a letter also of a noun in a sentence, and if of a noun in a sentence also of a sentence which is not appropriate to the matter, and acknowledge that the thing may be named, and described, so long as the general character of the thing which you are describing is retained; and this, as you will remember, was remarked by Hermogenes and myself in the particular instance of the names of the letters. CRATYLUS: Yes, I remember. SOCRATES: Good; and when the general character is preserved, even if some of the proper letters are wanting, still the thing is signified;--well, if all the letters are given; not well, when only a few of them are given. I think that we had better admit this, lest we be punished like travellers in Aegina who wander about the street late at night: and be likewise told by truth herself that we have arrived too late; or if not, you must find out some new notion of correctness of names, and no longer maintain that a name is the expression of a thing in letters or syllables; for if you say both, you will be inconsistent with yourself. CRATYLUS: I quite acknowledge, Socrates, what you say to be very reasonable. SOCRATES: Then as we are agreed thus far, let us ask ourselves whether a name rightly imposed ought not to have the proper letters. CRATYLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And the proper letters are those which are like the things? CRATYLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Enough then of names which are rightly given. And in names which are incorrectly given, the greater part may be supposed to be made up of proper and similar letters, or there would be no likeness; but there will be likewise a part which is improper and spoils the beauty and formation of the word: you would admit that? CRATYLUS: There would be no use, Socrates, in my quarrelling with you, since I cannot be satisfied that a name which is incorrectly given is a name at all. SOCRATES: Do you admit a name to be the representation of a thing? CRATYLUS: Yes, I do. SOCRATES: But do you not allow that some nouns are primitive, and some derived? CRATYLUS: Yes, I do. SOCRATES: Then if you admit that primitive or first nouns are representations of things, is there any better way of framing representations than by assimilating them to the objects as much as you can; or do you prefer the notion of Hermogenes and of many others, who say that names are conventional, and have a meaning to those who have agreed about them, and who have previous knowledge of the things intended by them, and that convention is the only principle; and whether you abide by our present convention, or make a new and opposite one, according to which you call small great and great small--that, they would say, makes no difference, if you are only agreed. Which of these two notions do you prefer? CRATYLUS: Representation by likeness, Socrates, is infinitely better than representation by any chance sign. SOCRATES: Very good: but if the name is to be like the thing, the letters out of which the first names are composed must also be like things. Returning to the image of the picture, I would ask, How could any one ever compose a picture which would be like anything at all, if there were not pigments in nature which resembled the things imitated, and out of which the picture is composed? CRATYLUS: Impossible. SOCRATES: No more could names ever resemble any actually existing thing, unless the original elements of which they are compounded bore some degree of resemblance to the objects of which the names are the imitation: And the original elements are letters? CRATYLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Let me now invite you to consider what Hermogenes and I were saying about sounds. Do you agree with me that the letter rho is expressive of rapidity, motion, and hardness? Were we right or wrong in saying so? CRATYLUS: I should say that you were right. SOCRATES: And that lamda was expressive of smoothness, and softness, and the like? CRATYLUS: There again you were right. SOCRATES: And yet, as you are aware, that which is called by us sklerotes, is by the Eretrians called skleroter. CRATYLUS: Very true. SOCRATES: But are the letters rho and sigma equivalents; and is there the same significance to them in the termination rho, which there is to us in sigma, or is there no significance to one of us? CRATYLUS: Nay, surely there is a significance to both of us. SOCRATES: In as far as they are like, or in as far as they are unlike? CRATYLUS: In as far as they are like. SOCRATES: Are they altogether alike? CRATYLUS: Yes; for the purpose of expressing motion. SOCRATES: And what do you say of the insertion of the lamda? for that is expressive not of hardness but of softness. CRATYLUS: Why, perhaps the letter lamda is wrongly inserted, Socrates, and should be altered into rho, as you were saying to Hermogenes and in my opinion rightly, when you spoke of adding and subtracting letters upon occasion. SOCRATES: Good. But still the word is intelligible to both of us; when I say skleros (hard), you know what I mean. CRATYLUS: Yes, my dear friend, and the explanation of that is custom. SOCRATES: And what is custom but convention? I utter a sound which I understand, and you know that I understand the meaning of the sound: this is what you are saying? CRATYLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And if when I speak you know my meaning, there is an indication given by me to you? CRATYLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: This indication of my meaning may proceed from unlike as well as from like, for example in the lamda of sklerotes. But if this is true, then you have made a convention with yourself, and the correctness of a name turns out to be convention, since letters which are unlike are indicative equally with those which are like, if they are sanctioned by custom and convention. And even supposing that you distinguish custom from convention ever so much, still you must say that the signification of words is given by custom and not by likeness, for custom may indicate by the unlike as well as by the like. But as we are agreed thus far, Cratylus (for I shall assume that your silence gives consent), then custom and convention must be supposed to contribute to the indication of our thoughts; for suppose we take the instance of number, how can you ever imagine, my good friend, that you will find names resembling every individual number, unless you allow that which you term convention and agreement to have authority in determining the correctness of names? I quite agree with you that words should as far as possible resemble things; but I fear that this dragging in of resemblance, as Hermogenes says, is a shabby thing, which has to be supplemented by the mechanical aid of convention with a view to correctness; for I believe that if we could always, or almost always, use likenesses, which are perfectly appropriate, this would be the most perfect state of language; as the opposite is the most imperfect. But let me ask you, what is the force of names, and what is the use of them? CRATYLUS: The use of names, Socrates, as I should imagine, is to inform: the simple truth is, that he who knows names knows also the things which are expressed by them. SOCRATES: I suppose you mean to say, Cratylus, that as the name is, so also is the thing; and that he who knows the one will also know the other, because they are similars, and all similars fall under the same art or science; and therefore you would say that he who knows names will also know things. CRATYLUS: That is precisely what I mean. SOCRATES: But let us consider what is the nature of this information about things which, according to you, is given us by names. Is it the best sort of information? or is there any other? What do you say? CRATYLUS: I believe that to be both the only and the best sort of information about them; there can be no other. SOCRATES: But do you believe that in the discovery of them, he who discovers the names discovers also the things; or is this only the method of instruction, and is there some other method of enquiry and discovery. CRATYLUS: I certainly believe that the methods of enquiry and discovery are of the same nature as instruction. SOCRATES: Well, but do you not see, Cratylus, that he who follows names in the search after things, and analyses their meaning, is in great danger of being deceived? CRATYLUS: How so? SOCRATES: Why clearly he who first gave names gave them according to his conception of the things which they signified--did he not? CRATYLUS: True. SOCRATES: And if his conception was erroneous, and he gave names according to his conception, in what position shall we who are his followers find ourselves? Shall we not be deceived by him? CRATYLUS: But, Socrates, am I not right in thinking that he must surely have known; or else, as I was saying, his names would not be names at all? And you have a clear proof that he has not missed the truth, and the proof is--that he is perfectly consistent. Did you ever observe in speaking that all the words which you utter have a common character and purpose? SOCRATES: But that, friend Cratylus, is no answer. For if he did begin in error, he may have forced the remainder into agreement with the original error and with himself; there would be nothing strange in this, any more than in geometrical diagrams, which have often a slight and invisible flaw in the first part of the process, and are consistently mistaken in the long deductions which follow. And this is the reason why every man should expend his chief thought and attention on the consideration of his first principles:--are they or are they not rightly laid down? and when he has duly sifted them, all the rest will follow. Now I should be astonished to find that names are really consistent. And here let us revert to our former discussion: Were we not saying that all things are in motion and progress and flux, and that this idea of motion is expressed by names? Do you not conceive that to be the meaning of them? CRATYLUS: Yes; that is assuredly their meaning, and the true meaning. SOCRATES: Let us revert to episteme (knowledge) and observe how ambiguous this word is, seeming rather to signify stopping the soul at things than going round with them; and therefore we should leave the beginning as at present, and not reject the epsilon, but make an insertion of an iota instead of an epsilon (not pioteme, but epiisteme). Take another example: bebaion (sure) is clearly the expression of station and position, and not of motion. Again, the word istoria (enquiry) bears upon the face of it the stopping (istanai) of the stream; and the word piston (faithful) certainly indicates cessation of motion; then, again, mneme (memory), as any one may see, expresses rest in the soul, and not motion. Moreover, words such as amartia and sumphora, which have a bad sense, viewed in the light of their etymologies will be the same as sunesis and episteme and other words which have a good sense (compare omartein, sunienai, epesthai, sumpheresthai); and much the same may be said of amathia and akolasia, for amathia may be explained as e ama theo iontos poreia, and akolasia as e akolouthia tois pragmasin. Thus the names which in these instances we find to have the worst sense, will turn out to be framed on the same principle as those which have the best. And any one I believe who would take the trouble might find many other examples in which the giver of names indicates, not that things are in motion or progress, but that they are at rest; which is the opposite of motion. CRATYLUS: Yes, Socrates, but observe; the greater number express motion. SOCRATES: What of that, Cratylus? Are we to count them like votes? and is correctness of names the voice of the majority? Are we to say of whichever sort there are most, those are the true ones? CRATYLUS: No; that is not reasonable. SOCRATES: Certainly not. But let us have done with this question and proceed to another, about which I should like to know whether you think with me. Were we not lately acknowledging that the first givers of names in states, both Hellenic and barbarous, were the legislators, and that the art which gave names was the art of the legislator? CRATYLUS: Quite true. SOCRATES: Tell me, then, did the first legislators, who were the givers of the first names, know or not know the things which they named? CRATYLUS: They must have known, Socrates. SOCRATES: Why, yes, friend Cratylus, they could hardly have been ignorant. CRATYLUS: I should say not. SOCRATES: Let us return to the point from which we digressed. You were saying, if you remember, that he who gave names must have known the things which he named; are you still of that opinion? CRATYLUS: I am. SOCRATES: And would you say that the giver of the first names had also a knowledge of the things which he named? CRATYLUS: I should. SOCRATES: But how could he have learned or discovered things from names if the primitive names were not yet given? For, if we are correct in our view, the only way of learning and discovering things, is either to discover names for ourselves or to learn them from others. CRATYLUS: I think that there is a good deal in what you say, Socrates. SOCRATES: But if things are only to be known through names, how can we suppose that the givers of names had knowledge, or were legislators before there were names at all, and therefore before they could have known them? CRATYLUS: I believe, Socrates, the true account of the matter to be, that a power more than human gave things their first names, and that the names which are thus given are necessarily their true names. SOCRATES: Then how came the giver of the names, if he was an inspired being or God, to contradict himself? For were we not saying just now that he made some names expressive of rest and others of motion? Were we mistaken? CRATYLUS: But I suppose one of the two not to be names at all. SOCRATES: And which, then, did he make, my good friend; those which are expressive of rest, or those which are expressive of motion? This is a point which, as I said before, cannot be determined by counting them. CRATYLUS: No; not in that way, Socrates. SOCRATES: But if this is a battle of names, some of them asserting that they are like the truth, others contending that THEY are, how or by what criterion are we to decide between them? For there are no other names to which appeal can be made, but obviously recourse must be had to another standard which, without employing names, will make clear which of the two are right; and this must be a standard which shows the truth of things. CRATYLUS: I agree. SOCRATES: But if that is true, Cratylus, then I suppose that things may be known without names? CRATYLUS: Clearly. SOCRATES: But how would you expect to know them? What other way can there be of knowing them, except the true and natural way, through their affinities, when they are akin to each other, and through themselves? For that which is other and different from them must signify something other and different from them. CRATYLUS: What you are saying is, I think, true. SOCRATES: Well, but reflect; have we not several times acknowledged that names rightly given are the likenesses and images of the things which they name? CRATYLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Let us suppose that to any extent you please you can learn things through the medium of names, and suppose also that you can learn them from the things themselves--which is likely to be the nobler and clearer way; to learn of the image, whether the image and the truth of which the image is the expression have been rightly conceived, or to learn of the truth whether the truth and the image of it have been duly executed? CRATYLUS: I should say that we must learn of the truth. SOCRATES: How real existence is to be studied or discovered is, I suspect, beyond you and me. But we may admit so much, that the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names. No; they must be studied and investigated in themselves. CRATYLUS: Clearly, Socrates. SOCRATES: There is another point. I should not like us to be imposed upon by the appearance of such a multitude of names, all tending in the same direction. I myself do not deny that the givers of names did really give them under the idea that all things were in motion and flux; which was their sincere but, I think, mistaken opinion. And having fallen into a kind of whirlpool themselves, they are carried round, and want to drag us in after them. There is a matter, master Cratylus, about which I often dream, and should like to ask your opinion: Tell me, whether there is or is not any absolute beauty or good, or any other absolute existence? CRATYLUS: Certainly, Socrates, I think so. SOCRATES: Then let us seek the true beauty: not asking whether a face is fair, or anything of that sort, for all such things appear to be in a flux; but let us ask whether the true beauty is not always beautiful. CRATYLUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And can we rightly speak of a beauty which is always passing away, and is first this and then that; must not the same thing be born and retire and vanish while the word is in our mouths? CRATYLUS: Undoubtedly. SOCRATES: Then how can that be a real thing which is never in the same state? for obviously things which are the same cannot change while they remain the same; and if they are always the same and in the same state, and never depart from their original form, they can never change or be moved. CRATYLUS: Certainly they cannot. SOCRATES: Nor yet can they be known by any one; for at the moment that the observer approaches, then they become other and of another nature, so that you cannot get any further in knowing their nature or state, for you cannot know that which has no state. CRATYLUS: True. SOCRATES: Nor can we reasonably say, Cratylus, that there is knowledge at all, if everything is in a state of transition and there is nothing abiding; for knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless continuing always to abide and exist. But if the very nature of knowledge changes, at the time when the change occurs there will be no knowledge; and if the transition is always going on, there will always be no knowledge, and, according to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known: but if that which knows and that which is known exists ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing also exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process or flux, as we were just now supposing. Whether there is this eternal nature in things, or whether the truth is what Heracleitus and his followers and many others say, is a question hard to determine; and no man of sense will like to put himself or the education of his mind in the power of names: neither will he so far trust names or the givers of names as to be confident in any knowledge which condemns himself and other existences to an unhealthy state of unreality; he will not believe that all things leak like a pot, or imagine that the world is a man who has a running at the nose. This may be true, Cratylus, but is also very likely to be untrue; and therefore I would not have you be too easily persuaded of it. Reflect well and like a man, and do not easily accept such a doctrine; for you are young and of an age to learn. And when you have found the truth, come and tell me. CRATYLUS: I will do as you say, though I can assure you, Socrates, that I have been considering the matter already, and the result of a great deal of trouble and consideration is that I incline to Heracleitus. SOCRATES: Then, another day, my friend, when you come back, you shall give me a lesson; but at present, go into the country, as you are intending, and Hermogenes shall set you on your way. CRATYLUS: Very good, Socrates; I hope, however, that you will continue to think about these things yourself. 
12629	----	Proofreaders LANGUAGE AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF SPEECH BY EDWARD SAPIR 1939 1921 PREFACE This little book aims to give a certain perspective on the subject of language rather than to assemble facts about it. It has little to say of the ultimate psychological basis of speech and gives only enough of the actual descriptive or historical facts of particular languages to illustrate principles. Its main purpose is to show what I conceive language to be, what is its variability in place and time, and what are its relations to other fundamental human interests--the problem of thought, the nature of the historical process, race, culture, art. The perspective thus gained will be useful, I hope, both to linguistic students and to the outside public that is half inclined to dismiss linguistic notions as the private pedantries of essentially idle minds. Knowledge of the wider relations of their science is essential to professional students of language if they are to be saved from a sterile and purely technical attitude. Among contemporary writers of influence on liberal thought Croce is one of the very few who have gained an understanding of the fundamental significance of language. He has pointed out its close relation to the problem of art. I am deeply indebted to him for this insight. Quite aside from their intrinsic interest, linguistic forms and historical processes have the greatest possible diagnostic value for the understanding of some of the more difficult and elusive problems in the psychology of thought and in the strange, cumulative drift in the life of the human spirit that we call history or progress or evolution. This value depends chiefly on the unconscious and unrationalized nature of linguistic structure. I have avoided most of the technical terms and all of the technical symbols of the linguistic academy. There is not a single diacritical mark in the book. Where possible, the discussion is based on English material. It was necessary, however, for the scheme of the book, which includes a consideration of the protean forms in which human thought has found expression, to quote some exotic instances. For these no apology seems necessary. Owing to limitations of space I have had to leave out many ideas or principles that I should have liked to touch upon. Other points have had to be barely hinted at in a sentence or flying phrase. Nevertheless, I trust that enough has here been brought together to serve as a stimulus for the more fundamental study of a neglected field. I desire to express my cordial appreciation of the friendly advice and helpful suggestions of a number of friends who have read the work in manuscript, notably Profs. A.L. Kroeber and R.H. Lowie of the University of California, Prof. W.D. Wallis of Reed College, and Prof. J. Zeitlin of the University of Illinois. EDWARD SAPIR. OTTAWA, ONT., April 8, 1921. CONTENTS PREFACE CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY: LANGUAGE DEFINED Language a cultural, not a biologically inherited, function. Futility of interjectional and sound-imitative theories of the origin of speech. Definition of language. The psycho-physical basis of speech. Concepts and language. Is thought possible without language? Abbreviations and transfers of the speech process. The universality of language. II. THE ELEMENTS OF SPEECH Sounds not properly elements of speech. Words and significant parts of words (radical elements, grammatical elements). Types of words. The word a formal, not a functional unit. The word has a real psychological existence. The sentence. The cognitive, volitional, and emotional aspects of speech. Feeling-tones of words. III. THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE The vast number of possible sounds. The articulating organs and their share in the production of speech sounds: lungs, glottal cords, nose, mouth and its parts. Vowel articulations. How and where consonants are articulated. The phonetic habits of a language. The "values" of sounds. Phonetic patterns. IV. FORM IN LANGUAGE: GRAMMATICAL PROCESSES Formal processes as distinct from grammatical functions. Intercrossing of the two points of view. Six main types of grammatical process. Word sequence as a method. Compounding of radical elements. Affixing: prefixes and suffixes; infixes. Internal vocalic change; consonantal change. Reduplication. Functional variations of stress; of pitch. V. FORM IN LANGUAGE: GRAMMATICAL CONCEPTS Analysis of a typical English sentence. Types of concepts illustrated by it. Inconsistent expression of analogous concepts. How the same sentence may be expressed in other languages with striking differences in the selection and grouping of concepts. Essential and non-essential concepts. The mixing of essential relational concepts with secondary ones of more concrete order. Form for form's sake. Classification of linguistic concepts: basic or concrete, derivational, concrete relational, pure relational. Tendency for these types of concepts to flow into each other. Categories expressed in various grammatical systems. Order and stress as relating principles in the sentence. Concord. Parts of speech: no absolute classification possible; noun and verb. VI. TYPES OF LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE The possibility of classifying languages. Difficulties. Classification into form-languages and formless languages not valid. Classification according to formal processes used not practicable. Classification according to degree of synthesis. "Inflective" and "agglutinative." Fusion and symbolism as linguistic techniques. Agglutination. "Inflective" a confused term. Threefold classification suggested: what types of concepts are expressed? what is the prevailing technique? what is the degree of synthesis? Four fundamental conceptual types. Examples tabulated. Historical test of the validity of the suggested conceptual classification. VII. LANGUAGE AS A HISTORICAL PRODUCT: DRIFT Variability of language. Individual and dialectic variations. Time variation or "drift." How dialects arise. Linguistic stocks. Direction or "slope" of linguistic drift. Tendencies illustrated in an English sentence. Hesitations of usage as symptomatic of the direction of drift. Leveling tendencies in English. Weakening of case elements. Tendency to fixed position in the sentence. Drift toward the invariable word. VIII. LANGUAGE AS A HISTORICAL PRODUCT: PHONETIC LAW Parallels in drift in related languages. Phonetic law as illustrated in the history of certain English and German vowels and consonants. Regularity of phonetic law. Shifting of sounds without destruction of phonetic pattern. Difficulty of explaining the nature of phonetic drifts. Vowel mutation in English and German. Morphological influence on phonetic change. Analogical levelings to offset irregularities produced by phonetic laws. New morphological features due to phonetic change. IX. HOW LANGUAGES INFLUENCE EACH OTHER Linguistic influences due to cultural contact. Borrowing of words. Resistances to borrowing. Phonetic modification of borrowed words. Phonetic interinfluencings of neighboring languages. Morphological borrowings. Morphological resemblances as vestiges of genetic relationship. X. LANGUAGE, RACE, AND CULTURE Naïve tendency to consider linguistic, racial, and cultural groupings as congruent. Race and language need not correspond. Cultural and linguistic boundaries not identical. Coincidences between linguistic cleavages and those of language and culture due to historical, not intrinsic psychological, causes. Language does not in any deep sense "reflect" culture. XL LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Language as the material or medium of literature. Literature may move on the generalized linguistic plane or may be inseparable from specific linguistic conditions. Language as a collective art. Necessary esthetic advantages or limitations in any language. Style as conditioned by inherent features of the language. Prosody as conditioned by the phonetic dynamics of a language. INDEX I INTRODUCTORY: LANGUAGE DEFINED Speech is so familiar a feature of daily life that we rarely pause to define it. It seems as natural to man as walking, and only less so than breathing. Yet it needs but a moment's reflection to convince us that this naturalness of speech is but an illusory feeling. The process of acquiring speech is, in sober fact, an utterly different sort of thing from the process of learning to walk. In the case of the latter function, culture, in other words, the traditional body of social usage, is not seriously brought into play. The child is individually equipped, by the complex set of factors that we term biological heredity, to make all the needed muscular and nervous adjustments that result in walking. Indeed, the very conformation of these muscles and of the appropriate parts of the nervous system may be said to be primarily adapted to the movements made in walking and in similar activities. In a very real sense the normal human being is predestined to walk, not because his elders will assist him to learn the art, but because his organism is prepared from birth, or even from the moment of conception, to take on all those expenditures of nervous energy and all those muscular adaptations that result in walking. To put it concisely, walking is an inherent, biological function of man. Not so language. It is of course true that in a certain sense the individual is predestined to talk, but that is due entirely to the circumstance that he is born not merely in nature, but in the lap of a society that is certain, reasonably certain, to lead him to its traditions. Eliminate society and there is every reason to believe that he will learn to walk, if, indeed, he survives at all. But it is just as certain that he will never learn to talk, that is, to communicate ideas according to the traditional system of a particular society. Or, again, remove the new-born individual from the social environment into which he has come and transplant him to an utterly alien one. He will develop the art of walking in his new environment very much as he would have developed it in the old. But his speech will be completely at variance with the speech of his native environment. Walking, then, is a general human activity that varies only within circumscribed limits as we pass from individual to individual. Its variability is involuntary and purposeless. Speech is a human activity that varies without assignable limit as we pass from social group to social group, because it is a purely historical heritage of the group, the product of long-continued social usage. It varies as all creative effort varies--not as consciously, perhaps, but none the less as truly as do the religions, the beliefs, the customs, and the arts of different peoples. Walking is an organic, an instinctive, function (not, of course, itself an instinct); speech is a non-instinctive, acquired, "cultural" function. There is one fact that has frequently tended to prevent the recognition of language as a merely conventional system of sound symbols, that has seduced the popular mind into attributing to it an instinctive basis that it does not really possess. This is the well-known observation that under the stress of emotion, say of a sudden twinge of pain or of unbridled joy, we do involuntarily give utterance to sounds that the hearer interprets as indicative of the emotion itself. But there is all the difference in the world between such involuntary expression of feeling and the normal type of communication of ideas that is speech. The former kind of utterance is indeed instinctive, but it is non-symbolic; in other words, the sound of pain or the sound of joy does not, as such, indicate the emotion, it does not stand aloof, as it were, and announce that such and such an emotion is being felt. What it does is to serve as a more or less automatic overflow of the emotional energy; in a sense, it is part and parcel of the emotion itself. Moreover, such instinctive cries hardly constitute communication in any strict sense. They are not addressed to any one, they are merely overheard, if heard at all, as the bark of a dog, the sound of approaching footsteps, or the rustling of the wind is heard. If they convey certain ideas to the hearer, it is only in the very general sense in which any and every sound or even any phenomenon in our environment may be said to convey an idea to the perceiving mind. If the involuntary cry of pain which is conventionally represented by "Oh!" be looked upon as a true speech symbol equivalent to some such idea as "I am in great pain," it is just as allowable to interpret the appearance of clouds as an equivalent symbol that carries the definite message "It is likely to rain." A definition of language, however, that is so extended as to cover every type of inference becomes utterly meaningless. The mistake must not be made of identifying our conventional interjections (our oh! and ah! and sh!) with the instinctive cries themselves. These interjections are merely conventional fixations of the natural sounds. They therefore differ widely in various languages in accordance with the specific phonetic genius of each of these. As such they may be considered an integral portion of speech, in the properly cultural sense of the term, being no more identical with the instinctive cries themselves than such words as "cuckoo" and "kill-deer" are identical with the cries of the birds they denote or than Rossini's treatment of a storm in the overture to "William Tell" is in fact a storm. In other words, the interjections and sound-imitative words of normal speech are related to their natural prototypes as is art, a purely social or cultural thing, to nature. It may be objected that, though the interjections differ somewhat as we pass from language to language, they do nevertheless offer striking family resemblances and may therefore be looked upon as having grown up out of a common instinctive base. But their case is nowise different from that, say, of the varying national modes of pictorial representation. A Japanese picture of a hill both differs from and resembles a typical modern European painting of the same kind of hill. Both are suggested by and both "imitate" the same natural feature. Neither the one nor the other is the same thing as, or, in any intelligible sense, a direct outgrowth of, this natural feature. The two modes of representation are not identical because they proceed from differing historical traditions, are executed with differing pictorial techniques. The interjections of Japanese and English are, just so, suggested by a common natural prototype, the instinctive cries, and are thus unavoidably suggestive of each other. They differ, now greatly, now but little, because they are builded out of historically diverse materials or techniques, the respective linguistic traditions, phonetic systems, speech habits of the two peoples. Yet the instinctive cries as such are practically identical for all humanity, just as the human skeleton or nervous system is to all intents and purposes a "fixed," that is, an only slightly and "accidentally" variable, feature of man's organism. Interjections are among the least important of speech elements. Their discussion is valuable mainly because it can be shown that even they, avowedly the nearest of all language sounds to instinctive utterance, are only superficially of an instinctive nature. Were it therefore possible to demonstrate that the whole of language is traceable, in its ultimate historical and psychological foundations, to the interjections, it would still not follow that language is an instinctive activity. But, as a matter of fact, all attempts so to explain the origin of speech have been fruitless. There is no tangible evidence, historical or otherwise, tending to show that the mass of speech elements and speech processes has evolved out of the interjections. These are a very small and functionally insignificant proportion of the vocabulary of language; at no time and in no linguistic province that we have record of do we see a noticeable tendency towards their elaboration into the primary warp and woof of language. They are never more, at best, than a decorative edging to the ample, complex fabric. What applies to the interjections applies with even greater force to the sound-imitative words. Such words as "whippoorwill," "to mew," "to caw" are in no sense natural sounds that man has instinctively or automatically reproduced. They are just as truly creations of the human mind, flights of the human fancy, as anything else in language. They do not directly grow out of nature, they are suggested by it and play with it. Hence the onomatopoetic theory of the origin of speech, the theory that would explain all speech as a gradual evolution from sounds of an imitative character, really brings us no nearer to the instinctive level than is language as we know it to-day. As to the theory itself, it is scarcely more credible than its interjectional counterpart. It is true that a number of words which we do not now feel to have a sound-imitative value can be shown to have once had a phonetic form that strongly suggests their origin as imitations of natural sounds. Such is the English word "to laugh." For all that, it is quite impossible to show, nor does it seem intrinsically reasonable to suppose, that more than a negligible proportion of the elements of speech or anything at all of its formal apparatus is derivable from an onomatopoetic source. However much we may be disposed on general principles to assign a fundamental importance in the languages of primitive peoples to the imitation of natural sounds, the actual fact of the matter is that these languages show no particular preference for imitative words. Among the most primitive peoples of aboriginal America, the Athabaskan tribes of the Mackenzie River speak languages in which such words seem to be nearly or entirely absent, while they are used freely enough in languages as sophisticated as English and German. Such an instance shows how little the essential nature of speech is concerned with the mere imitation of things. The way is now cleared for a serviceable definition of language. Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols. These symbols are, in the first instance, auditory and they are produced by the so-called "organs of speech." There is no discernible instinctive basis in human speech as such, however much instinctive expressions and the natural environment may serve as a stimulus for the development of certain elements of speech, however much instinctive tendencies, motor and other, may give a predetermined range or mold to linguistic expression. Such human or animal communication, if "communication" it may be called, as is brought about by involuntary, instinctive cries is not, in our sense, language at all. I have just referred to the "organs of speech," and it would seem at first blush that this is tantamount to an admission that speech itself is an instinctive, biologically predetermined activity. We must not be misled by the mere term. There are, properly speaking, no organs of speech; there are only organs that are incidentally useful in the production of speech sounds. The lungs, the larynx, the palate, the nose, the tongue, the teeth, and the lips, are all so utilized, but they are no more to be thought of as primary organs of speech than are the fingers to be considered as essentially organs of piano-playing or the knees as organs of prayer. Speech is not a simple activity that is carried on by one or more organs biologically adapted to the purpose. It is an extremely complex and ever-shifting network of adjustments--in the brain, in the nervous system, and in the articulating and auditory organs--tending towards the desired end of communication. The lungs developed, roughly speaking, in connection with the necessary biological function known as breathing; the nose, as an organ of smell; the teeth, as organs useful in breaking up food before it was ready for digestion. If, then, these and other organs are being constantly utilized in speech, it is only because any organ, once existent and in so far as it is subject to voluntary control, can be utilized by man for secondary purposes. Physiologically, speech is an overlaid function, or, to be more precise, a group of overlaid functions. It gets what service it can out of organs and functions, nervous and muscular, that have come into being and are maintained for very different ends than its own. It is true that physiological psychologists speak of the localization of speech in the brain. This can only mean that the sounds of speech are localized in the auditory tract of the brain, or in some circumscribed portion of it, precisely as other classes of sounds are localized; and that the motor processes involved in speech (such as the movements of the glottal cords in the larynx, the movements of the tongue required to pronounce the vowels, lip movements required to articulate certain consonants, and numerous others) are localized in the motor tract precisely as are all other impulses to special motor activities. In the same way control is lodged in the visual tract of the brain over all those processes of visual recognition involved in reading. Naturally the particular points or clusters of points of localization in the several tracts that refer to any element of language are connected in the brain by paths of association, so that the outward, or psycho-physical, aspect of language, is of a vast network of associated localizations in the brain and lower nervous tracts, the auditory localizations being without doubt the most fundamental of all for speech. However, a speechsound localized in the brain, even when associated with the particular movements of the "speech organs" that are required to produce it, is very far from being an element of language. It must be further associated with some element or group of elements of experience, say a visual image or a class of visual images or a feeling of relation, before it has even rudimentary linguistic significance. This "element" of experience is the content or "meaning" of the linguistic unit; the associated auditory, motor, and other cerebral processes that lie immediately back of the act of speaking and the act of hearing speech are merely a complicated symbol of or signal for these "meanings," of which more anon. We see therefore at once that language as such is not and cannot be definitely localized, for it consists of a peculiar symbolic relation--physiologically an arbitrary one--between all possible elements of consciousness on the one hand and certain selected elements localized in the auditory, motor, and other cerebral and nervous tracts on the other. If language can be said to be definitely "localized" in the brain, it is only in that general and rather useless sense in which all aspects of consciousness, all human interest and activity, may be said to be "in the brain." Hence, we have no recourse but to accept language as a fully formed functional system within man's psychic or "spiritual" constitution. We cannot define it as an entity in psycho-physical terms alone, however much the psycho-physical basis is essential to its functioning in the individual. From the physiologist's or psychologist's point of view we may seem to be making an unwarrantable abstraction in desiring to handle the subject of speech without constant and explicit reference to that basis. However, such an abstraction is justifiable. We can profitably discuss the intention, the form, and the history of speech, precisely as we discuss the nature of any other phase of human culture--say art or religion--as an institutional or cultural entity, leaving the organic and psychological mechanisms back of it as something to be taken for granted. Accordingly, it must be clearly understood that this introduction to the study of speech is not concerned with those aspects of physiology and of physiological psychology that underlie speech. Our study of language is not to be one of the genesis and operation of a concrete mechanism; it is, rather, to be an inquiry into the function and form of the arbitrary systems of symbolism that we term languages. I have already pointed out that the essence of language consists in the assigning of conventional, voluntarily articulated, sounds, or of their equivalents, to the diverse elements of experience. The word "house" is not a linguistic fact if by it is meant merely the acoustic effect produced on the ear by its constituent consonants and vowels, pronounced in a certain order; nor the motor processes and tactile feelings which make up the articulation of the word; nor the visual perception on the part of the hearer of this articulation; nor the visual perception of the word "house" on the written or printed page; nor the motor processes and tactile feelings which enter into the writing of the word; nor the memory of any or all of these experiences. It is only when these, and possibly still other, associated experiences are automatically associated with the image of a house that they begin to take on the nature of a symbol, a word, an element of language. But the mere fact of such an association is not enough. One might have heard a particular word spoken in an individual house under such impressive circumstances that neither the word nor the image of the house ever recur in consciousness without the other becoming present at the same time. This type of association does not constitute speech. The association must be a purely symbolic one; in other words, the word must denote, tag off, the image, must have no other significance than to serve as a counter to refer to it whenever it is necessary or convenient to do so. Such an association, voluntary and, in a sense, arbitrary as it is, demands a considerable exercise of self-conscious attention. At least to begin with, for habit soon makes the association nearly as automatic as any and more rapid than most. But we have traveled a little too fast. Were the symbol "house"--whether an auditory, motor, or visual experience or image--attached but to the single image of a particular house once seen, it might perhaps, by an indulgent criticism, be termed an element of speech, yet it is obvious at the outset that speech so constituted would have little or no value for purposes of communication. The world of our experiences must be enormously simplified and generalized before it is possible to make a symbolic inventory of all our experiences of things and relations; and this inventory is imperative before we can convey ideas. The elements of language, the symbols that ticket off experience, must therefore be associated with whole groups, delimited classes, of experience rather than with the single experiences themselves. Only so is communication possible, for the single experience lodges in an individual consciousness and is, strictly speaking, incommunicable. To be communicated it needs to be referred to a class which is tacitly accepted by the community as an identity. Thus, the single impression which I have had of a particular house must be identified with all my other impressions of it. Further, my generalized memory or my "notion" of this house must be merged with the notions that all other individuals who have seen the house have formed of it. The particular experience that we started with has now been widened so as to embrace all possible impressions or images that sentient beings have formed or may form of the house in question. This first simplification of experience is at the bottom of a large number of elements of speech, the so-called proper nouns or names of single individuals or objects. It is, essentially, the type of simplification which underlies, or forms the crude subject of, history and art. But we cannot be content with this measure of reduction of the infinity of experience. We must cut to the bone of things, we must more or less arbitrarily throw whole masses of experience together as similar enough to warrant their being looked upon--mistakenly, but conveniently--as identical. This house and that house and thousands of other phenomena of like character are thought of as having enough in common, in spite of great and obvious differences of detail, to be classed under the same heading. In other words, the speech element "house" is the symbol, first and foremost, not of a single perception, nor even of the notion of a particular object, but of a "concept," in other words, of a convenient capsule of thought that embraces thousands of distinct experiences and that is ready to take in thousands more. If the single significant elements of speech are the symbols of concepts, the actual flow of speech may be interpreted as a record of the setting of these concepts into mutual relations. The question has often been raised whether thought is possible without speech; further, if speech and thought be not but two facets of the same psychic process. The question is all the more difficult because it has been hedged about by misunderstandings. In the first place, it is well to observe that whether or not thought necessitates symbolism, that is speech, the flow of language itself is not always indicative of thought. We have seen that the typical linguistic element labels a concept. It does not follow from this that the use to which language is put is always or even mainly conceptual. We are not in ordinary life so much concerned with concepts as such as with concrete particularities and specific relations. When I say, for instance, "I had a good breakfast this morning," it is clear that I am not in the throes of laborious thought, that what I have to transmit is hardly more than a pleasurable memory symbolically rendered in the grooves of habitual expression. Each element in the sentence defines a separate concept or conceptual relation or both combined, but the sentence as a whole has no conceptual significance whatever. It is somewhat as though a dynamo capable of generating enough power to run an elevator were operated almost exclusively to feed an electric door-bell. The parallel is more suggestive than at first sight appears. Language may be looked upon as an instrument capable of running a gamut of psychic uses. Its flow not only parallels that of the inner content of consciousness, but parallels it on different levels, ranging from the state of mind that is dominated by particular images to that in which abstract concepts and their relations are alone at the focus of attention and which is ordinarily termed reasoning. Thus the outward form only of language is constant; its inner meaning, its psychic value or intensity, varies freely with attention or the selective interest of the mind, also, needless to say, with the mind's general development. From the point of view of language, thought may be defined as the highest latent or potential content of speech, the content that is obtained by interpreting each of the elements in the flow of language as possessed of its very fullest conceptual value. From this it follows at once that language and thought are not strictly coterminous. At best language can but be the outward facet of thought on the highest, most generalized, level of symbolic expression. To put our viewpoint somewhat differently, language is primarily a pre-rational function. It humbly works up to the thought that is latent in, that may eventually be read into, its classifications and its forms; it is not, as is generally but naïvely assumed, the final label put upon, the finished thought. Most people, asked if they can think without speech, would probably answer, "Yes, but it is not easy for me to do so. Still I know it can be done." Language is but a garment! But what if language is not so much a garment as a prepared road or groove? It is, indeed, in the highest degree likely that language is an instrument originally put to uses lower than the conceptual plane and that thought arises as a refined interpretation of its content. The product grows, in other words, with the instrument, and thought may be no more conceivable, in its genesis and daily practice, without speech than is mathematical reasoning practicable without the lever of an appropriate mathematical symbolism. No one believes that even the most difficult mathematical proposition is inherently dependent on an arbitrary set of symbols, but it is impossible to suppose that the human mind is capable of arriving at or holding such a proposition without the symbolism. The writer, for one, is strongly of the opinion that the feeling entertained by so many that they can think, or even reason, without language is an illusion. The illusion seems to be due to a number of factors. The simplest of these is the failure to distinguish between imagery and thought. As a matter of fact, no sooner do we try to put an image into conscious relation with another than we find ourselves slipping into a silent flow of words. Thought may be a natural domain apart from the artificial one of speech, but speech would seem to be the only road we know of that leads to it. A still more fruitful source of the illusive feeling that language may be dispensed with in thought is the common failure to realize that language is not identical with its auditory symbolism. The auditory symbolism may be replaced, point for point, by a motor or by a visual symbolism (many people can read, for instance, in a purely visual sense, that is, without the intermediating link of an inner flow of the auditory images that correspond to the printed or written words) or by still other, more subtle and elusive, types of transfer that are not so easy to define. Hence the contention that one thinks without language merely because he is not aware of a coexisting auditory imagery is very far indeed from being a valid one. One may go so far as to suspect that the symbolic expression of thought may in some cases run along outside the fringe of the conscious mind, so that the feeling of a free, nonlinguistic stream of thought is for minds of a certain type a relatively, but only a relatively, justified one. Psycho-physically, this would mean that the auditory or equivalent visual or motor centers in the brain, together with the appropriate paths of association, that are the cerebral equivalent of speech, are touched off so lightly during the process of thought as not to rise into consciousness at all. This would be a limiting case--thought riding lightly on the submerged crests of speech, instead of jogging along with it, hand in hand. The modern psychology has shown us how powerfully symbolism is at work in the unconscious mind. It is therefore easier to understand at the present time than it would have been twenty years ago that the most rarefied thought may be but the conscious counterpart of an unconscious linguistic symbolism. One word more as to the relation between language and thought. The point of view that we have developed does not by any means preclude the possibility of the growth of speech being in a high degree dependent on the development of thought. We may assume that language arose pre-rationally--just how and on what precise level of mental activity we do not know--but we must not imagine that a highly developed system of speech symbols worked itself out before the genesis of distinct concepts and of thinking, the handling of concepts. We must rather imagine that thought processes set in, as a kind of psychic overflow, almost at the beginning of linguistic expression; further, that the concept, once defined, necessarily reacted on the life of its linguistic symbol, encouraging further linguistic growth. We see this complex process of the interaction of language and thought actually taking place under our eyes. The instrument makes possible the product, the product refines the instrument. The birth of a new concept is invariably foreshadowed by a more or less strained or extended use of old linguistic material; the concept does not attain to individual and independent life until it has found a distinctive linguistic embodiment. In most cases the new symbol is but a thing wrought from linguistic material already in existence in ways mapped out by crushingly despotic precedents. As soon as the word is at hand, we instinctively feel, with something of a sigh of relief, that the concept is ours for the handling. Not until we own the symbol do we feel that we hold a key to the immediate knowledge or understanding of the concept. Would we be so ready to die for "liberty," to struggle for "ideals," if the words themselves were not ringing within us? And the word, as we know, is not only a key; it may also be a fetter. Language is primarily an auditory system of symbols. In so far as it is articulated it is also a motor system, but the motor aspect of speech is clearly secondary to the auditory. In normal individuals the impulse to speech first takes effect in the sphere of auditory imagery and is then transmitted to the motor nerves that control the organs of speech. The motor processes and the accompanying motor feelings are not, however, the end, the final resting point. They are merely a means and a control leading to auditory perception in both speaker and hearer. Communication, which is the very object of speech, is successfully effected only when the hearer's auditory perceptions are translated into the appropriate and intended flow of imagery or thought or both combined. Hence the cycle of speech, in so far as we may look upon it as a purely external instrument, begins and ends in the realm of sounds. The concordance between the initial auditory imagery and the final auditory perceptions is the social seal or warrant of the successful issue of the process. As we have already seen, the typical course of this process may undergo endless modifications or transfers into equivalent systems without thereby losing its essential formal characteristics. The most important of these modifications is the abbreviation of the speech process involved in thinking. This has doubtless many forms, according to the structural or functional peculiarities of the individual mind. The least modified form is that known as "talking to one's self" or "thinking aloud." Here the speaker and the hearer are identified in a single person, who may be said to communicate with himself. More significant is the still further abbreviated form in which the sounds of speech are not articulated at all. To this belong all the varieties of silent speech and of normal thinking. The auditory centers alone may be excited; or the impulse to linguistic expression may be communicated as well to the motor nerves that communicate with the organs of speech but be inhibited either in the muscles of these organs or at some point in the motor nerves themselves; or, possibly, the auditory centers may be only slightly, if at all, affected, the speech process manifesting itself directly in the motor sphere. There must be still other types of abbreviation. How common is the excitation of the motor nerves in silent speech, in which no audible or visible articulations result, is shown by the frequent experience of fatigue in the speech organs, particularly in the larynx, after unusually stimulating reading or intensive thinking. All the modifications so far considered are directly patterned on the typical process of normal speech. Of very great interest and importance is the possibility of transferring the whole system of speech symbolism into other terms than those that are involved in the typical process. This process, as we have seen, is a matter of sounds and of movements intended to produce these sounds. The sense of vision is not brought into play. But let us suppose that one not only hears the articulated sounds but sees the articulations themselves as they are being executed by the speaker. Clearly, if one can only gain a sufficiently high degree of adroitness in perceiving these movements of the speech organs, the way is opened for a new type of speech symbolism--that in which the sound is replaced by the visual image of the articulations that correspond to the sound. This sort of system has no great value for most of us because we are already possessed of the auditory-motor system of which it is at best but an imperfect translation, not all the articulations being visible to the eye. However, it is well known what excellent use deaf-mutes can make of "reading from the lips" as a subsidiary method of apprehending speech. The most important of all visual speech symbolisms is, of course, that of the written or printed word, to which, on the motor side, corresponds the system of delicately adjusted movements which result in the writing or typewriting or other graphic method of recording speech. The significant feature for our recognition in these new types of symbolism, apart from the fact that they are no longer a by-product of normal speech itself, is that each element (letter or written word) in the system corresponds to a specific element (sound or sound-group or spoken word) in the primary system. Written language is thus a point-to-point equivalence, to borrow a mathematical phrase, to its spoken counterpart. The written forms are secondary symbols of the spoken ones--symbols of symbols--yet so close is the correspondence that they may, not only in theory but in the actual practice of certain eye-readers and, possibly, in certain types of thinking, be entirely substituted for the spoken ones. Yet the auditory-motor associations are probably always latent at the least, that is, they are unconsciously brought into play. Even those who read and think without the slightest use of sound imagery are, at last analysis, dependent on it. They are merely handling the circulating medium, the money, of visual symbols as a convenient substitute for the economic goods and services of the fundamental auditory symbols. The possibilities of linguistic transfer are practically unlimited. A familiar example is the Morse telegraph code, in which the letters of written speech are represented by a conventionally fixed sequence of longer or shorter ticks. Here the transfer takes place from the written word rather than directly from the sounds of spoken speech. The letter of the telegraph code is thus a symbol of a symbol of a symbol. It does not, of course, in the least follow that the skilled operator, in order to arrive at an understanding of a telegraphic message, needs to transpose the individual sequence of ticks into a visual image of the word before he experiences its normal auditory image. The precise method of reading off speech from the telegraphic communication undoubtedly varies widely with the individual. It is even conceivable, if not exactly likely, that certain operators may have learned to think directly, so far as the purely conscious part of the process of thought is concerned, in terms of the tick-auditory symbolism or, if they happen to have a strong natural bent toward motor symbolism, in terms of the correlated tactile-motor symbolism developed in the sending of telegraphic messages. Still another interesting group of transfers are the different gesture languages, developed for the use of deaf-mutes, of Trappist monks vowed to perpetual silence, or of communicating parties that are within seeing distance of each other but are out of earshot. Some of these systems are one-to-one equivalences of the normal system of speech; others, like military gesture-symbolism or the gesture language of the Plains Indians of North America (understood by tribes of mutually unintelligible forms of speech) are imperfect transfers, limiting themselves to the rendering of such grosser speech elements as are an imperative minimum under difficult circumstances. In these latter systems, as in such still more imperfect symbolisms as those used at sea or in the woods, it may be contended that language no longer properly plays a part but that the ideas are directly conveyed by an utterly unrelated symbolic process or by a quasi-instinctive imitativeness. Such an interpretation would be erroneous. The intelligibility of these vaguer symbolisms can hardly be due to anything but their automatic and silent translation into the terms of a fuller flow of speech. We shall no doubt conclude that all voluntary communication of ideas, aside from normal speech, is either a transfer, direct or indirect, from the typical symbolism of language as spoken and heard or, at the least, involves the intermediary of truly linguistic symbolism. This is a fact of the highest importance. Auditory imagery and the correlated motor imagery leading to articulation are, by whatever devious ways we follow the process, the historic fountain-head of all speech and of all thinking. One other point is of still greater importance. The ease with which speech symbolism can be transferred from one sense to another, from technique to technique, itself indicates that the mere sounds of speech are not the essential fact of language, which lies rather in the classification, in the formal patterning, and in the relating of concepts. Once more, language, as a structure, is on its inner face the mold of thought. It is this abstracted language, rather more than the physical facts of speech, that is to concern us in our inquiry. There is no more striking general fact about language than its universality. One may argue as to whether a particular tribe engages in activities that are worthy of the name of religion or of art, but we know of no people that is not possessed of a fully developed language. The lowliest South African Bushman speaks in the forms of a rich symbolic system that is in essence perfectly comparable to the speech of the cultivated Frenchman. It goes without saying that the more abstract concepts are not nearly so plentifully represented in the language of the savage, nor is there the rich terminology and the finer definition of nuances that reflect the higher culture. Yet the sort of linguistic development that parallels the historic growth of culture and which, in its later stages, we associate with literature is, at best, but a superficial thing. The fundamental groundwork of language--the development of a clear-cut phonetic system, the specific association of speech elements with concepts, and the delicate provision for the formal expression of all manner of relations--all this meets us rigidly perfected and systematized in every language known to us. Many primitive languages have a formal richness, a latent luxuriance of expression, that eclipses anything known to the languages of modern civilization. Even in the mere matter of the inventory of speech the layman must be prepared for strange surprises. Popular statements as to the extreme poverty of expression to which primitive languages are doomed are simply myths. Scarcely less impressive than the universality of speech is its almost incredible diversity. Those of us that have studied French or German, or, better yet, Latin or Greek, know in what varied forms a thought may run. The formal divergences between the English plan and the Latin plan, however, are comparatively slight in the perspective of what we know of more exotic linguistic patterns. The universality and the diversity of speech lead to a significant inference. We are forced to believe that language is an immensely ancient heritage of the human race, whether or not all forms of speech are the historical outgrowth of a single pristine form. It is doubtful if any other cultural asset of man, be it the art of drilling for fire or of chipping stone, may lay claim to a greater age. I am inclined to believe that it antedated even the lowliest developments of material culture, that these developments, in fact, were not strictly possible until language, the tool of significant expression, had itself taken shape. II THE ELEMENTS OF SPEECH We have more than once referred to the "elements of speech," by which we understood, roughly speaking, what are ordinarily called "words." We must now look more closely at these elements and acquaint ourselves with the stuff of language. The very simplest element of speech--and by "speech" we shall hence-forth mean the auditory system of speech symbolism, the flow of spoken words--is the individual sound, though, as we shall see later on, the sound is not itself a simple structure but the resultant of a series of independent, yet closely correlated, adjustments in the organs of speech. And yet the individual sound is not, properly considered, an element of speech at all, for speech is a significant function and the sound as such has no significance. It happens occasionally that the single sound is an independently significant element (such as French _a_ "has" and _à_ "to" or Latin _i_ "go!"), but such cases are fortuitous coincidences between individual sound and significant word. The coincidence is apt to be fortuitous not only in theory but in point of actual historic fact; thus, the instances cited are merely reduced forms of originally fuller phonetic groups--Latin _habet_ and _ad_ and Indo-European _ei_ respectively. If language is a structure and if the significant elements of language are the bricks of the structure, then the sounds of speech can only be compared to the unformed and unburnt clay of which the bricks are fashioned. In this chapter we shall have nothing further to do with sounds as sounds. The true, significant elements of language are generally sequences of sounds that are either words, significant parts of words, or word groupings. What distinguishes each of these elements is that it is the outward sign of a specific idea, whether of a single concept or image or of a number of such concepts or images definitely connected into a whole. The single word may or may not be the simplest significant element we have to deal with. The English words _sing_, _sings_, _singing_, _singer_ each conveys a perfectly definite and intelligible idea, though the idea is disconnected and is therefore functionally of no practical value. We recognize immediately that these words are of two sorts. The first word, _sing_, is an indivisible phonetic entity conveying the notion of a certain specific activity. The other words all involve the same fundamental notion but, owing to the addition of other phonetic elements, this notion is given a particular twist that modifies or more closely defines it. They represent, in a sense, compounded concepts that have flowered from the fundamental one. We may, therefore, analyze the words _sings_, _singing_, and _singer_ as binary expressions involving a fundamental concept, a concept of subject matter (_sing_), and a further concept of more abstract order--one of person, number, time, condition, function, or of several of these combined. If we symbolize such a term as _sing_ by the algebraic formula A, we shall have to symbolize such terms as _sings_ and _singer_ by the formula A + b.[1] The element A may be either a complete and independent word (_sing_) or the fundamental substance, the so-called root or stem[2] or "radical element" (_sing-_) of a word. The element b (_-s_, _-ing_, _-er_) is the indicator of a subsidiary and, as a rule, a more abstract concept; in the widest sense of the word "form," it puts upon the fundamental concept a formal limitation. We may term it a "grammatical element" or affix. As we shall see later on, the grammatical element or the grammatical increment, as we had better put it, need not be suffixed to the radical element. It may be a prefixed element (like the _un-_ of _unsingable_), it may be inserted into the very body of the stem (like the _n_ of the Latin _vinco_ "I conquer" as contrasted with its absence in _vici_ "I have conquered"), it may be the complete or partial repetition of the stem, or it may consist of some modification of the inner form of the stem (change of vowel, as in _sung_ and _song_; change of consonant as in _dead_ and _death_; change of accent; actual abbreviation). Each and every one of these types of grammatical element or modification has this peculiarity, that it may not, in the vast majority of cases, be used independently but needs to be somehow attached to or welded with a radical element in order to convey an intelligible notion. We had better, therefore, modify our formula, A + b, to A + (b), the round brackets symbolizing the incapacity of an element to stand alone. The grammatical element, moreover, is not only non-existent except as associated with a radical one, it does not even, as a rule, obtain its measure of significance unless it is associated with a particular class of radical elements. Thus, the _-s_ of English _he hits_ symbolizes an utterly different notion from the _-s_ of _books_, merely because _hit_ and _book_ are differently classified as to function. We must hasten to observe, however, that while the radical element may, on occasion, be identical with the word, it does not follow that it may always, or even customarily, be used as a word. Thus, the _hort-_ "garden" of such Latin forms as _hortus_, _horti_, and _horto_ is as much of an abstraction, though one yielding a more easily apprehended significance, than the _-ing_ of _singing_. Neither exists as an independently intelligible and satisfying element of speech. Both the radical element, as such, and the grammatical element, therefore, are reached only by a process of abstraction. It seemed proper to symbolize _sing-er_ as A + (b); _hort-us_ must be symbolized as (A) + (b). [Footnote 1: We shall reserve capitals for radical elements.] [Footnote 2: These words are not here used in a narrowly technical sense.] So far, the first speech element that we have found which we can say actually "exists" is the word. Before defining the word, however, we must look a little more closely at the type of word that is illustrated by _sing_. Are we, after all, justified in identifying it with a radical element? Does it represent a simple correspondence between concept and linguistic expression? Is the element _sing-_, that we have abstracted from _sings_, _singing_, and _singer_ and to which we may justly ascribe a general unmodified conceptual value, actually the same linguistic fact as the word _sing_? It would almost seem absurd to doubt it, yet a little reflection only is needed to convince us that the doubt is entirely legitimate. The word _sing_ cannot, as a matter of fact, be freely used to refer to its own conceptual content. The existence of such evidently related forms as _sang_ and _sung_ at once shows that it cannot refer to past time, but that, for at least an important part of its range of usage, it is limited to the present. On the other hand, the use of _sing_ as an "infinitive" (in such locutions as _to sing_ and _he will sing_) does indicate that there is a fairly strong tendency for the word _sing_ to represent the full, untrammeled amplitude of a specific concept. Yet if _sing_ were, in any adequate sense, the fixed expression of the unmodified concept, there should be no room for such vocalic aberrations as we find in _sang_ and _sung_ and _song_, nor should we find _sing_ specifically used to indicate present time for all persons but one (third person singular _sings_). The truth of the matter is that _sing_ is a kind of twilight word, trembling between the status of a true radical element and that of a modified word of the type of _singing_. Though it has no outward sign to indicate that it conveys more than a generalized idea, we do feel that there hangs about it a variable mist of added value. The formula A does not seem to represent it so well as A + (0). We might suspect _sing_ of belonging to the A + (b) type, with the reservation that the (b) had vanished. This report of the "feel" of the word is far from fanciful, for historical evidence does, in all earnest, show that _sing_ is in origin a number of quite distinct words, of type A + (b), that have pooled their separate values. The (b) of each of these has gone as a tangible phonetic element; its force, however, lingers on in weakened measure. The _sing_ of _I sing_ is the correspondent of the Anglo-Saxon _singe_; the infinitive _sing_, of _singan_; the imperative _sing_ of _sing_. Ever since the breakdown of English forms that set in about the time of the Norman Conquest, our language has been straining towards the creation of simple concept-words, unalloyed by formal connotations, but it has not yet succeeded in this, apart, possibly, from isolated adverbs and other elements of that sort. Were the typical unanalyzable word of the language truly a pure concept-word (type A) instead of being of a strangely transitional type (type A + [0]), our _sing_ and _work_ and _house_ and thousands of others would compare with the genuine radical-words of numerous other languages.[3] Such a radical-word, to take a random example, is the Nootka[4] word _hamot_ "bone." Our English correspondent is only superficially comparable. _Hamot_ means "bone" in a quite indefinite sense; to our English word clings the notion of singularity. The Nootka Indian can convey the idea of plurality, in one of several ways, if he so desires, but he does not need to; _hamot_ may do for either singular or plural, should no interest happen to attach to the distinction. As soon as we say "bone" (aside from its secondary usage to indicate material), we not merely specify the nature of the object but we imply, whether we will or no, that there is but one of these objects to be considered. And this increment of value makes all the difference. [Footnote 3: It is not a question of the general isolating character of such languages as Chinese (see Chapter VI). Radical-words may and do occur in languages of all varieties, many of them of a high degree of complexity.] [Footnote 4: Spoken by a group of Indian tribes in Vancouver Island.] We now know of four distinct formal types of word: A (Nootka _hamot_); A + (0) (_sing_, _bone_); A + (b) (_singing_); (A) + (b) (Latin _hortus_). There is but one other type that is fundamentally possible: A + B, the union of two (or more) independently occurring radical elements into a single term. Such a word is the compound _fire-engine_ or a Sioux form equivalent to _eat-stand_ (i.e., "to eat while standing"). It frequently happens, however, that one of the radical elements becomes functionally so subordinated to the other that it takes on the character of a grammatical element. We may symbolize this by A + b, a type that may gradually, by loss of external connection between the subordinated element b and its independent counterpart B merge with the commoner type A + (b). A word like _beautiful_ is an example of A + b, the _-ful_ barely preserving the impress of its lineage. A word like _homely_, on the other hand, is clearly of the type A + (b), for no one but a linguistic student is aware of the connection between the _-ly_ and the independent word _like_. In actual use, of course, these five (or six) fundamental types may be indefinitely complicated in a number of ways. The (0) may have a multiple value; in other words, the inherent formal modification of the basic notion of the word may affect more than one category. In such a Latin word as _cor_ "heart," for instance, not only is a concrete concept conveyed, but there cling to the form, which is actually shorter than its own radical element (_cord-_), the three distinct, yet intertwined, formal concepts of singularity, gender classification (neuter), and case (subjective-objective). The complete grammatical formula for _cor_ is, then, A + (0) + (0) + (0), though the merely external, phonetic formula would be (A)--, (A) indicating the abstracted "stem" _cord-_, the minus sign a loss of material. The significant thing about such a word as _cor_ is that the three conceptual limitations are not merely expressed by implication as the word sinks into place in a sentence; they are tied up, for good and all, within the very vitals of the word and cannot be eliminated by any possibility of usage. Other complications result from a manifolding of parts. In a given word there may be several elements of the order A (we have already symbolized this by the type A + B), of the order (A), of the order b, and of the order (b). Finally, the various types may be combined among themselves in endless ways. A comparatively simple language like English, or even Latin, illustrates but a modest proportion of these theoretical possibilities. But if we take our examples freely from the vast storehouse of language, from languages exotic as well as from those that we are more familiar with, we shall find that there is hardly a possibility that is not realized in actual usage. One example will do for thousands, one complex type for hundreds of possible types. I select it from Paiute, the language of the Indians of the arid plateaus of southwestern Utah. The word _wii-to-kuchum-punku-rügani-yugwi-va-ntü-m(ü)_[5] is of unusual length even for its own language, but it is no psychological monster for all that. It means "they who are going to sit and cut up with a knife a black cow (_or_ bull)," or, in the order of the Indian elements, "knife-black-buffalo-pet-cut up-sit(plur.)-future-participle-animate plur." The formula for this word, in accordance with our symbolism, would be (F) + (E) + C + d + A + B + (g) + (h) + (i) + (0). It is the plural of the future participle of a compound verb "to sit and cut up"--A + B. The elements (g)--which denotes futurity--, (h)--a participial suffix--, and (i)--indicating the animate plural--are grammatical elements which convey nothing when detached. The formula (0) is intended to imply that the finished word conveys, in addition to what is definitely expressed, a further relational idea, that of subjectivity; in other words, the form can only be used as the subject of a sentence, not in an objective or other syntactic relation. The radical element A ("to cut up"), before entering into combination with the coördinate element B ("to sit"), is itself compounded with two nominal elements or element-groups--an instrumentally used stem (F) ("knife"), which may be freely used as the radical element of noun forms but cannot be employed as an absolute noun in its given form, and an objectively used group--(E) + C + d ("black cow _or_ bull"). This group in turn consists of an adjectival radical element (E) ("black"), which cannot be independently employed (the absolute notion of "black" can be rendered only as the participle of a verb: "black-be-ing"), and the compound noun C + d ("buffalo-pet"). The radical element C properly means "buffalo," but the element d, properly an independently occurring noun meaning "horse" (originally "dog" or "domesticated animal" in general), is regularly used as a quasi-subordinate element indicating that the animal denoted by the stem to which it is affixed is owned by a human being. It will be observed that the whole complex (F) + (E) + C + d + A + B is functionally no more than a verbal base, corresponding to the _sing-_ of an English form like _singing_; that this complex remains verbal in force on the addition of the temporal element (g)--this (g), by the way, must not be understood as appended to B alone, but to the whole basic complex as a unit--; and that the elements (h) + (i) + (0) transform the verbal expression into a formally well-defined noun. [Footnote 5: In this and other examples taken from exotic languages I am forced by practical considerations to simplify the actual phonetic forms. This should not matter perceptibly, as we are concerned with form as such, not with phonetic content.] It is high time that we decided just what is meant by a word. Our first impulse, no doubt, would have been to define the word as the symbolic, linguistic counterpart of a single concept. We now know that such a definition is impossible. In truth it is impossible to define the word from a functional standpoint at all, for the word may be anything from the expression of a single concept--concrete or abstract or purely relational (as in _of_ or _by_ or _and_)--to the expression of a complete thought (as in Latin _dico_ "I say" or, with greater elaborateness of form, in a Nootka verb form denoting "I have been accustomed to eat twenty round objects [e.g., apples] while engaged in [doing so and so]"). In the latter case the word becomes identical with the sentence. The word is merely a form, a definitely molded entity that takes in as much or as little of the conceptual material of the whole thought as the genius of the language cares to allow. Thus it is that while the single radical elements and grammatical elements, the carriers of isolated concepts, are comparable as we pass from language to language, the finished words are not. Radical (or grammatical) element and sentence--these are the primary _functional_ units of speech, the former as an abstracted minimum, the latter as the esthetically satisfying embodiment of a unified thought. The actual _formal_ units of speech, the words, may on occasion identify themselves with either of the two functional units; more often they mediate between the two extremes, embodying one or more radical notions and also one or more subsidiary ones. We may put the whole matter in a nutshell by saying that the radical and grammatical elements of language, abstracted as they are from the realities of speech, respond to the conceptual world of science, abstracted as it is from the realities of experience, and that the word, the existent unit of living speech, responds to the unit of actually apprehended experience, of history, of art. The sentence is the logical counterpart of the complete thought only if it be felt as made up of the radical and grammatical elements that lurk in the recesses of its words. It is the psychological counterpart of experience, of art, when it is felt, as indeed it normally is, as the finished play of word with word. As the necessity of defining thought solely and exclusively for its own sake becomes more urgent, the word becomes increasingly irrelevant as a means. We can therefore easily understand why the mathematician and the symbolic logician are driven to discard the word and to build up their thought with the help of symbols which have, each of them, a rigidly unitary value. But is not the word, one may object, as much of an abstraction as the radical element? Is it not as arbitrarily lifted out of the living sentence as is the minimum conceptual element out of the word? Some students of language have, indeed, looked upon the word as such an abstraction, though with very doubtful warrant, it seems to me. It is true that in particular cases, especially in some of the highly synthetic languages of aboriginal America, it is not always easy to say whether a particular element of language is to be interpreted as an independent word or as part of a larger word. These transitional cases, puzzling as they may be on occasion, do not, however, materially weaken the case for the psychological validity of the word. Linguistic experience, both as expressed in standardized, written form and as tested in daily usage, indicates overwhelmingly that there is not, as a rule, the slightest difficulty in bringing the word to consciousness as a psychological reality. No more convincing test could be desired than this, that the naive Indian, quite unaccustomed to the concept of the written word, has nevertheless no serious difficulty in dictating a text to a linguistic student word by word; he tends, of course, to run his words together as in actual speech, but if he is called to a halt and is made to understand what is desired, he can readily isolate the words as such, repeating them as units. He regularly refuses, on the other hand, to isolate the radical or grammatical element, on the ground that it "makes no sense."[6] What, then, is the objective criterion of the word? The speaker and hearer feel the word, let us grant, but how shall we justify their feeling? If function is not the ultimate criterion of the word, what is? [Footnote 6: These oral experiences, which I have had time and again as a field student of American Indian languages, are very neatly confirmed by personal experiences of another sort. Twice I have taught intelligent young Indians to write their own languages according to the phonetic system which I employ. They were taught merely how to render accurately the sounds as such. Both had some difficulty in learning to break up a word into its constituent sounds, but none whatever in determining the words. This they both did with spontaneous and complete accuracy. In the hundreds of pages of manuscript Nootka text that I have obtained from one of these young Indians the words, whether abstract relational entities like English _that_ and _but_ or complex sentence-words like the Nootka example quoted above, are, practically without exception, isolated precisely as I or any other student would have isolated them. Such experiences with naïve speakers and recorders do more to convince one of the definitely plastic unity of the word than any amount of purely theoretical argument.] It is easier to ask the question than to answer it. The best that we can do is to say that the word is one of the smallest, completely satisfying bits of isolated "meaning" into which the sentence resolves itself. It cannot be cut into without a disturbance of meaning, one or the other or both of the severed parts remaining as a helpless waif on our hands. In practice this unpretentious criterion does better service than might be supposed. In such a sentence as _It is unthinkable_, it is simply impossible to group the elements into any other and smaller "words" than the three indicated. _Think_ or _thinkable_ might be isolated, but as neither _un-_ nor _-able_ nor _is-un_ yields a measurable satisfaction, we are compelled to leave _unthinkable_ as an integral whole, a miniature bit of art. Added to the "feel" of the word are frequently, but by no means invariably, certain external phonetic characteristics. Chief of these is accent. In many, perhaps in most, languages the single word is marked by a unifying accent, an emphasis on one of the syllables, to which the rest are subordinated. The particular syllable that is to be so distinguished is dependent, needless to say, on the special genius of the language. The importance of accent as a unifying feature of the word is obvious in such English examples as _unthinkable_, _characterizing_. The long Paiute word that we have analyzed is marked as a rigid phonetic unit by several features, chief of which are the accent on its second syllable (_wii'_-"knife") and the slurring ("unvoicing," to use the technical phonetic term) of its final vowel (_-mü_, animate plural). Such features as accent, cadence, and the treatment of consonants and vowels within the body of a word are often useful as aids in the external demarcation of the word, but they must by no means be interpreted, as is sometimes done, as themselves responsible for its psychological existence. They at best but strengthen a feeling of unity that is already present on other grounds. We have already seen that the major functional unit of speech, the sentence, has, like the word, a psychological as well as a merely logical or abstracted existence. Its definition is not difficult. It is the linguistic expression of a proposition. It combines a subject of discourse with a statement in regard to this subject. Subject and "predicate" may be combined in a single word, as in Latin _dico_; each may be expressed independently, as in the English equivalent, _I say_; each or either may be so qualified as to lead to complex propositions of many sorts. No matter how many of these qualifying elements (words or functional parts of words) are introduced, the sentence does not lose its feeling of unity so long as each and every one of them falls in place as contributory to the definition of either the subject of discourse or the core of the predicate[7]. Such a sentence as _The mayor of New York is going to deliver a speech of welcome in French_ is readily felt as a unified statement, incapable of reduction by the transfer of certain of its elements, in their given form, to the preceding or following sentences. The contributory ideas of _of New York_, _of welcome_, and _in French_ may be eliminated without hurting the idiomatic flow of the sentence. _The mayor is going to deliver a speech_ is a perfectly intelligible proposition. But further than this we cannot go in the process of reduction. We cannot say, for instance, _Mayor is going to deliver_.[8] The reduced sentence resolves itself into the subject of discourse--_the mayor_--and the predicate--_is going to deliver a speech_. It is customary to say that the true subject of such a sentence is _mayor_, the true predicate _is going_ or even _is_, the other elements being strictly subordinate. Such an analysis, however, is purely schematic and is without psychological value. It is much better frankly to recognize the fact that either or both of the two terms of the sentence-proposition may be incapable of expression in the form of single words. There are languages that can convey all that is conveyed by _The-mayor is-going-to-deliver-a-speech_ in two words, a subject word and a predicate word, but English is not so highly synthetic. The point that we are really making here is that underlying the finished sentence is a living sentence type, of fixed formal characteristics. These fixed types or actual sentence-groundworks may be freely overlaid by such additional matter as the speaker or writer cares to put on, but they are themselves as rigidly "given" by tradition as are the radical and grammatical elements abstracted from the finished word. New words may be consciously created from these fundamental elements on the analogy of old ones, but hardly new types of words. In the same way new sentences are being constantly created, but always on strictly traditional lines. The enlarged sentence, however, allows as a rule of considerable freedom in the handling of what may be called "unessential" parts. It is this margin of freedom which gives us the opportunity of individual style. [Footnote 7: "Coordinate sentences" like _I shall remain but you may go_ may only doubtfully be considered as truly unified predications, as true sentences. They are sentences in a stylistic sense rather than from the strictly formal linguistic standpoint. The orthography _I shall remain. But you may go_ is as intrinsically justified as _I shall remain. Now you may go_. The closer connection in sentiment between the first two propositions has led to a conventional visual representation that must not deceive the analytic spirit.] [Footnote 8: Except, possibly, in a newspaper headline. Such headlines, however, are language only in a derived sense.] The habitual association of radical elements, grammatical elements, words, and sentences with concepts or groups of concepts related into wholes is the fact itself of language. It is important to note that there is in all languages a certain randomness of association. Thus, the idea of "hide" may be also expressed by the word "conceal," the notion of "three times" also by "thrice." The multiple expression of a single concept is universally felt as a source of linguistic strength and variety, not as a needless extravagance. More irksome is a random correspondence between idea and linguistic expression in the field of abstract and relational concepts, particularly when the concept is embodied in a grammatical element. Thus, the randomness of the expression of plurality in such words as _books_, _oxen_, _sheep_, and _geese_ is felt to be rather more, I fancy, an unavoidable and traditional predicament than a welcome luxuriance. It is obvious that a language cannot go beyond a certain point in this randomness. Many languages go incredibly far in this respect, it is true, but linguistic history shows conclusively that sooner or later the less frequently occurring associations are ironed out at the expense of the more vital ones. In other words, all languages have an inherent tendency to economy of expression. Were this tendency entirely inoperative, there would be no grammar. The fact of grammar, a universal trait of language, is simply a generalized expression of the feeling that analogous concepts and relations are most conveniently symbolized in analogous forms. Were a language ever completely "grammatical," it would be a perfect engine of conceptual expression. Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak. Up to the present we have been assuming that the material of language reflects merely the world of concepts and, on what I have ventured to call the "pre-rational" plane, of images, which are the raw material of concepts. We have, in other words, been assuming that language moves entirely in the ideational or cognitive sphere. It is time that we amplified the picture. The volitional aspect of consciousness also is to some extent explicitly provided for in language. Nearly all languages have special means for the expression of commands (in the imperative forms of the verb, for example) and of desires, unattained or unattainable (_Would he might come!_ or _Would he were here!_) The emotions, on the whole, seem to be given a less adequate outlet. Emotion, indeed, is proverbially inclined to speechlessness. Most, if not all, the interjections are to be put to the credit of emotional expression, also, it may be, a number of linguistic elements expressing certain modalities, such as dubitative or potential forms, which may be interpreted as reflecting the emotional states of hesitation or doubt--attenuated fear. On the whole, it must be admitted that ideation reigns supreme in language, that volition and emotion come in as distinctly secondary factors. This, after all, is perfectly intelligible. The world of image and concept, the endless and ever-shifting picture of objective reality, is the unavoidable subject-matter of human communication, for it is only, or mainly, in terms of this world that effective action is possible. Desire, purpose, emotion are the personal color of the objective world; they are applied privately by the individual soul and are of relatively little importance to the neighboring one. All this does not mean that volition and emotion are not expressed. They are, strictly speaking, never absent from normal speech, but their expression is not of a truly linguistic nature. The nuances of emphasis, tone, and phrasing, the varying speed and continuity of utterance, the accompanying bodily movements, all these express something of the inner life of impulse and feeling, but as these means of expression are, at last analysis, but modified forms of the instinctive utterance that man shares with the lower animals, they cannot be considered as forming part of the essential cultural conception of language, however much they may be inseparable from its actual life. And this instinctive expression of volition and emotion is, for the most part, sufficient, often more than sufficient, for the purposes of communication. There are, it is true, certain writers on the psychology of language[9] who deny its prevailingly cognitive character but attempt, on the contrary, to demonstrate the origin of most linguistic elements within the domain of feeling. I confess that I am utterly unable to follow them. What there is of truth in their contentions may be summed up, it seems to me, by saying that most words, like practically all elements of consciousness, have an associated feeling-tone, a mild, yet none the less real and at times insidiously powerful, derivative of pleasure or pain. This feeling-tone, however, is not as a rule an inherent value in the word itself; it is rather a sentimental growth on the word's true body, on its conceptual kernel. Not only may the feeling-tone change from one age to another (this, of course, is true of the conceptual content as well), but it varies remarkably from individual to individual according to the personal associations of each, varies, indeed, from time to time in a single individual's consciousness as his experiences mold him and his moods change. To be sure, there are socially accepted feeling-tones, or ranges of feeling-tone, for many words over and above the force of individual association, but they are exceedingly variable and elusive things at best. They rarely have the rigidity of the central, primary fact. We all grant, for instance, that _storm_, _tempest_, and _hurricane_, quite aside from their slight differences of actual meaning, have distinct feeling-tones, tones that are felt by all sensitive speakers and readers of English in a roughly equivalent fashion. _Storm_, we feel, is a more general and a decidedly less "magnificent" word than the other two; _tempest_ is not only associated with the sea but is likely, in the minds of many, to have obtained a softened glamour from a specific association with Shakespeare's great play; _hurricane_ has a greater forthrightness, a directer ruthlessness than its synonyms. Yet the individual's feeling-tones for these words are likely to vary enormously. To some _tempest_ and _hurricane_ may seem "soft," literary words, the simpler _storm_ having a fresh, rugged value which the others do not possess (think of _storm and stress_). If we have browsed much in our childhood days in books of the Spanish Main, _hurricane_ is likely to have a pleasurably bracing tone; if we have had the misfortune to be caught in one, we are not unlikely to feel the word as cold, cheerless, sinister. [Footnote 9: E.g., the brilliant Dutch writer, Jac van Ginneken.] The feeling-tones of words are of no use, strictly speaking, to science; the philosopher, if he desires to arrive at truth rather than merely to persuade, finds them his most insidious enemies. But man is rarely engaged in pure science, in solid thinking. Generally his mental activities are bathed in a warm current of feeling and he seizes upon the feeling-tones of words as gentle aids to the desired excitation. They are naturally of great value to the literary artist. It is interesting to note, however, that even to the artist they are a danger. A word whose customary feeling-tone is too unquestioningly accepted becomes a plushy bit of furniture, a _cliché_. Every now and then the artist has to fight the feeling-tone, to get the word to mean what it nakedly and conceptually should mean, depending for the effect of feeling on the creative power of an individual juxtaposition of concepts or images. III THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE We have seen that the mere phonetic framework of speech does not constitute the inner fact of language and that the single sound of articulated speech is not, as such, a linguistic element at all. For all that, speech is so inevitably bound up with sounds and their articulation that we can hardly avoid giving the subject of phonetics some general consideration. Experience has shown that neither the purely formal aspects of a language nor the course of its history can be fully understood without reference to the sounds in which this form and this history are embodied. A detailed survey of phonetics would be both too technical for the general reader and too loosely related to our main theme to warrant the needed space, but we can well afford to consider a few outstanding facts and ideas connected with the sounds of language. The feeling that the average speaker has of his language is that it is built up, acoustically speaking, of a comparatively small number of distinct sounds, each of which is rather accurately provided for in the current alphabet by one letter or, in a few cases, by two or more alternative letters. As for the languages of foreigners, he generally feels that, aside from a few striking differences that cannot escape even the uncritical ear, the sounds they use are the same as those he is familiar with but that there is a mysterious "accent" to these foreign languages, a certain unanalyzed phonetic character, apart from the sounds as such, that gives them their air of strangeness. This naïve feeling is largely illusory on both scores. Phonetic analysis convinces one that the number of clearly distinguishable sounds and nuances of sounds that are habitually employed by the speakers of a language is far greater than they themselves recognize. Probably not one English speaker out of a hundred has the remotest idea that the _t_ of a word like _sting_ is not at all the same sound as the _t_ of _teem_, the latter _t_ having a fullness of "breath release" that is inhibited in the former case by the preceding _s_; that the _ea_ of _meat_ is of perceptibly shorter duration than the _ea_ of _mead_; or that the final _s_ of a word like _heads_ is not the full, buzzing _z_ sound of the _s_ in such a word as _please_. It is the frequent failure of foreigners, who have acquired a practical mastery of English and who have eliminated all the cruder phonetic shortcomings of their less careful brethren, to observe such minor distinctions that helps to give their English pronunciation the curiously elusive "accent" that we all vaguely feel. We do not diagnose the "accent" as the total acoustic effect produced by a series of slight but specific phonetic errors for the very good reason that we have never made clear to ourselves our own phonetic stock in trade. If two languages taken at random, say English and Russian, are compared as to their phonetic systems, we are more apt than not to find that very few of the phonetic elements of the one find an exact analogue in the other. Thus, the _t_ of a Russian word like _tam_ "there" is neither the English _t_ of _sting_ nor the English _t_ of _teem_. It differs from both in its "dental" articulation, in other words, in being produced by contact of the tip of the tongue with the upper teeth, not, as in English, by contact of the tongue back of the tip with the gum ridge above the teeth; moreover, it differs from the _t_ of _teem_ also in the absence of a marked "breath release" before the following vowel is attached, so that its acoustic effect is of a more precise, "metallic" nature than in English. Again, the English _l_ is unknown in Russian, which possesses, on the other hand, two distinct _l_-sounds that the normal English speaker would find it difficult exactly to reproduce--a "hollow," guttural-like _l_ and a "soft," palatalized _l_-sound that is only very approximately rendered, in English terms, as _ly_. Even so simple and, one would imagine, so invariable a sound as _m_ differs in the two languages. In a Russian word like _most_ "bridge" the _m_ is not the same as the _m_ of the English word _most_; the lips are more fully rounded during its articulation, so that it makes a heavier, more resonant impression on the ear. The vowels, needless to say, differ completely in English and Russian, hardly any two of them being quite the same. I have gone into these illustrative details, which are of little or no specific interest for us, merely in order to provide something of an experimental basis to convince ourselves of the tremendous variability of speech sounds. Yet a complete inventory of the acoustic resources of all the European languages, the languages nearer home, while unexpectedly large, would still fall far short of conveying a just idea of the true range of human articulation. In many of the languages of Asia, Africa, and aboriginal America there are whole classes of sounds that most of us have no knowledge of. They are not necessarily more difficult of enunciation than sounds more familiar to our ears; they merely involve such muscular adjustments of the organs of speech as we have never habituated ourselves to. It may be safely said that the total number of possible sounds is greatly in excess of those actually in use. Indeed, an experienced phonetician should have no difficulty in inventing sounds that are unknown to objective investigation. One reason why we find it difficult to believe that the range of possible speech sounds is indefinitely large is our habit of conceiving the sound as a simple, unanalyzable impression instead of as the resultant of a number of distinct muscular adjustments that take place simultaneously. A slight change in any one of these adjustments gives us a new sound which is akin to the old one, because of the continuance of the other adjustments, but which is acoustically distinct from it, so sensitive has the human ear become to the nuanced play of the vocal mechanism. Another reason for our lack of phonetic imagination is the fact that, while our ear is delicately responsive to the sounds of speech, the muscles of our speech organs have early in life become exclusively accustomed to the particular adjustments and systems of adjustment that are required to produce the traditional sounds of the language. All or nearly all other adjustments have become permanently inhibited, whether through inexperience or through gradual elimination. Of course the power to produce these inhibited adjustments is not entirely lost, but the extreme difficulty we experience in learning the new sounds of foreign languages is sufficient evidence of the strange rigidity that has set in for most people in the voluntary control of the speech organs. The point may be brought home by contrasting the comparative lack of freedom of voluntary speech movements with the all but perfect freedom of voluntary gesture.[10] Our rigidity in articulation is the price we have had to pay for easy mastery of a highly necessary symbolism. One cannot be both splendidly free in the random choice of movements and selective with deadly certainty.[11] [Footnote 10: Observe the "voluntary." When we shout or grunt or otherwise allow our voices to take care of themselves, as we are likely to do when alone in the country on a fine spring day, we are no longer fixing vocal adjustments by voluntary control. Under these circumstances we are almost certain to hit on speech sounds that we could never learn to control in actual speech.] [Footnote 11: If speech, in its acoustic and articulatory aspect, is indeed a rigid system, how comes it, one may plausibly object, that no two people speak alike? The answer is simple. All that part of speech which falls out of the rigid articulatory framework is not speech in idea, but is merely a superadded, more or less instinctively determined vocal complication inseparable from speech in practice. All the individual color of speech--personal emphasis, speed, personal cadence, personal pitch--is a non-linguistic fact, just as the incidental expression of desire and emotion are, for the most part, alien to linguistic expression. Speech, like all elements of culture, demands conceptual selection, inhibition of the randomness of instinctive behavior. That its "idea" is never realized as such in practice, its carriers being instinctively animated organisms, is of course true of each and every aspect of culture.] There are, then, an indefinitely large number of articulated sounds available for the mechanics of speech; any given language makes use of an explicit, rigidly economical selection of these rich resources; and each of the many possible sounds of speech is conditioned by a number of independent muscular adjustments that work together simultaneously towards its production. A full account of the activity of each of the organs of speech--in so far as its activity has a bearing on language--is impossible here, nor can we concern ourselves in a systematic way with the classification of sounds on the basis of their mechanics.[12] A few bold outlines are all that we can attempt. The organs of speech are the lungs and bronchial tubes; the throat, particularly that part of it which is known as the larynx or, in popular parlance, the "Adam's apple"; the nose; the uvula, which is the soft, pointed, and easily movable organ that depends from the rear of the palate; the palate, which is divided into a posterior, movable "soft palate" or velum and a "hard palate"; the tongue; the teeth; and the lips. The palate, lower palate, tongue, teeth, and lips may be looked upon as a combined resonance chamber, whose constantly varying shape, chiefly due to the extreme mobility of the tongue, is the main factor in giving the outgoing breath its precise quality[13] of sound. [Footnote 12: Purely acoustic classifications, such as more easily suggest themselves to a first attempt at analysis, are now in less favor among students of phonetics than organic classifications. The latter have the advantage of being more objective. Moreover, the acoustic quality of a sound is dependent on the articulation, even though in linguistic consciousness this quality is the primary, not the secondary, fact.] [Footnote 13: By "quality" is here meant the inherent nature and resonance of the sound as such. The general "quality" of the individual's voice is another matter altogether. This is chiefly determined by the individual anatomical characteristics of the larynx and is of no linguistic interest whatever.] The lungs and bronchial tubes are organs of speech only in so far as they supply and conduct the current of outgoing air without which audible articulation is impossible. They are not responsible for any specific sound or acoustic feature of sounds except, possibly, accent or stress. It may be that differences of stress are due to slight differences in the contracting force of the lung muscles, but even this influence of the lungs is denied by some students, who explain the fluctuations of stress that do so much to color speech by reference to the more delicate activity of the glottal cords. These glottal cords are two small, nearly horizontal, and highly sensitive membranes within the larynx, which consists, for the most part, of two large and several smaller cartilages and of a number of small muscles that control the action of the cords. The cords, which are attached to the cartilages, are to the human speech organs what the two vibrating reeds are to a clarinet or the strings to a violin. They are capable of at least three distinct types of movement, each of which is of the greatest importance for speech. They may be drawn towards or away from each other, they may vibrate like reeds or strings, and they may become lax or tense in the direction of their length. The last class of these movements allows the cords to vibrate at different "lengths" or degrees of tenseness and is responsible for the variations in pitch which are present not only in song but in the more elusive modulations of ordinary speech. The two other types of glottal action determine the nature of the voice, "voice" being a convenient term for breath as utilized in speech. If the cords are well apart, allowing the breath to escape in unmodified form, we have the condition technically known as "voicelessness." All sounds produced under these circumstances are "voiceless" sounds. Such are the simple, unmodified breath as it passes into the mouth, which is, at least approximately, the same as the sound that we write _h_, also a large number of special articulations in the mouth chamber, like _p_ and _s_. On the other hand, the glottal cords may be brought tight together, without vibrating. When this happens, the current of breath is checked for the time being. The slight choke or "arrested cough" that is thus made audible is not recognized in English as a definite sound but occurs nevertheless not infrequently.[14] This momentary check, technically known as a "glottal stop," is an integral element of speech in many languages, as Danish, Lettish, certain Chinese dialects, and nearly all American Indian languages. Between the two extremes of voicelessness, that of completely open breath and that of checked breath, lies the position of true voice. In this position the cords are close together, but not so tightly as to prevent the air from streaming through; the cords are set vibrating and a musical tone of varying pitch results. A tone so produced is known as a "voiced sound." It may have an indefinite number of qualities according to the precise position of the upper organs of speech. Our vowels, nasals (such as _m_ and _n_), and such sounds as _b_, _z_, and _l_ are all voiced sounds. The most convenient test of a voiced sound is the possibility of pronouncing it on any given pitch, in other words, of singing on it.[15] The voiced sounds are the most clearly audible elements of speech. As such they are the carriers of practically all significant differences in stress, pitch, and syllabification. The voiceless sounds are articulated noises that break up the stream of voice with fleeting moments of silence. Acoustically intermediate between the freely unvoiced and the voiced sounds are a number of other characteristic types of voicing, such as murmuring and whisper.[16] These and still other types of voice are relatively unimportant in English and most other European languages, but there are languages in which they rise to some prominence in the normal flow of speech. [Footnote 14: As at the end of the snappily pronounced _no!_ (sometimes written _nope!_) or in the over-carefully pronounced _at all_, where one may hear a slight check between the _t_ and the _a_.] [Footnote 15: "Singing" is here used in a wide sense. One cannot sing continuously on such a sound as _b_ or _d_, but one may easily outline a tune on a series of _b_'s or _d_'s in the manner of the plucked "pizzicato" on stringed instruments. A series of tones executed on continuant consonants, like _m_, _z_, or _l_, gives the effect of humming, droning, or buzzing. The sound of "humming," indeed, is nothing but a continuous voiced nasal, held on one pitch or varying in pitch, as desired.] [Footnote 16: The whisper of ordinary speech is a combination of unvoiced sounds and "whispered" sounds, as the term is understood in phonetics.] The nose is not an active organ of speech, but it is highly important as a resonance chamber. It may be disconnected from the mouth, which is the other great resonance chamber, by the lifting of the movable part of the soft palate so as to shut off the passage of the breath into the nasal cavity; or, if the soft palate is allowed to hang down freely and unobstructively, so that the breath passes into both the nose and the mouth, these make a combined resonance chamber. Such sounds as _b_ and _a_ (as in _father_) are voiced "oral" sounds, that is, the voiced breath does not receive a nasal resonance. As soon as the soft palate is lowered, however, and the nose added as a participating resonance chamber, the sounds _b_ and _a_ take on a peculiar "nasal" quality and become, respectively, _m_ and the nasalized vowel written _an_ in French (e.g., _sang_, _tant_). The only English sounds[17] that normally receive a nasal resonance are _m_, _n_, and the _ng_ sound of _sing_. Practically all sounds, however, may be nasalized, not only the vowels--nasalized vowels are common in all parts of the world--but such sounds as _l_ or _z_. Voiceless nasals are perfectly possible. They occur, for instance, in Welsh and in quite a number of American Indian languages. [Footnote 17: Aside from the involuntary nasalizing of all voiced sounds in the speech of those that talk with a "nasal twang."] The organs that make up the oral resonance chamber may articulate in two ways. The breath, voiced or unvoiced, nasalized or unnasalized, may be allowed to pass through the mouth without being checked or impeded at any point; or it may be either momentarily checked or allowed to stream through a greatly narrowed passage with resulting air friction. There are also transitions between the two latter types of articulation. The unimpeded breath takes on a particular color or quality in accordance with the varying shape of the oral resonance chamber. This shape is chiefly determined by the position of the movable parts--the tongue and the lips. As the tongue is raised or lowered, retracted or brought forward, held tense or lax, and as the lips are pursed ("rounded") in varying degree or allowed to keep their position of rest, a large number of distinct qualities result. These oral qualities are the vowels. In theory their number is infinite, in practice the ear can differentiate only a limited, yet a surprisingly large, number of resonance positions. Vowels, whether nasalized or not, are normally voiced sounds; in not a few languages, however, "voiceless vowels"[18] also occur. [Footnote 18: These may be also defined as free unvoiced breath with varying vocalic timbres. In the long Paiute word quoted on page 31 the first _u_ and the final _ü_ are pronounced without voice.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 18 refers to line 1014.] The remaining oral sounds are generally grouped together as "consonants." In them the stream of breath is interfered with in some way, so that a lesser resonance results, and a sharper, more incisive quality of tone. There are four main types of articulation generally recognized within the consonantal group of sounds. The breath may be completely stopped for a moment at some definite point in the oral cavity. Sounds so produced, like _t_ or _d_ or _p_, are known as "stops" or "explosives."[19] Or the breath may be continuously obstructed through a narrow passage, not entirely checked. Examples of such "spirants" or "fricatives," as they are called, are _s_ and _z_ and _y_. The third class of consonants, the "laterals," are semi-stopped. There is a true stoppage at the central point of articulation, but the breath is allowed to escape through the two side passages or through one of them. Our English _d_, for instance, may be readily transformed into _l_, which has the voicing and the position of _d_, merely by depressing the sides of the tongue on either side of the point of contact sufficiently to allow the breath to come through. Laterals are possible in many distinct positions. They may be unvoiced (the Welsh _ll_ is an example) as well as voiced. Finally, the stoppage of the breath may be rapidly intermittent; in other words, the active organ of contact--generally the point of the tongue, less often the uvula[20]--may be made to vibrate against or near the point of contact. These sounds are the "trills" or "rolled consonants," of which the normal English _r_ is a none too typical example. They are well developed in many languages, however, generally in voiced form, sometimes, as in Welsh and Paiute, in unvoiced form as well. [Footnote 19: Nasalized stops, say _m_ or _n_, can naturally not be truly "stopped," as there is no way of checking the stream of breath in the nose by a definite articulation.] [Footnote 20: The lips also may theoretically so articulate. "Labial trills," however, are certainly rare in natural speech.] The oral manner of articulation is naturally not sufficient to define a consonant. The place of articulation must also be considered. Contacts may be formed at a large number of points, from the root of the tongue to the lips. It is not necessary here to go at length into this somewhat complicated matter. The contact is either between the root of the tongue and the throat,[21] some part of the tongue and a point on the palate (as in _k_ or _ch_ or _l_), some part of the tongue and the teeth (as in the English _th_ of _thick_ and _then_), the teeth and one of the lips (practically always the upper teeth and lower lip, as in _f_), or the two lips (as in _p_ or English _w_). The tongue articulations are the most complicated of all, as the mobility of the tongue allows various points on its surface, say the tip, to articulate against a number of opposed points of contact. Hence arise many positions of articulation that we are not familiar with, such as the typical "dental" position of Russian or Italian _t_ and _d_; or the "cerebral" position of Sanskrit and other languages of India, in which the tip of the tongue articulates against the hard palate. As there is no break at any point between the rims of the teeth back to the uvula nor from the tip of the tongue back to its root, it is evident that all the articulations that involve the tongue form a continuous organic (and acoustic) series. The positions grade into each other, but each language selects a limited number of clearly defined positions as characteristic of its consonantal system, ignoring transitional or extreme positions. Frequently a language allows a certain latitude in the fixing of the required position. This is true, for instance, of the English _k_ sound, which is articulated much further to the front in a word like _kin_ than in _cool_. We ignore this difference, psychologically, as a non-essential, mechanical one. Another language might well recognize the difference, or only a slightly greater one, as significant, as paralleling the distinction in position between the _k_ of _kin_ and the _t_ of _tin_. [Footnote 21: This position, known as "faucal," is not common.] The organic classification of speech sounds is a simple matter after what we have learned of their production. Any such sound may be put into its proper place by the appropriate answer to four main questions:--What is the position of the glottal cords during its articulation? Does the breath pass into the mouth alone or is it also allowed to stream into the nose? Does the breath pass freely through the mouth or is it impeded at some point and, if so, in what manner? What are the precise points of articulation in the mouth?[22] This fourfold classification of sounds, worked out in all its detailed ramifications,[23] is sufficient to account for all, or practically all, the sounds of language.[24] [Footnote 22: "Points of articulation" must be understood to include tongue and lip positions of the vowels.] [Footnote 23: Including, under the fourth category, a number of special resonance adjustments that we have not been able to take up specifically.] [Footnote 24: In so far, it should be added, as these sounds are expiratory, i.e., pronounced with the outgoing breath. Certain languages, like the South African Hottentot and Bushman, have also a number of inspiratory sounds, pronounced by sucking in the breath at various points of oral contact. These are the so-called "clicks."] The phonetic habits of a given language are not exhaustively defined by stating that it makes use of such and such particular sounds out of the all but endless gamut that we have briefly surveyed. There remains the important question of the dynamics of these phonetic elements. Two languages may, theoretically, be built up of precisely the same series of consonants and vowels and yet produce utterly different acoustic effects. One of them may not recognize striking variations in the lengths or "quantities" of the phonetic elements, the other may note such variations most punctiliously (in probably the majority of languages long and short vowels are distinguished; in many, as in Italian or Swedish or Ojibwa, long consonants are recognized as distinct from short ones). Or the one, say English, may be very sensitive to relative stresses, while in the other, say French, stress is a very minor consideration. Or, again, the pitch differences which are inseparable from the actual practice of language may not affect the word as such, but, as in English, may be a more or less random or, at best, but a rhetorical phenomenon, while in other languages, as in Swedish, Lithuanian, Chinese, Siamese, and the majority of African languages, they may be more finely graduated and felt as integral characteristics of the words themselves. Varying methods of syllabifying are also responsible for noteworthy acoustic differences. Most important of all, perhaps, are the very different possibilities of combining the phonetic elements. Each language has its peculiarities. The _ts_ combination, for instance, is found in both English and German, but in English it can only occur at the end of a word (as in _hats_), while it occurs freely in German as the psychological equivalent of a single sound (as in _Zeit_, _Katze_). Some languages allow of great heapings of consonants or of vocalic groups (diphthongs), in others no two consonants or no two vowels may ever come together. Frequently a sound occurs only in a special position or under special phonetic circumstances. In English, for instance, the _z_-sound of _azure_ cannot occur initially, while the peculiar quality of the _t_ of _sting_ is dependent on its being preceded by the _s_. These dynamic factors, in their totality, are as important for the proper understanding of the phonetic genius of a language as the sound system itself, often far more so. We have already seen, in an incidental way, that phonetic elements or such dynamic features as quantity and stress have varying psychological "values." The English _ts_ of _fiats_ is merely a _t_ followed by a functionally independent _s_, the _ts_ of the German word _Zeit_ has an integral value equivalent, say, to the _t_ of the English word _tide_. Again, the _t_ of _time_ is indeed noticeably distinct from that of _sting_, but the difference, to the consciousness of an English-speaking person, is quite irrelevant. It has no "value." If we compare the _t_-sounds of Haida, the Indian language spoken in the Queen Charlotte Islands, we find that precisely the same difference of articulation has a real value. In such a word as _sting_ "two," the _t_ is pronounced precisely as in English, but in _sta_ "from" the _t_ is clearly "aspirated," like that of _time_. In other words, an objective difference that is irrelevant in English is of functional value in Haida; from its own psychological standpoint the _t_ of _sting_ is as different from that of _sta_ as, from our standpoint, is the _t_ of _time_ from the _d_ of _divine_. Further investigation would yield the interesting result that the Haida ear finds the difference between the English _t_ of _sting_ and the _d_ of _divine_ as irrelevant as the naïve English ear finds that of the _t_-sounds of _sting_ and _time_. The objective comparison of sounds in two or more languages is, then, of no psychological or historical significance unless these sounds are first "weighted," unless their phonetic "values" are determined. These values, in turn, flow from the general behavior and functioning of the sounds in actual speech. These considerations as to phonetic value lead to an important conception. Back of the purely objective system of sounds that is peculiar to a language and which can be arrived at only by a painstaking phonetic analysis, there is a more restricted "inner" or "ideal" system which, while perhaps equally unconscious as a system to the naïve speaker, can far more readily than the other be brought to his consciousness as a finished pattern, a psychological mechanism. The inner sound-system, overlaid though it may be by the mechanical or the irrelevant, is a real and an immensely important principle in the life of a language. It may persist as a pattern, involving number, relation, and functioning of phonetic elements, long after its phonetic content is changed. Two historically related languages or dialects may not have a sound in common, but their ideal sound-systems may be identical patterns. I would not for a moment wish to imply that this pattern may not change. It may shrink or expand or change its functional complexion, but its rate of change is infinitely less rapid than that of the sounds as such. Every language, then, is characterized as much by its ideal system of sounds and by the underlying phonetic pattern (system, one might term it, of symbolic atoms) as by a definite grammatical structure. Both the phonetic and conceptual structures show the instinctive feeling of language for form.[25] [Footnote 25: The conception of the ideal phonetic system, the phonetic pattern, of a language is not as well understood by linguistic students as it should be. In this respect the unschooled recorder of language, provided he has a good ear and a genuine instinct for language, is often at a great advantage as compared with the minute phonetician, who is apt to be swamped by his mass of observations. I have already employed my experience in teaching Indians to write their own language for its testing value in another connection. It yields equally valuable evidence here. I found that it was difficult or impossible to teach an Indian to make phonetic distinctions that did not correspond to "points in the pattern of his language," however these differences might strike our objective ear, but that subtle, barely audible, phonetic differences, if only they hit the "points in the pattern," were easily and voluntarily expressed in writing. In watching my Nootka interpreter write his language, I often had the curious feeling that he was transcribing an ideal flow of phonetic elements which he heard, inadequately from a purely objective standpoint, as the intention of the actual rumble of speech.] IV FORM IN LANGUAGE: GRAMMATICAL PROCESSES The question of form in language presents itself under two aspects. We may either consider the formal methods employed by a language, its "grammatical processes," or we may ascertain the distribution of concepts with reference to formal expression. What are the formal patterns of the language? And what types of concepts make up the content of these formal patterns? The two points of view are quite distinct. The English word _unthinkingly_ is, broadly speaking, formally parallel to the word _reformers_, each being built up on a radical element which may occur as an independent verb (_think_, _form_), this radical element being preceded by an element (_un-_, _re-_) that conveys a definite and fairly concrete significance but that cannot be used independently, and followed by two elements (_-ing_, _-ly_; _-er_, _-s_) that limit the application of the radical concept in a relational sense. This formal pattern--(b) + A + (c) + (d)[26]--is a characteristic feature of the language. A countless number of functions may be expressed by it; in other words, all the possible ideas conveyed by such prefixed and suffixed elements, while tending to fall into minor groups, do not necessarily form natural, functional systems. There is no logical reason, for instance, why the numeral function of _-s_ should be formally expressed in a manner that is analogous to the expression of the idea conveyed by _-ly_. It is perfectly conceivable that in another language the concept of manner (_-ly_) may be treated according to an entirely different pattern from that of plurality. The former might have to be expressed by an independent word (say, _thus unthinking_), the latter by a prefixed element (say, _plural[27]-reform-er_). There are, of course, an unlimited number of other possibilities. Even within the confines of English alone the relative independence of form and function can be made obvious. Thus, the negative idea conveyed by _un-_ can be just as adequately expressed by a suffixed element (_-less_) in such a word as _thoughtlessly_. Such a twofold formal expression of the negative function would be inconceivable in certain languages, say Eskimo, where a suffixed element would alone be possible. Again, the plural notion conveyed by the _-s_ of _reformers_ is just as definitely expressed in the word _geese_, where an utterly distinct method is employed. Furthermore, the principle of vocalic change (_goose_--_geese_) is by no means confined to the expression of the idea of plurality; it may also function as an indicator of difference of time (e.g., _sing_--_sang_, _throw_--_threw_). But the expression in English of past time is not by any means always bound up with a change of vowel. In the great majority of cases the same idea is expressed by means of a distinct suffix (_die-d_, _work-ed_). Functionally, _died_ and _sang_ are analogous; so are _reformers_ and _geese_. Formally, we must arrange these words quite otherwise. Both _die-d_ and _re-form-er-s_ employ the method of suffixing grammatical elements; both _sang_ and _geese_ have grammatical form by virtue of the fact that their vowels differ from the vowels of other words with which they are closely related in form and meaning (_goose_; _sing_, _sung_). [Footnote 26: For the symbolism, see chapter II.] [Footnote 27: "_Plural_" is here a symbol for any prefix indicating plurality.] Every language possesses one or more formal methods or indicating the relation of a secondary concept to the main concept of the radical element. Some of these grammatical processes, like suffixing, are exceedingly wide-spread; others, like vocalic change, are less common but far from rare; still others, like accent and consonantal change, are somewhat exceptional as functional processes. Not all languages are as irregular as English in the assignment of functions to its stock of grammatical processes. As a rule, such basic concepts as those of plurality and time are rendered by means of one or other method alone, but the rule has so many exceptions that we cannot safely lay it down as a principle. Wherever we go we are impressed by the fact that pattern is one thing, the utilization of pattern quite another. A few further examples of the multiple expression of identical functions in other languages than English may help to make still more vivid this idea of the relative independence of form and function. In Hebrew, as in other Semitic languages, the verbal idea as such is expressed by three, less often by two or four, characteristic consonants. Thus, the group _sh-m-r_ expresses the idea of "guarding," the group _g-n-b_ that of "stealing," _n-t-n_ that of "giving." Naturally these consonantal sequences are merely abstracted from the actual forms. The consonants are held together in different forms by characteristic vowels that vary according to the idea that it is desired to express. Prefixed and suffixed elements are also frequently used. The method of internal vocalic change is exemplified in _shamar_ "he has guarded," _shomer_ "guarding," _shamur_ "being guarded," _shmor_ "(to) guard." Analogously, _ganab_ "he has stolen," _goneb_ "stealing," _ganub_ "being stolen," _gnob_ "(to) steal." But not all infinitives are formed according to the type of _shmor_ and _gnob_ or of other types of internal vowel change. Certain verbs suffix a _t_-element for the infinitive, e.g., _ten-eth_ "to give," _heyo-th_ "to be." Again, the pronominal ideas may be expressed by independent words (e.g., _anoki_ "I"), by prefixed elements (e.g., _e-shmor_ "I shall guard"), or by suffixed elements (e.g., _shamar-ti_ "I have guarded"). In Nass, an Indian language of British Columbia, plurals are formed by four distinct methods. Most nouns (and verbs) are reduplicated in the plural, that is, part of the radical element is repeated, e.g., _gyat_ "person," _gyigyat_ "people." A second method is the use of certain characteristic prefixes, e.g., _an'on_ "hand," _ka-an'on_ "hands"; _wai_ "one paddles," _lu-wai_ "several paddle." Still other plurals are formed by means of internal vowel change, e.g., _gwula_ "cloak," _gwila_ "cloaks." Finally, a fourth class of plurals is constituted by such nouns as suffix a grammatical element, e.g., _waky_ "brother," _wakykw_ "brothers." From such groups of examples as these--and they might be multiplied _ad nauseam_--we cannot but conclude that linguistic form may and should be studied as types of patterning, apart from the associated functions. We are the more justified in this procedure as all languages evince a curious instinct for the development of one or more particular grammatical processes at the expense of others, tending always to lose sight of any explicit functional value that the process may have had in the first instance, delighting, it would seem, in the sheer play of its means of expression. It does not matter that in such a case as the English _goose_--_geese_, _foul_--_defile_, _sing_--_sang_--_sung_ we can prove that we are dealing with historically distinct processes, that the vocalic alternation of _sing_ and _sang_, for instance, is centuries older as a specific type of grammatical process than the outwardly parallel one of _goose_ and _geese_. It remains true that there is (or was) an inherent tendency in English, at the time such forms as _geese_ came into being, for the utilization of vocalic change as a significant linguistic method. Failing the precedent set by such already existing types of vocalic alternation as _sing_--_sang_--_sung_, it is highly doubtful if the detailed conditions that brought about the evolution of forms like _teeth_ and _geese_ from _tooth_ and _goose_ would have been potent enough to allow the native linguistic feeling to win through to an acceptance of these new types of plural formation as psychologically possible. This feeling for form as such, freely expanding along predetermined lines and greatly inhibited in certain directions by the lack of controlling types of patterning, should be more clearly understood than it seems to be. A general survey of many diverse types of languages is needed to give us the proper perspective on this point. We saw in the preceding chapter that every language has an inner phonetic system of definite pattern. We now learn that it has also a definite feeling for patterning on the level of grammatical formation. Both of these submerged and powerfully controlling impulses to definite form operate as such, regardless of the need for expressing particular concepts or of giving consistent external shape to particular groups of concepts. It goes without saying that these impulses can find realization only in concrete functional expression. We must say something to be able to say it in a certain manner. Let us now take up a little more systematically, however briefly, the various grammatical processes that linguistic research has established. They may be grouped into six main types: word order; composition; affixation, including the use of prefixes, suffixes, and infixes; internal modification of the radical or grammatical element, whether this affects a vowel or a consonant; reduplication; and accentual differences, whether dynamic (stress) or tonal (pitch). There are also special quantitative processes, like vocalic lengthening or shortening and consonantal doubling, but these may be looked upon as particular sub-types of the process of internal modification. Possibly still other formal types exist, but they are not likely to be of importance in a general survey. It is important to bear in mind that a linguistic phenomenon cannot be looked upon as illustrating a definite "process" unless it has an inherent functional value. The consonantal change in English, for instance, of _book-s_ and _bag-s_ (_s_ in the former, _z_ in the latter) is of no functional significance. It is a purely external, mechanical change induced by the presence of a preceding voiceless consonant, _k_, in the former case, of a voiced consonant, _g_, in the latter. This mechanical alternation is objectively the same as that between the noun _house_ and the verb _to house_. In the latter case, however, it has an important grammatical function, that of transforming a noun into a verb. The two alternations belong, then, to entirely different psychological categories. Only the latter is a true illustration of consonantal modification as a grammatical process. The simplest, at least the most economical, method of conveying some sort of grammatical notion is to juxtapose two or more words in a definite sequence without making any attempt by inherent modification of these words to establish a connection between them. Let us put down two simple English words at random, say _sing praise_. This conveys no finished thought in English, nor does it clearly establish a relation between the idea of singing and that of praising. Nevertheless, it is psychologically impossible to hear or see the two words juxtaposed without straining to give them some measure of coherent significance. The attempt is not likely to yield an entirely satisfactory result, but what is significant is that as soon as two or more radical concepts are put before the human mind in immediate sequence it strives to bind them together with connecting values of some sort. In the case of _sing praise_ different individuals are likely to arrive at different provisional results. Some of the latent possibilities of the juxtaposition, expressed in currently satisfying form, are: _sing praise (to him)!_ or _singing praise, praise expressed in a song_ or _to sing and praise_ or _one who sings a song of praise_ (compare such English compounds as _killjoy_, i.e., _one who kills joy_) or _he sings a song of praise (to him)_. The theoretical possibilities in the way of rounding out these two concepts into a significant group of concepts or even into a finished thought are indefinitely numerous. None of them will quite work in English, but there are numerous languages where one or other of these amplifying processes is habitual. It depends entirely on the genius of the particular language what function is inherently involved in a given sequence of words. Some languages, like Latin, express practically all relations by means of modifications within the body of the word itself. In these, sequence is apt to be a rhetorical rather than a strictly grammatical principle. Whether I say in Latin _hominem femina videt_ or _femina hominem videt_ or _hominem videt femina_ or _videt femina hominem_ makes little or no difference beyond, possibly, a rhetorical or stylistic one. _The woman sees the man_ is the identical significance of each of these sentences. In Chinook, an Indian language of the Columbia River, one can be equally free, for the relation between the verb and the two nouns is as inherently fixed as in Latin. The difference between the two languages is that, while Latin allows the nouns to establish their relation to each other and to the verb, Chinook lays the formal burden entirely on the verb, the full content of which is more or less adequately rendered by _she-him-sees_. Eliminate the Latin case suffixes (_-a_ and _-em_) and the Chinook pronominal prefixes (_she-him-_) and we cannot afford to be so indifferent to our word order. We need to husband our resources. In other words, word order takes on a real functional value. Latin and Chinook are at one extreme. Such languages as Chinese, Siamese, and Annamite, in which each and every word, if it is to function properly, falls into its assigned place, are at the other extreme. But the majority of languages fall between these two extremes. In English, for instance, it may make little grammatical difference whether I say _yesterday the man saw the dog_ or _the man saw the dog yesterday_, but it is not a matter of indifference whether I say _yesterday the man saw the dog_ or _yesterday the dog saw the man_ or whether I say _he is here_ or _is he here?_ In the one case, of the latter group of examples, the vital distinction of subject and object depends entirely on the placing of certain words of the sentence, in the latter a slight difference of sequence makes all the difference between statement and question. It goes without saying that in these cases the English principle of word order is as potent a means of expression as is the Latin use of case suffixes or of an interrogative particle. There is here no question of functional poverty, but of formal economy. We have already seen something of the process of composition, the uniting into a single word of two or more radical elements. Psychologically this process is closely allied to that of word order in so far as the relation between the elements is implied, not explicitly stated. It differs from the mere juxtaposition of words in the sentence in that the compounded elements are felt as constituting but parts of a single word-organism. Such languages as Chinese and English, in which the principle of rigid sequence is well developed, tend not infrequently also to the development of compound words. It is but a step from such a Chinese word sequence as _jin tak_ "man virtue," i.e., "the virtue of men," to such more conventionalized and psychologically unified juxtapositions as _t'ien tsz_ "heaven son," i.e., "emperor," or _shui fu_ "water man," i.e., "water carrier." In the latter case we may as well frankly write _shui-fu_ as a single word, the meaning of the compound as a whole being as divergent from the precise etymological values of its component elements as is that of our English word _typewriter_ from the merely combined values of _type_ and _writer_. In English the unity of the word _typewriter_ is further safeguarded by a predominant accent on the first syllable and by the possibility of adding such a suffixed element as the plural _-s_ to the whole word. Chinese also unifies its compounds by means of stress. However, then, in its ultimate origins the process of composition may go back to typical sequences of words in the sentence, it is now, for the most part, a specialized method of expressing relations. French has as rigid a word order as English but does not possess anything like its power of compounding words into more complex units. On the other hand, classical Greek, in spite of its relative freedom in the placing of words, has a very considerable bent for the formation of compound terms. It is curious to observe how greatly languages differ in their ability to make use of the process of composition. One would have thought on general principles that so simple a device as gives us our _typewriter_ and _blackbird_ and hosts of other words would be an all but universal grammatical process. Such is not the case. There are a great many languages, like Eskimo and Nootka and, aside from paltry exceptions, the Semitic languages, that cannot compound radical elements. What is even stranger is the fact that many of these languages are not in the least averse to complex word-formations, but may on the contrary effect a synthesis that far surpasses the utmost that Greek and Sanskrit are capable of. Such a Nootka word, for instance, as "when, as they say, he had been absent for four days" might be expected to embody at least three radical elements corresponding to the concepts of "absent," "four," and "day." As a matter of fact the Nootka word is utterly incapable of composition in our sense. It is invariably built up out of a single radical element and a greater or less number of suffixed elements, some of which may have as concrete a significance as the radical element itself. In, the particular case we have cited the radical element conveys the idea of "four," the notions of "day" and "absent" being expressed by suffixes that are as inseparable from the radical nucleus of the word as is an English element like _-er_ from the _sing_ or _hunt_ of such words as _singer_ and _hunter_. The tendency to word synthesis is, then, by no means the same thing as the tendency to compounding radical elements, though the latter is not infrequently a ready means for the synthetic tendency to work with. There is a bewildering variety of types of composition. These types vary according to function, the nature of the compounded elements, and order. In a great many languages composition is confined to what we may call the delimiting function, that is, of the two or more compounded elements one is given a more precisely qualified significance by the others, which contribute nothing to the formal build of the sentence. In English, for instance, such compounded elements as _red_ in _redcoat_ or _over_ in _overlook_ merely modify the significance of the dominant _coat_ or _look_ without in any way sharing, as such, in the predication that is expressed by the sentence. Some languages, however, such as Iroquois and Nahuatl,[28] employ the method of composition for much heavier work than this. In Iroquois, for instance, the composition of a noun, in its radical form, with a following verb is a typical method of expressing case relations, particularly of the subject or object. _I-meat-eat_ for instance, is the regular Iroquois method of expressing the sentence _I am eating meat_. In other languages similar forms may express local or instrumental or still other relations. Such English forms as _killjoy_ and _marplot_ also illustrate the compounding of a verb and a noun, but the resulting word has a strictly nominal, not a verbal, function. We cannot say _he marplots_. Some languages allow the composition of all or nearly all types of elements. Paiute, for instance, may compound noun with noun, adjective with noun, verb with noun to make a noun, noun with verb to make a verb, adverb with verb, verb with verb. Yana, an Indian language of California, can freely compound noun with noun and verb with noun, but not verb with verb. On the other hand, Iroquois can compound only noun with verb, never noun and noun as in English or verb and verb as in so many other languages. Finally, each language has its characteristic types of order of composition. In English the qualifying element regularly precedes; in certain other languages it follows. Sometimes both types are used in the same language, as in Yana, where "beef" is "bitter-venison" but "deer-liver" is expressed by "liver-deer." The compounded object of a verb precedes the verbal element in Paiute, Nahuatl, and Iroquois, follows it in Yana, Tsimshian,[29] and the Algonkin languages. [Footnote 28: The language of the Aztecs, still spoken in large parts of Mexico.] [Footnote 29: Indian language of British Columbia closely related to the Nass already cited.] Of all grammatical processes affixing is incomparably the most frequently employed. There are languages, like Chinese and Siamese, that make no grammatical use of elements that do not at the same time possess an independent value as radical elements, but such languages are uncommon. Of the three types of affixing--the use of prefixes, suffixes, and infixes--suffixing is much the commonest. Indeed, it is a fair guess that suffixes do more of the formative work of language than all other methods combined. It is worth noting that there are not a few affixing languages that make absolutely no use of prefixed elements but possess a complex apparatus of suffixes. Such are Turkish, Hottentot, Eskimo, Nootka, and Yana. Some of these, like the three last mentioned, have hundreds of suffixed elements, many of them of a concreteness of significance that would demand expression in the vast majority of languages by means of radical elements. The reverse case, the use of prefixed elements to the complete exclusion of suffixes, is far less common. A good example is Khmer (or Cambodgian), spoken in French Cochin-China, though even here there are obscure traces of old suffixes that have ceased to function as such and are now felt to form part of the radical element. A considerable majority of known languages are prefixing and suffixing at one and the same time, but the relative importance of the two groups of affixed elements naturally varies enormously. In some languages, such as Latin and Russian, the suffixes alone relate the word to the rest of the sentence, the prefixes being confined to the expression of such ideas as delimit the concrete significance of the radical element without influencing its bearing in the proposition. A Latin form like _remittebantur_ "they were being sent back" may serve as an illustration of this type of distribution of elements. The prefixed element _re-_ "back" merely qualifies to a certain extent the inherent significance of the radical element _mitt-_ "send," while the suffixes _-eba-_, _-nt-_, and _-ur_ convey the less concrete, more strictly formal, notions of time, person, plurality, and passivity. On the other hand, there are languages, like the Bantu group of Africa or the Athabaskan languages[30] of North America, in which the grammatically significant elements precede, those that follow the radical element forming a relatively dispensable class. The Hupa word _te-s-e-ya-te_ "I will go," for example, consists of a radical element _-ya-_ "to go," three essential prefixes and a formally subsidiary suffix. The element _te-_ indicates that the act takes place here and there in space or continuously over space; practically, it has no clear-cut significance apart from such verb stems as it is customary to connect it with. The second prefixed element, _-s-_, is even less easy to define. All we can say is that it is used in verb forms of "definite" time and that it marks action as in progress rather than as beginning or coming to an end. The third prefix, _-e-_, is a pronominal element, "I," which can be used only in "definite" tenses. It is highly important to understand that the use of _-e-_ is conditional on that of _-s-_ or of certain alternative prefixes and that _te-_ also is in practice linked with _-s-_. The group _te-s-e-ya_ is a firmly knit grammatical unit. The suffix _-te_, which indicates the future, is no more necessary to its formal balance than is the prefixed _re-_ of the Latin word; it is not an element that is capable of standing alone but its function is materially delimiting rather than strictly formal.[31] [Footnote 30: Including such languages as Navaho, Apache, Hupa, Carrier, Chipewyan, Loucheux.] [Footnote 31: This may seem surprising to an English reader. We generally think of time as a function that is appropriately expressed in a purely formal manner. This notion is due to the bias that Latin grammar has given us. As a matter of fact the English future (_I shall go_) is not expressed by affixing at all; moreover, it may be expressed by the present, as in _to-morrow I leave this place_, where the temporal function is inherent in the independent adverb. Though in lesser degree, the Hupa _-te_ is as irrelevant to the vital word as is _to-morrow_ to the grammatical "feel" of _I leave_.] It is not always, however, that we can clearly set off the suffixes of a language as a group against its prefixes. In probably the majority of languages that use both types of affixes each group has both delimiting and formal or relational functions. The most that we can say is that a language tends to express similar functions in either the one or the other manner. If a certain verb expresses a certain tense by suffixing, the probability is strong that it expresses its other tenses in an analogous fashion and that, indeed, all verbs have suffixed tense elements. Similarly, we normally expect to find the pronominal elements, so far as they are included in the verb at all, either consistently prefixed or suffixed. But these rules are far from absolute. We have already seen that Hebrew prefixes its pronominal elements in certain cases, suffixes them in others. In Chimariko, an Indian language of California, the position of the pronominal affixes depends on the verb; they are prefixed for certain verbs, suffixed for others. It will not be necessary to give many further examples of prefixing and suffixing. One of each category will suffice to illustrate their formative possibilities. The idea expressed in English by the sentence _I came to give it to her_ is rendered in Chinook[32] by _i-n-i-a-l-u-d-am_. This word--and it is a thoroughly unified word with a clear-cut accent on the first _a_--consists of a radical element, _-d-_ "to give," six functionally distinct, if phonetically frail, prefixed elements, and a suffix. Of the prefixes, _i-_ indicates recently past time; _n-_, the pronominal subject "I"; _-i-_, the pronominal object "it";[33] _-a-_, the second pronominal object "her"; _-l-_, a prepositional element indicating that the preceding pronominal prefix is to be understood as an indirect object (_-her-to-_, i.e., "to her"); and _-u-_, an element that it is not easy to define satisfactorily but which, on the whole, indicates movement away from the speaker. The suffixed _-am_ modifies the verbal content in a local sense; it adds to the notion conveyed by the radical element that of "arriving" or "going (or coming) for that particular purpose." It is obvious that in Chinook, as in Hupa, the greater part of the grammatical machinery resides in the prefixes rather than in the suffixes. [Footnote 32: Wishram dialect.] [Footnote 33: Really "him," but Chinook, like Latin or French, possesses grammatical gender. An object may be referred to as "he," "she," or "it," according to the characteristic form of its noun.] A reverse case, one in which the grammatically significant elements cluster, as in Latin, at the end of the word is yielded by Fox, one of the better known Algonkin languages of the Mississippi Valley. We may take the form _eh-kiwi-n-a-m-oht-ati-wa-ch(i)_ "then they together kept (him) in flight from them." The radical element here is _kiwi-_, a verb stem indicating the general notion of "indefinite movement round about, here and there." The prefixed element _eh-_ is hardly more than an adverbial particle indicating temporal subordination; it may be conveniently rendered as "then." Of the seven suffixes included in this highly-wrought word, _-n-_ seems to be merely a phonetic element serving to connect the verb stem with the following _-a-_;[34] _-a-_ is a "secondary stem"[35] denoting the idea of "flight, to flee"; _-m-_ denotes causality with reference to an animate object;[36] _-o(ht)-_ indicates activity done for the subject (the so-called "middle" or "medio-passive" voice of Greek); _-(a)ti-_ is a reciprocal element, "one another"; _-wa-ch(i)_ is the third person animate plural (_-wa-_, plural; _-chi_, more properly personal) of so-called "conjunctive" forms. The word may be translated more literally (and yet only approximately as to grammatical feeling) as "then they (animate) caused some animate being to wander about in flight from one another of themselves." Eskimo, Nootka, Yana, and other languages have similarly complex arrays of suffixed elements, though the functions performed by them and their principles of combination differ widely. [Footnote 34: This analysis is doubtful. It is likely that _-n-_ possesses a function that still remains to be ascertained. The Algonkin languages are unusually complex and present many unsolved problems of detail.] [Footnote 35: "Secondary stems" are elements which are suffixes from a formal point of view, never appearing without the support of a true radical element, but whose function is as concrete, to all intents and purposes, as that of the radical element itself. Secondary verb stems of this type are characteristic of the Algonkin languages and of Yana.] [Footnote 36: In the Algonkin languages all persons and things are conceived of as either animate or inanimate, just as in Latin or German they are conceived of as masculine, feminine, or neuter.] We have reserved the very curious type of affixation known as "infixing" for separate illustration. It is utterly unknown in English, unless we consider the _-n-_ of _stand_ (contrast _stood_) as an infixed element. The earlier Indo-European languages, such as Latin, Greek and Sanskrit, made a fairly considerable use of infixed nasals to differentiate the present tense of a certain class of verbs from other forms (contrast Latin _vinc-o_ "I conquer" with _vic-i_ "I conquered"; Greek _lamb-an-o_ "I take" with _e-lab-on_ "I took"). There are, however, more striking examples of the process, examples in which it has assumed a more clearly defined function than in these Latin and Greek cases. It is particularly prevalent in many languages of southeastern Asia and of the Malay archipelago. Good examples from Khmer (Cambodgian) are _tmeu_ "one who walks" and _daneu_ "walking" (verbal noun), both derived from _deu_ "to walk." Further examples may be quoted from Bontoc Igorot, a Filipino language. Thus, an infixed _-in-_ conveys the idea of the product of an accomplished action, e.g., _kayu_ "wood," _kinayu_ "gathered wood." Infixes are also freely used in the Bontoc Igorot verb. Thus, an infixed _-um-_ is characteristic of many intransitive verbs with personal pronominal suffixes, e.g., _sad-_ "to wait," _sumid-ak_ "I wait"; _kineg_ "silent," _kuminek-ak_ "I am silent." In other verbs it indicates futurity, e.g., _tengao-_ "to celebrate a holiday," _tumengao-ak_ "I shall have a holiday." The past tense is frequently indicated by an infixed _-in-_; if there is already an infixed _-um-_, the two elements combine to _-in-m-_, e.g., _kinminek-ak_ "I am silent." Obviously the infixing process has in this (and related) languages the same vitality that is possessed by the commoner prefixes and suffixes of other languages. The process is also found in a number of aboriginal American languages. The Yana plural is sometimes formed by an infixed element, e.g., _k'uruwi_ "medicine-men," _k'uwi_ "medicine-man"; in Chinook an infixed _-l-_ is used in certain verbs to indicate repeated activity, e.g., _ksik'ludelk_ "she keeps looking at him," _iksik'lutk_ "she looked at him" (radical element _-tk_). A peculiarly interesting type of infixation is found in the Siouan languages, in which certain verbs insert the pronominal elements into the very body of the radical element, e.g., Sioux _cheti_ "to build a fire," _chewati_ "I build a fire"; _shuta_ "to miss," _shuunta-pi_ "we miss." A subsidiary but by no means unimportant grammatical process is that of internal vocalic or consonantal change. In some languages, as in English (_sing_, _sang_, _sung_, _song_; _goose_, _geese_), the former of these has become one of the major methods of indicating fundamental changes of grammatical function. At any rate, the process is alive enough to lead our children into untrodden ways. We all know of the growing youngster who speaks of having _brung_ something, on the analogy of such forms as _sung_ and _flung_. In Hebrew, as we have seen, vocalic change is of even greater significance than in English. What is true of Hebrew is of course true of all other Semitic languages. A few examples of so-called "broken" plurals from Arabic[37] will supplement the Hebrew verb forms that I have given in another connection. The noun _balad_ "place" has the plural form _bilad_;[38] _gild_ "hide" forms the plural _gulud_; _ragil_ "man," the plural _rigal_; _shibbak_ "window," the plural _shababik_. Very similar phenomena are illustrated by the Hamitic languages of Northern Africa, e.g., Shilh[39] _izbil_ "hair," plural _izbel_; _a-slem_ "fish," plural _i-slim-en_; _sn_ "to know," _sen_ "to be knowing"; _rmi_ "to become tired," _rumni_ "to be tired"; _ttss_[40] "to fall asleep," _ttoss_ "to sleep." Strikingly similar to English and Greek alternations of the type _sing_--_sang_ and _leip-o_ "I leave," _leloip-a_ "I have left," are such Somali[41] cases as _al_ "I am," _il_ "I was"; _i-dah-a_ "I say," _i-di_ "I said," _deh_ "say!" [Footnote 37: Egyptian dialect.] [Footnote 38: There are changes of accent and vocalic quantity in these forms as well, but the requirements of simplicity force us to neglect them.] [Footnote 39: A Berber language of Morocco.] [Footnote 40: Some of the Berber languages allow consonantal combinations that seem unpronounceable to us.] [Footnote 41: One of the Hamitic languages of eastern Africa.] Vocalic change is of great significance also in a number of American Indian languages. In the Athabaskan group many verbs change the quality or quantity of the vowel of the radical element as it changes its tense or mode. The Navaho verb for "I put (grain) into a receptacle" is _bi-hi-sh-ja_, in which _-ja_ is the radical element; the past tense, _bi-hi-ja'_, has a long _a_-vowel, followed by the "glottal stop"[42]; the future is _bi-h-de-sh-ji_ with complete change of vowel. In other types of Navaho verbs the vocalic changes follow different lines, e.g., _yah-a-ni-ye_ "you carry (a pack) into (a stable)"; past, _yah-i-ni-yin_ (with long _i_ in _-yin_; _-n_ is here used to indicate nasalization); future, _yah-a-di-yehl_ (with long _e_). In another Indian language, Yokuts[43], vocalic modifications affect both noun and verb forms. Thus, _buchong_ "son" forms the plural _bochang-i_ (contrast the objective _buchong-a_); _enash_ "grandfather," the plural _inash-a_; the verb _engtyim_ "to sleep" forms the continuative _ingetym-ad_ "to be sleeping" and the past _ingetym-ash_. [Footnote 42: See page 49.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 42 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 1534.] [Footnote 43: Spoken in the south-central part of California.] Consonantal change as a functional process is probably far less common than vocalic modifications, but it is not exactly rare. There is an interesting group of cases in English, certain nouns and corresponding verbs differing solely in that the final consonant is voiceless or voiced. Examples are _wreath_ (with _th_ as in _think_), but _to wreathe_ (with _th_ as in _then_); _house_, but _to house_ (with _s_ pronounced like _z_). That we have a distinct feeling for the interchange as a means of distinguishing the noun from the verb is indicated by the extension of the principle by many Americans to such a noun as _rise_ (e.g., _the rise of democracy_)--pronounced like _rice_--in contrast to the verb _to rise_ (_s_ like _z_). In the Celtic languages the initial consonants undergo several types of change according to the grammatical relation that subsists between the word itself and the preceding word. Thus, in modern Irish, a word like _bo_ "ox" may under the appropriate circumstances, take the forms _bho_ (pronounce _wo_) or _mo_ (e.g., _an bo_ "the ox," as a subject, but _tir na mo_ "land of the oxen," as a possessive plural). In the verb the principle has as one of its most striking consequences the "aspiration" of initial consonants in the past tense. If a verb begins with _t_, say, it changes the _t_ to _th_ (now pronounced _h_) in forms of the past; if it begins with _g_, the consonant changes, in analogous forms, to _gh_ (pronounced like a voiced spirant[44] _g_ or like _y_, according to the nature of the following vowel). In modern Irish the principle of consonantal change, which began in the oldest period of the language as a secondary consequence of certain phonetic conditions, has become one of the primary grammatical processes of the language. [Footnote 44: See page 50.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 44 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 1534.] Perhaps as remarkable as these Irish phenomena are the consonantal interchanges of Ful, an African language of the Soudan. Here we find that all nouns belonging to the personal class form the plural by changing their initial _g_, _j_, _d_, _b_, _k_, _ch_, and _p_ to _y_ (or _w_), _y_, _r_, _w_, _h_, _s_ and _f_ respectively; e.g., _jim-o_ "companion," _yim-'be_ "companions"; _pio-o_ "beater," _fio-'be_ "beaters." Curiously enough, nouns that belong to the class of things form their singular and plural in exactly reverse fashion, e.g., _yola-re_ "grass-grown place," _jola-je_ "grass-grown places"; _fitan-du_ "soul," _pital-i_ "souls." In Nootka, to refer to but one other language in which the process is found, the _t_ or _tl_[45] of many verbal suffixes becomes _hl_ in forms denoting repetition, e.g., _hita-'ato_ "to fall out," _hita-'ahl_ "to keep falling out"; _mat-achisht-utl_ "to fly on to the water," _mat-achisht-ohl_ "to keep flying on to the water." Further, the _hl_ of certain elements changes to a peculiar _h_-sound in plural forms, e.g., _yak-ohl_ "sore-faced," _yak-oh_ "sore-faced (people)." [Footnote 45: These orthographies are but makeshifts for simple sounds.] Nothing is more natural than the prevalence of reduplication, in other words, the repetition of all or part of the radical element. The process is generally employed, with self-evident symbolism, to indicate such concepts as distribution, plurality, repetition, customary activity, increase of size, added intensity, continuance. Even in English it is not unknown, though it is not generally accounted one of the typical formative devices of our language. Such words as _goody-goody_ and _to pooh-pooh_ have become accepted as part of our normal vocabulary, but the method of duplication may on occasion be used more freely than is indicated by such stereotyped examples. Such locutions as _a big big man_ or _Let it cool till it's thick thick_ are far more common, especially in the speech of women and children, than our linguistic text-books would lead one to suppose. In a class by themselves are the really enormous number of words, many of them sound-imitative or contemptuous in psychological tone, that consist of duplications with either change of the vowel or change of the initial consonant--words of the type _sing-song_, _riff-raff_, _wishy-washy_, _harum-skarum_, _roly-poly_. Words of this type are all but universal. Such examples as the Russian _Chudo-Yudo_ (a dragon), the Chinese _ping-pang_ "rattling of rain on the roof,"[46] the Tibetan _kyang-kyong_ "lazy," and the Manchu _porpon parpan_ "blear-eyed" are curiously reminiscent, both in form and in psychology, of words nearer home. But it can hardly be said that the duplicative process is of a distinctively grammatical significance in English. We must turn to other languages for illustration. Such cases as Hottentot _go-go_ "to look at carefully" (from _go_ "to see"), Somali _fen-fen_ "to gnaw at on all sides" (from _fen_ "to gnaw at"), Chinook _iwi iwi_ "to look about carefully, to examine" (from _iwi_ "to appear"), or Tsimshian _am'am_ "several (are) good" (from _am_ "good") do not depart from the natural and fundamental range of significance of the process. A more abstract function is illustrated in Ewe,[47] in which both infinitives and verbal adjectives are formed from verbs by duplication; e.g., _yi_ "to go," _yiyi_ "to go, act of going"; _wo_ "to do," _wowo_[48] "done"; _mawomawo_ "not to do" (with both duplicated verb stem and duplicated negative particle). Causative duplications are characteristic of Hottentot, e.g., _gam-gam_[49] "to cause to tell" (from _gam_ "to tell"). Or the process may be used to derive verbs from nouns, as in Hottentot _khoe-khoe_ "to talk Hottentot" (from _khoe-b_ "man, Hottentot"), or as in Kwakiutl _metmat_ "to eat clams" (radical element _met-_ "clam"). [Footnote 46: Whence our _ping-pong_.] [Footnote 47: An African language of the Guinea Coast.] [Footnote 48: In the verbal adjective the tone of the second syllable differs from that of the first.] [Footnote 49: Initial "click" (see page 55, note 15) omitted.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 49 refers to Footnote 24, beginning on line 1729.] The most characteristic examples of reduplication are such as repeat only part of the radical element. It would be possible to demonstrate the existence of a vast number of formal types of such partial duplication, according to whether the process makes use of one or more of the radical consonants, preserves or weakens or alters the radical vowel, or affects the beginning, the middle, or the end of the radical element. The functions are even more exuberantly developed than with simple duplication, though the basic notion, at least in origin, is nearly always one of repetition or continuance. Examples illustrating this fundamental function can be quoted from all parts of the globe. Initially reduplicating are, for instance, Shilh _ggen_ "to be sleeping" (from _gen_ "to sleep"); Ful _pepeu-'do_ "liar" (i.e., "one who always lies"), plural _fefeu-'be_ (from _fewa_ "to lie"); Bontoc Igorot _anak_ "child," _ananak_ "children"; _kamu-ek_ "I hasten," _kakamu-ek_ "I hasten more"; Tsimshian _gyad_ "person," _gyigyad_ "people"; Nass _gyibayuk_ "to fly," _gyigyibayuk_ "one who is flying." Psychologically comparable, but with the reduplication at the end, are Somali _ur_ "body," plural _urar_; Hausa _suna_ "name," plural _sunana-ki;_ Washo[50] _gusu_ "buffalo," _gususu_ "buffaloes"; Takelma[51] _himi-d-_ "to talk to," _himim-d-_ "to be accustomed to talk to." Even more commonly than simple duplication, this partial duplication of the radical element has taken on in many languages functions that seem in no way related to the idea of increase. The best known examples are probably the initial reduplication of our older Indo-European languages, which helps to form the perfect tense of many verbs (e.g., Sanskrit _dadarsha_ "I have seen," Greek _leloipa_ "I have left," Latin _tetigi_ "I have touched," Gothic _lelot_ "I have let"). In Nootka reduplication of the radical element is often employed in association with certain suffixes; e.g., _hluch-_ "woman" forms _hluhluch-'ituhl_ "to dream of a woman," _hluhluch-k'ok_ "resembling a woman." Psychologically similar to the Greek and Latin examples are many Takelma cases of verbs that exhibit two forms of the stem, one employed in the present or past, the other in the future and in certain modes and verbal derivatives. The former has final reduplication, which is absent in the latter; e.g., _al-yebeb-i'n_ "I show (or showed) to him," _al-yeb-in_ "I shall show him." [Footnote 50: An Indian language of Nevada.] [Footnote 51: An Indian language of Oregon.] We come now to the subtlest of all grammatical processes, variations in accent, whether of stress or pitch. The chief difficulty in isolating accent as a functional process is that it is so often combined with alternations in vocalic quantity or quality or complicated by the presence of affixed elements that its grammatical value appears as a secondary rather than as a primary feature. In Greek, for instance, it is characteristic of true verbal forms that they throw the accent back as far as the general accentual rules will permit, while nouns may be more freely accented. There is thus a striking accentual difference between a verbal form like _eluthemen_ "we were released," accented on the second syllable of the word, and its participial derivative _lutheis_ "released," accented on the last. The presence of the characteristic verbal elements _e-_ and _-men_ in the first case and of the nominal _-s_ in the second tends to obscure the inherent value of the accentual alternation. This value comes out very neatly in such English doublets as _to refund_ and _a refund_, _to extract_ and _an extract, to come down_ and _a come down_, _to lack luster_ and _lack-luster eyes_, in which the difference between the verb and the noun is entirely a matter of changing stress. In the Athabaskan languages there are not infrequently significant alternations of accent, as in Navaho _ta-di-gis_ "you wash yourself" (accented on the second syllable), _ta-di-gis_ "he washes himself" (accented on the first).[52] [Footnote 52: It is not unlikely, however, that these Athabaskan alternations are primarily tonal in character.] Pitch accent may be as functional as stress and is perhaps more often so. The mere fact, however, that pitch variations are phonetically essential to the language, as in Chinese (e.g., _feng_ "wind" with a level tone, _feng_ "to serve" with a falling tone) or as in classical Greek (e.g., _lab-on_ "having taken" with a simple or high tone on the suffixed participial _-on_, _gunaik-on_ "of women" with a compound or falling tone on the case suffix _-on_) does not necessarily constitute a functional, or perhaps we had better say grammatical, use of pitch. In such cases the pitch is merely inherent in the radical element or affix, as any vowel or consonant might be. It is different with such Chinese alternations as _chung_ (level) "middle" and _chung_ (falling) "to hit the middle"; _mai_ (rising) "to buy" and _mai_ (falling) "to sell"; _pei_ (falling) "back" and _pei_ (level) "to carry on the back." Examples of this type are not exactly common in Chinese and the language cannot be said to possess at present a definite feeling for tonal differences as symbolic of the distinction between noun and verb. There are languages, however, in which such differences are of the most fundamental grammatical importance. They are particularly common in the Soudan. In Ewe, for instance, there are formed from _subo_ "to serve" two reduplicated forms, an infinitive _subosubo_ "to serve," with a low tone on the first two syllables and a high one on the last two, and an adjectival _subosubo_ "serving," in which all the syllables have a high tone. Even more striking are cases furnished by Shilluk, one of the languages of the headwaters of the Nile. The plural of the noun often differs in tone from the singular, e.g., _yit_ (high) "ear" but _yit_ (low) "ears." In the pronoun three forms may be distinguished by tone alone; _e_ "he" has a high tone and is subjective, _-e_ "him" (e.g., _a chwol-e_ "he called him") has a low tone and is objective, _-e_ "his" (e.g., _wod-e_ "his house") has a middle tone and is possessive. From the verbal element _gwed-_ "to write" are formed _gwed-o_ "(he) writes" with a low tone, the passive _gwet_ "(it was) written" with a falling tone, the imperative _gwet_ "write!" with a rising tone, and the verbal noun _gwet_ "writing" with a middle tone. In aboriginal America also pitch accent is known to occur as a grammatical process. A good example of such a pitch language is Tlingit, spoken by the Indians of the southern coast of Alaska. In this language many verbs vary the tone of the radical element according to tense; _hun_ "to sell," _sin_ "to hide," _tin_ "to see," and numerous other radical elements, if low-toned, refer to past time, if high-toned, to the future. Another type of function is illustrated by the Takelma forms _hel_ "song," with falling pitch, but _hel_ "sing!" with a rising inflection; parallel to these forms are _sel_ (falling) "black paint," _sel_ (rising) "paint it!" All in all it is clear that pitch accent, like stress and vocalic or consonantal modifications, is far less infrequently employed as a grammatical process than our own habits of speech would prepare us to believe probable. V FORM IN LANGUAGE: GRAMMATICAL CONCEPTS We have seen that the single word expresses either a simple concept or a combination of concepts so interrelated as to form a psychological unity. We have, furthermore, briefly reviewed from a strictly formal standpoint the main processes that are used by all known languages to affect the fundamental concepts--those embodied in unanalyzable words or in the radical elements of words--by the modifying or formative influence of subsidiary concepts. In this chapter we shall look a little more closely into the nature of the world of concepts, in so far as that world is reflected and systematized in linguistic structure. Let us begin with a simple sentence that involves various kinds of concepts--_the farmer kills the duckling_. A rough and ready analysis discloses here the presence of three distinct and fundamental concepts that are brought into connection with each other in a number of ways. These three concepts are "farmer" (the subject of discourse), "kill" (defining the nature of the activity which the sentence informs us about), and "duckling" (another subject[53] of discourse that takes an important though somewhat passive part in this activity). We can visualize the farmer and the duckling and we have also no difficulty in constructing an image of the killing. In other words, the elements _farmer_, _kill_, and _duckling_ define concepts of a concrete order. [Footnote 53: Not in its technical sense.] But a more careful linguistic analysis soon brings us to see that the two subjects of discourse, however simply we may visualize them, are not expressed quite as directly, as immediately, as we feel them. A "farmer" is in one sense a perfectly unified concept, in another he is "one who farms." The concept conveyed by the radical element (_farm-_) is not one of personality at all but of an industrial activity (_to farm_), itself based on the concept of a particular type of object (_a farm_). Similarly, the concept of _duckling_ is at one remove from that which is expressed by the radical element of the word, _duck_. This element, which may occur as an independent word, refers to a whole class of animals, big and little, while _duckling_ is limited in its application to the young of that class. The word _farmer_ has an "agentive" suffix _-er_ that performs the function of indicating the one that carries out a given activity, in this case that of farming. It transforms the verb _to farm_ into an agentive noun precisely as it transforms the verbs _to sing_, _to paint_, _to teach_ into the corresponding agentive nouns _singer_, _painter_, _teacher_. The element _-ling_ is not so freely used, but its significance is obvious. It adds to the basic concept the notion of smallness (as also in _gosling_, _fledgeling_) or the somewhat related notion of "contemptible" (as in _weakling_, _princeling_, _hireling_). The agentive _-er_ and the diminutive _-ling_ both convey fairly concrete ideas (roughly those of "doer" and "little"), but the concreteness is not stressed. They do not so much define distinct concepts as mediate between concepts. The _-er_ of _farmer_ does not quite say "one who (farms)" it merely indicates that the sort of person we call a "farmer" is closely enough associated with activity on a farm to be conventionally thought of as always so occupied. He may, as a matter of fact, go to town and engage in any pursuit but farming, yet his linguistic label remains "farmer." Language here betrays a certain helplessness or, if one prefers, a stubborn tendency to look away from the immediately suggested function, trusting to the imagination and to usage to fill in the transitions of thought and the details of application that distinguish one concrete concept (_to farm_) from another "derived" one (_farmer_). It would be impossible for any language to express every concrete idea by an independent word or radical element. The concreteness of experience is infinite, the resources of the richest language are strictly limited. It must perforce throw countless concepts under the rubric of certain basic ones, using other concrete or semi-concrete ideas as functional mediators. The ideas expressed by these mediating elements--they may be independent words, affixes, or modifications of the radical element--may be called "derivational" or "qualifying." Some concrete concepts, such as _kill_, are expressed radically; others, such as _farmer_ and _duckling_, are expressed derivatively. Corresponding to these two modes of expression we have two types of concepts and of linguistic elements, radical (_farm_, _kill_, _duck_) and derivational (_-er_, _-ling_). When a word (or unified group of words) contains a derivational element (or word) the concrete significance of the radical element (_farm-_, _duck-_) tends to fade from consciousness and to yield to a new concreteness (_farmer_, _duckling_) that is synthetic in expression rather than in thought. In our sentence the concepts of _farm_ and _duck_ are not really involved at all; they are merely latent, for formal reasons, in the linguistic expression. Returning to this sentence, we feel that the analysis of _farmer_ and _duckling_ are practically irrelevant to an understanding of its content and entirely irrelevant to a feeling for the structure of the sentence as a whole. From the standpoint of the sentence the derivational elements _-er_ and _-ling_ are merely details in the local economy of two of its terms (_farmer_, _duckling_) that it accepts as units of expression. This indifference of the sentence as such to some part of the analysis of its words is shown by the fact that if we substitute such radical words as _man_ and _chick_ for _farmer_ and _duckling_, we obtain a new material content, it is true, but not in the least a new structural mold. We can go further and substitute another activity for that of "killing," say "taking." The new sentence, _the man takes the chick_, is totally different from the first sentence in what it conveys, not in how it conveys it. We feel instinctively, without the slightest attempt at conscious analysis, that the two sentences fit precisely the same pattern, that they are really the same fundamental sentence, differing only in their material trappings. In other words, they express identical relational concepts in an identical manner. The manner is here threefold--the use of an inherently relational word (_the_) in analogous positions, the analogous sequence (subject; predicate, consisting of verb and object) of the concrete terms of the sentence, and the use of the suffixed element _-s_ in the verb. Change any of these features of the sentence and it becomes modified, slightly or seriously, in some purely relational, non-material regard. If _the_ is omitted (_farmer kills duckling_, _man takes chick_), the sentence becomes impossible; it falls into no recognized formal pattern and the two subjects of discourse seem to hang incompletely in the void. We feel that there is no relation established between either of them and what is already in the minds of the speaker and his auditor. As soon as a _the_ is put before the two nouns, we feel relieved. We know that the farmer and duckling which the sentence tells us about are the same farmer and duckling that we had been talking about or hearing about or thinking about some time before. If I meet a man who is not looking at and knows nothing about the farmer in question, I am likely to be stared at for my pains if I announce to him that "the farmer [what farmer?] kills the duckling [didn't know he had any, whoever he is]." If the fact nevertheless seems interesting enough to communicate, I should be compelled to speak of "_a farmer_ up my way" and of "_a duckling_ of his." These little words, _the_ and _a_, have the important function of establishing a definite or an indefinite reference. If I omit the first _the_ and also leave out the suffixed _-s_, I obtain an entirely new set of relations. _Farmer, kill the duckling_ implies that I am now speaking to the farmer, not merely about him; further, that he is not actually killing the bird, but is being ordered by me to do so. The subjective relation of the first sentence has become a vocative one, one of address, and the activity is conceived in terms of command, not of statement. We conclude, therefore, that if the farmer is to be merely talked about, the little _the_ must go back into its place and the _-s_ must not be removed. The latter element clearly defines, or rather helps to define, statement as contrasted with command. I find, moreover, that if I wish to speak of several farmers, I cannot say _the farmers kills the duckling_, but must say _the farmers kill the duckling_. Evidently _-s_ involves the notion of singularity in the subject. If the noun is singular, the verb must have a form to correspond; if the noun is plural, the verb has another, corresponding form.[54] Comparison with such forms as _I kill_ and _you kill_ shows, moreover, that the _-s_ has exclusive reference to a person other than the speaker or the one spoken to. We conclude, therefore, that it connotes a personal relation as well as the notion of singularity. And comparison with a sentence like _the farmer killed the duckling_ indicates that there is implied in this overburdened _-s_ a distinct reference to present time. Statement as such and personal reference may well be looked upon as inherently relational concepts. Number is evidently felt by those who speak English as involving a necessary relation, otherwise there would be no reason to express the concept twice, in the noun and in the verb. Time also is clearly felt as a relational concept; if it were not, we should be allowed to say _the farmer killed-s_ to correspond to _the farmer kill-s_. Of the four concepts inextricably interwoven in the _-s_ suffix, all are felt as relational, two necessarily so. The distinction between a truly relational concept and one that is so felt and treated, though it need not be in the nature of things, will receive further attention in a moment. [Footnote 54: It is, of course, an "accident" that _-s_ denotes plurality in the noun, singularity in the verb.] Finally, I can radically disturb the relational cut of the sentence by changing the order of its elements. If the positions of _farmer_ and _kills_ are interchanged, the sentence reads _kills the farmer the duckling_, which is most naturally interpreted as an unusual but not unintelligible mode of asking the question, _does the farmer kill the duckling?_ In this new sentence the act is not conceived as necessarily taking place at all. It may or it may not be happening, the implication being that the speaker wishes to know the truth of the matter and that the person spoken to is expected to give him the information. The interrogative sentence possesses an entirely different "modality" from the declarative one and implies a markedly different attitude of the speaker towards his companion. An even more striking change in personal relations is effected if we interchange _the farmer_ and _the duckling_. _The duckling kills the farmer_ involves precisely the same subjects of discourse and the same type of activity as our first sentence, but the roles of these subjects of discourse are now reversed. The duckling has turned, like the proverbial worm, or, to put it in grammatical terminology, what was "subject" is now "object," what was object is now subject. The following tabular statement analyzes the sentence from the point of view of the concepts expressed in it and of the grammatical processes employed for their expression. I. CONCRETE CONCEPTS: 1. First subject of discourse: _farmer_ 2. Second subject of discourse: _duckling_ 3. Activity: _kill_ ---- analyzable into: A. RADICAL CONCEPTS: 1. Verb: _(to) farm_ 2. Noun: _duck_ 3. Verb: _kill_ B. DERIVATIONAL CONCEPTS: 1. Agentive: expressed by suffix _-er_ 2. Diminutive: expressed by suffix _-ling_ II. RELATIONAL CONCEPTS: Reference: 1. Definiteness of reference to first subject of discourse: expressed by first _the_, which has preposed position 2. Definiteness of reference to second subject of discourse: expressed by second _the_, which has preposed position Modality: 3. Declarative: expressed by sequence of "subject" plus verb; and implied by suffixed _-s_ Personal relations: 4. Subjectivity of _farmer_: expressed by position of _farmer_ before kills; and by suffixed _-s_ 5. Objectivity of _duckling_: expressed by position of _duckling_ after _kills_ Number: 6. Singularity of first subject of discourse: expressed by lack of plural suffix in _farmer_; and by suffix _-s_ in following verb 7. Singularity of second subject of discourse: expressed by lack of plural suffix in _duckling_ Time: 8. Present: expressed by lack of preterit suffix in verb; and by suffixed _-s_ In this short sentence of five words there are expressed, therefore, thirteen distinct concepts, of which three are radical and concrete, two derivational, and eight relational. Perhaps the most striking result of the analysis is a renewed realization of the curious lack of accord in our language between function and form. The method of suffixing is used both for derivational and for relational elements; independent words or radical elements express both concrete ideas (objects, activities, qualities) and relational ideas (articles like _the_ and _a_; words defining case relations, like _of_, _to_, _for_, _with_, _by_; words defining local relations, like _in_, _on_, _at_); the same relational concept may be expressed more than once (thus, the singularity of _farmer_ is both negatively expressed in the noun and positively in the verb); and one element may convey a group of interwoven concepts rather than one definite concept alone (thus the _-s_ of _kills_ embodies no less than four logically independent relations). Our analysis may seem a bit labored, but only because we are so accustomed to our own well-worn grooves of expression that they have come to be felt as inevitable. Yet destructive analysis of the familiar is the only method of approach to an understanding of fundamentally different modes of expression. When one has learned to feel what is fortuitous or illogical or unbalanced in the structure of his own language, he is already well on the way towards a sympathetic grasp of the expression of the various classes of concepts in alien types of speech. Not everything that is "outlandish" is intrinsically illogical or far-fetched. It is often precisely the familiar that a wider perspective reveals as the curiously exceptional. From a purely logical standpoint it is obvious that there is no inherent reason why the concepts expressed in our sentence should have been singled out, treated, and grouped as they have been and not otherwise. The sentence is the outgrowth of historical and of unreasoning psychological forces rather than of a logical synthesis of elements that have been clearly grasped in their individuality. This is the case, to a greater or less degree, in all languages, though in the forms of many we find a more coherent, a more consistent, reflection than in our English forms of that unconscious analysis into individual concepts which is never entirely absent from speech, however it may be complicated with or overlaid by the more irrational factors. A cursory examination of other languages, near and far, would soon show that some or all of the thirteen concepts that our sentence happens to embody may not only be expressed in different form but that they may be differently grouped among themselves; that some among them may be dispensed with; and that other concepts, not considered worth expressing in English idiom, may be treated as absolutely indispensable to the intelligible rendering of the proposition. First as to a different method of handling such concepts as we have found expressed in the English sentence. If we turn to German, we find that in the equivalent sentence (_Der Bauer tötet das Entelein_) the definiteness of reference expressed by the English _the_ is unavoidably coupled with three other concepts--number (both _der_ and _das_ are explicitly singular), case (_der_ is subjective; _das_ is subjective or objective, by elimination therefore objective), and gender, a new concept of the relational order that is not in this case explicitly involved in English (_der_ is masculine, _das_ is neuter). Indeed, the chief burden of the expression of case, gender, and number is in the German sentence borne by the particles of reference rather than by the words that express the concrete concepts (_Bauer_, _Entelein_) to which these relational concepts ought logically to attach themselves. In the sphere of concrete concepts too it is worth noting that the German splits up the idea of "killing" into the basic concept of "dead" (_tot_) and the derivational one of "causing to do (or be) so and so" (by the method of vocalic change, _töt-_); the German _töt-et_ (analytically _tot-_+vowel change+_-et_) "causes to be dead" is, approximately, the formal equivalent of our _dead-en-s_, though the idiomatic application of this latter word is different.[55] [Footnote 55: "To cause to be dead" or "to cause to die" in the sense of "to kill" is an exceedingly wide-spread usage. It is found, for instance, also in Nootka and Sioux.] Wandering still further afield, we may glance at the Yana method of expression. Literally translated, the equivalent Yana sentence would read something like "kill-s he farmer[56] he to duck-ling," in which "he" and "to" are rather awkward English renderings of a general third personal pronoun (_he_, _she_, _it_, or _they_) and an objective particle which indicates that the following noun is connected with the verb otherwise than as subject. The suffixed element in "kill-s" corresponds to the English suffix with the important exceptions that it makes no reference to the number of the subject and that the statement is known to be true, that it is vouched for by the speaker. Number is only indirectly expressed in the sentence in so far as there is no specific verb suffix indicating plurality of the subject nor specific plural elements in the two nouns. Had the statement been made on another's authority, a totally different "tense-modal" suffix would have had to be used. The pronouns of reference ("he") imply nothing by themselves as to number, gender, or case. Gender, indeed, is completely absent in Yana as a relational category. [Footnote 56: Agriculture was not practised by the Yana. The verbal idea of "to farm" would probably be expressed in some such synthetic manner as "to dig-earth" or "to grow-cause." There are suffixed elements corresponding to _-er_ and _-ling_.] The Yana sentence has already illustrated the point that certain of our supposedly essential concepts may be ignored; both the Yana and the German sentence illustrate the further point that certain concepts may need expression for which an English-speaking person, or rather the English-speaking habit, finds no need whatever. One could go on and give endless examples of such deviations from English form, but we shall have to content ourselves with a few more indications. In the Chinese sentence "Man kill duck," which may be looked upon as the practical equivalent of "The man kills the duck," there is by no means present for the Chinese consciousness that childish, halting, empty feeling which we experience in the literal English translation. The three concrete concepts--two objects and an action--are each directly expressed by a monosyllabic word which is at the same time a radical element; the two relational concepts--"subject" and "object"--are expressed solely by the position of the concrete words before and after the word of action. And that is all. Definiteness or indefiniteness of reference, number, personality as an inherent aspect of the verb, tense, not to speak of gender--all these are given no expression in the Chinese sentence, which, for all that, is a perfectly adequate communication--provided, of course, there is that context, that background of mutual understanding that is essential to the complete intelligibility of all speech. Nor does this qualification impair our argument, for in the English sentence too we leave unexpressed a large number of ideas which are either taken for granted or which have been developed or are about to be developed in the course of the conversation. Nothing has been said, for example, in the English, German, Yana, or Chinese sentence as to the place relations of the farmer, the duck, the speaker, and the listener. Are the farmer and the duck both visible or is one or the other invisible from the point of view of the speaker, and are both placed within the horizon of the speaker, the listener, or of some indefinite point of reference "off yonder"? In other words, to paraphrase awkwardly certain latent "demonstrative" ideas, does this farmer (invisible to us but standing behind a door not far away from me, you being seated yonder well out of reach) kill that duckling (which belongs to you)? or does that farmer (who lives in your neighborhood and whom we see over there) kill that duckling (that belongs to him)? This type of demonstrative elaboration is foreign to our way of thinking, but it would seem very natural, indeed unavoidable, to a Kwakiutl Indian. What, then, are the absolutely essential concepts in speech, the concepts that must be expressed if language is to be a satisfactory means of communication? Clearly we must have, first of all, a large stock of basic or radical concepts, the concrete wherewithal of speech. We must have objects, actions, qualities to talk about, and these must have their corresponding symbols in independent words or in radical elements. No proposition, however abstract its intent, is humanly possible without a tying on at one or more points to the concrete world of sense. In every intelligible proposition at least two of these radical ideas must be expressed, though in exceptional cases one or even both may be understood from the context. And, secondly, such relational concepts must be expressed as moor the concrete concepts to each other and construct a definite, fundamental form of proposition. In this fundamental form there must be no doubt as to the nature of the relations that obtain between the concrete concepts. We must know what concrete concept is directly or indirectly related to what other, and how. If we wish to talk of a thing and an action, we must know if they are coördinately related to each other (e.g., "He is fond of _wine and gambling_"); or if the thing is conceived of as the starting point, the "doer" of the action, or, as it is customary to say, the "subject" of which the action is predicated; or if, on the contrary, it is the end point, the "object" of the action. If I wish to communicate an intelligible idea about a farmer, a duckling, and the act of killing, it is not enough to state the linguistic symbols for these concrete ideas in any order, higgledy-piggledy, trusting that the hearer may construct some kind of a relational pattern out of the general probabilities of the case. The fundamental syntactic relations must be unambiguously expressed. I can afford to be silent on the subject of time and place and number and of a host of other possible types of concepts, but I can find no way of dodging the issue as to who is doing the killing. There is no known language that can or does dodge it, any more than it succeeds in saying something without the use of symbols for the concrete concepts. We are thus once more reminded of the distinction between essential or unavoidable relational concepts and the dispensable type. The former are universally expressed, the latter are but sparsely developed in some languages, elaborated with a bewildering exuberance in others. But what prevents us from throwing in these "dispensable" or "secondary" relational concepts with the large, floating group of derivational, qualifying concepts that we have already discussed? Is there, after all is said and done, a fundamental difference between a qualifying concept like the negative in _unhealthy_ and a relational one like the number concept in _books_? If _unhealthy_ may be roughly paraphrased as _not healthy_, may not _books_ be just as legitimately paraphrased, barring the violence to English idiom, as _several book?_ There are, indeed, languages in which the plural, if expressed at all, is conceived of in the same sober, restricted, one might almost say casual, spirit in which we feel the negative in _unhealthy_. For such languages the number concept has no syntactic significance whatever, is not essentially conceived of as defining a relation, but falls into the group of derivational or even of basic concepts. In English, however, as in French, German, Latin, Greek--indeed in all the languages that we have most familiarity with--the idea of number is not merely appended to a given concept of a thing. It may have something of this merely qualifying value, but its force extends far beyond. It infects much else in the sentence, molding other concepts, even such as have no intelligible relation to number, into forms that are said to correspond to or "agree with" the basic concept to which it is attached in the first instance. If "a man falls" but "men fall" in English, it is not because of any inherent change that has taken place in the nature of the action or because the idea of plurality inherent in "men" must, in the very nature of ideas, relate itself also to the action performed by these men. What we are doing in these sentences is what most languages, in greater or less degree and in a hundred varying ways, are in the habit of doing--throwing a bold bridge between the two basically distinct types of concept, the concrete and the abstractly relational, infecting the latter, as it were, with the color and grossness of the former. By a certain violence of metaphor the material concept is forced to do duty for (or intertwine itself with) the strictly relational. The case is even more obvious if we take gender as our text. In the two English phrases, "The white woman that comes" and "The white men that come," we are not reminded that gender, as well as number, may be elevated into a secondary relational concept. It would seem a little far-fetched to make of masculinity and femininity, crassly material, philosophically accidental concepts that they are, a means of relating quality and person, person and action, nor would it easily occur to us, if we had not studied the classics, that it was anything but absurd to inject into two such highly attenuated relational concepts as are expressed by "the" and "that" the combined notions of number and sex. Yet all this, and more, happens in Latin. _Illa alba femina quae venit_ and _illi albi homines qui veniunt_, conceptually translated, amount to this: _that_-one-feminine-doer[57] one-feminine-_white_-doer feminine-doing-one-_woman_ _which_-one-feminine-doer other[58]-one-now-_come_; and: _that_-several-masculine-doer several-masculine-_white_-doer masculine-doing-several-_man_ _which_-several-masculine-doer other-several-now-_come_. Each word involves no less than four concepts, a radical concept (either properly concrete--_white_, _man_, _woman_, _come_--or demonstrative--_that_, _which_) and three relational concepts, selected from the categories of case, number, gender, person, and tense. Logically, only case[59] (the relation of _woman_ or _men_ to a following verb, of _which_ to its antecedent, of _that_ and _white_ to _woman_ or _men_, and of _which_ to _come_) imperatively demands expression, and that only in connection with the concepts directly affected (there is, for instance, no need to be informed that the whiteness is a doing or doer's whiteness[60]). The other relational concepts are either merely parasitic (gender throughout; number in the demonstrative, the adjective, the relative, and the verb) or irrelevant to the essential syntactic form of the sentence (number in the noun; person; tense). An intelligent and sensitive Chinaman, accustomed as he is to cut to the very bone of linguistic form, might well say of the Latin sentence, "How pedantically imaginative!" It must be difficult for him, when first confronted by the illogical complexities of our European languages, to feel at home in an attitude that so largely confounds the subject-matter of speech with its formal pattern or, to be more accurate, that turns certain fundamentally concrete concepts to such attenuated relational uses. [Footnote 57: "Doer," not "done to." This is a necessarily clumsy tag to represent the "nominative" (subjective) in contrast to the "accusative" (objective).] [Footnote 58: I.e., not you or I.] [Footnote 59: By "case" is here meant not only the subjective-objective relation but also that of attribution.] [Footnote 60: Except in so far as Latin uses this method as a rather awkward, roundabout method of establishing the attribution of the color to the particular object or person. In effect one cannot in Latin directly say that a person is white, merely that what is white is identical with the person who is, acts, or is acted upon in such and such a manner. In origin the feel of the Latin _illa alba femina_ is really "that-one, the-white-one, (namely) the-woman"--three substantive ideas that are related to each other by a juxtaposition intended to convey an identity. English and Chinese express the attribution directly by means of order. In Latin the _illa_ and _alba_ may occupy almost any position in the sentence. It is important to observe that the subjective form of _illa_ and _alba_, does not truly define a relation of these qualifying concepts to _femina_. Such a relation might be formally expressed _via_ an attributive case, say the genitive (_woman of whiteness_). In Tibetan both the methods of order and of true case relation may be employed: _woman white_ (i.e., "white woman") or _white-of woman_ (i.e., "woman of whiteness, woman who is white, white woman").] I have exaggerated somewhat the concreteness of our subsidiary or rather non-syntactical relational concepts In order that the essential facts might come out in bold relief. It goes without saying that a Frenchman has no clear sex notion in his mind when he speaks of _un arbre_ ("a-masculine tree") or of _une pomme_ ("a-feminine apple"). Nor have we, despite the grammarians, a very vivid sense of the present as contrasted with all past and all future time when we say _He comes_.[61] This is evident from our use of the present to indicate both future time ("He comes to-morrow") and general activity unspecified as to time ("Whenever he comes, I am glad to see him," where "comes" refers to past occurrences and possible future ones rather than to present activity). In both the French and English instances the primary ideas of sex and time have become diluted by form-analogy and by extensions into the relational sphere, the concepts ostensibly indicated being now so vaguely delimited that it is rather the tyranny of usage than the need of their concrete expression that sways us in the selection of this or that form. If the thinning-out process continues long enough, we may eventually be left with a system of forms on our hands from which all the color of life has vanished and which merely persist by inertia, duplicating each other's secondary, syntactic functions with endless prodigality. Hence, in part, the complex conjugational systems of so many languages, in which differences of form are attended by no assignable differences of function. There must have been a time, for instance, though it antedates our earliest documentary evidence, when the type of tense formation represented by _drove_ or _sank_ differed in meaning, in however slightly nuanced a degree, from the type (_killed_, _worked_) which has now become established in English as the prevailing preterit formation, very much as we recognize a valuable distinction at present between both these types and the "perfect" (_has driven, has killed_) but may have ceased to do so at some point in the future.[62] Now form lives longer than its own conceptual content. Both are ceaselessly changing, but, on the whole, the form tends to linger on when the spirit has flown or changed its being. Irrational form, form for form's sake--however we term this tendency to hold on to formal distinctions once they have come to be--is as natural to the life of language as is the retention of modes of conduct that have long outlived the meaning they once had. [Footnote 61: Aside, naturally, from the life and imminence that may be created for such a sentence by a particular context.] [Footnote 62: This has largely happened in popular French and German, where the difference is stylistic rather than functional. The preterits are more literary or formal in tone than the perfects.] There is another powerful tendency which makes for a formal elaboration that does not strictly correspond to clear-cut conceptual differences. This is the tendency to construct schemes of classification into which all the concepts of language must be fitted. Once we have made up our minds that all things are either definitely good or bad or definitely black or white, it is difficult to get into the frame of mind that recognizes that any particular thing may be both good and bad (in other words, indifferent) or both black and white (in other words, gray), still more difficult to realize that the good-bad or black-white categories may not apply at all. Language is in many respects as unreasonable and stubborn about its classifications as is such a mind. It must have its perfectly exclusive pigeon-holes and will tolerate no flying vagrants. Any concept that asks for expression must submit to the classificatory rules of the game, just as there are statistical surveys in which even the most convinced atheist must perforce be labeled Catholic, Protestant, or Jew or get no hearing. In English we have made up our minds that all action must be conceived of in reference to three standard times. If, therefore, we desire to state a proposition that is as true to-morrow as it was yesterday, we have to pretend that the present moment may be elongated fore and aft so as to take in all eternity.[63] In French we know once for all that an object is masculine or feminine, whether it be living or not; just as in many American and East Asiatic languages it must be understood to belong to a certain form-category (say, ring-round, ball-round, long and slender, cylindrical, sheet-like, in mass like sugar) before it can be enumerated (e.g., "two ball-class potatoes," "three sheet-class carpets") or even said to "be" or "be handled in a definite way" (thus, in the Athabaskan languages and in Yana, "to carry" or "throw" a pebble is quite another thing than to carry or throw a log, linguistically no less than in terms of muscular experience). Such instances might be multiplied at will. It is almost as though at some period in the past the unconscious mind of the race had made a hasty inventory of experience, committed itself to a premature classification that allowed of no revision, and saddled the inheritors of its language with a science that they no longer quite believed in nor had the strength to overthrow. Dogma, rigidly prescribed by tradition, stiffens into formalism. Linguistic categories make up a system of surviving dogma--dogma of the unconscious. They are often but half real as concepts; their life tends ever to languish away into form for form's sake. [Footnote 63: Hence, "the square root of 4 _is_ 2," precisely as "my uncle _is_ here now." There are many "primitive" languages that are more philosophical and distinguish between a true "present" and a "customary" or "general" tense.] There is still a third cause for the rise of this non-significant form, or rather of non-significant differences of form. This is the mechanical operation of phonetic processes, which may bring about formal distinctions that have not and never had a corresponding functional distinction. Much of the irregularity and general formal complexity of our declensional and conjugational systems is due to this process. The plural of _hat_ is _hats_, the plural of _self_ is _selves_. In the former case we have a true _-s_ symbolizing plurality, in the latter a _z_-sound coupled with a change in the radical element of the word of _f_ to _v_. Here we have not a falling together of forms that originally stood for fairly distinct concepts--as we saw was presumably the case with such parallel forms as _drove_ and _worked_--but a merely mechanical manifolding of the same formal element without a corresponding growth of a new concept. This type of form development, therefore, while of the greatest interest for the general history of language, does not directly concern us now in our effort to understand the nature of grammatical concepts and their tendency to degenerate into purely formal counters. We may now conveniently revise our first classification of concepts as expressed in language and suggest the following scheme: I. _Basic (Concrete) Concepts_ (such as objects, actions, qualities): normally expressed by independent words or radical elements; involve no relation as such[64] II. _Derivational Concepts_ (less concrete, as a rule, than I, more so than III): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements or by inner modification of these; differ from type I in defining ideas that are irrelevant to the proposition as a whole but that give a radical element a particular increment of significance and that are thus inherently related in a specific way to concepts of type I[65] III. _Concrete Relational Concepts_ (still more abstract, yet not entirely devoid of a measure of concreteness): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements, but generally at a greater remove from these than is the case with elements of type II, or by inner modification of radical elements; differ fundamentally from type II in indicating or implying relations that transcend the particular word to which they are immediately attached, thus leading over to IV. _Pure Relational Concepts_ (purely abstract): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements (in which case these concepts are frequently intertwined with those of type III) or by their inner modification, by independent words, or by position; serve to relate the concrete elements of the proposition to each other, thus giving it definite syntactic form. [Footnote 64: Except, of course, the fundamental selection and contrast necessarily implied in defining one concept as against another. "Man" and "white" possess an inherent relation to "woman" and "black," but it is a relation of conceptual content only and is of no direct interest to grammar.] [Footnote 65: Thus, the _-er_ of _farmer_ may he defined as indicating that particular substantive concept (object or thing) that serves as the habitual subject of the particular verb to which it is affixed. This relation of "subject" (_a farmer farms_) is inherent in and specific to the word; it does not exist for the sentence as a whole. In the same way the _-ling_ of _duckling_ defines a specific relation of attribution that concerns only the radical element, not the sentence.] The nature of these four classes of concepts as regards their concreteness or their power to express syntactic relations may be thus symbolized: _ Material _/ I. Basic Concepts Content \_ II. Derivational Concepts _ Relation _/ III. Concrete Relational Concepts \_ IV. Pure Relational Concepts These schemes must not be worshipped as fetiches. In the actual work of analysis difficult problems frequently arise and we may well be in doubt as to how to group a given set of concepts. This is particularly apt to be the case in exotic languages, where we may be quite sure of the analysis of the words in a sentence and yet not succeed in acquiring that inner "feel" of its structure that enables us to tell infallibly what is "material content" and what is "relation." Concepts of class I are essential to all speech, also concepts of class IV. Concepts II and III are both common, but not essential; particularly group III, which represents, in effect, a psychological and formal confusion of types II and IV or of types I and IV, is an avoidable class of concepts. Logically there is an impassable gulf between I and IV, but the illogical, metaphorical genius of speech has wilfully spanned the gulf and set up a continuous gamut of concepts and forms that leads imperceptibly from the crudest of materialities ("house" or "John Smith") to the most subtle of relations. It is particularly significant that the unanalyzable independent word belongs in most cases to either group I or group IV, rather less commonly to II or III. It is possible for a concrete concept, represented by a simple word, to lose its material significance entirely and pass over directly into the relational sphere without at the same time losing its independence as a word. This happens, for instance, in Chinese and Cambodgian when the verb "give" is used in an abstract sense as a mere symbol of the "indirect objective" relation (e.g., Cambodgian "We make story this give all that person who have child," i.e., "We have made this story _for_ all those that have children"). There are, of course, also not a few instances of transitions between groups I and II and I and III, as well as of the less radical one between II and III. To the first of these transitions belongs that whole class of examples in which the independent word, after passing through the preliminary stage of functioning as the secondary or qualifying element in a compound, ends up by being a derivational affix pure and simple, yet without losing the memory of its former independence. Such an element and concept is the _full_ of _teaspoonfull_, which hovers psychologically between the status of an independent, radical concept (compare _full_) or of a subsidiary element in a compound (cf. _brim-full_) and that of a simple suffix (cf. _dutiful_) in which the primary concreteness is no longer felt. In general, the more highly synthetic our linguistic type, the more difficult and even arbitrary it becomes to distinguish groups I and II. Not only is there a gradual loss of the concrete as we pass through from group I to group IV, there is also a constant fading away of the feeling of sensible reality within the main groups of linguistic concepts themselves. In many languages it becomes almost imperative, therefore, to make various sub-classifications, to segregate, for instance, the more concrete from the more abstract concepts of group II. Yet we must always beware of reading into such abstracter groups that purely formal, relational feeling that we can hardly help associating with certain of the abstracter concepts which, with us, fall in group III, unless, indeed, there is clear evidence to warrant such a reading in. An example or two should make clear these all-important distinctions.[66] In Nootka we have an unusually large number of derivational affixes (expressing concepts of group II). Some of these are quite material in content (e.g., "in the house," "to dream of"), others, like an element denoting plurality and a diminutive affix, are far more abstract in content. The former type are more closely welded with the radical element than the latter, which can only be suffixed to formations that have the value of complete words. If, therefore, I wish to say "the small fires in the house"--and I can do this in one word--I must form the word "fire-in-the-house," to which elements corresponding to "small," our plural, and "the" are appended. The element indicating the definiteness of reference that is implied in our "the" comes at the very end of the word. So far, so good. "Fire-in-the-house-the" is an intelligible correlate of our "the house-fire."[67] But is the Nootka correlate of "the small fires in the house" the true equivalent of an English "_the house-firelets_"?[68] By no means. First of all, the plural element precedes the diminutive in Nootka: "fire-in-the-house-plural-small-the," in other words "the house-fires-let," which at once reveals the important fact that the plural concept is not as abstractly, as relationally, felt as in English. A more adequate rendering would be "the house-fire-several-let," in which, however, "several" is too gross a word, "-let" too choice an element ("small" again is too gross). In truth we cannot carry over into English the inherent feeling of the Nootka word, which seems to hover somewhere between "the house-firelets" and "the house-fire-several-small." But what more than anything else cuts off all possibility of comparison between the English _-s_ of "house-firelets" and the "-several-small" of the Nootka word is this, that in Nootka neither the plural nor the diminutive affix corresponds or refers to anything else in the sentence. In English "the house-firelets burn" (not "burns"), in Nootka neither verb, nor adjective, nor anything else in the proposition is in the least concerned with the plurality or the diminutiveness of the fire. Hence, while Nootka recognizes a cleavage between concrete and less concrete concepts within group II, the less concrete do not transcend the group and lead us into that abstracter air into which our plural _-s_ carries us. But at any rate, the reader may object, it is something that the Nootka plural affix is set apart from the concreter group of affixes; and may not the Nootka diminutive have a slenderer, a more elusive content than our _-let_ or _-ling_ or the German _-chen_ or _-lein?_[69] [Footnote 66: It is precisely the failure to feel the "value" or "tone," as distinct from the outer significance, of the concept expressed by a given grammatical element that has so often led students to misunderstand the nature of languages profoundly alien to their own. Not everything that calls itself "tense" or "mode" or "number" or "gender" or "person" is genuinely comparable to what we mean by these terms in Latin or French.] [Footnote 67: Suffixed articles occur also in Danish and Swedish and in numerous other languages. The Nootka element for "in the house" differs from our "house-" in that it is suffixed and cannot occur as an independent word; nor is it related to the Nootka word for "house."] [Footnote 68: Assuming the existence of a word "firelet."] [Footnote 69: The Nootka diminutive is doubtless more of a feeling-element, an element of nuance, than our _-ling_. This is shown by the fact that it may be used with verbs as well as with nouns. In speaking to a child, one is likely to add the diminutive to any word in the sentence, regardless of whether there is an inherent diminutive meaning in the word or not.] Can such a concept as that of plurality ever be classified with the more material concepts of group II? Indeed it can be. In Yana the third person of the verb makes no formal distinction between singular and plural. Nevertheless the plural concept can be, and nearly always is, expressed by the suffixing of an element (_-ba-_) to the radical element of the verb. "It burns in the east" is rendered by the verb _ya-hau-si_ "burn-east-s."[70] "They burn in the east" is _ya-ba-hau-si_. Note that the plural affix immediately follows the radical element (_ya-_), disconnecting it from the local element (_-hau-_). It needs no labored argument to prove that the concept of plurality is here hardly less concrete than that of location "in the east," and that the Yana form corresponds in feeling not so much to our "They burn in the east" (_ardunt oriente_) as to a "Burn-several-east-s, it plurally burns in the east," an expression which we cannot adequately assimilate for lack of the necessary form-grooves into which to run it. [Footnote 70: _-si_ is the third person of the present tense. _-hau-_ "east" is an affix, not a compounded radical element.] But can we go a step farther and dispose of the category of plurality as an utterly material idea, one that would make of "books" a "plural book," in which the "plural," like the "white" of "white book," falls contentedly into group I? Our "many books" and "several books" are obviously not cases in point. Even if we could say "many book" and "several book" (as we can say "many a book" and "each book"), the plural concept would still not emerge as clearly as it should for our argument; "many" and "several" are contaminated by certain notions of quantity or scale that are not essential to the idea of plurality itself. We must turn to central and eastern Asia for the type of expression we are seeking. In Tibetan, for instance, _nga-s mi mthong_[71] "I-by man see, by me a man is seen, I see a man" may just as well be understood to mean "I see men," if there happens to be no reason to emphasize the fact of plurality.[72] If the fact is worth expressing, however, I can say _nga-s mi rnams mthong_ "by me man plural see," where _rnams_ is the perfect conceptual analogue of _-s_ in _books_, divested of all relational strings. _Rnams_ follows its noun as would any other attributive word--"man plural" (whether two or a million) like "man white." No need to bother about his plurality any more than about his whiteness unless we insist on the point. [Footnote 71: These are classical, not modern colloquial, forms.] [Footnote 72: Just as in English "He has written books" makes no commitment on the score of quantity ("a few, several, many").] What is true of the idea of plurality is naturally just as true of a great many other concepts. They do not necessarily belong where we who speak English are in the habit of putting them. They may be shifted towards I or towards IV, the two poles of linguistic expression. Nor dare we look down on the Nootka Indian and the Tibetan for their material attitude towards a concept which to us is abstract and relational, lest we invite the reproaches of the Frenchman who feels a subtlety of relation in _femme blanche_ and _homme blanc_ that he misses in the coarser-grained _white woman_ and _white man_. But the Bantu Negro, were he a philosopher, might go further and find it strange that we put in group II a category, the diminutive, which he strongly feels to belong to group III and which he uses, along with a number of other classificatory concepts,[73] to relate his subjects and objects, attributes and predicates, as a Russian or a German handles his genders and, if possible, with an even greater finesse. [Footnote 73: Such as person class, animal class, instrument class, augmentative class.] It is because our conceptual scheme is a sliding scale rather than a philosophical analysis of experience that we cannot say in advance just where to put a given concept. We must dispense, in other words, with a well-ordered classification of categories. What boots it to put tense and mode here or number there when the next language one handles puts tense a peg "lower down" (towards I), mode and number a peg "higher up" (towards IV)? Nor is there much to be gained in a summary work of this kind from a general inventory of the types of concepts generally found in groups II, III, and IV. There are too many possibilities. It would be interesting to show what are the most typical noun-forming and verb-forming elements of group II; how variously nouns may be classified (by gender; personal and non-personal; animate and inanimate; by form; common and proper); how the concept of number is elaborated (singular and plural; singular, dual, and plural; singular, dual, trial, and plural; single, distributive, and collective); what tense distinctions may be made in verb or noun (the "past," for instance, may be an indefinite past, immediate, remote, mythical, completed, prior); how delicately certain languages have developed the idea of "aspect"[74] (momentaneous, durative, continuative, inceptive, cessative, durative-inceptive, iterative, momentaneous-iterative, durative-iterative, resultative, and still others); what modalities may be recognized (indicative, imperative, potential, dubitative, optative, negative, and a host of others[75]); what distinctions of person are possible (is "we," for instance, conceived of as a plurality of "I" or is it as distinct from "I" as either is from "you" or "he"?--both attitudes are illustrated in language; moreover, does "we" include you to whom I speak or not?--"inclusive" and "exclusive" forms); what may be the general scheme of orientation, the so-called demonstrative categories ("this" and "that" in an endless procession of nuances);[76] how frequently the form expresses the source or nature of the speaker's knowledge (known by actual experience, by hearsay,[77] by inference); how the syntactic relations may be expressed in the noun (subjective and objective; agentive, instrumental, and person affected;[78] various types of "genitive" and indirect relations) and, correspondingly, in the verb (active and passive; active and static; transitive and intransitive; impersonal, reflexive, reciprocal, indefinite as to object, and many other special limitations on the starting-point and end-point of the flow of activity). These details, important as many of them are to an understanding of the "inner form" of language, yield in general significance to the more radical group-distinctions that we have set up. It is enough for the general reader to feel that language struggles towards two poles of linguistic expression--material content and relation--and that these poles tend to be connected by a long series of transitional concepts. [Footnote 74: A term borrowed from Slavic grammar. It indicates the lapse of action, its nature from the standpoint of continuity. Our "cry" is indefinite as to aspect, "be crying" is durative, "cry put" is momentaneous, "burst into tears" is inceptive, "keep crying" is continuative, "start in crying" is durative-inceptive, "cry now and again" is iterative, "cry out every now and then" or "cry in fits and starts" is momentaneous-iterative. "To put on a coat" is momentaneous, "to wear a coat" is resultative. As our examples show, aspect is expressed in English by all kinds of idiomatic turns rather than by a consistently worked out set of grammatical forms. In many languages aspect is of far greater formal significance than tense, with which the naive student is apt to confuse it.] [Footnote 75: By "modalities" I do not mean the matter of fact statement, say, of negation or uncertainty as such, rather their implication in terms of form. There are languages, for instance, which have as elaborate an apparatus of negative forms for the verb as Greek has of the optative or wish-modality.] [Footnote 76: Compare page 97.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 76 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 2948.] [Footnote 77: It is because of this classification of experience that in many languages the verb forms which are proper, say, to a mythical narration differ from those commonly used in daily intercourse. We leave these shades to the context or content ourselves with a more explicit and roundabout mode of expression, e.g., "He is dead, as I happen to know," "They say he is dead," "He must be dead by the looks of things."] [Footnote 78: We say "_I_ sleep" and "_I_ go," as well as "_I_ kill him," but "he kills _me_." Yet _me_ of the last example is at least as close psychologically to _I_ of "I sleep" as is the latter to _I_ of "I kill him." It is only by form that we can classify the "I" notion of "I sleep" as that of an acting subject. Properly speaking, I am handled by forces beyond my control when I sleep just as truly as when some one is killing me. Numerous languages differentiate clearly between active subject and static subject (_I go_ and _I kill him_ as distinct from _I sleep_, _I am good_, _I am killed_) or between transitive subject and intransitive subject (_I kill him_ as distinct from _I sleep_, _I am good_, _I am killed_, _I go_). The intransitive or static subjects may or may not be identical with the object of the transitive verb.] In dealing with words and their varying forms we have had to anticipate much that concerns the sentence as a whole. Every language has its special method or methods of binding words into a larger unity. The importance of these methods is apt to vary with the complexity of the individual word. The more synthetic the language, in other words, the more clearly the status of each word in the sentence is indicated by its own resources, the less need is there for looking beyond the word to the sentence as a whole. The Latin _agit_ "(he) acts" needs no outside help to establish its place in a proposition. Whether I say _agit dominus_ "the master acts" or _sic femina agit_ "thus the woman acts," the net result as to the syntactic feel of the _agit_ is practically the same. It can only be a verb, the predicate of a proposition, and it can only be conceived as a statement of activity carried out by a person (or thing) other than you or me. It is not so with such a word as the English _act_. _Act_ is a syntactic waif until we have defined its status in a proposition--one thing in "they act abominably," quite another in "that was a kindly act." The Latin sentence speaks with the assurance of its individual members, the English word needs the prompting of its fellows. Roughly speaking, to be sure. And yet to say that a sufficiently elaborate word-structure compensates for external syntactic methods is perilously close to begging the question. The elements of the word are related to each other in a specific way and follow each other in a rigorously determined sequence. This is tantamount to saying that a word which consists of more than a radical element is a crystallization of a sentence or of some portion of a sentence, that a form like _agit_ is roughly the psychological[79] equivalent of a form like _age is_ "act he." Breaking down, then, the wall that separates word and sentence, we may ask: What, at last analysis, are the fundamental methods of relating word to word and element to element, in short, of passing from the isolated notions symbolized by each word and by each element to the unified proposition that corresponds to a thought? [Footnote 79: Ultimately, also historical--say, _age to_ "act that (one)."] The answer is simple and is implied in the preceding remarks. The most fundamental and the most powerful of all relating methods is the method of order. Let us think of some more or less concrete idea, say a color, and set down its symbol--_red_; of another concrete idea, say a person or object, setting down its symbol--_dog_; finally, of a third concrete idea, say an action, setting down its symbol--_run_. It is hardly possible to set down these three symbols--_red dog run_--without relating them in some way, for example _(the) red dog run(s)_. I am far from wishing to state that the proposition has always grown up in this analytic manner, merely that the very process of juxtaposing concept to concept, symbol to symbol, forces some kind of relational "feeling," if nothing else, upon us. To certain syntactic adhesions we are very sensitive, for example, to the attributive relation of quality (_red dog_) or the subjective relation (_dog run_) or the objective relation (_kill dog_), to others we are more indifferent, for example, to the attributive relation of circumstance (_to-day red dog run_ or _red dog to-day run_ or _red dog run to-day_, all of which are equivalent propositions or propositions in embryo). Words and elements, then, once they are listed in a certain order, tend not only to establish some kind of relation among themselves but are attracted to each other in greater or in less degree. It is presumably this very greater or less that ultimately leads to those firmly solidified groups of elements (radical element or elements plus one or more grammatical elements) that we have studied as complex words. They are in all likelihood nothing but sequences that have shrunk together and away from other sequences or isolated elements in the flow of speech. While they are fully alive, in other words, while they are functional at every point, they can keep themselves at a psychological distance from their neighbors. As they gradually lose much of their life, they fall back into the embrace of the sentence as a whole and the sequence of independent words regains the importance it had in part transferred to the crystallized groups of elements. Speech is thus constantly tightening and loosening its sequences. In its highly integrated forms (Latin, Eskimo) the "energy" of sequence is largely locked up in complex word formations, it becomes transformed into a kind of potential energy that may not be released for millennia. In its more analytic forms (Chinese, English) this energy is mobile, ready to hand for such service as we demand of it. There can be little doubt that stress has frequently played a controlling influence in the formation of element-groups or complex words out of certain sequences in the sentence. Such an English word as _withstand_ is merely an old sequence _with stand_, i.e., "against[80] stand," in which the unstressed adverb was permanently drawn to the following verb and lost its independence as a significant element. In the same way French futures of the type _irai_ "(I) shall go" are but the resultants of a coalescence of originally independent words: _ir[81] a'i_ "to-go I-have," under the influence of a unifying accent. But stress has done more than articulate or unify sequences that in their own right imply a syntactic relation. Stress is the most natural means at our disposal to emphasize a linguistic contrast, to indicate the major element in a sequence. Hence we need not be surprised to find that accent too, no less than sequence, may serve as the unaided symbol of certain relations. Such a contrast as that of _go' between_ ("one who goes between") and _to go between'_ may be of quite secondary origin in English, but there is every reason to believe that analogous distinctions have prevailed at all times in linguistic history. A sequence like _see' man_ might imply some type of relation in which _see_ qualifies the following word, hence "a seeing man" or "a seen (or visible) man," or is its predication, hence "the man sees" or "the man is seen," while a sequence like _see man'_ might indicate that the accented word in some way limits the application of the first, say as direct object, hence "to see a man" or "(he) sees the man." Such alternations of relation, as symbolized by varying stresses, are important and frequent in a number of languages.[82] [Footnote 80: For _with_ in the sense of "against," compare German _wider_ "against."] [Footnote 81: Cf. Latin _ire_ "to go"; also our English idiom "I have to go," i.e., "must go."] [Footnote 82: In Chinese no less than in English.] It is a somewhat venturesome and yet not an altogether unreasonable speculation that sees in word order and stress the primary methods for the expression of all syntactic relations and looks upon the present relational value of specific words and elements as but a secondary condition due to a transfer of values. Thus, we may surmise that the Latin _-m_ of words like _feminam_, _dominum_, and _civem_ did not originally[83] denote that "woman," "master," and "citizen" were objectively related to the verb of the proposition but indicated something far more concrete,[84] that the objective relation was merely implied by the position or accent of the word (radical element) immediately preceding the _-m_, and that gradually, as its more concrete significance faded away, it took over a syntactic function that did not originally belong to it. This sort of evolution by transfer is traceable in many instances. Thus, the _of_ in an English phrase like "the law of the land" is now as colorless in content, as purely a relational indicator as the "genitive" suffix _-is_ in the Latin _lex urbis_ "the law of the city." We know, however, that it was originally an adverb of considerable concreteness of meaning,[85] "away, moving from," and that the syntactic relation was originally expressed by the case form[86] of the second noun. As the case form lost its vitality, the adverb took over its function. If we are actually justified in assuming that the expression of all syntactic relations is ultimately traceable to these two unavoidable, dynamic features of speech--sequence and stress[87]--an interesting thesis results:--All of the actual content of speech, its clusters of vocalic and consonantal sounds, is in origin limited to the concrete; relations were originally not expressed in outward form but were merely implied and articulated with the help of order and rhythm. In other words, relations were intuitively felt and could only "leak out" with the help of dynamic factors that themselves move on an intuitional plane. [Footnote 83: By "originally" I mean, of course, some time antedating the earliest period of the Indo-European languages that we can get at by comparative evidence.] [Footnote 84: Perhaps it was a noun-classifying element of some sort.] [Footnote 85: Compare its close historical parallel _off_.] [Footnote 86: "Ablative" at last analysis.] [Footnote 87: Very likely pitch should be understood along with stress.] There is a special method for the expression of relations that has been so often evolved in the history of language that we must glance at it for a moment. This is the method of "concord" or of like signaling. It is based on the same principle as the password or label. All persons or objects that answer to the same counter-sign or that bear the same imprint are thereby stamped as somehow related. It makes little difference, once they are so stamped, where they are to be found or how they behave themselves. They are known to belong together. We are familiar with the principle of concord in Latin and Greek. Many of us have been struck by such relentless rhymes as _vidi ilium bonum dominum_ "I saw that good master" or _quarum dearum saevarum_ "of which stern goddesses." Not that sound-echo, whether in the form of rhyme or of alliteration[88] is necessary to concord, though in its most typical and original forms concord is nearly always accompanied by sound repetition. The essence of the principle is simply this, that words (elements) that belong together, particularly if they are syntactic equivalents or are related in like fashion to another word or element, are outwardly marked by the same or functionally equivalent affixes. The application of the principle varies considerably according to the genius of the particular language. In Latin and Greek, for instance, there is concord between noun and qualifying word (adjective or demonstrative) as regards gender, number, and case, between verb and subject only as regards number, and no concord between verb and object. [Footnote 88: As in Bantu or Chinook.] In Chinook there is a more far-reaching concord between noun, whether subject or object, and verb. Every noun is classified according to five categories--masculine, feminine, neuter,[89] dual, and plural. "Woman" is feminine, "sand" is neuter, "table" is masculine. If, therefore, I wish to say "The woman put the sand on the table," I must place in the verb certain class or gender prefixes that accord with corresponding noun prefixes. The sentence reads then, "The (fem.)-woman she (fem.)-it (neut.)-it (masc.)-on-put the (neut.)-sand the (masc.)-table." If "sand" is qualified as "much" and "table" as "large," these new ideas are expressed as abstract nouns, each with its inherent class-prefix ("much" is neuter or feminine, "large" is masculine) and with a possessive prefix referring to the qualified noun. Adjective thus calls to noun, noun to verb. "The woman put much sand on the large table," therefore, takes the form: "The (fem.)-woman she (fem.)-it (neut.)-it (masc.)-on-put the (fem.)-thereof (neut.)-quantity the (neut.)-sand the (masc.)-thereof (masc.)-largeness the (masc.)-table." The classification of "table" as masculine is thus three times insisted on--in the noun, in the adjective, and in the verb. In the Bantu languages,[90] the principle of concord works very much as in Chinook. In them also nouns are classified into a number of categories and are brought into relation with adjectives, demonstratives, relative pronouns, and verbs by means of prefixed elements that call off the class and make up a complex system of concordances. In such a sentence as "That fierce lion who came here is dead," the class of "lion," which we may call the animal class, would be referred to by concording prefixes no less than six times,--with the demonstrative ("that"), the qualifying adjective, the noun itself, the relative pronoun, the subjective prefix to the verb of the relative clause, and the subjective prefix to the verb of the main clause ("is dead"). We recognize in this insistence on external clarity of reference the same spirit as moves in the more familiar _illum bonum dominum_. [Footnote 89: Perhaps better "general." The Chinook "neuter" may refer to persons as well as things and may also be used as a plural. "Masculine" and "feminine," as in German and French, include a great number of inanimate nouns.] [Footnote 90: Spoken in the greater part of the southern half of Africa. Chinook is spoken in a number of dialects in the lower Columbia River valley. It is impressive to observe how the human mind has arrived at the same form of expression in two such historically unconnected regions.] Psychologically the methods of sequence and accent lie at the opposite pole to that of concord. Where they are all for implication, for subtlety of feeling, concord is impatient of the least ambiguity but must have its well-certificated tags at every turn. Concord tends to dispense with order. In Latin and Chinook the independent words are free in position, less so in Bantu. In both Chinook and Bantu, however, the methods of concord and order are equally important for the differentiation of subject and object, as the classifying verb prefixes refer to subject, object, or indirect object according to the relative position they occupy. These examples again bring home to us the significant fact that at some point or other order asserts itself in every language as the most fundamental of relating principles. The observant reader has probably been surprised that all this time we have had so little to say of the time-honored "parts of speech." The reason for this is not far to seek. Our conventional classification of words into parts of speech is only a vague, wavering approximation to a consistently worked out inventory of experience. We imagine, to begin with, that all "verbs" are inherently concerned with action as such, that a "noun" is the name of some definite object or personality that can be pictured by the mind, that all qualities are necessarily expressed by a definite group of words to which we may appropriately apply the term "adjective." As soon as we test our vocabulary, we discover that the parts of speech are far from corresponding to so simple an analysis of reality. We say "it is red" and define "red" as a quality-word or adjective. We should consider it strange to think of an equivalent of "is red" in which the whole predication (adjective and verb of being) is conceived of as a verb in precisely the same way in which we think of "extends" or "lies" or "sleeps" as a verb. Yet as soon as we give the "durative" notion of being red an inceptive or transitional turn, we can avoid the parallel form "it becomes red, it turns red" and say "it reddens." No one denies that "reddens" is as good a verb as "sleeps" or even "walks." Yet "it is red" is related to "it reddens" very much as is "he stands" to "he stands up" or "he rises." It is merely a matter of English or of general Indo-European idiom that we cannot say "it reds" in the sense of "it is red." There are hundreds of languages that can. Indeed there are many that can express what we should call an adjective only by making a participle out of a verb. "Red" in such languages is merely a derivative "being red," as our "sleeping" or "walking" are derivatives of primary verbs. Just as we can verbify the idea of a quality in such cases as "reddens," so we can represent a quality or an action to ourselves as a thing. We speak of "the height of a building" or "the fall of an apple" quite as though these ideas were parallel to "the roof of a building" or "the skin of an apple," forgetting that the nouns (_height_, _fall_) have not ceased to indicate a quality and an act when we have made them speak with the accent of mere objects. And just as there are languages that make verbs of the great mass of adjectives, so there are others that make nouns of them. In Chinook, as we have seen, "the big table" is "the-table its-bigness"; in Tibetan the same idea may be expressed by "the table of bigness," very much as we may say "a man of wealth" instead of "a rich man." But are there not certain ideas that it is impossible to render except by way of such and such parts of speech? What can be done with the "to" of "he came to the house"? Well, we can say "he reached the house" and dodge the preposition altogether, giving the verb a nuance that absorbs the idea of local relation carried by the "to." But let us insist on giving independence to this idea of local relation. Must we not then hold to the preposition? No, we can make a noun of it. We can say something like "he reached the proximity of the house" or "he reached the house-locality." Instead of saying "he looked into the glass" we may say "he scrutinized the glass-interior." Such expressions are stilted in English because they do not easily fit into our formal grooves, but in language after language we find that local relations are expressed in just this way. The local relation is nominalized. And so we might go on examining the various parts of speech and showing how they not merely grade into each other but are to an astonishing degree actually convertible into each other. The upshot of such an examination would be to feel convinced that the "part of speech" reflects not so much our intuitive analysis of reality as our ability to compose that reality into a variety of formal patterns. A part of speech outside of the limitations of syntactic form is but a will o' the wisp. For this reason no logical scheme of the parts of speech--their number, nature, and necessary confines--is of the slightest interest to the linguist. Each language has its own scheme. Everything depends on the formal demarcations which it recognizes. Yet we must not be too destructive. It is well to remember that speech consists of a series of propositions. There must be something to talk about and something must be said about this subject of discourse once it is selected. This distinction is of such fundamental importance that the vast majority of languages have emphasized it by creating some sort of formal barrier between the two terms of the proposition. The subject of discourse is a noun. As the most common subject of discourse is either a person or a thing, the noun clusters about concrete concepts of that order. As the thing predicated of a subject is generally an activity in the widest sense of the word, a passage from one moment of existence to another, the form which has been set aside for the business of predicating, in other words, the verb, clusters about concepts of activity. No language wholly fails to distinguish noun and verb, though in particular cases the nature of the distinction may be an elusive one. It is different with the other parts of speech. Not one of them is imperatively required for the life of language.[91] [Footnote 91: In Yana the noun and the verb are well distinct, though there are certain features that they hold in common which tend to draw them nearer to each other than we feel to be possible. But there are, strictly speaking, no other parts of speech. The adjective is a verb. So are the numeral, the interrogative pronoun (e.g., "to be what?"), and certain "conjunctions" and adverbs (e.g., "to be and" and "to be not"; one says "and-past-I go," i.e., "and I went"). Adverbs and prepositions are either nouns or merely derivative affixes in the verb.] VI TYPES OF LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE So far, in dealing with linguistic form, we have been concerned only with single words and with the relations of words in sentences. We have not envisaged whole languages as conforming to this or that general type. Incidentally we have observed that one language runs to tight-knit synthesis where another contents itself with a more analytic, piece-meal handling of its elements, or that in one language syntactic relations appear pure which in another are combined with certain other notions that have something concrete about them, however abstract they may be felt to be in practice. In this way we may have obtained some inkling of what is meant when we speak of the general form of a language. For it must be obvious to any one who has thought about the question at all or who has felt something of the spirit of a foreign language that there is such a thing as a basic plan, a certain cut, to each language. This type or plan or structural "genius" of the language is something much more fundamental, much more pervasive, than any single feature of it that we can mention, nor can we gain an adequate idea of its nature by a mere recital of the sundry facts that make up the grammar of the language. When we pass from Latin to Russian, we feel that it is approximately the same horizon that bounds our view, even though the near, familiar landmarks have changed. When we come to English, we seem to notice that the hills have dipped down a little, yet we recognize the general lay of the land. And when we have arrived at Chinese, it is an utterly different sky that is looking down upon us. We can translate these metaphors and say that all languages differ from one another but that certain ones differ far more than others. This is tantamount to saying that it is possible to group them into morphological types. Strictly speaking, we know in advance that it is impossible to set up a limited number of types that would do full justice to the peculiarities of the thousands of languages and dialects spoken on the surface of the earth. Like all human institutions, speech is too variable and too elusive to be quite safely ticketed. Even if we operate with a minutely subdivided scale of types, we may be quite certain that many of our languages will need trimming before they fit. To get them into the scheme at all it will be necessary to overestimate the significance of this or that feature or to ignore, for the time being, certain contradictions in their mechanism. Does the difficulty of classification prove the uselessness of the task? I do not think so. It would be too easy to relieve ourselves of the burden of constructive thinking and to take the standpoint that each language has its unique history, therefore its unique structure. Such a standpoint expresses only a half truth. Just as similar social, economic, and religious institutions have grown up in different parts of the world from distinct historical antecedents, so also languages, traveling along different roads, have tended to converge toward similar forms. Moreover, the historical study of language has proven to us beyond all doubt that a language changes not only gradually but consistently, that it moves unconsciously from one type towards another, and that analogous trends are observable in remote quarters of the globe. From this it follows that broadly similar morphologies must have been reached by unrelated languages, independently and frequently. In assuming the existence of comparable types, therefore, we are not gainsaying the individuality of all historical processes; we are merely affirming that back of the face of history are powerful drifts that move language, like other social products, to balanced patterns, in other words, to types. As linguists we shall be content to realize that there are these types and that certain processes in the life of language tend to modify them. Why similar types should be formed, just what is the nature of the forces that make them and dissolve them--these questions are more easily asked than answered. Perhaps the psychologists of the future will be able to give us the ultimate reasons for the formation of linguistic types. When it comes to the actual task of classification, we find that we have no easy road to travel. Various classifications have been suggested, and they all contain elements of value. Yet none proves satisfactory. They do not so much enfold the known languages in their embrace as force them down into narrow, straight-backed seats. The difficulties have been of various kinds. First and foremost, it has been difficult to choose a point of view. On what basis shall we classify? A language shows us so many facets that we may well be puzzled. And is one point of view sufficient? Secondly, it is dangerous to generalize from a small number of selected languages. To take, as the sum total of our material, Latin, Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, and perhaps Eskimo or Sioux as an afterthought, is to court disaster. We have no right to assume that a sprinkling of exotic types will do to supplement the few languages nearer home that we are more immediately interested in. Thirdly, the strong craving for a simple formula[92] has been the undoing of linguists. There is something irresistible about a method of classification that starts with two poles, exemplified, say, by Chinese and Latin, clusters what it conveniently can about these poles, and throws everything else into a "transitional type." Hence has arisen the still popular classification of languages into an "isolating" group, an "agglutinative" group, and an "inflective" group. Sometimes the languages of the American Indians are made to straggle along as an uncomfortable "polysynthetic" rear-guard to the agglutinative languages. There is justification for the use of all of these terms, though not perhaps in quite the spirit in which they are commonly employed. In any case it is very difficult to assign all known languages to one or other of these groups, the more so as they are not mutually exclusive. A language may be both agglutinative and inflective, or inflective and polysynthetic, or even polysynthetic and isolating, as we shall see a little later on. [Footnote 92: If possible, a triune formula.] There is a fourth reason why the classification of languages has generally proved a fruitless undertaking. It is probably the most powerful deterrent of all to clear thinking. This is the evolutionary prejudice which instilled itself into the social sciences towards the middle of the last century and which is only now beginning to abate its tyrannical hold on our mind. Intermingled with this scientific prejudice and largely anticipating it was another, a more human one. The vast majority of linguistic theorists themselves spoke languages of a certain type, of which the most fully developed varieties were the Latin and Greek that they had learned in their childhood. It was not difficult for them to be persuaded that these familiar languages represented the "highest" development that speech had yet attained and that all other types were but steps on the way to this beloved "inflective" type. Whatever conformed to the pattern of Sanskrit and Greek and Latin and German was accepted as expressive of the "highest," whatever departed from it was frowned upon as a shortcoming or was at best an interesting aberration.[93] Now any classification that starts with preconceived values or that works up to sentimental satisfactions is self-condemned as unscientific. A linguist that insists on talking about the Latin type of morphology as though it were necessarily the high-water mark of linguistic development is like the zoölogist that sees in the organic world a huge conspiracy to evolve the race-horse or the Jersey cow. Language in its fundamental forms is the symbolic expression of human intuitions. These may shape themselves in a hundred ways, regardless of the material advancement or backwardness of the people that handle the forms, of which, it need hardly be said, they are in the main unconscious. If, therefore, we wish to understand language in its true inwardness we must disabuse our minds of preferred "values"[94] and accustom ourselves to look upon English and Hottentot with the same cool, yet interested, detachment. [Footnote 93: One celebrated American writer on culture and language delivered himself of the dictum that, estimable as the speakers of agglutinative languages might be, it was nevertheless a crime for an inflecting woman to marry an agglutinating man. Tremendous spiritual values were evidently at stake. Champions of the "inflective" languages are wont to glory in the very irrationalities of Latin and Greek, except when it suits them to emphasize their profoundly "logical" character. Yet the sober logic of Turkish or Chinese leaves them cold. The glorious irrationalities and formal complexities of many "savage" languages they have no stomach for. Sentimentalists are difficult people.] [Footnote 94: I have in mind valuations of form as such. Whether or not a language has a large and useful vocabulary is another matter. The actual size of a vocabulary at a given time is not a thing of real interest to the linguist, as all languages have the resources at their disposal for the creation of new words, should need for them arise. Furthermore, we are not in the least concerned with whether or not a language is of great practical value or is the medium of a great culture. All these considerations, important from other standpoints, have nothing to do with form value.] We come back to our first difficulty. What point of view shall we adopt for our classification? After all that we have said about grammatical form in the preceding chapter, it is clear that we cannot now make the distinction between form languages and formless languages that used to appeal to some of the older writers. Every language can and must express the fundamental syntactic relations even though there is not a single affix to be found in its vocabulary. We conclude that every language is a form language. Aside from the expression of pure relation a language may, of course, be "formless"--formless, that is, in the mechanical and rather superficial sense that it is not encumbered by the use of non-radical elements. The attempt has sometimes been made to formulate a distinction on the basis of "inner form." Chinese, for instance, has no formal elements pure and simple, no "outer form," but it evidences a keen sense of relations, of the difference between subject and object, attribute and predicate, and so on. In other words, it has an "inner form" in the same sense in which Latin possesses it, though it is outwardly "formless" where Latin is outwardly "formal." On the other hand, there are supposed to be languages[95] which have no true grasp of the fundamental relations but content themselves with the more or less minute expression of material ideas, sometimes with an exuberant display of "outer form," leaving the pure relations to be merely inferred from the context. I am strongly inclined to believe that this supposed "inner formlessness" of certain languages is an illusion. It may well be that in these languages the relations are not expressed in as immaterial a way as in Chinese or even as in Latin,[96] or that the principle of order is subject to greater fluctuations than in Chinese, or that a tendency to complex derivations relieves the language of the necessity of expressing certain relations as explicitly as a more analytic language would have them expressed.[97] All this does not mean that the languages in question have not a true feeling for the fundamental relations. We shall therefore not be able to use the notion of "inner formlessness," except in the greatly modified sense that syntactic relations may be fused with notions of another order. To this criterion of classification we shall have to return a little later. [Footnote 95: E.g., Malay, Polynesian.] [Footnote 96: Where, as we have seen, the syntactic relations are by no means free from an alloy of the concrete.] [Footnote 97: Very much as an English _cod-liver oil_ dodges to some extent the task of explicitly defining the relations of the three nouns. Contrast French _huile de foie de morue_ "oil of liver of cod."] More justifiable would be a classification according to the formal processes[98] most typically developed in the language. Those languages that always identify the word with the radical element would be set off as an "isolating" group against such as either affix modifying elements (affixing languages) or possess the power to change the significance of the radical element by internal changes (reduplication; vocalic and consonantal change; changes in quantity, stress, and pitch). The latter type might be not inaptly termed "symbolic" languages.[99] The affixing languages would naturally subdivide themselves into such as are prevailingly prefixing, like Bantu or Tlingit, and such as are mainly or entirely suffixing, like Eskimo or Algonkin or Latin. There are two serious difficulties with this fourfold classification (isolating, prefixing, suffixing, symbolic). In the first place, most languages fall into more than one of these groups. The Semitic languages, for instance, are prefixing, suffixing, and symbolic at one and the same time. In the second place, the classification in its bare form is superficial. It would throw together languages that differ utterly in spirit merely because of a certain external formal resemblance. There is clearly a world of difference between a prefixing language like Cambodgian, which limits itself, so far as its prefixes (and infixes) are concerned, to the expression of derivational concepts, and the Bantu languages, in which the prefixed elements have a far-reaching significance as symbols of syntactic relations. The classification has much greater value if it is taken to refer to the expression of relational concepts[100] alone. In this modified form we shall return to it as a subsidiary criterion. We shall find that the terms "isolating," "affixing," and "symbolic" have a real value. But instead of distinguishing between prefixing and suffixing languages, we shall find that it is of superior interest to make another distinction, one that is based on the relative firmness with which the affixed elements are united with the core of the word.[101] [Footnote 98: See Chapter IV.] [Footnote 99: There is probably a real psychological connection between symbolism and such significant alternations as _drink_, _drank_, _drunk_ or Chinese _mai_ (with rising tone) "to buy" and _mai_ (with falling tone) "to sell." The unconscious tendency toward symbolism is justly emphasized by recent psychological literature. Personally I feel that the passage from _sing_ to _sang_ has very much the same feeling as the alternation of symbolic colors--e.g., green for safe, red for danger. But we probably differ greatly as to the intensity with which we feel symbolism in linguistic changes of this type.] [Footnote 100: Pure or "concrete relational." See Chapter V.] [Footnote 101: In spite of my reluctance to emphasize the difference between a prefixing and a suffixing language, I feel that there is more involved in this difference than linguists have generally recognized. It seems to me that there is a rather important psychological distinction between a language that settles the formal status of a radical element before announcing it--and this, in effect, is what such languages as Tlingit and Chinook and Bantu are in the habit of doing--and one that begins with the concrete nucleus of a word and defines the status of this nucleus by successive limitations, each curtailing in some degree the generality of all that precedes. The spirit of the former method has something diagrammatic or architectural about it, the latter is a method of pruning afterthoughts. In the more highly wrought prefixing languages the word is apt to affect us as a crystallization of floating elements, the words of the typical suffixing languages (Turkish, Eskimo, Nootka) are "determinative" formations, each added element determining the form of the whole anew. It is so difficult in practice to apply these elusive, yet important, distinctions that an elementary study has no recourse but to ignore them.] There is another very useful set of distinctions that can be made, but these too must not be applied exclusively, or our classification will again be superficial. I refer to the notions of "analytic," "synthetic," and "polysynthetic." The terms explain themselves. An analytic language is one that either does not combine concepts into single words at all (Chinese) or does so economically (English, French). In an analytic language the sentence is always of prime importance, the word is of minor interest. In a synthetic language (Latin, Arabic, Finnish) the concepts cluster more thickly, the words are more richly chambered, but there is a tendency, on the whole, to keep the range of concrete significance in the single word down to a moderate compass. A polysynthetic language, as its name implies, is more than ordinarily synthetic. The elaboration of the word is extreme. Concepts which we should never dream of treating in a subordinate fashion are symbolized by derivational affixes or "symbolic" changes in the radical element, while the more abstract notions, including the syntactic relations, may also be conveyed by the word. A polysynthetic language illustrates no principles that are not already exemplified in the more familiar synthetic languages. It is related to them very much as a synthetic language is related to our own analytic English.[102] The three terms are purely quantitative--and relative, that is, a language may be "analytic" from one standpoint, "synthetic" from another. I believe the terms are more useful in defining certain drifts than as absolute counters. It is often illuminating to point out that a language has been becoming more and more analytic in the course of its history or that it shows signs of having crystallized from a simple analytic base into a highly synthetic form.[103] [Footnote 102: English, however, is only analytic in tendency. Relatively to French, it is still fairly synthetic, at least in certain aspects.] [Footnote 103: The former process is demonstrable for English, French, Danish, Tibetan, Chinese, and a host of other languages. The latter tendency may be proven, I believe, for a number of American Indian languages, e.g., Chinook, Navaho. Underneath their present moderately polysynthetic form is discernible an analytic base that in the one case may be roughly described as English-like, in the other, Tibetan-like.] We now come to the difference between an "inflective" and an "agglutinative" language. As I have already remarked, the distinction is a useful, even a necessary, one, but it has been generally obscured by a number of irrelevancies and by the unavailing effort to make the terms cover all languages that are not, like Chinese, of a definitely isolating cast. The meaning that we had best assign to the term "inflective" can be gained by considering very briefly what are some of the basic features of Latin and Greek that have been looked upon as peculiar to the inflective languages. First of all, they are synthetic rather than analytic. This does not help us much. Relatively to many another language that resembles them in broad structural respects, Latin and Greek are not notably synthetic; on the other hand, their modern descendants, Italian and Modern Greek, while far more analytic[104] than they, have not departed so widely in structural outlines as to warrant their being put in a distinct major group. An inflective language, we must insist, may be analytic, synthetic, or polysynthetic. [Footnote 104: This applies more particularly to the Romance group: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Roumanian. Modern Greek is not so clearly analytic.] Latin and Greek are mainly affixing in their method, with the emphasis heavily on suffixing. The agglutinative languages are just as typically affixing as they, some among them favoring prefixes, others running to the use of suffixes. Affixing alone does not define inflection. Possibly everything depends on just what kind of affixing we have to deal with. If we compare our English words _farmer_ and _goodness_ with such words as _height_ and _depth_, we cannot fail to be struck by a notable difference in the affixing technique of the two sets. The _-er_ and _-ness_ are affixed quite mechanically to radical elements which are at the same time independent words (_farm_, _good_). They are in no sense independently significant elements, but they convey their meaning (agentive, abstract quality) with unfailing directness. Their use is simple and regular and we should have no difficulty in appending them to any verb or to any adjective, however recent in origin. From a verb _to camouflage_ we may form the noun _camouflager_ "one who camouflages," from an adjective _jazzy_ proceeds with perfect ease the noun _jazziness_. It is different with _height_ and _depth_. Functionally they are related to _high_ and _deep_ precisely as is _goodness_ to _good_, but the degree of coalescence between radical element and affix is greater. Radical element and affix, while measurably distinct, cannot be torn apart quite so readily as could the _good_ and _-ness_ of _goodness_. The _-t_ of _height_ is not the typical form of the affix (compare _strength_, _length_, _filth_, _breadth_, _youth_), while _dep-_ is not identical with _deep_. We may designate the two types of affixing as "fusing" and "juxtaposing." The juxtaposing technique we may call an "agglutinative" one, if we like. Is the fusing technique thereby set off as the essence of inflection? I am afraid that we have not yet reached our goal. If our language were crammed full of coalescences of the type of _depth_, but if, on the other hand, it used the plural independently of verb concord (e.g., _the books falls_ like _the book falls_, or _the book fall_ like _the books fall_), the personal endings independently of tense (e.g., _the book fells_ like _the book falls_, or _the book fall_ like _the book fell_), and the pronouns independently of case (e.g., _I see he_ like _he sees me_, or _him see the man_ like _the man sees him_), we should hesitate to describe it as inflective. The mere fact of fusion does not seem to satisfy us as a clear indication of the inflective process. There are, indeed, a large number of languages that fuse radical element and affix in as complete and intricate a fashion as one could hope to find anywhere without thereby giving signs of that particular kind of formalism that marks off such languages as Latin and Greek as inflective. What is true of fusion is equally true of the "symbolic" processes.[105] There are linguists that speak of alternations like _drink_ and _drank_ as though they represented the high-water mark of inflection, a kind of spiritualized essence of pure inflective form. In such Greek forms, nevertheless, as _pepomph-a_ "I have sent," as contrasted with _pemp-o_ "I send," with its trebly symbolic change of the radical element (reduplicating _pe-_, change of _e_ to _o_, change of _p_ to _ph_), it is rather the peculiar alternation of the first person singular _-a_ of the perfect with the _-o_ of the present that gives them their inflective cast. Nothing could be more erroneous than to imagine that symbolic changes of the radical element, even for the expression of such abstract concepts as those of number and tense, is always associated with the syntactic peculiarities of an inflective language. If by an "agglutinative" language we mean one that affixes according to the juxtaposing technique, then we can only say that there are hundreds of fusing and symbolic languages--non-agglutinative by definition--that are, for all that, quite alien in spirit to the inflective type of Latin and Greek. We can call such languages inflective, if we like, but we must then be prepared to revise radically our notion of inflective form. [Footnote 105: See pages 133, 134.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 105 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 4081.] It is necessary to understand that fusion of the radical element and the affix may be taken in a broader psychological sense than I have yet indicated. If every noun plural in English were of the type of _book_: _books_, if there were not such conflicting patterns as _deer_: _deer_, _ox_: _oxen_, _goose_: _geese_ to complicate the general form picture of plurality, there is little doubt that the fusion of the elements _book_ and _-s_ into the unified word _books_ would be felt as a little less complete than it actually is. One reasons, or feels, unconsciously about the matter somewhat as follows:--If the form pattern represented by the word _books_ is identical, as far as use is concerned, with that of the word _oxen_, the pluralizing elements _-s_ and _-en_ cannot have quite so definite, quite so autonomous, a value as we might at first be inclined to suppose. They are plural elements only in so far as plurality is predicated of certain selected concepts. The words _books_ and _oxen_ are therefore a little other than mechanical combinations of the symbol of a thing (_book_, _ox_) and a clear symbol of plurality. There is a slight psychological uncertainty or haze about the juncture in _book-s_ and _ox-en_. A little of the force of _-s_ and _-en_ is anticipated by, or appropriated by, the words _book_ and _ox_ themselves, just as the conceptual force of _-th_ in _dep-th_ is appreciably weaker than that of _-ness_ in _good-ness_ in spite of the functional parallelism between _depth_ and _goodness_. Where there is uncertainty about the juncture, where the affixed element cannot rightly claim to possess its full share of significance, the unity of the complete word is more strongly emphasized. The mind must rest on something. If it cannot linger on the constituent elements, it hastens all the more eagerly to the acceptance of the word as a whole. A word like _goodness_ illustrates "agglutination," _books_ "regular fusion," _depth_ "irregular fusion," _geese_ "symbolic fusion" or "symbolism."[106] [Footnote 106: The following formulae may prove useful to those that are mathematically inclined. Agglutination: c = a + b; regular fusion: c = a + (b - x) + x; irregular fusion: c = (a - x) + (b - y) + (x + y); symbolism: c = (a - x) + x. I do not wish to imply that there is any mystic value in the process of fusion. It is quite likely to have developed as a purely mechanical product of phonetic forces that brought about irregularities of various sorts.] The psychological distinctness of the affixed elements in an agglutinative term may be even more marked than in the _-ness_ of _goodness_. To be strictly accurate, the significance of the _-ness_ is not quite as inherently determined, as autonomous, as it might be. It is at the mercy of the preceding radical element to this extent, that it requires to be preceded by a particular type of such element, an adjective. Its own power is thus, in a manner, checked in advance. The fusion here, however, is so vague and elementary, so much a matter of course in the great majority of all cases of affixing, that it is natural to overlook its reality and to emphasize rather the juxtaposing or agglutinative nature of the affixing process. If the _-ness_ could be affixed as an abstractive element to each and every type of radical element, if we could say _fightness_ ("the act or quality of fighting") or _waterness_ ("the quality or state of water") or _awayness_ ("the state of being away") as we can say _goodness_ ("the state of being good"), we should have moved appreciably nearer the agglutinative pole. A language that runs to synthesis of this loose-jointed sort may be looked upon as an example of the ideal agglutinative type, particularly if the concepts expressed by the agglutinated elements are relational or, at the least, belong to the abstracter class of derivational ideas. Instructive forms may be cited from Nootka. We shall return to our "fire in the house."[107] The Nootka word _inikw-ihl_ "fire in the house" is not as definitely formalized a word as its translation, suggests. The radical element _inikw-_ "fire" is really as much of a verbal as of a nominal term; it may be rendered now by "fire," now by "burn," according to the syntactic exigencies of the sentence. The derivational element _-ihl_ "in the house" does not mitigate this vagueness or generality; _inikw-ihl_ is still "fire in the house" or "burn in the house." It may be definitely nominalized or verbalized by the affixing of elements that are exclusively nominal or verbal in force. For example, _inikw-ihl-'i_, with its suffixed article, is a clear-cut nominal form: "the burning in the house, the fire in the house"; _inikw-ihl-ma_, with its indicative suffix, is just as clearly verbal: "it burns in the house." How weak must be the degree of fusion between "fire in the house" and the nominalizing or verbalizing suffix is apparent from the fact that the formally indifferent _inikwihl_ is not an abstraction gained by analysis but a full-fledged word, ready for use in the sentence. The nominalizing _-'i_ and the indicative _-ma_ are not fused form-affixes, they are simply additions of formal import. But we can continue to hold the verbal or nominal nature of _inikwihl_ in abeyance long before we reach the _-'i_ or _-ma_. We can pluralize it: _inikw-ihl-'minih_; it is still either "fires in the house" or "burn plurally in the house." We can diminutivize this plural: _inikw-ihl-'minih-'is_, "little fires in the house" or "burn plurally and slightly in the house." What if we add the preterit tense suffix _-it_? Is not _inikw-ihl-'minih-'is-it_ necessarily a verb: "several small fires were burning in the house"? It is not. It may still be nominalized; _inikwihl'minih'isit-'i_ means "the former small fires in the house, the little fires that were once burning in the house." It is not an unambiguous verb until it is given a form that excludes every other possibility, as in the indicative _inikwihl-minih'isit-a_ "several small fires were burning in the house." We recognize at once that the elements _-ihl_, _-'minih_, _-'is_, and _-it_, quite aside from the relatively concrete or abstract nature of their content and aside, further, from the degree of their outer (phonetic) cohesion with the elements that precede them, have a psychological independence that our own affixes never have. They are typically agglutinated elements, though they have no greater external independence, are no more capable of living apart from the radical element to which they are suffixed, than the _-ness_ and _goodness_ or the _-s_ of _books_. It does not follow that an agglutinative language may not make use of the principle of fusion, both external and psychological, or even of symbolism to a considerable extent. It is a question of tendency. Is the formative slant clearly towards the agglutinative method? Then the language is "agglutinative." As such, it may be prefixing or suffixing, analytic, synthetic, or polysynthetic. [Footnote 107: See page 110.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 107 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 3331.] To return to inflection. An inflective language like Latin or Greek uses the method of fusion, and this fusion has an inner psychological as well as an outer phonetic meaning. But it is not enough that the fusion operate merely in the sphere of derivational concepts (group II),[108] it must involve the syntactic relations, which may either be expressed in unalloyed form (group IV) or, as in Latin and Greek, as "concrete relational concepts" (group III).[109] As far as Latin and Greek are concerned, their inflection consists essentially of the fusing of elements that express logically impure relational concepts with radical elements and with elements expressing derivational concepts. Both fusion as a general method and the expression of relational concepts in the word are necessary to the notion of "inflection." [Footnote 108: See Chapter V.] [Footnote 109: If we deny the application of the term "inflective" to fusing languages that express the syntactic relations in pure form, that is, without the admixture of such concepts as number, gender, and tense, merely because such admixture is familiar to us in Latin and Greek, we make of "inflection" an even more arbitrary concept than it need be. At the same time it is true that the method of fusion itself tends to break down the wall between our conceptual groups II and IV, to create group III. Yet the possibility of such "inflective" languages should not be denied. In modern Tibetan, for instance, in which concepts of group II are but weakly expressed, if at all, and in which the relational concepts (e.g., the genitive, the agentive or instrumental) are expressed without alloy of the material, we get many interesting examples of fusion, even of symbolism. _Mi di_, e.g., "man this, the man" is an absolutive form which may be used as the subject of an intransitive verb. When the verb is transitive (really passive), the (logical) subject has to take the agentive form. _Mi di_ then becomes _mi di_ "by the man," the vowel of the demonstrative pronoun (or article) being merely lengthened. (There is probably also a change in the tone of the syllable.) This, of course, is of the very essence of inflection. It is an amusing commentary on the insufficiency of our current linguistic classification, which considers "inflective" and "isolating" as worlds asunder, that modern Tibetan may be not inaptly described as an isolating language, aside from such examples of fusion and symbolism as the foregoing.] But to have thus defined inflection is to doubt the value of the term as descriptive of a major class. Why emphasize both a technique and a particular content at one and the same time? Surely we should be clear in our minds as to whether we set more store by one or the other. "Fusional" and "symbolic" contrast with "agglutinative," which is not on a par with "inflective" at all. What are we to do with the fusional and symbolic languages that do not express relational concepts in the word but leave them to the sentence? And are we not to distinguish between agglutinative languages that express these same concepts in the word--in so far inflective-like--and those that do not? We dismissed the scale: analytic, synthetic, polysynthetic, as too merely quantitative for our purpose. Isolating, affixing, symbolic--this also seemed insufficient for the reason that it laid too much stress on technical externals. Isolating, agglutinative, fusional, and symbolic is a preferable scheme, but still skirts the external. We shall do best, it seems to me, to hold to "inflective" as a valuable suggestion for a broader and more consistently developed scheme, as a hint for a classification based on the nature of the concepts expressed by the language. The other two classifications, the first based on degree of synthesis, the second on degree of fusion, may be retained as intercrossing schemes that give us the opportunity to subdivide our main conceptual types. It is well to recall that all languages must needs express radical concepts (group I) and relational ideas (group IV). Of the two other large groups of concepts--derivational (group II) and mixed relational (group III)--both may be absent, both present, or only one present. This gives us at once a simple, incisive, and absolutely inclusive method of classifying all known languages. They are: A. Such as express only concepts of groups I and IV; in other words, languages that keep the syntactic relations pure and that do not possess the power to modify the significance of their radical elements by means of affixes or internal changes.[110] We may call these _Pure-relational non-deriving languages_ or, more tersely, _Simple Pure-relational languages_. These are the languages that cut most to the bone of linguistic expression. B. Such as express concepts of groups I, II, and IV; in other words, languages that keep the syntactic relations pure and that also possess the power to modify the significance of their radical elements by means of affixes or internal changes. These are the _Pure-relational deriving languages_ or _Complex Pure-relational languages_. C. Such as express concepts of groups I and III;[111] in other words, languages in which the syntactic relations are expressed in necessary connection with concepts that are not utterly devoid of concrete significance but that do not, apart from such mixture, possess the power to modify the significance of their radical elements by means of affixes or internal changes.[112] These are the _Mixed-relational non-deriving languages_ or _Simple Mixed-relational languages_. D. Such as express concepts of groups I, II, and III; in other words, languages in which the syntactic relations are expressed in mixed form, as in C, and that also possess the power to modify the significance of their radical elements by means of affixes or internal changes. These are the _Mixed-relational deriving languages_ or _Complex Mixed-relational languages_. Here belong the "inflective" languages that we are most familiar with as well as a great many "agglutinative" languages, some "polysynthetic," others merely synthetic. [Footnote 110: I am eliminating entirely the possibility of compounding two or more radical elements into single words or word-like phrases (see pages 67-70). To expressly consider compounding in the present survey of types would be to complicate our problem unduly. Most languages that possess no derivational affixes of any sort may nevertheless freely compound radical elements (independent words). Such compounds often have a fixity that simulates the unity of single words.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 110 refers to the three paragraphs beginning on line 2066.] [Footnote 111: We may assume that in these languages and in those of type D all or most of the relational concepts are expressed in "mixed" form, that such a concept as that of subjectivity, for instance, cannot be expressed without simultaneously involving number or gender or that an active verb form must be possessed of a definite tense. Hence group III will be understood to include, or rather absorb, group IV. Theoretically, of course, certain relational concepts may be expressed pure, others mixed, but in practice it will not be found easy to make the distinction.] [Footnote 112: The line between types C and D cannot be very sharply drawn. It is a matter largely of degree. A language of markedly mixed-relational type, but of little power of derivation pure and simple, such as Bantu or French, may be conveniently put into type C, even though it is not devoid of a number of derivational affixes. Roughly speaking, languages of type C may be considered as highly analytic ("purified") forms of type D.] This conceptual classification of languages, I must repeat, does not attempt to take account of the technical externals of language. It answers, in effect, two fundamental questions concerning the translation of concepts into linguistic symbols. Does the language, in the first place, keep its radical concepts pure or does it build up its concrete ideas by an aggregation of inseparable elements (types A and C _versus_ types B and D)? And, in the second place, does it keep the basic relational concepts, such as are absolutely unavoidable in the ordering of a proposition, free of an admixture of the concrete or not (types A and B _versus_ types C and D)? The second question, it seems to me, is the more fundamental of the two. We can therefore simplify our classification and present it in the following form: _ I. Pure-relational _/ A. Simple Languages \_ B. Complex _ II. Mixed-relational _/ C. Simple Languages \_ D. Complex The classification is too sweeping and too broad for an easy, descriptive survey of the many varieties of human speech. It needs to be amplified. Each of the types A, B, C, D may be subdivided into an agglutinative, a fusional, and a symbolic sub-type, according to the prevailing method of modification of the radical element. In type A we distinguish in addition an isolating sub-type, characterized by the absence of all affixes and modifications of the radical element. In the isolating languages the syntactic relations are expressed by the position of the words in the sentence. This is also true of many languages of type B, the terms "agglutinative," "fusional," and "symbolic" applying in their case merely to the treatment of the derivational, not the relational, concepts. Such languages could be termed "agglutinative-isolating," "fusional-isolating" and "symbolic-isolating." This brings up the important general consideration that the method of handling one group of concepts need not in the least be identical with that used for another. Compound terms could be used to indicate this difference, if desired, the first element of the compound referring to the treatment of the concepts of group II, the second to that of the concepts of groups III and IV. An "agglutinative" language would normally be taken to mean one that agglutinates all of its affixed elements or that does so to a preponderating extent. In an "agglutinative-fusional" language the derivational elements are agglutinated, perhaps in the form of prefixes, while the relational elements (pure or mixed) are fused with the radical element, possibly as another set of prefixes following the first set or in the form of suffixes or as part prefixes and part suffixes. By a "fusional-agglutinative" language we would understand one that fuses its derivational elements but allows a greater independence to those that indicate relations. All these and similar distinctions are not merely theoretical possibilities, they can be abundantly illustrated from the descriptive facts of linguistic morphology. Further, should it prove desirable to insist on the degree of elaboration of the word, the terms "analytic," "synthetic," and "polysynthetic" can be added as descriptive terms. It goes without saying that languages of type A are necessarily analytic and that languages of type C also are prevailingly analytic and are not likely to develop beyond the synthetic stage. But we must not make too much of terminology. Much depends on the relative emphasis laid on this or that feature or point of view. The method of classifying languages here developed has this great advantage, that it can be refined or simplified according to the needs of a particular discussion. The degree of synthesis may be entirely ignored; "fusion" and "symbolism" may often be combined with advantage under the head of "fusion"; even the difference between agglutination and fusion may, if desired, be set aside as either too difficult to draw or as irrelevant to the issue. Languages, after all, are exceedingly complex historical structures. It is of less importance to put each language in a neat pigeon-hole than to have evolved a flexible method which enables us to place it, from two or three independent standpoints, relatively to another language. All this is not to deny that certain linguistic types are more stable and frequently represented than others that are just as possible from a theoretical standpoint. But we are too ill-informed as yet of the structural spirit of great numbers of languages to have the right to frame a classification that is other than flexible and experimental. The reader will gain a somewhat livelier idea of the possibilities of linguistic morphology by glancing down the subjoined analytical table of selected types. The columns II, III, IV refer to the groups of concepts so numbered in the preceding chapter. The letters _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_ refer respectively to the processes of isolation (position in the sentence), agglutination, fusion, and symbolism. Where more than one technique is employed, they are put in the order of their importance.[113] [Footnote 113: In defining the type to which a language belongs one must be careful not to be misled by structural features which are mere survivals of an older stage, which have no productive life and do not enter into the unconscious patterning of the language. All languages are littered with such petrified bodies. The English _-ster_ of _spinster_ and _Webster_ is an old agentive suffix, but, as far as the feeling of the present English-speaking generation is concerned, it cannot be said to really exist at all; _spinster_ and _Webster_ have been completely disconnected from the etymological group of _spin_ and of _weave (web)_. Similarly, there are hosts of related words in Chinese which differ in the initial consonant, the vowel, the tone, or in the presence or absence of a final consonant. Even where the Chinaman feels the etymological relationship, as in certain cases he can hardly help doing, he can assign no particular function to the phonetic variation as such. Hence it forms no live feature of the language-mechanism and must be ignored in defining the general form of the language. The caution is all the more necessary, as it is precisely the foreigner, who approaches a new language with a certain prying inquisitiveness, that is most apt to see life in vestigial features which the native is either completely unaware of or feels merely as dead form.] Note.--Parentheses indicate a weak development of the process in question. +----------------+---+----+---+--------------+----------+--------------+ |Fundamental Type"II |III |IV |Technique "Synthesis "Examples | +----------------+---+----+---+--------------+----------+--------------+ | A " | | | " " | |(Simple Pure- "-- |-- |a |Isolating "Analytic "Chinese; | | relational) " | | | " "Annamite | | " | | | " " | | "(d)|-- |a,b|Isolating "Analytic "Ewe | | " | | |(weakly " "(Guinea Coast)| | " | | |agglutinative)" " | | " | | | " " | | "(b)|-- |a, |Agglutinative "Analytic "Modern Tibetan| | " | |b,c|(mildly " " | | " | | |agglutinative-" " | | " | | |fusional) " " | | " | | | " " | | B " | | | " " | |(Complex Pure- "b, |-- |a |Agglutinative-"Analytic "Polynesian | | relational) "(d)| | |isolating " " | | " | | | " " | | "b |-- |a, |Agglutinative-"Polysyn- "Haida | | " | |(b)|isolating "thetic " | | " | | | " " | | "c |-- |a |Fusional- "Analytic "Cambodgian | | " | | |isolating " " | | " | | | " " | | "b |-- |b |Agglutinative "Synthetic "Turkish | | " | | | " " | | "b,d|(b) |b |Agglutinative "Polysyn- "Yana (N. | | " | | |(symbolic "thetic "California) | | " | | |tinge) " " | | " | | | " " | | "c, |-- |a,b|Fusional- "Synthetic "Classical | | "d, | | |agglutinative "(mildly) "Tibetan | | "(b)| | |(symbolic " " | | " | | |tinge) " " | | " | | | " " | | "b |-- |c |Agglutinative-"Synthetic "Sioux | | " | | |fusional "(mildly " | | " | | | "polysyn- " | | " | | | "thetic) " | | " | | | " " | | "c |-- |c |Fusional "Synthetic "Salinan (S.W. | | " | | | " "California) | | " | | | " " | | "d,c|(d) |d, |Symbolic "Analytic "Shilluk | | " | |c,a| " "(Upper Nile) | | " | | | " " | | C " | | | " " | |(Simple Mixed- "(b)|b |-- |Agglutinative "Synthetic "Bantu | | relational) " | | | " " | | "(c)|c, |a |Fusional "Analytic "French[114] | | " |(d) | | "(mildly " | | " | | | "synthetic)" | | " | | | " " | | D " | | | " " | |(Complex Mixed- "b, |b |b |Agglutinative "Polysyn- "Nootka | | relational) "c,d| | | "thetic "(Vancouver | | " | | | "(symbolic "Island)[115] | | " | | | "tinge) " | | " | | | " " | | "c, |b |-- |Fusional- "Polysyn- "Chinook (lower| | "(d)| | |agglutinative "thetic "Columbia R.) | | " | | | "(mildly) " | | " | | | " " | | "c, |c, |-- |Fusional "Polysyn- "Algonkin | | "(d)|(d),| | "thetic " | | " |(b) | | " " | | " | | | " " | | "c |c,d |a |Fusional "Analytic "English | | " | | | " " | | "c,d|c,d |-- |Fusional "Synthetic "Latin, Greek, | | " | | |(symbolic " "Sanskrit | | " | | |tinge) " " | | " | | | " " | | "c, |c,d |(a)|Fusional "Synthetic "Takelma | | "b,d| | |(strongly " "(S.W. Oregon) | | " | | |symbolic) " " | | " | | | " " | | "d,c|c,d |(a)|Symbolic- "Synthetic "Semitic | | " | | |fusional " "(Arabic, | | " | | | " "Hebrew) | +----------------+---+----+---+--------------+----------+--------------+ [Footnote 114: Might nearly as well have come under D.] [Footnote 115: Very nearly complex pure-relational.] I need hardly point out that these examples are far from exhausting the possibilities of linguistic structure. Nor that the fact that two languages are similarly classified does not necessarily mean that they present a great similarity on the surface. We are here concerned with the most fundamental and generalized features of the spirit, the technique, and the degree of elaboration of a given language. Nevertheless, in numerous instances we may observe this highly suggestive and remarkable fact, that languages that fall into the same class have a way of paralleling each other in many details or in structural features not envisaged by the scheme of classification. Thus, a most interesting parallel could be drawn on structural lines between Takelma and Greek,[116] languages that are as geographically remote from each other and as unconnected in a historical sense as two languages selected at random can well be. Their similarity goes beyond the generalized facts registered in the table. It would almost seem that linguistic features that are easily thinkable apart from each other, that seem to have no necessary connection in theory, have nevertheless a tendency to cluster or to follow together in the wake of some deep, controlling impulse to form that dominates their drift. If, therefore, we can only be sure of the intuitive similarity of two given languages, of their possession of the same submerged form-feeling, we need not be too much surprised to find that they seek and avoid certain linguistic developments in common. We are at present very far from able to define just what these fundamental form intuitions are. We can only feel them rather vaguely at best and must content ourselves for the most part with noting their symptoms. These symptoms are being garnered in our descriptive and historical grammars of diverse languages. Some day, it may be, we shall be able to read from them the great underlying ground-plans. [Footnote 116: Not Greek specifically, of course, but as a typical representative of Indo-European.] Such a purely technical classification of languages as the current one into "isolating," "agglutinative," and "inflective" (read "fusional") cannot claim to have great value as an entering wedge into the discovery of the intuitional forms of language. I do not know whether the suggested classification into four conceptual groups is likely to drive deeper or not. My own feeling is that it does, but classifications, neat constructions of the speculative mind, are slippery things. They have to be tested at every possible opportunity before they have the right to cry for acceptance. Meanwhile we may take some encouragement from the application of a rather curious, yet simple, historical test. Languages are in constant process of change, but it is only reasonable to suppose that they tend to preserve longest what is most fundamental in their structure. Now if we take great groups of genetically related languages,[117] we find that as we pass from one to another or trace the course of their development we frequently encounter a gradual change of morphological type. This is not surprising, for there is no reason why a language should remain permanently true to its original form. It is interesting, however, to note that of the three intercrossing classifications represented in our table (conceptual type, technique, and degree of synthesis), it is the degree of synthesis that seems to change most readily, that the technique is modifiable but far less readily so, and that the conceptual type tends to persist the longest of all. [Footnote 117: Such, in other words, as can be shown by documentary or comparative evidence to have been derived from a common source. See Chapter VII.] The illustrative material gathered in the table is far too scanty to serve as a real basis of proof, but it is highly suggestive as far as it goes. The only changes of conceptual type within groups of related languages that are to be gleaned from the table are of B to A (Shilluk as contrasted with Ewe;[118] Classical Tibetan as contrasted with Modern Tibetan and Chinese) and of D to C (French as contrasted with Latin[119]). But types A : B and C : D are respectively related to each other as a simple and a complex form of a still more fundamental type (pure-relational, mixed-relational). Of a passage from a pure-relational to a mixed-relational type or _vice versa_ I can give no convincing examples. [Footnote 118: These are far-eastern and far-western representatives of the "Soudan" group recently proposed by D. Westermann. The genetic relationship between Ewe and Shilluk is exceedingly remote at best.] [Footnote 119: This case is doubtful at that. I have put French in C rather than in D with considerable misgivings. Everything depends on how one evaluates elements like _-al_ in _national_, _-té_ in _bonté_, or _re-_ in _retourner_. They are common enough, but are they as alive, as little petrified or bookish, as our English _-ness_ and _-ful_ and _un-_?] The table shows clearly enough how little relative permanence there is in the technical features of language. That highly synthetic languages (Latin; Sanskrit) have frequently broken down into analytic forms (French; Bengali) or that agglutinative languages (Finnish) have in many instances gradually taken on "inflective" features are well-known facts, but the natural inference does not seem to have been often drawn that possibly the contrast between synthetic and analytic or agglutinative and "inflective" (fusional) is not so fundamental after all. Turning to the Indo-Chinese languages, we find that Chinese is as near to being a perfectly isolating language as any example we are likely to find, while Classical Tibetan has not only fusional but strong symbolic features (e.g., _g-tong-ba_ "to give," past _b-tang_, future _gtang_, imperative _thong_); but both are pure-relational languages. Ewe is either isolating or only barely agglutinative, while Shilluk, though soberly analytic, is one of the most definitely symbolic languages I know; both of these Soudanese languages are pure-relational. The relationship between Polynesian and Cambodgian is remote, though practically certain; while the latter has more markedly fusional features than the former,[120] both conform to the complex pure-relational type. Yana and Salinan are superficially very dissimilar languages. Yana is highly polysynthetic and quite typically agglutinative, Salinan is no more synthetic than and as irregularly and compactly fusional ("inflective") as Latin; both are pure-relational, Chinook and Takelma, remotely related languages of Oregon, have diverged very far from each other, not only as regards technique and synthesis in general but in almost all the details of their structure; both are complex mixed-relational languages, though in very different ways. Facts such as these seem to lend color to the suspicion that in the contrast of pure-relational and mixed-relational (or concrete-relational) we are confronted by something deeper, more far-reaching, than the contrast of isolating, agglutinative, and fusional.[121] [Footnote 120: In spite of its more isolating cast.] [Footnote 121: In a book of this sort it is naturally impossible to give an adequate idea of linguistic structure in its varying forms. Only a few schematic indications are possible. A separate volume would be needed to breathe life into the scheme. Such a volume would point out the salient structural characteristics of a number of languages, so selected as to give the reader an insight into the formal economy of strikingly divergent types.] VII LANGUAGE AS A HISTORICAL PRODUCT: DRIFT Every one knows that language is variable. Two individuals of the same generation and locality, speaking precisely the same dialect and moving in the same social circles, are never absolutely at one in their speech habits. A minute investigation of the speech of each individual would reveal countless differences of detail--in choice of words, in sentence structure, in the relative frequency with which particular forms or combinations of words are used, in the pronunciation of particular vowels and consonants and of combinations of vowels and consonants, in all those features, such as speed, stress, and tone, that give life to spoken language. In a sense they speak slightly divergent dialects of the same language rather than identically the same language. There is an important difference, however, between individual and dialectic variations. If we take two closely related dialects, say English as spoken by the "middle classes" of London and English as spoken by the average New Yorker, we observe that, however much the individual speakers in each city differ from each other, the body of Londoners forms a compact, relatively unified group in contrast to the body of New Yorkers. The individual variations are swamped in or absorbed by certain major agreements--say of pronunciation and vocabulary--which stand out very strongly when the language of the group as a whole is contrasted with that of the other group. This means that there is something like an ideal linguistic entity dominating the speech habits of the members of each group, that the sense of almost unlimited freedom which each individual feels in the use of his language is held in leash by a tacitly directing norm. One individual plays on the norm in a way peculiar to himself, the next individual is nearer the dead average in that particular respect in which the first speaker most characteristically departs from it but in turn diverges from the average in a way peculiar to himself, and so on. What keeps the individual's variations from rising to dialectic importance is not merely the fact that they are in any event of small moment--there are well-marked dialectic variations that are of no greater magnitude than individual variations within a dialect--it is chiefly that they are silently "corrected" or canceled by the consensus of usage. If all the speakers of a given dialect were arranged in order in accordance with the degree of their conformity to average usage, there is little doubt that they would constitute a very finely intergrading series clustered about a well-defined center or norm. The differences between any two neighboring speakers of the series[122] would be negligible for any but the most microscopic linguistic research. The differences between the outer-most members of the series are sure to be considerable, in all likelihood considerable enough to measure up to a true dialectic variation. What prevents us from saying that these untypical individuals speak distinct dialects is that their peculiarities, as a unified whole, are not referable to another norm than the norm of their own series. [Footnote 122: In so far as they do not fall out of the normal speech group by reason of a marked speech defect or because they are isolated foreigners that have acquired the language late in life.] If the speech of any member of the series could actually be made to fit into another dialect series,[123] we should have no true barriers between dialects (and languages) at all. We should merely have a continuous series of individual variations extending over the whole range of a historically unified linguistic area, and the cutting up of this large area (in some cases embracing parts of several continents) into distinct dialects and languages would be an essentially arbitrary proceeding with no warrant save that of practical convenience. But such a conception of the nature of dialectic variation does not correspond to the facts as we know them. Isolated individuals may be found who speak a compromise between two dialects of a language, and if their number and importance increases they may even end by creating a new dialectic norm of their own, a dialect in which the extreme peculiarities of the parent dialects are ironed out. In course of time the compromise dialect may absorb the parents, though more frequently these will tend to linger indefinitely as marginal forms of the enlarged dialect area. But such phenomena--and they are common enough in the history of language--are evidently quite secondary. They are closely linked with such social developments as the rise of nationality, the formation of literatures that aim to have more than a local appeal, the movement of rural populations into the cities, and all those other tendencies that break up the intense localism that unsophisticated man has always found natural. [Footnote 123: Observe that we are speaking of an individual's speech as a whole. It is not a question of isolating some particular peculiarity of pronunciation or usage and noting its resemblance to or identity with a feature in another dialect.] The explanation of primary dialectic differences is still to seek. It is evidently not enough to say that if a dialect or language is spoken in two distinct localities or by two distinct social strata it naturally takes on distinctive forms, which in time come to be divergent enough to deserve the name of dialects. This is certainly true as far as it goes. Dialects do belong, in the first instance, to very definitely circumscribed social groups, homogeneous enough to secure the common feeling and purpose needed to create a norm. But the embarrassing question immediately arises, If all the individual variations within a dialect are being constantly leveled out to the dialectic norm, if there is no appreciable tendency for the individual's peculiarities to initiate a dialectic schism, why should we have dialectic variations at all? Ought not the norm, wherever and whenever threatened, automatically to reassert itself? Ought not the individual variations of each locality, even in the absence of intercourse between them, to cancel out to the same accepted speech average? If individual variations "on a flat" were the only kind of variability in language, I believe we should be at a loss to explain why and how dialects arise, why it is that a linguistic prototype gradually breaks up into a number of mutually unintelligible languages. But language is not merely something that is spread out in space, as it were--a series of reflections in individual minds of one and the same timeless picture. Language moves down time in a current of its own making. It has a drift. If there were no breaking up of a language into dialects, if each language continued as a firm, self-contained unity, it would still be constantly moving away from any assignable norm, developing new features unceasingly and gradually transforming itself into a language so different from its starting point as to be in effect a new language. Now dialects arise not because of the mere fact of individual variation but because two or more groups of individuals have become sufficiently disconnected to drift apart, or independently, instead of together. So long as they keep strictly together, no amount of individual variation would lead to the formation of dialects. In practice, of course, no language can be spread over a vast territory or even over a considerable area without showing dialectic variations, for it is impossible to keep a large population from segregating itself into local groups, the language of each of which tends to drift independently. Under cultural conditions such as apparently prevail to-day, conditions that fight localism at every turn, the tendency to dialectic cleavage is being constantly counteracted and in part "corrected" by the uniformizing factors already referred to. Yet even in so young a country as America the dialectic differences are not inconsiderable. Under primitive conditions the political groups are small, the tendency to localism exceedingly strong. It is natural, therefore, that the languages of primitive folk or of non-urban populations in general are differentiated into a great number of dialects. There are parts of the globe where almost every village has its own dialect. The life of the geographically limited community is narrow and intense; its speech is correspondingly peculiar to itself. It is exceedingly doubtful if a language will ever be spoken over a wide area without multiplying itself dialectically. No sooner are the old dialects ironed out by compromises or ousted by the spread and influence of the one dialect which is culturally predominant when a new crop of dialects arises to undo the leveling work of the past. This is precisely what happened in Greece, for instance. In classical antiquity there were spoken a large number of local dialects, several of which are represented in the literature. As the cultural supremacy of Athens grew, its dialect, the Attic, spread at the expense of the rest, until, in the so-called Hellenistic period following the Macedonian conquest, the Attic dialect, in the vulgarized form known as the "Koine," became the standard speech of all Greece. But this linguistic uniformity[124] did not long continue. During the two millennia that separate the Greek of to-day from its classical prototype the Koine gradually split up into a number of dialects. Now Greece is as richly diversified in speech as in the time of Homer, though the present local dialects, aside from those of Attica itself, are not the lineal descendants of the old dialects of pre-Alexandrian days.[125] The experience of Greece is not exceptional. Old dialects are being continually wiped out only to make room for new ones. Languages can change at so many points of phonetics, morphology, and vocabulary that it is not surprising that once the linguistic community is broken it should slip off in different directions. It would be too much to expect a locally diversified language to develop along strictly parallel lines. If once the speech of a locality has begun to drift on its own account, it is practically certain to move further and further away from its linguistic fellows. Failing the retarding effect of dialectic interinfluences, which I have already touched upon, a group of dialects is bound to diverge on the whole, each from all of the others. [Footnote 124: It is doubtful if we have the right to speak of linguistic uniformity even during the predominance of the Koine. It is hardly conceivable that when the various groups of non-Attic Greeks took on the Koine they did not at once tinge it with dialectic peculiarities induced by their previous speech habits.] [Footnote 125: The Zaconic dialect of Lacedaemon is the sole exception. It is not derived from the Koine, but stems directly from the Doric dialect of Sparta.] In course of time each dialect itself splits up into sub-dialects, which gradually take on the dignity of dialects proper while the primary dialects develop into mutually unintelligible languages. And so the budding process continues, until the divergences become so great that none but a linguistic student, armed with his documentary evidence and with his comparative or reconstructive method, would infer that the languages in question were genealogically related, represented independent lines of development, in other words, from a remote and common starting point. Yet it is as certain as any historical fact can be that languages so little resembling each other as Modern Irish, English, Italian, Greek, Russian, Armenian, Persian, and Bengali are but end-points in the present of drifts that converge to a meeting-point in the dim past. There is naturally no reason to believe that this earliest "Indo-European" (or "Aryan") prototype which we can in part reconstruct, in part but dimly guess at, is itself other than a single "dialect" of a group that has either become largely extinct or is now further represented by languages too divergent for us, with our limited means, to recognize as clear kin.[126] [Footnote 126: Though indications are not lacking of what these remoter kin of the Indo-European languages may be. This is disputed ground, however, and hardly fit subject for a purely general study of speech.] All languages that are known to be genetically related, i.e., to be divergent forms of a single prototype, may be considered as constituting a "linguistic stock." There is nothing final about a linguistic stock. When we set it up, we merely say, in effect, that thus far we can go and no farther. At any point in the progress of our researches an unexpected ray of light may reveal the "stock" as but a "dialect" of a larger group. The terms dialect, language, branch, stock--it goes without saying--are purely relative terms. They are convertible as our perspective widens or contracts.[127] It would be vain to speculate as to whether or not we shall ever be able to demonstrate that all languages stem from a common source. Of late years linguists have been able to make larger historical syntheses than were at one time deemed feasible, just as students of culture have been able to show historical connections between culture areas or institutions that were at one time believed to be totally isolated from each other. The human world is contracting not only prospectively but to the backward-probing eye of culture-history. Nevertheless we are as yet far from able to reduce the riot of spoken languages to a small number of "stocks." We must still operate with a quite considerable number of these stocks. Some of them, like Indo-European or Indo-Chinese, are spoken over tremendous reaches; others, like Basque,[128] have a curiously restricted range and are in all likelihood but dwindling remnants of groups that were at one time more widely distributed. As for the single or multiple origin of speech, it is likely enough that language as a human institution (or, if one prefers, as a human "faculty") developed but once in the history of the race, that all the complex history of language is a unique cultural event. Such a theory constructed "on general principles" is of no real interest, however, to linguistic science. What lies beyond the demonstrable must be left to the philosopher or the romancer. [Footnote 127: "Dialect" in contrast to an accepted literary norm is a use of the term that we are not considering.] [Footnote 128: Spoken in France and Spain in the region of the Pyrenees.] We must return to the conception of "drift" in language. If the historical changes that take place in a language, if the vast accumulation of minute modifications which in time results in the complete remodeling of the language, are not in essence identical with the individual variations that we note on every hand about us, if these variations are born only to die without a trace, while the equally minute, or even minuter, changes that make up the drift are forever imprinted on the history of the language, are we not imputing to this history a certain mystical quality? Are we not giving language a power to change of its own accord over and above the involuntary tendency of individuals to vary the norm? And if this drift of language is not merely the familiar set of individual variations seen in vertical perspective, that is historically, instead of horizontally, that is in daily experience, what is it? Language exists only in so far as it is actually used--spoken and heard, written and read. What significant changes take place in it must exist, to begin with, as individual variations. This is perfectly true, and yet it by no means follows that the general drift of language can be understood[129] from an exhaustive descriptive study of these variations alone. They themselves are random phenomena,[130] like the waves of the sea, moving backward and forward in purposeless flux. The linguistic drift has direction. In other words, only those individual variations embody it or carry it which move in a certain direction, just as only certain wave movements in the bay outline the tide. The drift of a language is constituted by the unconscious selection on the part of its speakers of those individual variations that are cumulative in some special direction. This direction may be inferred, in the main, from the past history of the language. In the long run any new feature of the drift becomes part and parcel of the common, accepted speech, but for a long time it may exist as a mere tendency in the speech of a few, perhaps of a despised few. As we look about us and observe current usage, it is not likely to occur to us that our language has a "slope," that the changes of the next few centuries are in a sense prefigured in certain obscure tendencies of the present and that these changes, when consummated, will be seen to be but continuations of changes that have been already effected. We feel rather that our language is practically a fixed system and that what slight changes are destined to take place in it are as likely to move in one direction as another. The feeling is fallacious. Our very uncertainty as to the impending details of change makes the eventual consistency of their direction all the more impressive. [Footnote 129: Or rather apprehended, for we do not, in sober fact, entirely understand it as yet.] [Footnote 130: Not ultimately random, of course, only relatively so.] Sometimes we can feel where the drift is taking us even while we struggle against it. Probably the majority of those who read these words feel that it is quite "incorrect" to say "Who did you see?" We readers of many books are still very careful to say "Whom did you see?" but we feel a little uncomfortable (uncomfortably proud, it may be) in the process. We are likely to avoid the locution altogether and to say "Who was it you saw?" conserving literary tradition (the "whom") with the dignity of silence.[131] The folk makes no apology. "Whom did you see?" might do for an epitaph, but "Who did you see?" is the natural form for an eager inquiry. It is of course the uncontrolled speech of the folk to which we must look for advance information as to the general linguistic movement. It is safe to prophesy that within a couple of hundred years from to-day not even the most learned jurist will be saying "Whom did you see?" By that time the "whom" will be as delightfully archaic as the Elizabethan "his" for "its."[132] No logical or historical argument will avail to save this hapless "whom." The demonstration "I: me = he: him = who: whom" will be convincing in theory and will go unheeded in practice. [Footnote 131: In relative clauses too we tend to avoid the objective form of "who." Instead of "The man whom I saw" we are likely to say "The man that I saw" or "The man I saw."] [Footnote 132: "Its" was at one time as impertinent a departure as the "who" of "Who did you see?" It forced itself into English because the old cleavage between masculine, feminine, and neuter was being slowly and powerfully supplemented by a new one between thing-class and animate-class. The latter classification proved too vital to allow usage to couple males and things ("his") as against females ("her"). The form "its" had to be created on the analogy of words like "man's," to satisfy the growing form feeling. The drift was strong enough to sanction a grammatical blunder.] Even now we may go so far as to say that the majority of us are secretly wishing they could say "Who did you see?" It would be a weight off their unconscious minds if some divine authority, overruling the lifted finger of the pedagogue, gave them _carte blanche_. But we cannot too frankly anticipate the drift and maintain caste. We must affect ignorance of whither we are going and rest content with our mental conflict--uncomfortable conscious acceptance of the "whom," unconscious desire for the "who."[133] Meanwhile we indulge our sneaking desire for the forbidden locution by the use of the "who" in certain twilight cases in which we can cover up our fault by a bit of unconscious special pleading. Imagine that some one drops the remark when you are not listening attentively, "John Smith is coming to-night." You have not caught the name and ask, not "Whom did you say?" but "Who did you say?" There is likely to be a little hesitation in the choice of the form, but the precedent of usages like "Whom did you see?" will probably not seem quite strong enough to induce a "Whom did you say?" Not quite relevant enough, the grammarian may remark, for a sentence like "Who did you say?" is not strictly analogous to "Whom did you see?" or "Whom did you mean?" It is rather an abbreviated form of some such sentence as "Who, did you say, is coming to-night?" This is the special pleading that I have referred to, and it has a certain logic on its side. Yet the case is more hollow than the grammarian thinks it to be, for in reply to such a query as "You're a good hand at bridge, John, aren't you?" John, a little taken aback, might mutter "Did you say me?" hardly "Did you say I?" Yet the logic for the latter ("Did you say I was a good hand at bridge?") is evident. The real point is that there is not enough vitality in the "whom" to carry it over such little difficulties as a "me" can compass without a thought. The proportion "I : me = he : him = who : whom" is logically and historically sound, but psychologically shaky. "Whom did you see?" is correct, but there is something false about its correctness. [Footnote 133: Psychoanalysts will recognize the mechanism. The mechanisms of "repression of impulse" and of its symptomatic symbolization can be illustrated in the most unexpected corners of individual and group psychology. A more general psychology than Freud's will eventually prove them to be as applicable to the groping for abstract form, the logical or esthetic ordering of experience, as to the life of the fundamental instincts.] It is worth looking into the reason for our curious reluctance to use locutions involving the word "whom" particularly in its interrogative sense. The only distinctively objective forms which we still possess in English are _me_, _him_, _her_ (a little blurred because of its identity with the possessive _her_), _us_, _them_, and _whom_. In all other cases the objective has come to be identical with the subjective--that is, in outer form, for we are not now taking account of position in the sentence. We observe immediately in looking through the list of objective forms that _whom_ is psychologically isolated. _Me_, _him_, _her_, _us_, and _them_ form a solid, well-integrated group of objective personal pronouns parallel to the subjective series _I_, _he_, _she_, _we_, _they_. The forms _who_ and _whom_ are technically "pronouns" but they are not felt to be in the same box as the personal pronouns. _Whom_ has clearly a weak position, an exposed flank, for words of a feather tend to flock together, and if one strays behind, it is likely to incur danger of life. Now the other interrogative and relative pronouns (_which_, _what_, _that_), with which _whom_ should properly flock, do not distinguish the subjective and objective forms. It is psychologically unsound to draw the line of form cleavage between _whom_ and the personal pronouns on the one side, the remaining interrogative and relative pronouns on the other. The form groups should be symmetrically related to, if not identical with, the function groups. Had _which_, _what_, and _that_ objective forms parallel to _whom_, the position of this last would be more secure. As it is, there is something unesthetic about the word. It suggests a form pattern which is not filled out by its fellows. The only way to remedy the irregularity of form distribution is to abandon the _whom_ altogether for we have lost the power to create new objective forms and cannot remodel our _which_-_what_-_that_ group so as to make it parallel with the smaller group _who-whom_. Once this is done, _who_ joins its flock and our unconscious desire for form symmetry is satisfied. We do not secretly chafe at "Whom did you see?" without reason.[134] [Footnote 134: Note that it is different with _whose_. This has not the support of analogous possessive forms in its own functional group, but the analogical power of the great body of possessives of nouns (_man's_, _boy's_) as well as of certain personal pronouns (_his_, _its_; as predicated possessive also _hers_, _yours_, _theirs_) is sufficient to give it vitality.] But the drift away from _whom_ has still other determinants. The words _who_ and _whom_ in their interrogative sense are psychologically related not merely to the pronouns _which_ and _what_, but to a group of interrogative adverbs--_where_, _when_, _how_--all of which are invariable and generally emphatic. I believe it is safe to infer that there is a rather strong feeling in English that the interrogative pronoun or adverb, typically an emphatic element in the sentence, should be invariable. The inflective _-m_ of _whom_ is felt as a drag upon the rhetorical effectiveness of the word. It needs to be eliminated if the interrogative pronoun is to receive all its latent power. There is still a third, and a very powerful, reason for the avoidance of _whom_. The contrast between the subjective and objective series of personal pronouns (_I_, _he_, _she_, _we_, _they_: _me_, _him_, _her_, _us_, _them_) is in English associated with a difference of position. We say _I see the man_ but _the man sees me_; _he told him_, never _him he told_ or _him told he_. Such usages as the last two are distinctly poetic and archaic; they are opposed to the present drift of the language. Even in the interrogative one does not say _Him did you see?_ It is only in sentences of the type _Whom did you see?_ that an inflected objective before the verb is now used at all. On the other hand, the order in _Whom did you see?_ is imperative because of its interrogative form; the interrogative pronoun or adverb normally comes first in the sentence (_What are you doing?_ _When did he go?_ _Where are you from?_). In the "whom" of _Whom did you see?_ there is concealed, therefore, a conflict between the order proper to a sentence containing an inflected objective and the order natural to a sentence with an interrogative pronoun or adverb. The solution _Did you see whom?_ or _You saw whom?_[135] is too contrary to the idiomatic drift of our language to receive acceptance. The more radical solution _Who did you see?_ is the one the language is gradually making for. [Footnote 135: Aside from certain idiomatic usages, as when _You saw whom?_ is equivalent to _You saw so and so and that so and so is who?_ In such sentences _whom_ is pronounced high and lingeringly to emphasize the fact that the person just referred to by the listener is not known or recognized.] These three conflicts--on the score of form grouping, of rhetorical emphasis, and of order--are supplemented by a fourth difficulty. The emphatic _whom_, with its heavy build (half-long vowel followed by labial consonant), should contrast with a lightly tripping syllable immediately following. In _whom did_, however, we have an involuntary retardation that makes the locution sound "clumsy." This clumsiness is a phonetic verdict, quite apart from the dissatisfaction due to the grammatical factors which we have analyzed. The same prosodic objection does not apply to such parallel locutions as _what did_ and _when did_. The vowels of _what_ and _when_ are shorter and their final consonants melt easily into the following _d_, which is pronounced in the same tongue position as _t_ and _n_. Our instinct for appropriate rhythms makes it as difficult for us to feel content with _whom did_ as for a poet to use words like _dreamed_ and _hummed_ in a rapid line. Neither common feeling nor the poet's choice need be at all conscious. It may be that not all are equally sensitive to the rhythmic flow of speech, but it is probable that rhythm is an unconscious linguistic determinant even with those who set little store by its artistic use. In any event the poet's rhythms can only be a more sensitive and stylicized application of rhythmic tendencies that are characteristic of the daily speech of his people. We have discovered no less than four factors which enter into our subtle disinclination to say "Whom did you see?" The uneducated folk that says "Who did you see?" with no twinge of conscience has a more acute flair for the genuine drift of the language than its students. Naturally the four restraining factors do not operate independently. Their separate energies, if we may make bold to use a mechanical concept, are "canalized" into a single force. This force or minute embodiment of the general drift of the language is psychologically registered as a slight hesitation in using the word _whom_. The hesitation is likely to be quite unconscious, though it may be readily acknowledged when attention is called to it. The analysis is certain to be unconscious, or rather unknown, to the normal speaker.[136] How, then, can we be certain in such an analysis as we have undertaken that all of the assigned determinants are really operative and not merely some one of them? Certainly they are not equally powerful in all cases. Their values are variable, rising and falling according to the individual and the locution.[137] But that they really exist, each in its own right, may sometimes be tested by the method of elimination. If one or other of the factors is missing and we observe a slight diminution in the corresponding psychological reaction ("hesitation" in our case), we may conclude that the factor is in other uses genuinely positive. The second of our four factors applies only to the interrogative use of _whom_, the fourth factor applies with more force to the interrogative than to the relative. We can therefore understand why a sentence like _Is he the man whom you referred to?_ though not as idiomatic as _Is he the man (that) you referred to?_ (remember that it sins against counts one and three), is still not as difficult to reconcile with our innate feeling for English expression as _Whom did you see?_ If we eliminate the fourth factor from the interrogative usage,[138] say in _Whom are you looking at?_ where the vowel following _whom_ relieves this word of its phonetic weight, we can observe, if I am not mistaken, a lesser reluctance to use the _whom_. _Who are you looking at?_ might even sound slightly offensive to ears that welcome _Who did you see?_ [Footnote 136: Students of language cannot be entirely normal in their attitude towards their own speech. Perhaps it would be better to say "naïve" than "normal."] [Footnote 137: It is probably this _variability of value_ in the significant compounds of a general linguistic drift that is responsible for the rise of dialectic variations. Each dialect continues the general drift of the common parent, but has not been able to hold fast to constant values for each component of the drift. Deviations as to the drift itself, at first slight, later cumulative, are therefore unavoidable.] [Footnote 138: Most sentences beginning with interrogative _whom_ are likely to be followed by _did_ or _does_, _do_. Yet not all.] We may set up a scale of "hesitation values" somewhat after this fashion: Value 1: factors 1, 3. "The man whom I referred to." Value 2: factors 1, 3, 4. "The man whom they referred to." Value 3: factors 1, 2, 3. "Whom are you looking at?" Value 4: factors 1, 2, 3, 4. "Whom did you see?" We may venture to surmise that while _whom_ will ultimately disappear from English speech, locutions of the type _Whom did you see?_ will be obsolete when phrases like _The man whom I referred to_ are still in lingering use. It is impossible to be certain, however, for we can never tell if we have isolated all the determinants of a drift. In our particular case we have ignored what may well prove to be a controlling factor in the history of _who_ and _whom_ in the relative sense. This is the unconscious desire to leave these words to their interrogative function and to concentrate on _that_ or mere word order as expressions of the relative (e.g., _The man that I referred to_ or _The man I referred to_). This drift, which does not directly concern the use of _whom_ as such (merely of _whom_ as a form of _who_), may have made the relative _who_ obsolete before the other factors affecting relative _whom_ have run their course. A consideration like this is instructive because it indicates that knowledge of the general drift of a language is insufficient to enable us to see clearly what the drift is heading for. We need to know something of the relative potencies and speeds of the components of the drift. It is hardly necessary to say that the particular drifts involved in the use of _whom_ are of interest to us not for their own sake but as symptoms of larger tendencies at work in the language. At least three drifts of major importance are discernible. Each of these has operated for centuries, each is at work in other parts of our linguistic mechanism, each is almost certain to continue for centuries, possibly millennia. The first is the familiar tendency to level the distinction between the subjective and the objective, itself but a late chapter in the steady reduction of the old Indo-European system of syntactic cases. This system, which is at present best preserved in Lithuanian,[139] was already considerably reduced in the old Germanic language of which English, Dutch, German, Danish, and Swedish are modern dialectic forms. The seven Indo-European cases (nominative genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, locative, instrumental) had been already reduced to four (nominative genitive, dative, accusative). We know this from a careful comparison of and reconstruction based on the oldest Germanic dialects of which we still have records (Gothic, Old Icelandic, Old High German, Anglo-Saxon). In the group of West Germanic dialects, for the study of which Old High German, Anglo-Saxon, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon are our oldest and most valuable sources, we still have these four cases, but the phonetic form of the case syllables is already greatly reduced and in certain paradigms particular cases have coalesced. The case system is practically intact but it is evidently moving towards further disintegration. Within the Anglo-Saxon and early Middle English period there took place further changes in the same direction. The phonetic form of the case syllables became still further reduced and the distinction between the accusative and the dative finally disappeared. The new "objective" is really an amalgam of old accusative and dative forms; thus, _him_, the old dative (we still say _I give him the book_, not "abbreviated" from _I give to him_; compare Gothic _imma_, modern German _ihm_), took over the functions of the old accusative (Anglo-Saxon _hine_; compare Gothic _ina_, Modern German _ihn_) and dative. The distinction between the nominative and accusative was nibbled away by phonetic processes and morphological levelings until only certain pronouns retained distinctive subjective and objective forms. [Footnote 139: Better, indeed, than in our oldest Latin and Greek records. The old Indo-Iranian languages alone (Sanskrit, Avestan) show an equally or more archaic status of the Indo-European parent tongue as regards case forms.] In later medieval and in modern times there have been comparatively few apparent changes in our case system apart from the gradual replacement of _thou_--_thee_ (singular) and subjective _ye_--objective _you_ (plural) by a single undifferentiated form _you_. All the while, however, the case system, such as it is (subjective-objective, really absolutive, and possessive in nouns; subjective, objective, and possessive in certain pronouns) has been steadily weakening in psychological respects. At present it is more seriously undermined than most of us realize. The possessive has little vitality except in the pronoun and in animate nouns. Theoretically we can still say _the moon's phases_ or _a newspaper's vogue_; practically we limit ourselves pretty much to analytic locutions like _the phases of the moon_ and _the vogue of a newspaper_. The drift is clearly toward the limitation, of possessive forms to animate nouns. All the possessive pronominal forms except _its_ and, in part, _their_ and _theirs_, are also animate. It is significant that _theirs_ is hardly ever used in reference to inanimate nouns, that there is some reluctance to so use _their_, and that _its_ also is beginning to give way to _of it_. _The appearance of it_ or _the looks of it_ is more in the current of the language than _its appearance_. It is curiously significant that _its young_ (referring to an animal's cubs) is idiomatically preferable to _the young of it_. The form is only ostensibly neuter, in feeling it is animate; psychologically it belongs with _his children_, not with _the pieces of it_. Can it be that so common a word as _its_ is actually beginning to be difficult? Is it too doomed to disappear? It would be rash to say that it shows signs of approaching obsolescence, but that it is steadily weakening is fairly clear.[140] In any event, it is not too much to say that there is a strong drift towards the restriction of the inflected possessive forms to animate nouns and pronouns. [Footnote 140: Should _its_ eventually drop out, it will have had a curious history. It will have played the rôle of a stop-gap between _his_ in its non-personal use (see footnote 11, page 167) and the later analytic of _it_.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 140 refers to Footnote 132, beginning on line 5142.] How is it with the alternation of subjective and objective in the pronoun? Granted that _whom_ is a weak sister, that the two cases have been leveled in _you_ (in _it_, _that_, and _what_ they were never distinct, so far as we can tell[141]), and that _her_ as an objective is a trifle weak because of its formal identity with the possessive _her_, is there any reason to doubt the vitality of such alternations as _I see the man_ and _the man sees me_? Surely the distinction between subjective _I_ and objective _me_, between subjective _he_ and objective _him_, and correspondingly for other personal pronouns, belongs to the very core of the language. We can throw _whom_ to the dogs, somehow make shift to do without an _its_, but to level _I_ and _me_ to a single case--would that not be to un-English our language beyond recognition? There is no drift toward such horrors as _Me see him_ or _I see he_. True, the phonetic disparity between _I_ and _me_, _he_ and _him_, _we_ and _us_, has been too great for any serious possibility of form leveling. It does not follow that the case distinction as such is still vital. One of the most insidious peculiarities of a linguistic drift is that where it cannot destroy what lies in its way it renders it innocuous by washing the old significance out of it. It turns its very enemies to its own uses. This brings us to the second of the major drifts, the tendency to fixed position in the sentence, determined by the syntactic relation of the word. [Footnote 141: Except in so far as _that_ has absorbed other functions than such as originally belonged to it. It was only a nominative-accusative neuter to begin with.] We need not go into the history of this all-important drift. It is enough to know that as the inflected forms of English became scantier, as the syntactic relations were more and more inadequately expressed by the forms of the words themselves, position in the sentence gradually took over functions originally foreign to it. _The man_ in _the man sees the dog_ is subjective; in _the dog sees the man_, objective. Strictly parallel to these sentences are _he sees the dog_ and _the dog sees him_. Are the subjective value of _he_ and the objective value of _him_ entirely, or even mainly, dependent on the difference of form? I doubt it. We could hold to such a view if it were possible to say _the dog sees he_ or _him sees the dog_. It was once possible to say such things, but we have lost the power. In other words, at least part of the case feeling in _he_ and _him_ is to be credited to their position before or after the verb. May it not be, then, that _he_ and _him_, _we_ and _us_, are not so much subjective and objective forms as pre-verbal and post-verbal[142] forms, very much as _my_ and _mine_ are now pre-nominal and post-nominal forms of the possessive (_my father_ but _father mine_; _it is my book_ but _the book is mine_)? That this interpretation corresponds to the actual drift of the English language is again indicated by the language of the folk. The folk says _it is me_, not _it is I_, which is "correct" but just as falsely so as the _whom did you see_? that we have analyzed. _I'm the one_, _it's me_; _we're the ones_, _it's us that will win out_--such are the live parallelisms in English to-day. There is little doubt that _it is I_ will one day be as impossible in English as _c'est je_, for _c'est moi_, is now in French. [Footnote 142: Aside from the interrogative: _am I?_ _is he?_ Emphasis counts for something. There is a strong tendency for the old "objective" forms to bear a stronger stress than the "subjective" forms. This is why the stress in locutions like _He didn't go, did he?_ and _isn't he?_ is thrown back on the verb; it is not a matter of logical emphasis.] How differently our _I_: _me_ feels than in Chaucer's day is shown by the Chaucerian _it am I_. Here the distinctively subjective aspect of the _I_ was enough to influence the form of the preceding verb in spite of the introductory _it_; Chaucer's locution clearly felt more like a Latin _sum ego_ than a modern _it is I_ or colloquial _it is me_. We have a curious bit of further evidence to prove that the English personal pronouns have lost some share of their original syntactic force. Were _he_ and _she_ subjective forms pure and simple, were they not striving, so to speak, to become caseless absolutives, like _man_ or any other noun, we should not have been able to coin such compounds as _he-goat_ and _she-goat_, words that are psychologically analogous to _bull-moose_ and _mother-bear_. Again, in inquiring about a new-born baby, we ask _Is it a he or a she?_ quite as though _he_ and _she_ were the equivalents of _male_ and _female_ or _boy_ and _girl_. All in all, we may conclude that our English case system is weaker than it looks and that, in one way or another, it is destined to get itself reduced to an absolutive (caseless) form for all nouns and pronouns but those that are animate. Animate nouns and pronouns are sure to have distinctive possessive forms for an indefinitely long period. Meanwhile observe that the old alignment of case forms is being invaded by two new categories--a positional category (pre-verbal, post-verbal) and a classificatory category (animate, inanimate). The facts that in the possessive animate nouns and pronouns are destined to be more and more sharply distinguished from inanimate nouns and pronouns (_the man's_, but _of the house_; _his_, but _of it_) and that, on the whole, it is only animate pronouns that distinguish pre-verbal and post-verbal forms[143] are of the greatest theoretical interest. They show that, however the language strive for a more and more analytic form, it is by no means manifesting a drift toward the expression of "pure" relational concepts in the Indo-Chinese manner.[144] The insistence on the concreteness of the relational concepts is clearly stronger than the destructive power of the most sweeping and persistent drifts that we know of in the history and prehistory of our language. [Footnote 143: _They_: _them_ as an inanimate group may be looked upon as a kind of borrowing from the animate, to which, in feeling, it more properly belongs.] [Footnote 144: See page 155.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 144 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 4795.] The drift toward the abolition of most case distinctions and the correlative drift toward position as an all-important grammatical method are accompanied, in a sense dominated, by the last of the three major drifts that I have referred to. This is the drift toward the invariable word. In analyzing the "whom" sentence I pointed out that the rhetorical emphasis natural to an interrogative pronoun lost something by its form variability (_who_, _whose_, _whom_). This striving for a simple, unnuanced correspondence between idea and word, as invariable as may be, is very strong in English. It accounts for a number of tendencies which at first sight seem unconnected. Certain well-established forms, like the present third person singular _-s_ of _works_ or the plural _-s_ of _books_, have resisted the drift to invariable words, possibly because they symbolize certain stronger form cravings that we do not yet fully understand. It is interesting to note that derivations that get away sufficiently from the concrete notion of the radical word to exist as independent conceptual centers are not affected by this elusive drift. As soon as the derivation runs danger of being felt as a mere nuancing of, a finicky play on, the primary concept, it tends to be absorbed by the radical word, to disappear as such. English words crave spaces between them, they do not like to huddle in clusters of slightly divergent centers of meaning, each edging a little away from the rest. _Goodness_, a noun of quality, almost a noun of relation, that takes its cue from the concrete idea of "good" without necessarily predicating that quality (e.g., _I do not think much of his goodness_) is sufficiently spaced from _good_ itself not to need fear absorption. Similarly, _unable_ can hold its own against _able_ because it destroys the latter's sphere of influence; _unable_ is psychologically as distinct from _able_ as is _blundering_ or _stupid_. It is different with adverbs in _-ly_. These lean too heavily on their adjectives to have the kind of vitality that English demands of its words. _Do it quickly!_ drags psychologically. The nuance expressed by _quickly_ is too close to that of _quick_, their circles of concreteness are too nearly the same, for the two words to feel comfortable together. The adverbs in _-ly_ are likely to go to the wall in the not too distant future for this very reason and in face of their obvious usefulness. Another instance of the sacrifice of highly useful forms to this impatience of nuancing is the group _whence_, _whither_, _hence_, _hither_, _thence_, _thither_. They could not persist in live usage because they impinged too solidly upon the circles of meaning represented by the words _where_, _here_ and _there_. In saying _whither_ we feel too keenly that we repeat all of _where_. That we add to _where_ an important nuance of direction irritates rather than satisfies. We prefer to merge the static and the directive (_Where do you live?_ like _Where are you going?_) or, if need be, to overdo a little the concept of direction (_Where are you running to?_). Now it is highly symptomatic of the nature of the drift away from word clusters that we do not object to nuances as such, we object to having the nuances formally earmarked for us. As a matter of fact our vocabulary is rich in near-synonyms and in groups of words that are psychologically near relatives, but these near-synonyms and these groups do not hang together by reason of etymology. We are satisfied with _believe_ and _credible_ just because they keep aloof from each other. _Good_ and _well_ go better together than _quick_ and _quickly_. The English vocabulary is a rich medley because each English word wants its own castle. Has English long been peculiarly receptive to foreign words because it craves the staking out of as many word areas as possible, or, conversely, has the mechanical imposition of a flood of French and Latin loan-words, unrooted in our earlier tradition, so dulled our feeling for the possibilities of our native resources that we are allowing these to shrink by default? I suspect that both propositions are true. Each feeds on the other. I do not think it likely, however, that the borrowings in English have been as mechanical and external a process as they are generally represented to have been. There was something about the English drift as early as the period following the Norman Conquest that welcomed the new words. They were a compensation for something that was weakening within. VIII LANGUAGE AS A HISTORICAL PRODUCT: PHONETIC LAW I have preferred to take up in some detail the analysis of our hesitation in using a locution like "Whom did you see?" and to point to some of the English drifts, particular and general, that are implied by this hesitation than to discuss linguistic change in the abstract. What is true of the particular idiom that we started with is true of everything else in language. Nothing is perfectly static. Every word, every grammatical element, every locution, every sound and accent is a slowly changing configuration, molded by the invisible and impersonal drift that is the life of language. The evidence is overwhelming that this drift has a certain consistent direction. Its speed varies enormously according to circumstances that it is not always easy to define. We have already seen that Lithuanian is to-day nearer its Indo-European prototype than was the hypothetical Germanic mother-tongue five hundred or a thousand years before Christ. German has moved more slowly than English; in some respects it stands roughly midway between English and Anglo-Saxon, in others it has of course diverged from the Anglo-Saxon line. When I pointed out in the preceding chapter that dialects formed because a language broken up into local segments could not move along the same drift in all of these segments, I meant of course that it could not move along identically the same drift. The general drift of a language has its depths. At the surface the current is relatively fast. In certain features dialects drift apart rapidly. By that very fact these features betray themselves as less fundamental to the genius of the language than the more slowly modifiable features in which the dialects keep together long after they have grown to be mutually alien forms of speech. But this is not all. The momentum of the more fundamental, the pre-dialectic, drift is often such that languages long disconnected will pass through the same or strikingly similar phases. In many such cases it is perfectly clear that there could have been no dialectic interinfluencing. These parallelisms in drift may operate in the phonetic as well as in the morphological sphere, or they may affect both at the same time. Here is an interesting example. The English type of plural represented by _foot_: _feet_, _mouse_: _mice_ is strictly parallel to the German _Fuss_: _Füsse_, _Maus_: _Mäuse_. One would be inclined to surmise that these dialectic forms go back to old Germanic or West-Germanic alternations of the same type. But the documentary evidence shows conclusively that there could have been no plurals of this type in primitive Germanic. There is no trace of such vocalic mutation ("umlaut") in Gothic, our most archaic Germanic language. More significant still is the fact that it does not appear in our oldest Old High German texts and begins to develop only at the very end of the Old High German period (circa 1000 A.D.). In the Middle High German period the mutation was carried through in all dialects. The typical Old High German forms are singular _fuoss_, plural _fuossi_;[145] singular _mus_, plural _musi_. The corresponding Middle High German forms are _fuoss_, _füesse_; _mus_, _müse_. Modern German _Fuss_: _Füsse_, _Maus_: _Mäuse_ are the regular developments of these medieval forms. Turning to Anglo-Saxon, we find that our modern English forms correspond to _fot_, _fet_; _mus_, _mys_.[146] These forms are already in use in the earliest English monuments that we possess, dating from the eighth century, and thus antedate the Middle High German forms by three hundred years or more. In other words, on this particular point it took German at least three hundred years to catch up with a phonetic-morphological drift[147] that had long been under way in English. The mere fact that the affected vowels of related words (Old High German _uo_, Anglo-Saxon _o_) are not always the same shows that the affection took place at different periods in German and English.[148] There was evidently some general tendency or group of tendencies at work in early Germanic, long before English and German had developed as such, that eventually drove both of these dialects along closely parallel paths. [Footnote 145: I have changed the Old and Middle High German orthography slightly in order to bring it into accord with modern usage. These purely orthographical changes are immaterial. The _u_ of _mus_ is a long vowel, very nearly like the _oo_ of English _moose_.] [Footnote 146: The vowels of these four words are long; _o_ as in _rode_, _e_ like _a_ of _fade_, _u_ like _oo_ of _brood_, _y_ like German _ü_.] [Footnote 147: Or rather stage in a drift.] [Footnote 148: Anglo-Saxon _fet_ is "unrounded" from an older _föt_, which is phonetically related to _fot_ precisely as is _mys_ (i.e., _müs_) to _mus_. Middle High German _ue_ (Modern German _u_) did not develop from an "umlauted" prototype of Old High German _uo_ and Anglo-Saxon _o_, but was based directly on the dialectic _uo_. The unaffected prototype was long _o_. Had this been affected in the earliest Germanic or West-Germanic period, we should have had a pre-German alternation _fot_: _föti_; this older _ö_ could not well have resulted in _ue_. Fortunately we do not need inferential evidence in this case, yet inferential comparative methods, if handled with care, may be exceedingly useful. They are indeed indispensable to the historian of language.] How did such strikingly individual alternations as _fot_: _fet_, _fuoss_: _füesse_ develop? We have now reached what is probably the most central problem in linguistic history, gradual phonetic change. "Phonetic laws" make up a large and fundamental share of the subject-matter of linguistics. Their influence reaches far beyond the proper sphere of phonetics and invades that of morphology, as we shall see. A drift that begins as a slight phonetic readjustment or unsettlement may in the course of millennia bring about the most profound structural changes. The mere fact, for instance, that there is a growing tendency to throw the stress automatically on the first syllable of a word may eventually change the fundamental type of the language, reducing its final syllables to zero and driving it to the use of more and more analytical or symbolic[149] methods. The English phonetic laws involved in the rise of the words _foot_, _feet_, _mouse_ and _mice_ from their early West-Germanic prototypes _fot_, _foti_, _mus_, _musi_[150] may be briefly summarized as follows: [Footnote 149: See page 133.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 149 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 4081.] [Footnote 150: Primitive Germanic _fot(s)_, _fotiz_, _mus_, _musiz_; Indo-European _pods_, _podes_, _mus_, _muses_. The vowels of the first syllables are all long.] 1. In _foti_ "feet" the long _o_ was colored by the following _i_ to long _ö_, that is, _o_ kept its lip-rounded quality and its middle height of tongue position but anticipated the front tongue position of the _i_; _ö_ is the resulting compromise. This assimilatory change was regular, i.e., every accented long _o_ followed by an _i_ in the following syllable automatically developed to long _ö_; hence _tothi_ "teeth" became _töthi_, _fodian_ "to feed" became _födian_. At first there is no doubt the alternation between _o_ and _ö_ was not felt as intrinsically significant. It could only have been an unconscious mechanical adjustment such as may be observed in the speech of many to-day who modify the "oo" sound of words like _you_ and _few_ in the direction of German _ü_ without, however, actually departing far enough from the "oo" vowel to prevent their acceptance of _who_ and _you_ as satisfactory rhyming words. Later on the quality of the _ö_ vowel must have departed widely enough from that of _o_ to enable _ö_ to rise in consciousness[151] as a neatly distinct vowel. As soon as this happened, the expression of plurality in _föti_, _töthi_, and analogous words became symbolic and fusional, not merely fusional. [Footnote 151: Or in that unconscious sound patterning which is ever on the point of becoming conscious. See page 57.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 151 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 1797.] 2. In _musi_ "mice" the long _u_ was colored by the following _i_ to long _ü_. This change also was regular; _lusi_ "lice" became _lüsi_, _kui_ "cows" became _küi_ (later simplified to _kü_; still preserved as _ki-_ in _kine_), _fulian_ "to make foul" became _fülian_ (still preserved as _-file_ in _defile_). The psychology of this phonetic law is entirely analogous to that of 1. 3. The old drift toward reducing final syllables, a rhythmic consequence of the strong Germanic stress on the first syllable, now manifested itself. The final _-i_, originally an important functional element, had long lost a great share of its value, transferred as that was to the symbolic vowel change (_o_: _ö_). It had little power of resistance, therefore, to the drift. It became dulled to a colorless _-e_; _föti_ became _föte_. 4. The weak _-e_ finally disappeared. Probably the forms _föte_ and _föt_ long coexisted as prosodic variants according to the rhythmic requirements of the sentence, very much as _Füsse_ and _Füss'_ now coexist in German. 5. The _ö_ of _föt_ became "unrounded" to long _e_ (our present _a_ of _fade_). The alternation of _fot_: _foti_, transitionally _fot_: _föti_, _föte_, _föt_, now appears as _fot_: _fet_. Analogously, _töth_ appears as _teth_, _födian_ as _fedian_, later _fedan_. The new long _e_-vowel "fell together" with the older _e_-vowel already existent (e.g., _her_ "here," _he_ "he"). Henceforward the two are merged and their later history is in common. Thus our present _he_ has the same vowel as _feet_, _teeth_, and _feed_. In other words, the old sound pattern _o_, _e_, after an interim of _o_, _ö_, _e_, reappeared as _o_, _e_, except that now the _e_ had greater "weight" than before. 6. _Fot_: _fet_, _mus_: _müs_ (written _mys_) are the typical forms of Anglo-Saxon literature. At the very end of the Anglo-Saxon period, say about 1050 to 1100 A.D., the _ü_, whether long or short, became unrounded to _i_. _Mys_ was then pronounced _mis_ with long _i_ (rhyming with present _niece_). The change is analogous to 5, but takes place several centuries later. 7. In Chaucer's day (circa 1350-1400 A.D.) the forms were still _fot_: _fet_ (written _foot_, _feet_) and _mus_: _mis_ (written very variably, but _mous_, _myse_ are typical). About 1500 all the long _i_-vowels, whether original (as in _write_, _ride_, _wine_) or unrounded from Anglo-Saxon _ü_ (as in _hide_, _bride_, _mice_, _defile_), became diphthongized to _ei_ (i.e., _e_ of _met_ + short _i_). Shakespeare pronounced _mice_ as _meis_ (almost the same as the present Cockney pronunciation of _mace_). 8. About the same time the long _u_-vowels were diphthongized to _ou_ (i.e., _o_ of present Scotch _not_ + _u_ of _full_). The Chaucerian _mus_: _mis_ now appears as the Shakespearean _mous_: _meis_. This change may have manifested itself somewhat later than 7; all English dialects have diphthongized old Germanic long _i_,[152] but the long undiphthongized _u_ is still preserved in Lowland Scotch, in which _house_ and _mouse_ rhyme with our _loose_. 7 and 8 are analogous developments, as were 5 and 6; 8 apparently lags behind 7 as 6, centuries earlier, lagged behind 7. [Footnote 152: As have most Dutch and German dialects.] 9. Some time before 1550 the long _e_ of _fet_ (written _feet_) took the position that had been vacated by the old long _i_, now diphthongized (see 7), i.e., _e_ took the higher tongue position of _i_. Our (and Shakespeare's) "long _e_" is, then, phonetically the same as the old long _i_. _Feet_ now rhymed with the old _write_ and the present _beat_. 10. About the same time the long _o_ of _fot_ (written _foot_) took the position that had been vacated by the old long _u_, now diphthongized (see 8), i.e., _o_ took the higher tongue position of _u_. Our (and Shakespeare's) "long _oo_" is phonetically the same as the old long _u_. _Foot_ now rhymed with the old _out_ and the present _boot_. To summarize 7 to 10, Shakespeare pronounced _meis_, _mous_, _fit_, _fut_, of which _meis_ and _mous_ would affect our ears as a rather "mincing" rendering of our present _mice_ and _mouse_, _fit_ would sound practically identical with (but probably a bit more "drawled" than) our present _feet_, while _foot_, rhyming with _boot_, would now be set down as "broad Scotch." 11. Gradually the first vowel of the diphthong in _mice_ (see 7) was retracted and lowered in position. The resulting diphthong now varies in different English dialects, but _ai_ (i.e., _a_ of _father_, but shorter, + short _i_) may be taken as a fairly accurate rendering of its average quality.[153] What we now call the "long _i_" (of words like _ride, bite, mice_) is, of course, an _ai_-diphthong. _Mice_ is now pronounced _mais_. [Footnote 153: At least in America.] 12. Analogously to 11, the first vowel of the diphthong in _mouse_ (see 8) was unrounded and lowered in position. The resulting diphthong may be phonetically rendered _au_, though it too varies considerably according to dialect. _Mouse_, then, is now pronounced _maus_. 13. The vowel of _foot_ (see 10) became "open" in quality and shorter in quantity, i.e., it fell together with the old short _u_-vowel of words like _full_, _wolf_, _wool_. This change has taken place in a number of words with an originally long _u_ (Chaucerian long close _o_), such as _forsook_, _hook_, _book_, _look_, _rook_, _shook_, all of which formerly had the vowel of _boot_. The older vowel, however, is still preserved in most words of this class, such as _fool_, _moon_, _spool_, _stoop_. It is highly significant of the nature of the slow spread of a "phonetic law" that there is local vacillation at present in several words. One hears _roof_, _soot_, and _hoop_, for instance, both with the "long" vowel of _boot_ and the "short" of _foot_. It is impossible now, in other words, to state in a definitive manner what is the "phonetic law" that regulated the change of the older _foot_ (rhyming with _boot_) to the present _foot_. We know that there is a strong drift towards the short, open vowel of _foot_, but whether or not all the old "long _oo_" words will eventually be affected we cannot presume to say. If they all, or practically all, are taken by the drift, phonetic law 13 will be as "regular," as sweeping, as most of the twelve that have preceded it. If not, it may eventually be possible, if past experience is a safe guide, to show that the modified words form a natural phonetic group, that is, that the "law" will have operated under certain definable limiting conditions, e.g., that all words ending in a voiceless consonant (such as _p_, _t_, _k_, _f_) were affected (e.g., _hoof_, _foot_, _look_, _roof_), but that all words ending in the _oo_-vowel or in a voiced consonant remained unaffected (e.g., _do_, _food_, _move_, _fool_). Whatever the upshot, we may be reasonably certain that when the "phonetic law" has run its course, the distribution of "long" and "short" vowels in the old _oo_-words will not seem quite as erratic as at the present transitional moment.[154] We learn, incidentally, the fundamental fact that phonetic laws do not work with spontaneous automatism, that they are simply a formula for a consummated drift that sets in at a psychologically exposed point and gradually worms its way through a gamut of phonetically analogous forms. [Footnote 154: It is possible that other than purely phonetic factors are also at work in the history of these vowels.] It will be instructive to set down a table of form sequences, a kind of gross history of the words _foot_, _feet_, _mouse_, _mice_ for the last 1500 years:[155] [Footnote 155: The orthography is roughly phonetic. Pronounce all accented vowels long except where otherwise indicated, unaccented vowels short; give continental values to vowels, not present English ones.] I. _fot_: _foti_; _mus_: _musi_ (West Germanic) II. _fot_: _föti_; _mus_: _müsi_ III. _fot_: _föte_; _mus_: _müse_ IV. _fot_: _föt_; _mus_: _müs_ V. _fot_: _fet_; _mus_: _müs_ (Anglo-Saxon) VI. _fot_: _fet_; _mus_: _mis_(Chaucer) VII. _fot_: _fet_; _mous_: _meis_ VIII. _fut_ (rhymes with _boot_): _fit_; _mous_: _meis_ (Shakespeare) IX. _fut_: _fit_; _maus_: _mais_ X. _fut_ (rhymes with _put_): _fit_; _maus_: _mais_ (English of 1900) It will not be necessary to list the phonetic laws that gradually differentiated the modern German equivalents of the original West Germanic forms from their English cognates. The following table gives a rough idea of the form sequences in German:[156] [Footnote 156: After I. the numbers are not meant to correspond chronologically to those of the English table. The orthography is again roughly phonetic.] I. _fot_: _foti_; _mus_: _musi_ (West Germanic) II. _foss_:[157] _fossi_; _mus_: _musi_ III. _fuoss_: _fuossi_; _mus_: _musi_ (Old High German) IV. _fuoss_: _füessi_; _mus_: _müsi_ V. _fuoss_: _füesse_; _mus_: _müse_ (Middle High German) VI. _fuoss_: _füesse_; _mus_: _müze_[158] VII. _fuos_: _füese_; _mus_: _müze_ VIII. _fuos_: _füese_; _mous_: _möüze_ IX. _fus_: _füse_; _mous_: _möüze_ (Luther) X. _fus_: _füse_; _maus_: _moize_ (German of 1900) [Footnote 157: I use _ss_ to indicate a peculiar long, voiceless _s_-sound that was etymologically and phonetically distinct from the old Germanic _s_. It always goes back to an old _t_. In the old sources it is generally written as a variant of _z_, though it is not to be confused with the modern German _z_ (= _ts_). It was probably a dental (lisped) _s_.] [Footnote 158: _Z_ is to be understood as French or English _z_, not in its German use. Strictly speaking, this "z" (intervocalic _-s-_) was not voiced but was a soft voiceless sound, a sibilant intermediate between our _s_ and _z_. In modern North German it has become voiced to _z_. It is important not to confound this _s_--_z_ with the voiceless intervocalic _s_ that soon arose from the older lisped _ss_. In Modern German (aside from certain dialects), old _s_ and _ss_ are not now differentiated when final (_Maus_ and _Fuss_ have identical sibilants), but can still be distinguished as voiced and voiceless _s_ between vowels (_Mäuse_ and _Füsse_).] We cannot even begin to ferret out and discuss all the psychological problems that are concealed behind these bland tables. Their general parallelism is obvious. Indeed we might say that to-day the English and German forms resemble each other more than does either set the West Germanic prototypes from which each is independently derived. Each table illustrates the tendency to reduction of unaccented syllables, the vocalic modification of the radical element under the influence of the following vowel, the rise in tongue position of the long middle vowels (English _o_ to _u_, _e_ to _i_; German _o_ to _uo_ to _u_, _üe_ to _ü_), the diphthongizing of the old high vowels (English _i_ to _ei_ to _ai_; English and German _u_ to _ou_ to _au_; German _ü_ to _öü_ to _oi_). These dialectic parallels cannot be accidental. They are rooted in a common, pre-dialectic drift. Phonetic changes are "regular." All but one (English table, X.), and that as yet uncompleted, of the particular phonetic laws represented in our tables affect all examples of the sound in question or, if the phonetic change is conditional, all examples of the same sound that are analogously circumstanced.[159] An example of the first type of change is the passage in English of all old long _i_-vowels to diphthongal _ai_ via _ei_. The passage could hardly have been sudden or automatic, but it was rapid enough to prevent an irregularity of development due to cross drifts. The second type of change is illustrated in the development of Anglo-Saxon long _o_ to long _e_, via _ö_, under the influence of a following _i_. In the first case we may say that _au_ mechanically replaced long _u_, in the second that the old long _o_ "split" into two sounds--long _o_, eventually _u_, and long _e_, eventually _i_. The former type of change did no violence to the old phonetic pattern, the formal distribution of sounds into groups; the latter type rearranged the pattern somewhat. If neither of the two sounds into which an old one "splits" is a new sound, it means that there has been a phonetic leveling, that two groups of words, each with a distinct sound or sound combination, have fallen together into one group. This kind of leveling is quite frequent in the history of language. In English, for instance, we have seen that all the old long _ü_-vowels, after they had become unrounded, were indistinguishable from the mass of long _i_-vowels. This meant that the long _i_-vowel became a more heavily weighted point of the phonetic pattern than before. It is curious to observe how often languages have striven to drive originally distinct sounds into certain favorite positions, regardless of resulting confusions.[160] In Modern Greek, for instance, the vowel _i_ is the historical resultant of no less than ten etymologically distinct vowels (long and short) and diphthongs of the classical speech of Athens. There is, then, good evidence to show that there are general phonetic drifts toward particular sounds. [Footnote 159: In practice phonetic laws have their exceptions, but more intensive study almost invariably shows that these exceptions are more apparent than real. They are generally due to the disturbing influence of morphological groupings or to special psychological reasons which inhibit the normal progress of the phonetic drift. It is remarkable with how few exceptions one need operate in linguistic history, aside from "analogical leveling" (morphological replacement).] [Footnote 160: These confusions are more theoretical than real, however. A language has countless methods of avoiding practical ambiguities.] More often the phonetic drift is of a more general character. It is not so much a movement toward a particular set of sounds as toward particular types of articulation. The vowels tend to become higher or lower, the diphthongs tend to coalesce into monophthongs, the voiceless consonants tend to become voiced, stops tend to become spirants. As a matter of fact, practically all the phonetic laws enumerated in the two tables are but specific instances of such far-reaching phonetic drifts. The raising of English long _o_ to _u_ and of long _e_ to _i_, for instance, was part of a general tendency to raise the position of the long vowels, just as the change of _t_ to _ss_ in Old High German was part of a general tendency to make voiceless spirants of the old voiceless stopped consonants. A single sound change, even if there is no phonetic leveling, generally threatens to upset the old phonetic pattern because it brings about a disharmony in the grouping of sounds. To reëstablish the old pattern without going back on the drift the only possible method is to have the other sounds of the series shift in analogous fashion. If, for some reason or other, _p_ becomes shifted to its voiced correspondent _b_, the old series _p_, _t_, _k_ appears in the unsymmetrical form _b_, _t_, _k_. Such a series is, in phonetic effect, not the equivalent of the old series, however it may answer to it in etymology. The general phonetic pattern is impaired to that extent. But if _t_ and _k_ are also shifted to their voiced correspondents _d_ and _g_, the old series is reëstablished in a new form: _b_, _d_, _g_. The pattern as such is preserved, or restored. _Provided that_ the new series _b_, _d_, _g_ does not become confused with an old series _b_, _d_, _g_ of distinct historical antecedents. If there is no such older series, the creation of a _b_, _d_, _g_ series causes no difficulties. If there is, the old patterning of sounds can be kept intact only by shifting the old _b_, _d_, _g_ sounds in some way. They may become aspirated to _bh_, _dh_, _gh_ or spirantized or nasalized or they may develop any other peculiarity that keeps them intact as a series and serves to differentiate them from other series. And this sort of shifting about without loss of pattern, or with a minimum loss of it, is probably the most important tendency in the history of speech sounds. Phonetic leveling and "splitting" counteract it to some extent but, on the whole, it remains the central unconscious regulator of the course and speed of sound changes. The desire to hold on to a pattern, the tendency to "correct" a disturbance by an elaborate chain of supplementary changes, often spread over centuries or even millennia--these psychic undercurrents of language are exceedingly difficult to understand in terms of individual psychology, though there can be no denial of their historical reality. What is the primary cause of the unsettling of a phonetic pattern and what is the cumulative force that selects these or those particular variations of the individual on which to float the pattern readjustments we hardly know. Many linguistic students have made the fatal error of thinking of sound change as a quasi-physiological instead of as a strictly psychological phenomenon, or they have tried to dispose of the problem by bandying such catchwords as "the tendency to increased ease of articulation" or "the cumulative result of faulty perception" (on the part of children, say, in learning to speak). These easy explanations will not do. "Ease of articulation" may enter in as a factor, but it is a rather subjective concept at best. Indians find hopelessly difficult sounds and sound combinations that are simple to us; one language encourages a phonetic drift that another does everything to fight. "Faulty perception" does not explain that impressive drift in speech sounds which I have insisted upon. It is much better to admit that we do not yet understand the primary cause or causes of the slow drift in phonetics, though we can frequently point to contributing factors. It is likely that we shall not advance seriously until we study the intuitional bases of speech. How can we understand the nature of the drift that frays and reforms phonetic patterns when we have never thought of studying sound patterning as such and the "weights" and psychic relations of the single elements (the individual sounds) in these patterns? Every linguist knows that phonetic change is frequently followed by morphological rearrangements, but he is apt to assume that morphology exercises little or no influence on the course of phonetic history. I am inclined to believe that our present tendency to isolate phonetics and grammar as mutually irrelevant linguistic provinces is unfortunate. There are likely to be fundamental relations between them and their respective histories that we do not yet fully grasp. After all, if speech sounds exist merely because they are the symbolic carriers of significant concepts and groupings of concepts, why may not a strong drift or a permanent feature in the conceptual sphere exercise a furthering or retarding influence on the phonetic drift? I believe that such influences may be demonstrated and that they deserve far more careful study than they have received. This brings us back to our unanswered question: How is it that both English and German developed the curious alternation of unmodified vowel in the singular (_foot_, _Fuss_) and modified vowel in the plural (_feet_, _Füsse_)? Was the pre-Anglo-Saxon alternation of _fot_ and _föti_ an absolutely mechanical matter, without other than incidental morphological interest? It is always so represented, and, indeed, all the external facts support such a view. The change from _o_ to _ö_, later _e_, is by no means peculiar to the plural. It is found also in the dative singular (_fet_), for it too goes back to an older _foti_. Moreover, _fet_ of the plural applies only to the nominative and accusative; the genitive has _fota_, the dative _fotum_. Only centuries later was the alternation of _o_ and _e_ reinterpreted as a means of distinguishing number; _o_ was generalized for the singular, _e_ for the plural. Only when this reassortment of forms took place[161] was the modern symbolic value of the _foot_: _feet_ alternation clearly established. Again, we must not forget that _o_ was modified to _ö (e)_ in all manner of other grammatical and derivative formations. Thus, a pre-Anglo-Saxon _hohan_ (later _hon_) "to hang" corresponded to a _höhith_, _hehith_ (later _hehth_) "hangs"; to _dom_ "doom," _blod_ "blood," and _fod_ "food" corresponded the verbal derivatives _dömian_ (later _deman_) "to deem," _blödian_ (later _bledan_) "to bleed," and _födian_ (later _fedan_) "to feed." All this seems to point to the purely mechanical nature of the modification of _o_ to _ö_ to _e_. So many unrelated functions were ultimately served by the vocalic change that we cannot believe that it was motivated by any one of them. [Footnote 161: A type of adjustment generally referred to as "analogical leveling."] The German facts are entirely analogous. Only later in the history of the language was the vocalic alternation made significant for number. And yet consider the following facts. The change of _foti_ to _föti_ antedated that of _föti_ to _föte_, _föt_. This may be looked upon as a "lucky accident," for if _foti_ had become _fote_, _fot_ before the _-i_ had had the chance to exert a retroactive influence on the _o_, there would have been no difference between the singular and the plural. This would have been anomalous in Anglo-Saxon for a masculine noun. But was the sequence of phonetic changes an "accident"? Consider two further facts. All the Germanic languages were familiar with vocalic change as possessed of functional significance. Alternations like _sing_, _sang_, _sung_ (Anglo-Saxon _singan_, _sang_, _sungen_) were ingrained in the linguistic consciousness. Further, the tendency toward the weakening of final syllables was very strong even then and had been manifesting itself in one way and another for centuries. I believe that these further facts help us to understand the actual sequence of phonetic changes. We may go so far as to say that the _o_ (and _u_) could afford to stay the change to _ö_ (and _ü_) until the destructive drift had advanced to the point where failure to modify the vowel would soon result in morphological embarrassment. At a certain moment the _-i_ ending of the plural (and analogous endings with _i_ in other formations) was felt to be too weak to quite bear its functional burden. The unconscious Anglo-Saxon mind, if I may be allowed a somewhat summary way of putting the complex facts, was glad of the opportunity afforded by certain individual variations, until then automatically canceled out, to have some share of the burden thrown on them. These particular variations won through because they so beautifully allowed the general phonetic drift to take its course without unsettling the morphological contours of the language. And the presence of symbolic variation (_sing_, _sang_, _sung_) acted as an attracting force on the rise of a new variation of similar character. All these factors were equally true of the German vocalic shift. Owing to the fact that the destructive phonetic drift was proceeding at a slower rate in German than in English, the preservative change of _uo_ to _üe_ (_u_ to _ü_) did not need to set in until 300 years or more after the analogous English change. Nor did it. And this is to my mind a highly significant fact. Phonetic changes may sometimes be unconsciously encouraged in order to keep intact the psychological spaces between words and word forms. The general drift seizes upon those individual sound variations that help to preserve the morphological balance or to lead to the new balance that the language is striving for. I would suggest, then, that phonetic change is compacted of at least three basic strands: (1) A general drift in one direction, concerning the nature of which we know almost nothing but which may be suspected to be of prevailingly dynamic character (tendencies, e.g., to greater or less stress, greater or less voicing of elements); (2) A readjusting tendency which aims to preserve or restore the fundamental phonetic pattern of the language; (3) A preservative tendency which sets in when a too serious morphological unsettlement is threatened by the main drift. I do not imagine for a moment that it is always possible to separate these strands or that this purely schematic statement does justice to the complex forces that guide the phonetic drift. The phonetic pattern of a language is not invariable, but it changes far less readily than the sounds that compose it. Every phonetic element that it possesses may change radically and yet the pattern remain unaffected. It would be absurd to claim that our present English pattern is identical with the old Indo-European one, yet it is impressive to note that even at this late day the English series of initial consonants: _p_ _t_ _k_ _b_ _d_ _g_ _f_ _th_ _h_ corresponds point for point to the Sanskrit series: _b_ _d_ _g_ _bh_ _dh_ _gh_ _p_ _t_ _k_ The relation between phonetic pattern and individual sound is roughly parallel to that which obtains between the morphologic type of a language and one of its specific morphological features. Both phonetic pattern and fundamental type are exceedingly conservative, all superficial appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Which is more so we cannot say. I suspect that they hang together in a way that we cannot at present quite understand. If all the phonetic changes brought about by the phonetic drift were allowed to stand, it is probable that most languages would present such irregularities of morphological contour as to lose touch with their formal ground-plan. Sound changes work mechanically. Hence they are likely to affect a whole morphological group here--this does not matter--, only part of a morphological group there--and this may be disturbing. Thus, the old Anglo-Saxon paradigm: Sing. Plur. N. Ac. _fot_ _fet_ (older _foti_) G. _fotes_ _fota_ D. _fet_ (older _foti_) _fotum_ could not long stand unmodified. The _o_--_e_ alternation was welcome in so far as it roughly distinguished the singular from the plural. The dative singular _fet_, however, though justified historically, was soon felt to be an intrusive feature. The analogy of simpler and more numerously represented paradigms created the form _fote_ (compare, e.g., _fisc_ "fish," dative singular _fisce_). _Fet_ as a dative becomes obsolete. The singular now had _o_ throughout. But this very fact made the genitive and dative _o_-forms of the plural seem out of place. The nominative and accusative _fet_ was naturally far more frequently in use than were the corresponding forms of the genitive and dative. These, in the end, could not but follow the analogy of _fet_. At the very beginning of the Middle English period, therefore, we find that the old paradigm has yielded to a more regular one: Sing. Plur. N. Ac. *_fot_ *_fet_ G. *_fotes_ _fete_ D. _fote_ _feten_ The starred forms are the old nucleus around which the new paradigm is built. The unstarred forms are not genealogical kin of their formal prototypes. They are analogical replacements. The history of the English language teems with such levelings or extensions. _Elder_ and _eldest_ were at one time the only possible comparative and superlative forms of _old_ (compare German _alt_, _älter_, _der älteste_; the vowel following the _old-_, _alt-_ was originally an _i_, which modified the quality of the stem vowel). The general analogy of the vast majority of English adjectives, however, has caused the replacement of the forms _elder_ and _eldest_ by the forms with unmodified vowel, _older_ and _oldest_. _Elder_ and _eldest_ survive only as somewhat archaic terms for the older and oldest brother or sister. This illustrates the tendency for words that are psychologically disconnected from their etymological or formal group to preserve traces of phonetic laws that have otherwise left no recognizable trace or to preserve a vestige of a morphological process that has long lost its vitality. A careful study of these survivals or atrophied forms is not without value for the reconstruction of the earlier history of a language or for suggestive hints as to its remoter affiliations. Analogy may not only refashion forms within the confines of a related cluster of forms (a "paradigm") but may extend its influence far beyond. Of a number of functionally equivalent elements, for instance, only one may survive, the rest yielding to its constantly widening influence. This is what happened with the English _-s_ plural. Originally confined to a particular class of masculines, though an important class, the _-s_ plural was gradually generalized for all nouns but a mere handful that still illustrate plural types now all but extinct (_foot_: feet, _goose_: _geese_, _tooth_: _teeth_, _mouse_: _mice_, _louse_: _lice_; _ox_: _oxen_; _child_: _children_; _sheep_: _sheep_, _deer_: _deer_). Thus analogy not only regularizes irregularities that have come in the wake of phonetic processes but introduces disturbances, generally in favor of greater simplicity or regularity, in a long established system of forms. These analogical adjustments are practically always symptoms of the general morphological drift of the language. A morphological feature that appears as the incidental consequence of a phonetic process, like the English plural with modified vowel, may spread by analogy no less readily than old features that owe their origin to other than phonetic causes. Once the _e_-vowel of Middle English _fet_ had become confined to the plural, there was no theoretical reason why alternations of the type _fot_: _fet_ and _mus_: _mis_ might not have become established as a productive type of number distinction in the noun. As a matter of fact, it did not so become established. The _fot_: _fet_ type of plural secured but a momentary foothold. It was swept into being by one of the surface drifts of the language, to be swept aside in the Middle English period by the more powerful drift toward the use of simple distinctive forms. It was too late in the day for our language to be seriously interested in such pretty symbolisms as _foot_: _feet_. What examples of the type arose legitimately, in other words _via_ purely phonetic processes, were tolerated for a time, but the type as such never had a serious future. It was different in German. The whole series of phonetic changes comprised under the term "umlaut," of which _u_: _ü_ and _au_: _oi_ (written _äu_) are but specific examples, struck the German language at a time when the general drift to morphological simplification was not so strong but that the resulting formal types (e.g., _Fuss_: _Füsse_; _fallen_ "to fall": _fällen_ "to fell"; _Horn_ "horn": _Gehörne_ "group of horns"; _Haus_ "house": _Häuslein_ "little house") could keep themselves intact and even extend to forms that did not legitimately come within their sphere of influence. "Umlaut" is still a very live symbolic process in German, possibly more alive to-day than in medieval times. Such analogical plurals as _Baum_ "tree": _Bäume_ (contrast Middle High German _boum_: _boume_) and derivatives as _lachen_ "to laugh": _Gelächter_ "laughter" (contrast Middle High German _gelach_) show that vocalic mutation has won through to the status of a productive morphologic process. Some of the dialects have even gone further than standard German, at least in certain respects. In Yiddish,[162] for instance, "umlaut" plurals have been formed where there are no Middle High German prototypes or modern literary parallels, e.g., _tog_ "day": _teg_ "days" (but German _Tag_: _Tage_) on the analogy of _gast_ "guest": _gest_ "guests" (German _Gast_: _Gäste_), _shuch_[163] "shoe": _shich_ "shoes" (but German _Schuh_: _Schuhe_) on the analogy of _fus_ "foot": _fis_ "feet." It is possible that "umlaut" will run its course and cease to operate as a live functional process in German, but that time is still distant. Meanwhile all consciousness of the merely phonetic nature of "umlaut" vanished centuries ago. It is now a strictly morphological process, not in the least a mechanical phonetic adjustment. We have in it a splendid example of how a simple phonetic law, meaningless in itself, may eventually color or transform large reaches of the morphology of a language. [Footnote 162: Isolated from other German dialects in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It is therefore a good test for gauging the strength of the tendency to "umlaut," particularly as it has developed a strong drift towards analytic methods.] [Footnote 163: _Ch_ as in German _Buch_.] IX HOW LANGUAGES INFLUENCE EACH OTHER Languages, like cultures, are rarely sufficient unto themselves. The necessities of intercourse bring the speakers of one language into direct or indirect contact with those of neighboring or culturally dominant languages. The intercourse may be friendly or hostile. It may move on the humdrum plane of business and trade relations or it may consist of a borrowing or interchange of spiritual goods--art, science, religion. It would be difficult to point to a completely isolated language or dialect, least of all among the primitive peoples. The tribe is often so small that intermarriages with alien tribes that speak other dialects or even totally unrelated languages are not uncommon. It may even be doubted whether intermarriage, intertribal trade, and general cultural interchanges are not of greater relative significance on primitive levels than on our own. Whatever the degree or nature of contact between neighboring peoples, it is generally sufficient to lead to some kind of linguistic interinfluencing. Frequently the influence runs heavily in one direction. The language of a people that is looked upon as a center of culture is naturally far more likely to exert an appreciable influence on other languages spoken in its vicinity than to be influenced by them. Chinese has flooded the vocabularies of Corean, Japanese, and Annamite for centuries, but has received nothing in return. In the western Europe of medieval and modern times French has exercised a similar, though probably a less overwhelming, influence. English borrowed an immense number of words from the French of the Norman invaders, later also from the court French of Isle de France, appropriated a certain number of affixed elements of derivational value (e.g., _-ess_ of _princess_, _-ard_ of _drunkard_, _-ty_ of _royalty_), may have been somewhat stimulated in its general analytic drift by contact with French,[164] and even allowed French to modify its phonetic pattern slightly (e.g., initial _v_ and _j_ in words like _veal_ and _judge_; in words of Anglo-Saxon origin _v_ and _j_ can only occur after vowels, e.g., _over_, _hedge_). But English has exerted practically no influence on French. [Footnote 164: The earlier students of English, however, grossly exaggerated the general "disintegrating" effect of French on middle English. English was moving fast toward a more analytic structure long before the French influence set in.] The simplest kind of influence that one language may exert on another is the "borrowing" of words. When there is cultural borrowing there is always the likelihood that the associated words may be borrowed too. When the early Germanic peoples of northern Europe first learned of wine-culture and of paved streets from their commercial or warlike contact with the Romans, it was only natural that they should adopt the Latin words for the strange beverage (_vinum_, English _wine_, German _Wein_) and the unfamiliar type of road (_strata [via]_, English _street_, German _Strasse_). Later, when Christianity was introduced into England, a number of associated words, such as _bishop_ and _angel_, found their way into English. And so the process has continued uninterruptedly down to the present day, each cultural wave bringing to the language a new deposit of loan-words. The careful study of such loan-words constitutes an interesting commentary on the history of culture. One can almost estimate the rôle which various peoples have played in the development and spread of cultural ideas by taking note of the extent to which their vocabularies have filtered into those of other peoples. When we realize that an educated Japanese can hardly frame a single literary sentence without the use of Chinese resources, that to this day Siamese and Burmese and Cambodgian bear the unmistakable imprint of the Sanskrit and Pali that came in with Hindu Buddhism centuries ago, or that whether we argue for or against the teaching of Latin and Greek our argument is sure to be studded with words that have come to us from Rome and Athens, we get some inkling of what early Chinese culture and Buddhism and classical Mediterranean civilization have meant in the world's history. There are just five languages that have had an overwhelming significance as carriers of culture. They are classical Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Greek, and Latin. In comparison with these even such culturally important languages as Hebrew and French sink into a secondary position. It is a little disappointing to learn that the general cultural influence of English has so far been all but negligible. The English language itself is spreading because the English have colonized immense territories. But there is nothing to show that it is anywhere entering into the lexical heart of other languages as French has colored the English complexion or as Arabic has permeated Persian and Turkish. This fact alone is significant of the power of nationalism, cultural as well as political, during the last century. There are now psychological resistances to borrowing, or rather to new sources of borrowing,[165] that were not greatly alive in the Middle Ages or during the Renaissance. [Footnote 165: For we still name our new scientific instruments and patent medicines from Greek and Latin.] Are there resistances of a more intimate nature to the borrowing of words? It is generally assumed that the nature and extent of borrowing depend entirely on the historical facts of culture relation; that if German, for instance, has borrowed less copiously than English from Latin and French it is only because Germany has had less intimate relations than England with the culture spheres of classical Rome and France. This is true to a considerable extent, but it is not the whole truth. We must not exaggerate the physical importance of the Norman invasion nor underrate the significance of the fact that Germany's central geographical position made it peculiarly sensitive to French influences all through the Middle Ages, to humanistic influences in the latter fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and again to the powerful French influences of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It seems very probable that the psychological attitude of the borrowing language itself towards linguistic material has much to do with its receptivity to foreign words. English has long been striving for the completely unified, unanalyzed word, regardless of whether it is monosyllabic or polysyllabic. Such words as _credible_, _certitude_, _intangible_ are entirely welcome in English because each represents a unitary, well-nuanced idea and because their formal analysis (_cred-ible_, _cert-itude_, _in-tang-ible_) is not a necessary act of the unconscious mind (_cred-_, _cert-_, and _tang-_ have no real existence in English comparable to that of _good-_ in _goodness_). A word like _intangible_, once it is acclimated, is nearly as simple a psychological entity as any radical monosyllable (say _vague_, _thin_, _grasp_). In German, however, polysyllabic words strive to analyze themselves into significant elements. Hence vast numbers of French and Latin words, borrowed at the height of certain cultural influences, could not maintain themselves in the language. Latin-German words like _kredibel_ "credible" and French-German words like _reussieren_ "to succeed" offered nothing that the unconscious mind could assimilate to its customary method of feeling and handling words. It is as though this unconscious mind said: "I am perfectly willing to accept _kredibel_ if you will just tell me what you mean by _kred-_." Hence German has generally found it easier to create new words out of its own resources, as the necessity for them arose. The psychological contrast between English and German as regards the treatment of foreign material is a contrast that may be studied in all parts of the world. The Athabaskan languages of America are spoken by peoples that have had astonishingly varied cultural contacts, yet nowhere do we find that an Athabaskan dialect has borrowed at all freely[166] from a neighboring language. These languages have always found it easier to create new words by compounding afresh elements ready to hand. They have for this reason been highly resistant to receiving the linguistic impress of the external cultural experiences of their speakers. Cambodgian and Tibetan offer a highly instructive contrast in their reaction to Sanskrit influence. Both are analytic languages, each totally different from the highly-wrought, inflective language of India. Cambodgian is isolating, but, unlike Chinese, it contains many polysyllabic words whose etymological analysis does not matter. Like English, therefore, in its relation to French and Latin, it welcomed immense numbers of Sanskrit loan-words, many of which are in common use to-day. There was no psychological resistance to them. Classical Tibetan literature was a slavish adaptation of Hindu Buddhist literature and nowhere has Buddhism implanted itself more firmly than in Tibet, yet it is strange how few Sanskrit words have found their way into the language. Tibetan was highly resistant to the polysyllabic words of Sanskrit because they could not automatically fall into significant syllables, as they should have in order to satisfy the Tibetan feeling for form. Tibetan was therefore driven to translating the great majority of these Sanskrit words into native equivalents. The Tibetan craving for form was satisfied, though the literally translated foreign terms must often have done violence to genuine Tibetan idiom. Even the proper names of the Sanskrit originals were carefully translated, element for element, into Tibetan; e.g., _Suryagarbha_ "Sun-bosomed" was carefully Tibetanized into _Nyi-mai snying-po_ "Sun-of heart-the, the heart (or essence) of the sun." The study of how a language reacts to the presence of foreign words--rejecting them, translating them, or freely accepting them--may throw much valuable light on its innate formal tendencies. [Footnote 166: One might all but say, "has borrowed at all."] The borrowing of foreign words always entails their phonetic modification. There are sure to be foreign sounds or accentual peculiarities that do not fit the native phonetic habits. They are then so changed as to do as little violence as possible to these habits. Frequently we have phonetic compromises. Such an English word as the recently introduced _camouflage_, as now ordinarily pronounced, corresponds to the typical phonetic usage of neither English nor French. The aspirated _k_, the obscure vowel of the second syllable, the precise quality of the _l_ and of the last _a_, and, above all, the strong accent on the first syllable, are all the results of unconscious assimilation to our English habits of pronunciation. They differentiate our _camouflage_ clearly from the same word as pronounced by the French. On the other hand, the long, heavy vowel in the third syllable and the final position of the "zh" sound (like _z_ in _azure_) are distinctly un-English, just as, in Middle English, the initial _j_ and _v_[167] must have been felt at first as not strictly in accord with English usage, though the strangeness has worn off by now. In all four of these cases--initial _j_, initial _v_, final "zh," and unaccented _a_ of _father_--English has not taken on a new sound but has merely extended the use of an old one. [Footnote 167: See page 206.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 167 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 6329.] Occasionally a new sound is introduced, but it is likely to melt away before long. In Chaucer's day the old Anglo-Saxon _ü_ (written _y_) had long become unrounded to _i_, but a new set of _ü_-vowels had come in from the French (in such words as _due_, _value_, _nature_). The new _ü_ did not long hold its own; it became diphthongized to _iu_ and was amalgamated with the native _iw_ of words like _new_ and _slew_. Eventually this diphthong appears as _yu_, with change of stress--_dew_ (from Anglo-Saxon _deaw_) like _due_ (Chaucerian _dü_). Facts like these show how stubbornly a language resists radical tampering with its phonetic pattern. Nevertheless, we know that languages do influence each other in phonetic respects, and that quite aside from the taking over of foreign sounds with borrowed words. One of the most curious facts that linguistics has to note is the occurrence of striking phonetic parallels in totally unrelated or very remotely related languages of a restricted geographical area. These parallels become especially impressive when they are seen contrastively from a wide phonetic perspective. Here are a few examples. The Germanic languages as a whole have not developed nasalized vowels. Certain Upper German (Suabian) dialects, however, have now nasalized vowels in lieu of the older vowel + nasal consonant (_n_). Is it only accidental that these dialects are spoken in proximity to French, which makes abundant use of nasalized vowels? Again, there are certain general phonetic features that mark off Dutch and Flemish in contrast, say, to North German and Scandinavian dialects. One of these is the presence of unaspirated voiceless stops (_p_, _t_, _k_), which have a precise, metallic quality reminiscent of the corresponding French sounds, but which contrast with the stronger, aspirated stops of English, North German, and Danish. Even if we assume that the unaspirated stops are more archaic, that they are the unmodified descendants of the old Germanic consonants, is it not perhaps a significant historical fact that the Dutch dialects, neighbors of French, were inhibited from modifying these consonants in accordance with what seems to have been a general Germanic phonetic drift? Even more striking than these instances is the peculiar resemblance, in certain special phonetic respects, of Russian and other Slavic languages to the unrelated Ural-Altaic languages[168] of the Volga region. The peculiar, dull vowel, for instance, known in Russian as "yeri"[169] has Ural-Altaic analogues, but is entirely wanting in Germanic, Greek, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian, the nearest Indo-European congeners of Slavic. We may at least suspect that the Slavic vowel is not historically unconnected with its Ural-Altaic parallels. One of the most puzzling cases of phonetic parallelism is afforded by a large number of American Indian languages spoken west of the Rockies. Even at the most radical estimate there are at least four totally unrelated linguistic stocks represented in the region from southern Alaska to central California. Nevertheless all, or practically all, the languages of this immense area have some important phonetic features in common. Chief of these is the presence of a "glottalized" series of stopped consonants of very distinctive formation and of quite unusual acoustic effect.[170] In the northern part of the area all the languages, whether related or not, also possess various voiceless _l_-sounds and a series of "velar" (back-guttural) stopped consonants which are etymologically distinct from the ordinary _k_-series. It is difficult to believe that three such peculiar phonetic features as I have mentioned could have evolved independently in neighboring groups of languages. [Footnote 168: Ugro-Finnic and Turkish (Tartar)] [Footnote 169: Probably, in Sweet's terminology, high-back (or, better, between back and "mixed" positions)-narrow-unrounded. It generally corresponds to an Indo-European long _u_.] [Footnote 170: There seem to be analogous or partly analogous sounds in certain languages of the Caucasus.] How are we to explain these and hundreds of similar phonetic convergences? In particular cases we may really be dealing with archaic similarities due to a genetic relationship that it is beyond our present power to demonstrate. But this interpretation will not get us far. It must be ruled entirely out of court, for instance, in two of the three European examples I have instanced; both nasalized vowels and the Slavic "yeri" are demonstrably of secondary origin in Indo-European. However we envisage the process in detail, we cannot avoid the inference that there is a tendency for speech sounds or certain distinctive manners of articulation to spread over a continuous area in somewhat the same way that elements of culture ray out from a geographical center. We may suppose that individual variations arising at linguistic borderlands--whether by the unconscious suggestive influence of foreign speech habits or by the actual transfer of foreign sounds into the speech of bilingual individuals--have gradually been incorporated into the phonetic drift of a language. So long as its main phonetic concern is the preservation of its sound patterning, not of its sounds as such, there is really no reason why a language may not unconsciously assimilate foreign sounds that have succeeded in worming their way into its gamut of individual variations, provided always that these new variations (or reinforced old variations) are in the direction of the native drift. A simple illustration will throw light on this conception. Let us suppose that two neighboring and unrelated languages, A and B, each possess voiceless _l_-sounds (compare Welsh _ll_). We surmise that this is not an accident. Perhaps comparative study reveals the fact that in language A the voiceless _l_-sounds correspond to a sibilant series in other related languages, that an old alternation _s_: _sh_ has been shifted to the new alternation _l_ (voiceless): _s_.[171] Does it follow that the voiceless _l_ of language B has had the same history? Not in the least. Perhaps B has a strong tendency toward audible breath release at the end of a word, so that the final _l_, like a final vowel, was originally followed by a marked aspiration. Individuals perhaps tended to anticipate a little the voiceless release and to "unvoice" the latter part of the final _l_-sound (very much as the _l_ of English words like _felt_ tends to be partly voiceless in anticipation of the voicelessness of the _t_). Yet this final _l_ with its latent tendency to unvoicing might never have actually developed into a fully voiceless _l_ had not the presence of voiceless _l_-sounds in A acted as an unconscious stimulus or suggestive push toward a more radical change in the line of B's own drift. Once the final voiceless _l_ emerged, its alternation in related words with medial voiced _l_ is very likely to have led to its analogical spread. The result would be that both A and B have an important phonetic trait in common. Eventually their phonetic systems, judged as mere assemblages of sounds, might even become completely assimilated to each other, though this is an extreme case hardly ever realized in practice. The highly significant thing about such phonetic interinfluencings is the strong tendency of each language to keep its phonetic pattern intact. So long as the respective alignments of the similar sounds is different, so long as they have differing "values" and "weights" in the unrelated languages, these languages cannot be said to have diverged materially from the line of their inherent drift. In phonetics, as in vocabulary, we must be careful not to exaggerate the importance of interlinguistic influences. [Footnote 171: This can actually be demonstrated for one of the Athabaskan dialects of the Yukon.] I have already pointed out in passing that English has taken over a certain number of morphological elements from French. English also uses a number of affixes that are derived from Latin and Greek. Some of these foreign elements, like the _-ize_ of _materialize_ or the _-able_ of _breakable_, are even productive to-day. Such examples as these are hardly true evidences of a morphological influence exerted by one language on another. Setting aside the fact that they belong to the sphere of derivational concepts and do not touch the central morphological problem of the expression of relational ideas, they have added nothing to the structural peculiarities of our language. English was already prepared for the relation of _pity_ to _piteous_ by such a native pair as _luck_ and _lucky_; _material_ and _materialize_ merely swelled the ranks of a form pattern familiar from such instances as _wide_ and _widen_. In other words, the morphological influence exerted by foreign languages on English, if it is to be gauged by such examples as I have cited, is hardly different in kind from the mere borrowing of words. The introduction of the suffix _-ize_ made hardly more difference to the essential build of the language than did the mere fact that it incorporated a given number of words. Had English evolved a new future on the model of the synthetic future in French or had it borrowed from Latin and Greek their employment of reduplication as a functional device (Latin _tango_: _tetigi_; Greek _leipo_: _leloipa_), we should have the right to speak of true morphological influence. But such far-reaching influences are not demonstrable. Within the whole course of the history of the English language we can hardly point to one important morphological change that was not determined by the native drift, though here and there we may surmise that this drift was hastened a little by the suggestive influence of French forms.[172] [Footnote 172: In the sphere of syntax one may point to certain French and Latin influences, but it is doubtful if they ever reached deeper than the written language. Much of this type of influence belongs rather to literary style than to morphology proper.] It is important to realize the continuous, self-contained morphological development of English and the very modest extent to which its fundamental build has been affected by influences from without. The history of the English language has sometimes been represented as though it relapsed into a kind of chaos on the arrival of the Normans, who proceeded to play nine-pins with the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Students are more conservative today. That a far-reaching analytic development may take place without such external foreign influence as English was subjected to is clear from the history of Danish, which has gone even further than English in certain leveling tendencies. English may be conveniently used as an _a fortiori_ test. It was flooded with French loan-words during the later Middle Ages, at a time when its drift toward the analytic type was especially strong. It was therefore changing rapidly both within and on the surface. The wonder, then, is not that it took on a number of external morphological features, mere accretions on its concrete inventory, but that, exposed as it was to remolding influences, it remained so true to its own type and historic drift. The experience gained from the study of the English language is strengthened by all that we know of documented linguistic history. Nowhere do we find any but superficial morphological interinfluencings. We may infer one of several things from this:--That a really serious morphological influence is not, perhaps, impossible, but that its operation is so slow that it has hardly ever had the chance to incorporate itself in the relatively small portion of linguistic history that lies open to inspection; or that there are certain favorable conditions that make for profound morphological disturbances from without, say a peculiar instability of linguistic type or an unusual degree of cultural contact, conditions that do not happen to be realized in our documentary material; or, finally, that we have not the right to assume that a language may easily exert a remolding morphological influence on another. Meanwhile we are confronted by the baffling fact that important traits of morphology are frequently found distributed among widely differing languages within a large area, so widely differing, indeed, that it is customary to consider them genetically unrelated. Sometimes we may suspect that the resemblance is due to a mere convergence, that a similar morphological feature has grown up independently in unrelated languages. Yet certain morphological distributions are too specific in character to be so lightly dismissed. There must be some historical factor to account for them. Now it should be remembered that the concept of a "linguistic stock" is never definitive[173] in an exclusive sense. We can only say, with reasonable certainty, that such and such languages are descended from a common source, but we cannot say that such and such other languages are not genetically related. All we can do is to say that the evidence for relationship is not cumulative enough to make the inference of common origin absolutely necessary. May it not be, then, that many instances of morphological similarity between divergent languages of a restricted area are merely the last vestiges of a community of type and phonetic substance that the destructive work of diverging drifts has now made unrecognizable? There is probably still enough lexical and morphological resemblance between modern English and Irish to enable us to make out a fairly conclusive case for their genetic relationship on the basis of the present-day descriptive evidence alone. It is true that the case would seem weak in comparison to the case that we can actually make with the help of the historical and the comparative data that we possess. It would not be a bad case nevertheless. In another two or three millennia, however, the points of resemblance are likely to have become so obliterated that English and Irish, in the absence of all but their own descriptive evidence, will have to be set down as "unrelated" languages. They will still have in common certain fundamental morphological features, but it will be difficult to know how to evaluate them. Only in the light of the contrastive perspective afforded by still more divergent languages, such as Basque and Finnish, will these vestigial resemblances receive their true historic value. [Footnote 173: See page 163.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 173 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 5037.] I cannot but suspect that many of the more significant distributions of morphological similarities are to be explained as just such vestiges. The theory of "borrowing" seems totally inadequate to explain those fundamental features of structure, hidden away in the very core of the linguistic complex, that have been pointed out as common, say, to Semitic and Hamitic, to the various Soudanese languages, to Malayo-Polynesian and Mon-Khmer[174] and Munda,[175] to Athabaskan and Tlingit and Haida. We must not allow ourselves to be frightened away by the timidity of the specialists, who are often notably lacking in the sense of what I have called "contrastive perspective." [Footnote 174: A group of languages spoken in southeastern Asia, of which Khmer (Cambodgian) is the best known representative.] [Footnote 175: A group of languages spoken in northeastern India.] Attempts have sometimes been made to explain the distribution of these fundamental structural features by the theory of diffusion. We know that myths, religious ideas, types of social organization, industrial devices, and other features of culture may spread from point to point, gradually making themselves at home in cultures to which they were at one time alien. We also know that words may be diffused no less freely than cultural elements, that sounds also may be "borrowed," and that even morphological elements may be taken over. We may go further and recognize that certain languages have, in all probability, taken on structural features owing to the suggestive influence of neighboring languages. An examination of such cases,[176] however, almost invariably reveals the significant fact that they are but superficial additions on the morphological kernel of the language. So long as such direct historical testimony as we have gives us no really convincing examples of profound morphological influence by diffusion, we shall do well not to put too much reliance in diffusion theories. On the whole, therefore, we shall ascribe the major concordances and divergences in linguistic form--phonetic pattern and morphology--to the autonomous drift of language, not to the complicating effect of single, diffused features that cluster now this way, now that. Language is probably the most self-contained, the most massively resistant of all social phenomena. It is easier to kill it off than to disintegrate its individual form. [Footnote 176: I have in mind, e.g., the presence of postpositions in Upper Chinook, a feature that is clearly due to the influence of neighboring Sahaptin languages; or the use by Takelma of instrumental prefixes, which are likely to have been suggested by neighboring "Hokan" languages (Shasta, Karok).] X LANGUAGE, RACE AND CULTURE Language has a setting. The people that speak it belong to a race (or a number of races), that is, to a group which is set off by physical characteristics from other groups. Again, language does not exist apart from culture, that is, from the socially inherited assemblage of practices and beliefs that determines the texture of our lives. Anthropologists have been in the habit of studying man under the three rubrics of race, language, and culture. One of the first things they do with a natural area like Africa or the South Seas is to map it out from this threefold point of view. These maps answer the questions: What and where are the major divisions of the human animal, biologically considered (e.g., Congo Negro, Egyptian White; Australian Black, Polynesian)? What are the most inclusive linguistic groupings, the "linguistic stocks," and what is the distribution of each (e.g., the Hamitic languages of northern Africa, the Bantu languages of the south; the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia)? How do the peoples of the given area divide themselves as cultural beings? what are the outstanding "cultural areas" and what are the dominant ideas in each (e.g., the Mohammedan north of Africa; the primitive hunting, non-agricultural culture of the Bushmen in the south; the culture of the Australian natives, poor in physical respects but richly developed in ceremonialism; the more advanced and highly specialized culture of Polynesia)? The man in the street does not stop to analyze his position in the general scheme of humanity. He feels that he is the representative of some strongly integrated portion of humanity--now thought of as a "nationality," now as a "race"--and that everything that pertains to him as a typical representative of this large group somehow belongs together. If he is an Englishman, he feels himself to be a member of the "Anglo-Saxon" race, the "genius" of which race has fashioned the English language and the "Anglo-Saxon" culture of which the language is the expression. Science is colder. It inquires if these three types of classification--racial, linguistic, and cultural--are congruent, if their association is an inherently necessary one or is merely a matter of external history. The answer to the inquiry is not encouraging to "race" sentimentalists. Historians and anthropologists find that races, languages, and cultures are not distributed in parallel fashion, that their areas of distribution intercross in the most bewildering fashion, and that the history of each is apt to follow a distinctive course. Races intermingle in a way that languages do not. On the other hand, languages may spread far beyond their original home, invading the territory of new races and of new culture spheres. A language may even die out in its primary area and live on among peoples violently hostile to the persons of its original speakers. Further, the accidents of history are constantly rearranging the borders of culture areas without necessarily effacing the existing linguistic cleavages. If we can once thoroughly convince ourselves that race, in its only intelligible, that is biological, sense, is supremely indifferent to the history of languages and cultures, that these are no more directly explainable on the score of race than on that of the laws of physics and chemistry, we shall have gained a viewpoint that allows a certain interest to such mystic slogans as Slavophilism, Anglo-Saxondom, Teutonism, and the Latin genius but that quite refuses to be taken in by any of them. A careful study of linguistic distributions and of the history of such distributions is one of the driest of commentaries on these sentimental creeds. That a group of languages need not in the least correspond to a racial group or a culture area is easily demonstrated. We may even show how a single language intercrosses with race and culture lines. The English language is not spoken by a unified race. In the United States there are several millions of negroes who know no other language. It is their mother-tongue, the formal vesture of their inmost thoughts and sentiments. It is as much their property, as inalienably "theirs," as the King of England's. Nor do the English-speaking whites of America constitute a definite race except by way of contrast to the negroes. Of the three fundamental white races in Europe generally recognized by physical anthropologists--the Baltic or North European, the Alpine, and the Mediterranean--each has numerous English-speaking representatives in America. But does not the historical core of English-speaking peoples, those relatively "unmixed" populations that still reside in England and its colonies, represent a race, pure and single? I cannot see that the evidence points that way. The English people are an amalgam of many distinct strains. Besides the old "Anglo-Saxon," in other words North German, element which is conventionally represented as the basic strain, the English blood comprises Norman French,[177] Scandinavian, "Celtic,"[178] and pre-Celtic elements. If by "English" we mean also Scotch and Irish,[179] then the term "Celtic" is loosely used for at least two quite distinct racial elements--the short, dark-complexioned type of Wales and the taller, lighter, often ruddy-haired type of the Highlands and parts of Ireland. Even if we confine ourselves to the Saxon element, which, needless to say, nowhere appears "pure," we are not at the end of our troubles. We may roughly identify this strain with the racial type now predominant in southern Denmark and adjoining parts of northern Germany. If so, we must content ourselves with the reflection that while the English language is historically most closely affiliated with Frisian, in second degree with the other West Germanic dialects (Low Saxon or "Plattdeutsch," Dutch, High German), only in third degree with Scandinavian, the specific "Saxon" racial type that overran England in the fifth and sixth centuries was largely the same as that now represented by the Danes, who speak a Scandinavian language, while the High German-speaking population of central and southern Germany[180] is markedly distinct. [Footnote 177: Itself an amalgam of North "French" and Scandinavian elements.] [Footnote 178: The "Celtic" blood of what is now England and Wales is by no means confined to the Celtic-speaking regions--Wales and, until recently, Cornwall. There is every reason to believe that the invading Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) did not exterminate the Brythonic Celts of England nor yet drive them altogether into Wales and Cornwall (there has been far too much "driving" of conquered peoples into mountain fastnesses and land's ends in our histories), but simply intermingled with them and imposed their rule and language upon them.] [Footnote 179: In practice these three peoples can hardly be kept altogether distinct. The terms have rather a local-sentimental than a clearly racial value. Intermarriage has gone on steadily for centuries and it is only in certain outlying regions that we get relatively pure types, e.g., the Highland Scotch of the Hebrides. In America, English, Scotch, and Irish strands have become inextricably interwoven.] [Footnote 180: The High German now spoken in northern Germany is not of great age, but is due to the spread of standardized German, based on Upper Saxon, a High German dialect, at the expense of "Plattdeutsch."] But what if we ignore these finer distinctions and simply assume that the "Teutonic" or Baltic or North European racial type coincided in its distribution with that of the Germanic languages? Are we not on safe ground then? No, we are now in hotter water than ever. First of all, the mass of the German-speaking population (central and southern Germany, German Switzerland, German Austria) do not belong to the tall, blond-haired, long-headed[181] "Teutonic" race at all, but to the shorter, darker-complexioned, short-headed[182] Alpine race, of which the central population of France, the French Swiss, and many of the western and northern Slavs (e.g., Bohemians and Poles) are equally good representatives. The distribution of these "Alpine" populations corresponds in part to that of the old continental "Celts," whose language has everywhere given way to Italic, Germanic, and Slavic pressure. We shall do well to avoid speaking of a "Celtic race," but if we were driven to give the term a content, it would probably be more appropriate to apply it to, roughly, the western portion of the Alpine peoples than to the two island types that I referred to before. These latter were certainly "Celticized," in speech and, partly, in blood, precisely as, centuries later, most of England and part of Scotland was "Teutonized" by the Angles and Saxons. Linguistically speaking, the "Celts" of to-day (Irish Gaelic, Manx, Scotch Gaelic, Welsh, Breton) are Celtic and most of the Germans of to-day are Germanic precisely as the American Negro, Americanized Jew, Minnesota Swede, and German-American are "English." But, secondly, the Baltic race was, and is, by no means an exclusively Germanic-speaking people. The northernmost "Celts," such as the Highland Scotch, are in all probability a specialized offshoot of this race. What these people spoke before they were Celticized nobody knows, but there is nothing whatever to indicate that they spoke a Germanic language. Their language may quite well have been as remote from any known Indo-European idiom as are Basque and Turkish to-day. Again, to the east of the Scandinavians are non-Germanic members of the race--the Finns and related peoples, speaking languages that are not definitely known to be related to Indo-European at all. [Footnote 181: "Dolichocephalic."] [Footnote 182: "Brachycephalic."] We cannot stop here. The geographical position of the Germanic languages is such[183] as to make it highly probable that they represent but an outlying transfer of an Indo-European dialect (possibly a Celto-Italic prototype) to a Baltic people speaking a language or a group of languages that was alien to Indo-European.[184] Not only, then, is English not spoken by a unified race at present but its prototype, more likely than not, was originally a foreign language to the race with which English is more particularly associated. We need not seriously entertain the idea that English or the group of languages to which it belongs is in any intelligible sense the expression of race, that there are embedded in it qualities that reflect the temperament or "genius" of a particular breed of human beings. [Footnote 183: By working back from such data as we possess we can make it probable that these languages were originally confined to a comparatively small area in northern Germany and Scandinavia. This area is clearly marginal to the total area of distribution of the Indo-European-speaking peoples. Their center of gravity, say 1000 B.C., seems to have lain in southern Russia.] [Footnote 184: While this is only a theory, the technical evidence for it is stronger than one might suppose. There are a surprising number of common and characteristic Germanic words which cannot be connected with known Indo-European radical elements and which may well be survivals of the hypothetical pre-Germanic language; such are _house_, _stone_, _sea_, _wife_ (German _Haus_, _Stein_, _See_, _Weib_).] Many other, and more striking, examples of the lack of correspondence between race and language could be given if space permitted. One instance will do for many. The Malayo-Polynesian languages form a well-defined group that takes in the southern end of the Malay Peninsula and the tremendous island world to the south and east (except Australia and the greater part of New Guinea). In this vast region we find represented no less than three distinct races--the Negro-like Papuans of New Guinea and Melanesia, the Malay race of Indonesia, and the Polynesians of the outer islands. The Polynesians and Malays all speak languages of the Malayo-Polynesian group, while the languages of the Papuans belong partly to this group (Melanesian), partly to the unrelated languages ("Papuan") of New Guinea.[185] In spite of the fact that the greatest race cleavage in this region lies between the Papuans and the Polynesians, the major linguistic division is of Malayan on the one side, Melanesian and Polynesian on the other. [Footnote 185: Only the easternmost part of this island is occupied by Melanesian-speaking Papuans.] As with race, so with culture. Particularly in more primitive levels, where the secondarily unifying power of the "national"[186] ideal does not arise to disturb the flow of what we might call natural distributions, is it easy to show that language and culture are not intrinsically associated. Totally unrelated languages share in one culture, closely related languages--even a single language--belong to distinct culture spheres. There are many excellent examples in aboriginal America. The Athabaskan languages form as clearly unified, as structurally specialized, a group as any that I know of.[187] The speakers of these languages belong to four distinct culture areas--the simple hunting culture of western Canada and the interior of Alaska (Loucheux, Chipewyan), the buffalo culture of the Plains (Sarcee), the highly ritualized culture of the southwest (Navaho), and the peculiarly specialized culture of northwestern California (Hupa). The cultural adaptability of the Athabaskan-speaking peoples is in the strangest contrast to the inaccessibility to foreign influences of the languages themselves.[188] The Hupa Indians are very typical of the culture area to which they belong. Culturally identical with them are the neighboring Yurok and Karok. There is the liveliest intertribal intercourse between the Hupa, Yurok, and Karok, so much so that all three generally attend an important religious ceremony given by any one of them. It is difficult to say what elements in their combined culture belong in origin to this tribe or that, so much at one are they in communal action, feeling, and thought. But their languages are not merely alien to each other; they belong to three of the major American linguistic groups, each with an immense distribution on the northern continent. Hupa, as we have seen, is Athabaskan and, as such, is also distantly related to Haida (Queen Charlotte Islands) and Tlingit (southern Alaska); Yurok is one of the two isolated Californian languages of the Algonkin stock, the center of gravity of which lies in the region of the Great Lakes; Karok is the northernmost member of the Hokan group, which stretches far to the south beyond the confines of California and has remoter relatives along the Gulf of Mexico. [Footnote 186: A "nationality" is a major, sentimentally unified, group. The historical factors that lead to the feeling of national unity are various--political, cultural, linguistic, geographic, sometimes specifically religious. True racial factors also may enter in, though the accent on "race" has generally a psychological rather than a strictly biological value. In an area dominated by the national sentiment there is a tendency for language and culture to become uniform and specific, so that linguistic and cultural boundaries at least tend to coincide. Even at best, however, the linguistic unification is never absolute, while the cultural unity is apt to be superficial, of a quasi-political nature, rather than deep and far-reaching.] [Footnote 187: The Semitic languages, idiosyncratic as they are, are no more definitely ear-marked.] [Footnote 188: See page 209.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 188 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 6448.] Returning to English, most of us would readily admit, I believe, that the community of language between Great Britain and the United States is far from arguing a like community of culture. It is customary to say that they possess a common "Anglo-Saxon" cultural heritage, but are not many significant differences in life and feeling obscured by the tendency of the "cultured" to take this common heritage too much for granted? In so far as America is still specifically "English," it is only colonially or vestigially so; its prevailing cultural drift is partly towards autonomous and distinctive developments, partly towards immersion in the larger European culture of which that of England is only a particular facet. We cannot deny that the possession of a common language is still and will long continue to be a smoother of the way to a mutual cultural understanding between England and America, but it is very clear that other factors, some of them rapidly cumulative, are working powerfully to counteract this leveling influence. A common language cannot indefinitely set the seal on a common culture when the geographical, political, and economic determinants of the culture are no longer the same throughout its area. Language, race, and culture are not necessarily correlated. This does not mean that they never are. There is some tendency, as a matter of fact, for racial and cultural lines of cleavage to correspond to linguistic ones, though in any given case the latter may not be of the same degree of importance as the others. Thus, there is a fairly definite line of cleavage between the Polynesian languages, race, and culture on the one hand and those of the Melanesians on the other, in spite of a considerable amount of overlapping.[189] The racial and cultural division, however, particularly the former, are of major importance, while the linguistic division is of quite minor significance, the Polynesian languages constituting hardly more than a special dialectic subdivision of the combined Melanesian-Polynesian group. Still clearer-cut coincidences of cleavage may be found. The language, race, and culture of the Eskimo are markedly distinct from those of their neighbors;[190] in southern Africa the language, race, and culture of the Bushmen offer an even stronger contrast to those of their Bantu neighbors. Coincidences of this sort are of the greatest significance, of course, but this significance is not one of inherent psychological relation between the three factors of race, language, and culture. The coincidences of cleavage point merely to a readily intelligible historical association. If the Bantu and Bushmen are so sharply differentiated in all respects, the reason is simply that the former are relatively recent arrivals in southern Africa. The two peoples developed in complete isolation from each other; their present propinquity is too recent for the slow process of cultural and racial assimilation to have set in very powerfully. As we go back in time, we shall have to assume that relatively scanty populations occupied large territories for untold generations and that contact with other masses of population was not as insistent and prolonged as it later became. The geographical and historical isolation that brought about race differentiations was naturally favorable also to far-reaching variations in language and culture. The very fact that races and cultures which are brought into historical contact tend to assimilate in the long run, while neighboring languages assimilate each other only casually and in superficial respects[191], indicates that there is no profound causal relation between the development of language and the specific development of race and of culture. [Footnote 189: The Fijians, for instance, while of Papuan (negroid) race, are Polynesian rather than Melanesian in their cultural and linguistic affinities.] [Footnote 190: Though even here there is some significant overlapping. The southernmost Eskimo of Alaska were assimilated in culture to their Tlingit neighbors. In northeastern Siberia, too, there is no sharp cultural line between the Eskimo and the Chukchi.] [Footnote 191: The supersession of one language by another is of course not truly a matter of linguistic assimilation.] But surely, the wary reader will object, there must be some relation between language and culture, and between language and at least that intangible aspect of race that we call "temperament". Is it not inconceivable that the particular collective qualities of mind that have fashioned a culture are not precisely the same as were responsible for the growth of a particular linguistic morphology? This question takes us into the heart of the most difficult problems of social psychology. It is doubtful if any one has yet attained to sufficient clarity on the nature of the historical process and on the ultimate psychological factors involved in linguistic and cultural drifts to answer it intelligently. I can only very briefly set forth my own views, or rather my general attitude. It would be very difficult to prove that "temperament", the general emotional disposition of a people[192], is basically responsible for the slant and drift of a culture, however much it may manifest itself in an individual's handling of the elements of that culture. But granted that temperament has a certain value for the shaping of culture, difficult though it be to say just how, it does not follow that it has the same value for the shaping of language. It is impossible to show that the form of a language has the slightest connection with national temperament. Its line of variation, its drift, runs inexorably in the channel ordained for it by its historic antecedents; it is as regardless of the feelings and sentiments of its speakers as is the course of a river of the atmospheric humors of the landscape. I am convinced that it is futile to look in linguistic structure for differences corresponding to the temperamental variations which are supposed to be correlated with race. In this connection it is well to remember that the emotional aspect of our psychic life is but meagerly expressed in the build of language[193]. [Footnote 192: "Temperament" is a difficult term to work with. A great deal of what is loosely charged to national "temperament" is really nothing but customary behavior, the effect of traditional ideals of conduct. In a culture, for instance, that does not look kindly upon demonstrativeness, the natural tendency to the display of emotion becomes more than normally inhibited. It would be quite misleading to argue from the customary inhibition, a cultural fact, to the native temperament. But ordinarily we can get at human conduct only as it is culturally modified. Temperament in the raw is a highly elusive thing.] [Footnote 193: See pages 39, 40.] [Transcriber's note: Footnote 193 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 1256.] Language and our thought-grooves are inextricably interwoven, are, in a sense, one and the same. As there is nothing to show that there are significant racial differences in the fundamental conformation of thought, it follows that the infinite variability of linguistic form, another name for the infinite variability of the actual process of thought, cannot be an index of such significant racial differences. This is only apparently a paradox. The latent content of all languages is the same--the intuitive _science_ of experience. It is the manifest form that is never twice the same, for this form, which we call linguistic morphology, is nothing more nor less than a collective _art_ of thought, an art denuded of the irrelevancies of individual sentiment. At last analysis, then, language can no more flow from race as such than can the sonnet form. Nor can I believe that culture and language are in any true sense causally related. Culture may be defined as _what_ a society does and thinks. Language is a particular _how_ of thought. It is difficult to see what particular causal relations may be expected to subsist between a selected inventory of experience (culture, a significant selection made by society) and the particular manner in which the society expresses all experience. The drift of culture, another way of saying history, is a complex series of changes in society's selected inventory--additions, losses, changes of emphasis and relation. The drift of language is not properly concerned with changes of content at all, merely with changes in formal expression. It is possible, in thought, to change every sound, word, and concrete concept of a language without changing its inner actuality in the least, just as one can pour into a fixed mold water or plaster or molten gold. If it can be shown that culture has an innate form, a series of contours, quite apart from subject-matter of any description whatsoever, we have a something in culture that may serve as a term of comparison with and possibly a means of relating it to language. But until such purely formal patterns of culture are discovered and laid bare, we shall do well to hold the drifts of language and of culture to be non-comparable and unrelated processes. From this it follows that all attempts to connect particular types of linguistic morphology with certain correlated stages of cultural development are vain. Rightly understood, such correlations are rubbish. The merest _coup d'oeil_ verifies our theoretical argument on this point. Both simple and complex types of language of an indefinite number of varieties may be found spoken at any desired level of cultural advance. When it comes to linguistic form, Plato walks with the Macedonian swineherd, Confucius with the head-hunting savage of Assam. It goes without saying that the mere content of language is intimately related to culture. A society that has no knowledge of theosophy need have no name for it; aborigines that had never seen or heard of a horse were compelled to invent or borrow a word for the animal when they made his acquaintance. In the sense that the vocabulary of a language more or less faithfully reflects the culture whose purposes it serves it is perfectly true that the history of language and the history of culture move along parallel lines. But this superficial and extraneous kind of parallelism is of no real interest to the linguist except in so far as the growth or borrowing of new words incidentally throws light on the formal trends of the language. The linguistic student should never make the mistake of identifying a language with its dictionary. If both this and the preceding chapter have been largely negative in their contentions, I believe that they have been healthily so. There is perhaps no better way to learn the essential nature of speech than to realize what it is not and what it does not do. Its superficial connections with other historic processes are so close that it needs to be shaken free of them if we are to see it in its own right. Everything that we have so far seen to be true of language points to the fact that it is the most significant and colossal work that the human spirit has evolved--nothing short of a finished form of expression for all communicable experience. This form may be endlessly varied by the individual without thereby losing its distinctive contours; and it is constantly reshaping itself as is all art. Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations. XI LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Languages are more to us than systems of thought-transference. They are invisible garments that drape themselves about our spirit and give a predetermined form to all its symbolic expression. When the expression is of unusual significance, we call it literature.[194] Art is so personal an expression that we do not like to feel that it is bound to predetermined form of any sort. The possibilities of individual expression are infinite, language in particular is the most fluid of mediums. Yet some limitation there must be to this freedom, some resistance of the medium. In great art there is the illusion of absolute freedom. The formal restraints imposed by the material--paint, black and white, marble, piano tones, or whatever it may be--are not perceived; it is as though there were a limitless margin of elbow-room between the artist's fullest utilization of form and the most that the material is innately capable of. The artist has intuitively surrendered to the inescapable tyranny of the material, made its brute nature fuse easily with his conception.[195] The material "disappears" precisely because there is nothing in the artist's conception to indicate that any other material exists. For the time being, he, and we with him, move in the artistic medium as a fish moves in the water, oblivious of the existence of an alien atmosphere. No sooner, however, does the artist transgress the law of his medium than we realize with a start that there is a medium to obey. [Footnote 194: I can hardly stop to define just what kind of expression is "significant" enough to be called art or literature. Besides, I do not exactly know. We shall have to take literature for granted.] [Footnote 195: This "intuitive surrender" has nothing to do with subservience to artistic convention. More than one revolt in modern art has been dominated by the desire to get out of the material just what it is really capable of. The impressionist wants light and color because paint can give him just these; "literature" in painting, the sentimental suggestion of a "story," is offensive to him because he does not want the virtue of his particular form to be dimmed by shadows from another medium. Similarly, the poet, as never before, insists that words mean just what they really mean.] Language is the medium of literature as marble or bronze or clay are the materials of the sculptor. Since every language has its distinctive peculiarities, the innate formal limitations--and possibilities--of one literature are never quite the same as those of another. The literature fashioned out of the form and substance of a language has the color and the texture of its matrix. The literary artist may never be conscious of just how he is hindered or helped or otherwise guided by the matrix, but when it is a question of translating his work into another language, the nature of the original matrix manifests itself at once. All his effects have been calculated, or intuitively felt, with reference to the formal "genius" of his own language; they cannot be carried over without loss or modification. Croce[196] is therefore perfectly right in saying that a work of literary art can never be translated. Nevertheless literature does get itself translated, sometimes with astonishing adequacy. This brings up the question whether in the art of literature there are not intertwined two distinct kinds or levels of art--a generalized, non-linguistic art, which can be transferred without loss into an alien linguistic medium, and a specifically linguistic art that is not transferable.[197] I believe the distinction is entirely valid, though we never get the two levels pure in practice. Literature moves in language as a medium, but that medium comprises two layers, the latent content of language--our intuitive record of experience--and the particular conformation of a given language--the specific how of our record of experience. Literature that draws its sustenance mainly--never entirely--from the lower level, say a play of Shakespeare's, is translatable without too great a loss of character. If it moves in the upper rather than in the lower level--a fair example is a lyric of Swinburne's--it is as good as untranslatable. Both types of literary expression may be great or mediocre. [Footnote 196: See Benedetto Croce, "Aesthetic."] [Footnote 197: The question of the transferability of art productions seems to me to be of genuine theoretic interest. For all that we speak of the sacrosanct uniqueness of a given art work, we know very well, though we do not always admit it, that not all productions are equally intractable to transference. A Chopin étude is inviolate; it moves altogether in the world of piano tone. A Bach fugue is transferable into another set of musical timbres without serious loss of esthetic significance. Chopin plays with the language of the piano as though no other language existed (the medium "disappears"); Bach speaks the language of the piano as a handy means of giving outward expression to a conception wrought in the generalized language of tone.] There is really no mystery in the distinction. It can be clarified a little by comparing literature with science. A scientific truth is impersonal, in its essence it is untinctured by the particular linguistic medium in which it finds expression. It can as readily deliver its message in Chinese[198] as in English. Nevertheless it must have some expression, and that expression must needs be a linguistic one. Indeed the apprehension of the scientific truth is itself a linguistic process, for thought is nothing but language denuded of its outward garb. The proper medium of scientific expression is therefore a generalized language that may be defined as a symbolic algebra of which all known languages are translations. One can adequately translate scientific literature because the original scientific expression is itself a translation. Literary expression is personal and concrete, but this does not mean that its significance is altogether bound up with the accidental qualities of the medium. A truly deep symbolism, for instance, does not depend on the verbal associations of a particular language but rests securely on an intuitive basis that underlies all linguistic expression. The artist's "intuition," to use Croce's term, is immediately fashioned out of a generalized human experience--thought and feeling--of which his own individual experience is a highly personalized selection. The thought relations in this deeper level have no specific linguistic vesture; the rhythms are free, not bound, in the first instance, to the traditional rhythms of the artist's language. Certain artists whose spirit moves largely in the non-linguistic (better, in the generalized linguistic) layer even find a certain difficulty in getting themselves expressed in the rigidly set terms of their accepted idiom. One feels that they are unconsciously striving for a generalized art language, a literary algebra, that is related to the sum of all known languages as a perfect mathematical symbolism is related to all the roundabout reports of mathematical relations that normal speech is capable of conveying. Their art expression is frequently strained, it sounds at times like a translation from an unknown original--which, indeed, is precisely what it is. These artists--Whitmans and Brownings--impress us rather by the greatness of their spirit than the felicity of their art. Their relative failure is of the greatest diagnostic value as an index of the pervasive presence in literature of a larger, more intuitive linguistic medium than any particular language. [Footnote 198: Provided, of course, Chinese is careful to provide itself with the necessary scientific vocabulary. Like any other language, it can do so without serious difficulty if the need arises.] Nevertheless, human expression being what it is, the greatest--or shall we say the most satisfying--literary artists, the Shakespeares and Heines, are those who have known subconsciously to fit or trim the deeper intuition to the provincial accents of their daily speech. In them there is no effect of strain. Their personal "intuition" appears as a completed synthesis of the absolute art of intuition and the innate, specialized art of the linguistic medium. With Heine, for instance, one is under the illusion that the universe speaks German. The material "disappears." Every language is itself a collective art of expression. There is concealed in it a particular set of esthetic factors--phonetic, rhythmic, symbolic, morphological--which it does not completely share with any other language. These factors may either merge their potencies with those of that unknown, absolute language to which I have referred--this is the method of Shakespeare and Heine--or they may weave a private, technical art fabric of their own, the innate art of the language intensified or sublimated. The latter type, the more technically "literary" art of Swinburne and of hosts of delicate "minor" poets, is too fragile for endurance. It is built out of spiritualized material, not out of spirit. The successes of the Swinburnes are as valuable for diagnostic purposes as the semi-failures of the Brownings. They show to what extent literary art may lean on the collective art of the language itself. The more extreme technical practitioners may so over-individualize this collective art as to make it almost unendurable. One is not always thankful to have one's flesh and blood frozen to ivory. An artist must utilize the native esthetic resources of his speech. He may be thankful if the given palette of colors is rich, if the springboard is light. But he deserves no special credit for felicities that are the language's own. We must take for granted this language with all its qualities of flexibility or rigidity and see the artist's work in relation to it. A cathedral on the lowlands is higher than a stick on Mont Blanc. In other words, we must not commit the folly of admiring a French sonnet because the vowels are more sonorous than our own or of condemning Nietzsche's prose because it harbors in its texture combinations of consonants that would affright on English soil. To so judge literature would be tantamount to loving "Tristan und Isolde" because one is fond of the timbre of horns. There are certain things that one language can do supremely well which it would be almost vain for another to attempt. Generally there are compensations. The vocalism of English is an inherently drabber thing than the vowel scale of French, yet English compensates for this drawback by its greater rhythmical alertness. It is even doubtful if the innate sonority of a phonetic system counts for as much, as esthetic determinant, as the relations between the sounds, the total gamut of their similarities and contrasts. As long as the artist has the wherewithal to lay out his sequences and rhythms, it matters little what are the sensuous qualities of the elements of his material. The phonetic groundwork of a language, however, is only one of the features that give its literature a certain direction. Far more important are its morphological peculiarities. It makes a great deal of difference for the development of style if the language can or cannot create compound words, if its structure is synthetic or analytic, if the words of its sentences have considerable freedom of position or are compelled to fall into a rigidly determined sequence. The major characteristics of style, in so far as style is a technical matter of the building and placing of words, are given by the language itself, quite as inescapably, indeed, as the general acoustic effect of verse is given by the sounds and natural accents of the language. These necessary fundamentals of style are hardly felt by the artist to constrain his individuality of expression. They rather point the way to those stylistic developments that most suit the natural bent of the language. It is not in the least likely that a truly great style can seriously oppose itself to the basic form patterns of the language. It not only incorporates them, it builds on them. The merit of such a style as W.H. Hudson's or George Moore's[199] is that it does with ease and economy what the language is always trying to do. Carlylese, though individual and vigorous, is yet not style; it is a Teutonic mannerism. Nor is the prose of Milton and his contemporaries strictly English; it is semi-Latin done into magnificent English words. [Footnote 199: Aside from individual peculiarities of diction, the selection and evaluation of particular words as such.] It is strange how long it has taken the European literatures to learn that style is not an absolute, a something that is to be imposed on the language from Greek or Latin models, but merely the language itself, running in its natural grooves, and with enough of an individual accent to allow the artist's personality to be felt as a presence, not as an acrobat. We understand more clearly now that what is effective and beautiful in one language is a vice in another. Latin and Eskimo, with their highly inflected forms, lend themselves to an elaborately periodic structure that would be boring in English. English allows, even demands, a looseness that would be insipid in Chinese. And Chinese, with its unmodified words and rigid sequences, has a compactness of phrase, a terse parallelism, and a silent suggestiveness that would be too tart, too mathematical, for the English genius. While we cannot assimilate the luxurious periods of Latin nor the pointilliste style of the Chinese classics, we can enter sympathetically into the spirit of these alien techniques. I believe that any English poet of to-day would be thankful for the concision that a Chinese poetaster attains without effort. Here is an example:[200] [Footnote 200: Not by any means a great poem, merely a bit of occasional verse written by a young Chinese friend of mine when he left Shanghai for Canada.] Wu-river[201] stream mouth evening sun sink, North look Liao-Tung,[202] not see home. Steam whistle several noise, sky-earth boundless, Float float one reed out Middle-Kingdom. [Footnote 201: The old name of the country about the mouth of the Yangtsze.] [Footnote 202: A province of Manchuria.] These twenty-eight syllables may be clumsily interpreted: "At the mouth of the Yangtsze River, as the sun is about to sink, I look north toward Liao-Tung but do not see my home. The steam-whistle shrills several times on the boundless expanse where meet sky and earth. The steamer, floating gently like a hollow reed, sails out of the Middle Kingdom."[203] But we must not envy Chinese its terseness unduly. Our more sprawling mode of expression is capable of its own beauties, and the more compact luxuriance of Latin style has its loveliness too. There are almost as many natural ideals of literary style as there are languages. Most of these are merely potential, awaiting the hand of artists who will never come. And yet in the recorded texts of primitive tradition and song there are many passages of unique vigor and beauty. The structure of the language often forces an assemblage of concepts that impresses us as a stylistic discovery. Single Algonkin words are like tiny imagist poems. We must be careful not to exaggerate a freshness of content that is at least half due to our freshness of approach, but the possibility is indicated none the less of utterly alien literary styles, each distinctive with its disclosure of the search of the human spirit for beautiful form. [Footnote 203: I.e., China.] Probably nothing better illustrates the formal dependence of literature on language than the prosodic aspect of poetry. Quantitative verse was entirely natural to the Greeks, not merely because poetry grew up in connection with the chant and the dance,[204] but because alternations of long and short syllables were keenly live facts in the daily economy of the language. The tonal accents, which were only secondarily stress phenomena, helped to give the syllable its quantitative individuality. When the Greek meters were carried over into Latin verse, there was comparatively little strain, for Latin too was characterized by an acute awareness of quantitative distinctions. However, the Latin accent was more markedly stressed than that of Greek. Probably, therefore, the purely quantitative meters modeled after the Greek were felt as a shade more artificial than in the language of their origin. The attempt to cast English verse into Latin and Greek molds has never been successful. The dynamic basis of English is not quantity,[205] but stress, the alternation of accented and unaccented syllables. This fact gives English verse an entirely different slant and has determined the development of its poetic forms, is still responsible for the evolution of new forms. Neither stress nor syllabic weight is a very keen psychologic factor in the dynamics of French. The syllable has great inherent sonority and does not fluctuate significantly as to quantity and stress. Quantitative or accentual metrics would be as artificial in French as stress metrics in classical Greek or quantitative or purely syllabic metrics in English. French prosody was compelled to develop on the basis of unit syllable-groups. Assonance, later rhyme, could not but prove a welcome, an all but necessary, means of articulating or sectioning the somewhat spineless flow of sonorous syllables. English was hospitable to the French suggestion of rhyme, but did not seriously need it in its rhythmic economy. Hence rhyme has always been strictly subordinated to stress as a somewhat decorative feature and has been frequently dispensed with. It is no psychologic accident that rhyme came later into English than in French and is leaving it sooner.[206] Chinese verse has developed along very much the same lines as French verse. The syllable is an even more integral and sonorous unit than in French, while quantity and stress are too uncertain to form the basis of a metric system. Syllable-groups--so and so many syllables per rhythmic unit--and rhyme are therefore two of the controlling factors in Chinese prosody. The third factor, the alternation of syllables with level tone and syllables with inflected (rising or falling) tone, is peculiar to Chinese. [Footnote 204: Poetry everywhere is inseparable in its origins from the singing voice and the measure of the dance. Yet accentual and syllabic types of verse, rather than quantitative verse, seem to be the prevailing norms.] [Footnote 205: Quantitative distinctions exist as an objective fact. They have not the same inner, psychological value that they had in Greek.] [Footnote 206: Verhaeren was no slave to the Alexandrine, yet he remarked to Symons, _à propos_ of the translation of _Les Aubes_, that while he approved of the use of rhymeless verse in the English version, he found it "meaningless" in French.] To summarize, Latin and Greek verse depends on the principle of contrasting weights; English verse, on the principle of contrasting stresses; French verse, on the principles of number and echo; Chinese verse, on the principles of number, echo, and contrasting pitches. Each of these rhythmic systems proceeds from the unconscious dynamic habit of the language, falling from the lips of the folk. Study carefully the phonetic system of a language, above all its dynamic features, and you can tell what kind of a verse it has developed--or, if history has played pranks with its phychology, what kind of verse it should have developed and some day will. Whatever be the sounds, accents, and forms of a language, however these lay hands on the shape of its literature, there is a subtle law of compensations that gives the artist space. If he is squeezed a bit here, he can swing a free arm there. And generally he has rope enough to hang himself with, if he must. It is not strange that this should be so. Language is itself the collective art of expression, a summary of thousands upon thousands of individual intuitions. The individual goes lost in the collective creation, but his personal expression has left some trace in a certain give and flexibility that are inherent in all collective works of the human spirit. The language is ready, or can be quickly made ready, to define the artist's individuality. If no literary artist appears, it is not essentially because the language is too weak an instrument, it is because the culture of the people is not favorable to the growth of such personality as seeks a truly individual verbal expression. INDEX _Note_. Italicized entries are names of languages or groups of languages. A Abbreviation of stem, Accent, stress, as grammatical process, importance of, metrical value of "Accent," "Adam's apple," Adjective, Affixation, Affixing languages, African languages, pitch in, Agglutination, Agglutinative languages, Agglutinative-fusional, Agglutinative-isolating, _Algonkin_ languages (N. Amer.), Alpine race, Analogical leveling, Analytic tendency, Angles, _Anglo-Saxon_, Anglo-Saxon: culture, race, _Annamite_ (S.E. Asia), _Apache_ (N. Amer.), _Arabic_, _Armenian_, Art, language as, transferability of, Articulation: ease of, types of, drift toward, Articulations: laryngeal, manner of consonantal, nasal, oral, place of consonantal, vocalic, _Aryan_. See _Indo-European_. Aspect, Association of concepts and speech elements, Associations fundamental to speech, _Athabaskan_ languages (N. Amer.), Athabaskans, cultures of, _Attic_ dialect, Attribution, Auditory cycle in language, Australian culture, _Avestan_, B Bach, Baltic race, _Bantu_ languages (Africa), Bantus, _Basque_ (Pyrenees), _Bengali_ (India), _Berber_. See _Hamitic_. Bohemians, _Bontoc Igorot_ (Philippines), Borrowing, morphological, Borrowing, word, phonetic adaptation in, resistances to, _Breton_, Bronchial tubes, Browning, Buddhism, influence of, _Burmese_, _Bushman_ (S. Africa), Bushmen, C _Cambodgian_ (S.E. Asia), Carlyle, _Carrier_ (British Columbia), Case, See _Attribution_; _Object_; _Personal relations_; _Subject_. Case-system, history of, Caucasus, languages of, Celtic. See _Celts_. _Celtic_ languages, Celts, Brythonic, "Cerebral" articulations, Chaucer, English of, _Chimariko_ (N. California), _Chinese_: absence of affixes, analytic character, attribution, compounds, grammatical concepts illustrated, influence, "inner form,", pitch accent, radical words, relational use of material words, sounds, stress, structure, style, survivals, morphological, symbolism, verse, word duplication, word order, _Chinook_ (N. Amer.), _Chipewyan_ (N. Amer.), C. Indians, Chopin, Christianity, influence of, Chukchi, Classification: of concepts, rigid, of linguistic types, See _Structure, linguistic_. "Clicks," Composition, absence of, in certain languages, types of, word order as related to, Concepts, Concepts, grammatical: analysis of, in sentence, classification of, concrete, concrete relational, concreteness in, varying degree of, derivational, derivational, abstract, essential, grouping of, non-logical, lack of expression of certain, pure relational, radical, redistribution of, relational, thinning-out of significance of, types of, typical categories of, See _Structure, linguistic_. Concord, Concrete concepts. See _Concepts_. Conflict, Consonantal change, Consonants, combinations of, Coördinate sentences, _Corean_, Croce, Benedetto, Culture, language and, language as aspect of, language, race and, reflection of history of, in language, Culture areas, D _Danish_, Demonstrative ideas, Dental articulations, Derivational concepts. See _Concepts_. Determinative structure, Dialects: causes of, compromise between, distinctness of, drifts in, diverging, drifts in, parallel, splitting up of, unity of, Diffusion, morphological, Diphthongs, Drift, linguistic, components of, determinants of, in English, direction of, direction of, illustrated in English, examples of general, in English, parallelisms in, speed of, See _Phonetic Law_; _Phonetic processes_. Duplication of words, _Dutch_, E Elements of speech, Emotion, expression of: involuntary, linguistic, _English_: agentive suffix, analogical leveling, analytic tendency, animate and inanimate, aspect, attribution, case, history of, compounds, concepts, grammatical, in sentence, concepts, passage of concrete into derivational, consonantal change, culture of speakers of, desire, expression of, diminutive suffix, drift, duplication, word, esthetic qualities, feeling-tone, form, word, French influence on, function and form, fusing and juxtaposing, gender, Greek influence on, influence of, influence on, morphological, lack of deep, interrogative words, invariable words, tendency to, infixing, Latin influence on, loan-words, modality, number, order, word, parts of speech, patterning, formal, personal relations, phonetic drifts, history of, phonetic leveling, phonetic pattern, plurality, race of speakers of, reference, definiteness of, relational words, relations, genetic, rhythm, sentence, analysis of, sentence, dependence of word on, sound-imitative words, sounds, stress and pitch, structure, survivals, morphological, symbolism, syntactic adhesions, syntactic values, transfer of, tense, verb, syntactic relations of, verse, vocalic change, word and element, analysis of, _English, Middle_, English people, _Eskimo_, Eskimos, _Ewe_ (Guinea coast, Africa), Expiratory sounds, "Explosives," F Faucal position, Feeling-tones of words, Fijians, _Finnish_, Finns, _Flemish_, "Foot, feet" (English), history of, Form, cultural, feeling of language for, "inner," Form, linguistic: conservatism of, differences of, mechanical origin of, elaboration of, reasons for, function and, independence of, grammatical concepts embodied in, grammatical processes embodying, permanence of different aspects of, relative, twofold consideration of, See _Structure, linguistic_. Form-classes, See _Gender_. Formal units of speech, "Formlessness, inner," _Fox_ (N. Amer.), _French_: analytical tendency, esthetic qualities, gender, influence, order, word, plurality, sounds, sounds as words, single, stress, structure, tense forms, verse, French, Norman, French people, Freud, Fricatives, _Frisian_, _Ful_ (Soudan), Function, independence of form and, Functional units of speech, Fusion, Fusional languages, See _Fusion_. Fusional-agglutinative, Fusional-isolating, "Fuss, Füsse" (German), history of, G _Gaelic_, Gender, _German_: French influence on, grammatical concepts in sentence, Latin influence on, phonetic drifts, history of, plurality, relations, sound-imitative words, sounds, tense forms, "umlaut," unanalyzable words, resistance to, _German, High_, _German, Middle High_, _German, Old High_, _Germanic_ languages, _Germanic, West_, Germans, Gesture languages, Ginneken, Jac van, Glottal cords, action of, Glottal stop, _Gothic_, Grammar, Grammatical element, Grammatical concepts. See _Concepts, grammatical_. Grammatical processes: classified by, languages, particular, development by each language of, types of, variety of, use in one language of, _Greek_, dialectic history of, _Greek, classical_: affixing, compounds, concord, infixing, influence, pitch accent, plurality, reduplicated perfects, stress, structure, synthetic character, verse, _Greek, modern_, H _Haida_ (British Columbia), _Hamitic_ languages (N. Africa), _Hausa_ (Soudan), _Hebrew_, Heine, Hesitation, History, linguistic, _Hokan_ languages (N. Amer.), _Hottentot_ (S. Africa), Hudson, W.H., Humming, _Hupa_ (N. California), Hupa Indians, I _Icelandic, Old_, India, languages of, Indians, American, languages of, See also _Algonkin_; _Athabaskan_; _Chimariko_; _Chinook_; _Eskimo_; _Fox_; _Haida_; _Hokan_; _Hupa_; _Iroquois_; _Karok_; _Kwakiutl_; _Nahuatl_; _Nass_; _Navaho_; _Nootka_; _Ojibwa_; _Paiute_; _Sahaptin_; _Salinan_; _Shasta_; _Siouan_; _Sioux_; _Takelma_; _Tlingit_; _Tsimshian_; _Washo_; _Yana_; _Yokuts_; _Yurok_. _Indo-Chinese_ languages, _Indo-European_, _Indo-Iranian_ languages, Infixes, Inflection. See _Inflective languages_. Inflective languages, Influence: cultural, reflected in language, morphological, of alien language, phonetic, of alien language, Inspiratory sounds, Interjections, Irish, _Irish_, _Iroquois_ (N. Amer.), Isolating languages, _Italian_, "Its," history of, J _Japanese_, Jutes, Juxtaposing. See _Agglutination_. K _Karok_ (N. California), K. Indians, _Khmer_. See _Cambodgian_. Knowledge, source of, as grammatical category, _Koine_, _Kwakiutl_ (British Columbia), L Labial trills, Language: associations in, associations underlying elements of, auditory cycle in, concepts expressed in, a cultural function, definition of, diversity of, elements of, emotion expressed in, feeling-tones in, grammatical concepts of, grammatical processes of, historical aspects of, imitations of sounds, not evolved from, influences on, exotic, interjections, not evolved from, literature and, modifications and transfers of typical form of, an "overlaid" function, psycho-physical basis of, race, culture and, simplification of experience in, sounds of, structure of, thought and, universality of, variability of, volition expressed in, Larynx, Lateral sounds, _Latin_: attribution, concord, infixing, influence of, objective _-m_, order of words, plurality, prefixes and suffixes, reduplicated perfects, relational concepts expressed, sentence-word, sound as word in, single, structure, style, suffixing character, syntactic nature of sentence, synthetic character, verse, word and element in, analysis of, _Lettish_, Leveling, phonetic, See _Analogical leveling_. Lips, action of, Literature: compensations in, formal, language and, levels in, linguistic, medium of, language as, science and, Literature, determinants of: linguistic, metrical, morphological, phonetic, _Lithuanian_, Localism, Localization of speech, _Loucheux_ (N. Amer.), L. Indians, Lungs, Luther, German of, M _Malay_, M. race, _Malayan_, _Malayo-Polynesian_ languages, _Manchu_, _Manx_, "Maus, Mäuse" (German), history of, Mediterranean race, _Melanesian_ languages, Meter. See _Verse_. Milton, Mixed-relational languages, complex, simple, Modality, _Mon-Khmer_ (S.E. Asia), Moore, George, Morphological features, diffusion of, Morphology. See _Structure, linguistic_. "Mouse, mice" (English), history of, _Munda_ languages (E. India), Murmuring, Mutation, vocalic, N _Nahuatl_ (Mexico), Nasal sounds, "Nasal twang," Nasalized stops, _Nass_ (British Columbia), Nationality, _Navaho_ (Arizona, New Mexico), N. Indians, Nietzsche, _Nootka_ (Vancouver Id.), Nose, action of, Noun, Nouns, classification of, Number, See _Plurality_. O Object, See _Personal relations_. _Ojibwa_ (N, Amer.), Onomatopoetic theory of origin of speech, Oral sounds, Order, word, composition as related to, fixed, English tendency, sentence molded by, significance of, fundamental, Organs of speech, action of, P _Paiute_ (N. Amer.), Palate, action of soft, articulations of, _Pali_ (India), _Papuan_ languages, Papuans, Parts of speech, Pattern: formal, phonetic, _Persian_, Person, Personal relations, Phonetic adaptation, Phonetic diffusion, Phonetic law: basis of, direction of, examples of, influence of, on morphology, influence of morphology on, regularity of, significance of, spread of, slow, See _Leveling, phonetic_; _Pattern, phonetic_. Phonetic processes, form caused by, differences of, parallel drifts in, Pitch, grammatical use of, metrical use of, production of, significant differences in, Plains Indians, gesture language of, "Plattdeutsch," Plurality: classification of concept of, variable, a concrete relational category, a derivational or radical concept, expression of, multiple, See _Number_. Poles, _Polynesian_, Polynesians, Polysynthetic languages, _Portuguese_, Predicate, Prefixes, Prefixing languages, Preposition, Psycho-physical aspect of speech, Pure-relational languages, complex, simple, Q Qualifying concepts. See _Concepts, derivational_. Quality: of speech sounds, of individual's voice, Quantity of speech sounds, R Race, language and, lack of correspondence between, language and, theoretical relation between, language as correlated with, English, language, culture and, correspondence between, language, culture and, independence of, Radical concepts. See _Concepts_. Radical element, Radical word, "Reading from the lips," Reduplication, Reference, definite and indefinite, Repetition of stem, See _Reduplication_. Repression of impulse, Rhyme, Rolled consonants, _Romance_ languages, Root, _Roumanian_, Rounded vowels, _Russian_, S _Sahaptin_ languages (N. Amer.), _Salinan_ (S.W. California), _Sanskrit_ (India), Sarcee Indians, _Saxon_: _Low_, _Old_, _Upper_, Saxons, _Scandinavian_, See _Danish_; _Icelandic_; _Swedish_. Scandinavians, Scotch, _Scotch, Lowland_, _Semitic languages_, Sentence, binding words into, methods of, stress in, influence of, word-order in, Sequence. See _Order of words_. Shakespeare: art of, English of, _Shasta_ (N. California), _Shilh_ (Morocco), _Shilluk_ (Nile headwaters), _Siamese_, Singing, _Siouan_ languages (N. Amer.), _Sioux_ (Dakota), _Slavic_ languages, Slavs, _Somali_ (E. Africa), _Soudanese_ languages, Sound-imitative words, Sounds of speech, adjustments involved in, muscular, adjustments involved in certain, inhibition of, basic importance of, classification of, combinations of, conditioned appearance of, dynamics of, illusory feelings in regard to, "inner" or "ideal" system of, place in phonetic pattern of, production of, values of, psychological, variability of, _Spanish_, Speech. See _Language_. Spirants, Splitting of sounds, Stem, Stock, linguistic, Stopped consonants (_or_ stops), Stress. See _Accent_. Structure, linguistic, conservatism of, differences of, intuitional forms of, Structure, linguistic, types of: classification of, by character of concepts, by degree of fusion, by degree of synthesis, by formal processes, from threefold standpoint, into "formal" and "formless," classifying, difficulties in, examples of, mixed, reality of, validity of conceptual, historical test of, Style, Subject, See _Personal relations_. Subject of discourse, Suffixes, Suffixing, Suffixing languages, Survivals, morphological, _Swedish_, Swinburne, Swiss, French, Syllabifying, Symbolic languages, Symbolic processes, Symbolic-fusional, Symbolic-isolating, Symons, Syntactic adhesions, Syntactic relations: primary methods of expressing, transfer of values in, See _Concepts, relational_; _Concord_; _Order, word_; _Personal relations_; _Sentence_. Synthetic tendency, T _Takelma_ (S.W. Oregon), Teeth, articulations of, Telegraph code, Temperament, Tense, Teutonic race. See _Baltic race_. Thinking, types of, Thought, relation of language to, Throat, articulations of, _Tibetan_, Time. See _Tense_. _Tlingit_ (S. Alaska), T. Indians, Tongue, action of, Transfer, types of linguistic, Trills, _Tsimshian_ (British Columbia), See _Nass_. _Turkish_, Types, linguistic, change of, See _Structure, linguistic_. U _Ugro-Finnic_, "Umlaut." See _Mutation, vocalic_. United States: culture in, race in, _Ural-Altaic_ languages, Uvula, V Values: "hesitation," morphologic, phonetic, variability in, of components of drift, Variations, linguistic: dialect, historical, individual, Verb, syntactic relations expressed in, Verhaeren, Verse: accentual, linguistic determinants of, quantitative, syllabic, Vocalic change, See _Mutation, vocalic_. Voice, production of, Voiced sounds, Voiceless: laterals, nasals, sounds, trills, vowels, "Voicelessness," production of, Volition expressed in speech, Vowels, W Walking, a biological function, _Washo_ (Nevada), _Welsh_, Westermann, D., Whisper, Whitman, "Whom," use and drift of, Word, definition of, syntactic origin of complex, "twilight" type of, types of, formal, Written language, Y _Yana_ (N. California), _Yiddish_, _Yokuts_ (S. California), _Yurok_ (N.W. California), Y. Indians, Z _Zaconic_ dialect of Greek, 
9306	----	and PG Distributed Proofreaders AESTHETIC AS SCIENCE OF EXPRESSION AND GENERAL LINGUISTIC TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF BENEDETTO CROCE BY DOUGLAS AINSLIE B.A. (OXON.) 1909 THE AESTHETIC IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR TO THE MEMORY OF HIS PARENTS PASQUALE AND LUISA SIPARI AND OF HIS SISTER MARIA NOTE I give here a close translation of the complete _Theory of Aesthetic_, and in the Historical Summary, with the consent of the author, an abbreviation of the historical portion of the original work. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION THEORY I INTUITION AND EXPRESSION Intuitive knowledge--Its independence in respect to the intellect-- Intuition and perception--Intuition and the concepts of space and time--Intuition and sensation--Intuition and association--Intuition and representation--Intuition and expression--Illusions as to their difference--Identity of intuition and expression. II INTUITION AND ART Corollaries and explanations--Identity of art and of intuitive knowledge-- No specific difference--No difference of intensity--Difference extensive and empirical--Artistic genius--Content and form in Aesthetic--Critique of the imitation of nature and of the artistic illusion--Critique of art conceived as a sentimental, not a theoretic fact--The origin of Aesthetic, and sentiment--Critique of the theory of Aesthetic senses--Unity and indivisibility of the work of art--Art as deliverer. III ART AND PHILOSOPHY Indissolubility of intellective and of intuitive knowledge--Critique of the negations of this thesis--Art and science--Content and form: another meaning. Prose and poetry--The relation of first and second degree--Inexistence of other cognoscitive forms--Historicity--Identity and difference in respect of art--Historical criticism--Historical scepticism--Philosophy as perfect science. The so-called natural sciences, and their limits--The phenomenon and the noumenon. IV HISTORICISM AND INTELLECTUALISM IN AESTHETIC Critique of the verisimilar and of naturalism--Critique of ideas in art, of art as thesis, and of the typical--Critique of the symbol and of the allegory--Critique of the theory of artistic and literary categories--Errors derived from this theory in judgments on art-- Empirical meaning of the divisions of the categories. V ANALOGOUS ERRORS IN HISTORY AND IN LOGIC Critique of the philosophy of History--Aesthetic invasions of Logic-- Logic in its essence--Distinction between logical and non-logical judgments--The syllogism--False Logic and true Aesthetic--Logic reformed. VI THEORETIC AND PRACTICAL ACTIVITY The will--The will as ulterior grade in respect of knowledge--Objections and explanations--Critique of practical judgments or judgments of value--Exclusion of the practical from the aesthetic--Critique of the theory of the end of art and of the choice of content--Practical innocence of art--Independence of art--Critique of the saying: the style is the man--Critique of the concept of sincerity in art. VII ANALOGY BETWEEN THE THEORETIC AND THE PRACTICAL The two forms of practical activity--The economically useful-- Distinction between the useful and the technical--Distinction between the useful and the egoistic--Economic and moral volition--Pure economicity--The economic side of morality--The merely economical and the error of the morally indifferent--Critique of utilitarianism and the reform of Ethic and of Economic--Phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity. VIII EXCLUSION OF OTHER SPIRITUAL FORMS The system of the spirit--The forms of genius--Inexistence of a fifth form of activity--Law; sociality--Religiosity--Metaphysic--Mental imagination and the intuitive intellect--Mystical Aesthetic--Mortality and immortality of art. IX INDIVISIBILITY OF EXPRESSION INTO MODES OR GRADES AND CRITIQUE OF RHETORIC The characteristics of art--Inexistence of modes of expression-- Impossibility of translations--Critique of rhetorical categories-- Empirical meaning of rhetorical categories--Their use as synonyms of the aesthetic fact--Their use as indicating various aesthetic imperfections--Their use as transcending the aesthetic fact, and in the service of science--Rhetoric in schools--Similarities of expressions--Relative possibility of translations. X AESTHETIC SENTIMENTS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE UGLY Various meanings of the word sentiment--Sentiment as activity-- Identification of sentiment with economic activity--Critique of hedonism--Sentiment as concomitant of every form of activity--Meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of sentiments--Value and disvalue: the contraries and their union--The beautiful as the value of expression, or expression without adjunct--The ugly and the elements of beauty that constitute it--Illusion that there exist expressions neither beautiful nor ugly--Proper aesthetic sentiments and concomitant and accidental sentiments--Critique of apparent sentiments. XI CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC HEDONISM Critique of the beautiful as what pleases the superior senses--Critique of the theory of play--Critique of the theory of sexuality and of the triumph--Critique of the Aesthetic of the sympathetic--Meaning in it of content and of form--Aesthetic hedonism and moralism--The rigoristic negation, and the pedagogic negation of art--Critique of pure beauty. XII THE AESTHETIC OF THE SYMPATHETIC AND PSEUDO-AESTHETIC CONCEPTS Pseudo-aesthetic concepts, and the Aesthetic of the sympathetic-- Critique of the theory of the ugly in art and of its surmounting-- Pseudo-aesthetic concepts appertain to Psychology--Impossibility of rigorous definitions of these--Examples: definitions of the sublime, of the comic, of the humorous--Relation between those concepts and aesthetic concepts. XIII THE SO-CALLED PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE AND IN ART Aesthetic activity and physical concepts--Expression in the aesthetic sense, and expression in the naturalistic sense--Intuitions and memory--The production of aids to memory--The physically beautiful-- Content and form: another meaning--Natural beauty and artificial beauty--Mixed beauty--Writings--The beautiful that is free and that which is not free--Critique of the beautiful that is not free-- Stimulants of production. XIV ERRORS ARISING FROM THE CONFUSION BETWEEN PHYSIC AND AESTHETIC Critique of aesthetic associationism--Critique of aesthetic physic-- Critique of the theory of the beauty of the human body--Critique of the beauty of geometrical figures--Critique of another aspect of the imitation of nature--Critique of the theory of the elementary forms of the beautiful--Critique of the search for the objective conditions of the beautiful--The astrology of Aesthetic. XV THE ACTIVITY OF EXTERNALIZATION. TECHNIQUE AND THE THEORY OF THE ARTS The practical activity of externalization--The technique of externalization--Technical theories of single arts--Critique of the classifications of the arts--Relation of the activity of externalization with utility and morality. XVI TASTE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF ART Aesthetic judgment. Its identity with aesthetic reproduction-- Impossibility of divergences--Identity of taste and genius--Analogy with the other activities--Critique of absolutism (intellectualism) and of aesthetic relativism--Critique of relative relativism--Objections founded on the variation of the stimulus and of the psychic disposition-- Critique of the distinction of signs as natural and conventional--The surmounting of variety--Restorations and historical interpretation. XVII THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE AND OF ART Historical criticism in literature and art. Its importance--Artistic and literary history. Its distinction from historical criticism and from the aesthetic judgment--The method of artistic and literary history--Critique of the problem of the origin of art--The criterion of progress and history--Inexistence of a single line of progress in artistic and literary history--Errors in respect of this law--Other meanings of the word "progress" in relation to Aesthetic. XVIII CONCLUSION: IDENTITY OF LINGUISTIC AND AESTHETIC Summary of the inquiry--Identity of Linguistic with Aesthetic-- Aesthetic formulation of linguistic problems. Nature of language-- Origin of language and its development--Relation between Grammatic and Logic--Grammatical categories or parts of speech--Individuality of speech and the classification of languages--Impossibility of a normative Grammatic--Didactic organisms--Elementary linguistic elements, or roots--The aesthetic judgment and the model language-- Conclusion. HISTORICAL SUMMARY Aesthetic ideas in Graeco-Roman antiquity--In the Middle Age and at the Renaissance--Fermentation of thought in the seventeenth century--Aesthetic ideas in Cartesianism, Leibnitzianism, and in the "Aesthetic" of Baumgarten--G.B. Vico--Aesthetic doctrines in the eighteenth century--Emmanuel Kant--The Aesthetic of Idealism with Schiller and Hegel--Schopenhauer and Herbart--Friedrich Schleiermacher--The philosophy of language with Humboldt and Steinthal--Aesthetic in France, England, and Italy during the first half of the nineteenth century--Francesco de Sanctis--The Aesthetic of the epigoni--Positivism and aesthetic naturalism--Aesthetic psychologism and other recent tendencies--Glance at the history of certain particular doctrines--Conclusion. APPENDIX Translation of the lecture on Pure Intuition and the lyrical nature of art, delivered by Benedetto Croce before the International Congress of Philosophy at Heidelberg. INTRODUCTION There are always Americas to be discovered: the most interesting in Europe. I can lay no claim to having discovered an America, but I do claim to have discovered a Columbus. His name is Benedetto Croce, and he dwells on the shores of the Mediterranean, at Naples, city of the antique Parthenope. Croce's America cannot be expressed in geographical terms. It is more important than any space of mountain and river, of forest and dale. It belongs to the kingdom of the spirit, and has many provinces. That province which most interests me, I have striven in the following pages to annex to the possessions of the Anglo-Saxon race; an act which cannot be blamed as predatory, since it may be said of philosophy more truly than of love, that "to divide is not to take away." The Historical Summary will show how many a brave adventurer has navigated the perilous seas of speculation upon Art, how Aristotle's marvellous insight gave him glimpses of its beauty, how Plato threw away its golden fruit, how Baumgarten sounded the depth of its waters, Kant sailed along its coast without landing, and Vico hoisted the Italian flag upon its shore. But Benedetto Croce has been the first thoroughly to explore it, cutting his way inland through the tangled undergrowth of imperfect thought. He has measured its length and breadth, marked out and described its spiritual features with minute accuracy. The country thus won to philosophy will always bear his name, _Estetica di Croce_, a new America. It was at Naples, in the winter of 1907, that I first saw the Philosopher of Aesthetic. Benedetto Croce, although born in the Abruzzi, Province of Aquila (1866), is essentially a Neapolitan, and rarely remains long absent from the city, on the shore of that magical sea, where once Ulysses sailed, and where sometimes yet (near Amalfi) we may hear the Syrens sing their song. But more wonderful than the song of any Syren seems to me the Theory of Aesthetic as the Science of Expression, and that is why I have overcome the obstacles that stood between me and the giving of this theory, which in my belief is the truth, to the English-speaking world. No one could have been further removed than myself, as I turned over at Naples the pages of _La Critica_, from any idea that I was nearing the solution of the problem of Art. All my youth it had haunted me. As an undergraduate at Oxford I had caught the exquisite cadence of Walter Pater's speech, as it came from his very lips, or rose like the perfume of some exotic flower from the ribbed pages of the _Renaissance_. Seeming to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, he solved it not--only delighted with pure pleasure of poetry and of subtle thought as he led one along the pathways of his Enchanted Garden, where I shall always love to tread. Oscar Wilde, too, I had often heard at his best, the most brilliant talker of our time, his wit flashing in the spring sunlight of Oxford luncheon-parties as now in his beautiful writings, like the jewelled rapier of Mercutio. But his works, too, will be searched in vain by the seeker after definite aesthetic truth. With A.C. Swinburne I had sat and watched the lava that yet flowed from those lips that were kissed in youth by all the Muses. Neither from him nor from J.M. Whistler's brilliant aphorisms on art could be gathered anything more than the exquisite pleasure of the moment: the _monochronos haedonae_. Of the great pedagogues, I had known, but never sat at the feet of Jowett, whom I found far less inspiring than any of the great men above mentioned. Among the dead, I had studied Herbert Spencer and Matthew Arnold, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Guyau: I had conversed with that living Neo-Latin, Anatole France, the modern Rousseau, and had enjoyed the marvellous irony and eloquence of his writings, which, while they delight the society in which he lives, may well be one of the causes that lead to its eventual destruction. The solution of the problem of Aesthetic is not in the gift of the Muses. To return to Naples. As I looked over those pages of the bound volumes of _La Critica_. I soon became aware that I was in the presence of a mind far above the ordinary level of literary criticism. The profound studies of Carducci, of d'Annunzio, and of Pascoli (to name but three), in which those writers passed before me in all their strength and in all their weakness, led me to devote several days to the _Critica_. At the end of that time I was convinced that I had made a discovery, and wrote to the philosopher, who owns and edits that journal. In response to his invitation, I made my way, on a sunny day in November, past the little shops of the coral-vendors that surround, like a necklace, the Rione de la Bellezza, and wound zigzag along the over-crowded Toledo. I knew that Signor Croce lived in the old part of the town, but had hardly anticipated so remarkable a change as I experienced on passing beneath the great archway and finding myself in old Naples. This has already been described elsewhere, and I will not here dilate upon this world within a world, having so much of greater interest to tell in a brief space. I will merely say that the costumes here seemed more picturesque, the dark eyes flashed more dangerously than elsewhere, there was a quaint life, an animation about the streets, different from anything I had known before. As I climbed the lofty stone steps of the Palazzo to the floor where dwells the philosopher of Aesthetic I felt as though I had stumbled into the eighteenth century and were calling on Giambattista Vico. After a brief inspection by a young man with the appearance of a secretary, I was told that I was expected, and admitted into a small room opening out of the hall. Thence, after a few moments' waiting, I was led into a much larger room. The walls were lined all round with bookcases, barred and numbered, filled with volumes forming part of the philosopher's great library. I had not long to wait. A door opened behind me on my left, and a rather short, thick-set man advanced to greet me, and pronouncing my name at the same time with a slight foreign accent, asked me to be seated beside him. After the interchange of a few brief formulae of politeness in French, our conversation was carried on in Italian, and I had a better opportunity of studying my host's air and manner. His hands he held clasped before him, but frequently released them, to make those vivid gestures with which Neapolitans frequently clinch their phrase. His most remarkable feature was his eyes, of a greenish grey: extraordinary eyes, not for beauty, but for their fathomless depth, and for the sympathy which one felt welling up in them from the soul beneath. This was especially noticeable as our conversation fell upon the question of Art and upon the many problems bound up with it. I do not know how long that first interview lasted, but it seemed a few minutes only, during which was displayed before me a vast panorama of unknown height and headland, of league upon league of forest, with its bright-winged birds of thought flying from tree to tree down the long avenues into the dim blue vistas of the unknown. I returned with my brain awhirl, as though I had been in fairyland, and when I looked at the second edition of the _Estetica_, with his inscription, I was sure of it. These lines will suffice to show how the translation of the _Estetica_ originated from the acquaintance thus formed, which has developed into friendship. I will now make brief mention of Benedetto Croce's other work, especially in so far as it throws light upon the _Aesthetic_. For this purpose, besides articles in Italian and German reviews, I have made use of the excellent monograph on the philosopher, by G. Prezzolini.[1] First, then, it will be well to point out that the _Aesthetic_ forms part of a complete philosophical system, to which the author gives the general title of "Philosophy of the Spirit." The _Aesthetic_ is the first of the three volumes. The second is the _Logic_, the third the _Philosophy of the Practical_. In the _Logic_, as elsewhere in the system, Croce combats that false conception, by which natural science, in the shape of psychology, makes claim to philosophy, and formal logic to absolute value. The thesis of the _pure concept_ cannot be discussed here. It is connected with the logic of evolution as discovered by Hegel, and is the only logic which contains in itself the interpretation and the continuity of reality. Bergson in his _L'Evolution Créatrice_ deals with logic in a somewhat similar manner. I recently heard him lecture on the distinction between spirit and matter at the Collège de France, and those who read French and Italian will find that both Croce's _Logic_ and the book above mentioned by the French philosopher will amply repay their labour. The conception of nature as something lying outside the spirit which informs it, as the non-being which aspires to being, underlies all Croce's thought, and we find constant reference to it throughout his philosophical system. With regard to the third volume, the _Philosophy of the Practical_, it is impossible here to give more than a hint of its treasures. I merely refer in passing to the treatment of the will, which is posited as a unity _inseparable from the volitional act_. For Croce there is no difference between action and intention, means and end: they are one thing, inseparable as the intuition-expression of Aesthetic. The _Philosophy of the Practical_ is a logic and science of the will, not a normative science. Just as in Aesthetic the individuality of expression made models and rules impossible, so in practical life the individuality of action removes the possibility of catalogues of virtues, of the exact application of laws, of the existence of practical judgments and judgments of value _previous to action_. The reader will probably ask here: But what, then, becomes of morality? The question will be found answered in the _Theory of Aesthetic_, and I will merely say here that Croce's thesis of the _double degree_ of the practical activity, economic and moral, is one of the greatest contributions to modern thought. Just as it is proved in the _Theory of Aesthetic_ that the _concept_ depends upon the _intuition_, which is the first degree, the primary and indispensable thing, so it is proved in the _Philosophy of the Practical_ that _Morality_ or _Ethic_ depends upon _Economic_, which is the _first_ degree of the practical activity. The volitional act is _always economic_, but true freedom of the will exists and consists in conforming not merely to economic, but to moral conditions, to the human spirit, which is greater than any individual. Here we are face to face with the ethics of Christianity, to which Croce accords all honour. This Philosophy of the Spirit is symptomatic of the happy reaction of the twentieth century against the crude materialism of the second half of the nineteenth. It is the spirit which gives to the work of art its value, not this or that method of arrangement, this or that tint or cadence, which can always be copied by skilful plagiarists: not so the _spirit_ of the creator. In England we hear too much of (natural) science, which has usurped the very name of Philosophy. The natural sciences are very well in their place, but discoveries such as aviation are of infinitely less importance to the race than the smallest addition to the philosophy of the spirit. Empirical science, with the collusion of positivism, has stolen the cloak of philosophy and must be made to give it back. Among Croce's other important contributions to thought must be mentioned his definition of History as being aesthetic and differing from Art solely in that history represents the _real_, art the _possible_. In connection with this definition and its proof, the philosopher recounts how he used to hold an opposite view. Doing everything thoroughly, he had prepared and written out a long disquisition on this thesis, which was already in type, when suddenly, from the midst of his meditations, _the truth flashed upon him_. He saw for the first time clearly that history cannot be a science, since, like art, it always deals with the particular. Without a moment's hesitation he hastened to the printers and bade them break up the type. This incident is illustrative of the sincerity and good faith of Benedetto Croce. One knows him to be severe for the faults and weaknesses of others, merciless for his own. Yet though severe, the editor of _La Critica_ is uncompromisingly just, and would never allow personal dislike or jealousy, or any extrinsic consideration, to stand in the way of fair treatment to the writer concerned. Many superficial English critics might benefit considerably by attention to this quality in one who is in other respects also so immeasurably their superior. A good instance of this impartiality is his critique of Schopenhauer, with whose system he is in complete disagreement, yet affords him full credit for what of truth is contained in his voluminous writings.[2] Croce's education was largely completed in Germany, and on account of their thoroughness he has always been an upholder of German methods. One of his complaints against the Italian Positivists is that they only read second-rate works in French or at the most "the dilettante booklets published in such profusion by the Anglo-Saxon press." This tendency towards German thought, especially in philosophy, depends upon the fact of the former undoubted supremacy of Germany in that field, but Croce does not for a moment admit the inferiority of the Neo-Latin races, and adds with homely humour in reference to Germany, that we "must not throw away the baby with the bath-water"! Close, arduous study and clear thought are the only key to scientific (philosophical) truth, and Croce never begins an article for a newspaper without the complete collection of the works of the author to be criticized, and his own elaborate notes on the table before him. Schopenhauer said there were three kinds of writers--those who write without thinking, the great majority; those who think while they write, not very numerous; those who write after they have thought, very rare. Croce certainly belongs to the last division, and, as I have said, always feeds his thought upon complete erudition. The bibliography of the works consulted for the _Estetica_ alone, as printed at the end of the Italian edition, extends to many pages and contains references to works in any way dealing with the subject in all the European languages. For instance, Croce has studied Mr. B. Bosanquet's eclectic works on Aesthetic, largely based upon German sources and by no means without value. But he takes exception to Mr. Bosanquet's statement that _he_ has consulted all works of importance on the subject of Aesthetic. As a matter of fact, Mr. Bosanquet reveals his ignorance of the greater part of the contribution to Aesthetic made by the Neo-Latin races, which the reader of this book will recognize as of first-rate importance. This thoroughness it is which gives such importance to the literary and philosophical criticisms of _La Critica_. Croce's method is always historical, and his object in approaching any work of art is to classify the spirit of its author, as expressed in that work. There are, he maintains, but two things to be considered in criticizing a book. These are, _firstly_, what is its _peculiarity_, in what way is it singular, how is it differentiated from other works? _Secondly_, what is its degree of purity?--That is, to what extent has its author kept himself free from all considerations alien to the perfection of the work as an expression, as a lyrical intuition? With the answering of these questions Croce is satisfied. He does not care to know if the author keep a motor-car, like Maeterlinck; or prefer to walk on Putney Heath, like Swinburne. This amounts to saying that all works of art must be judged by their own standard. How far has the author succeeded in doing what he intended? Croce is far above any personal animus, although the same cannot be said of those he criticizes. These, like d'Annunzio, whose limitations he points out--his egoism, his lack of human sympathy--are often very bitter, and accuse the penetrating critic of want of courtesy. This seriousness of purpose runs like a golden thread through all Croce's work. The flimsy superficial remarks on poetry and fiction which too often pass for criticism in England (Scotland is a good deal more thorough) are put to shame by _La Critica_, the study of which I commend to all readers who read or wish to read Italian.[3] They will find in its back numbers a complete picture of a century of Italian literature, besides a store-house of philosophical criticism. The _Quarterly_ and _Edinburgh Reviews_ are our only journals which can be compared to _The Critica_, and they are less exhaustive on the philosophical side. We should have to add to these _Mind_ and the _Hibbert Journal_ to get even an approximation to the scope of the Italian review. As regards Croce's general philosophical position, it is important to understand that he is _not_ a Hegelian, in the sense of being a close follower of that philosopher. One of his last works is that in which he deals in a masterly manner with the philosophy of Hegel. The title may be translated, "What is living and what is dead of the philosophy of Hegel." Here he explains to us the Hegelian system more clearly than that wondrous edifice was ever before explained, and we realize at the same time that Croce is quite as independent of Hegel as of Kant, of Vico as of Spinoza. Of course he has made use of the best of Hegel, just as every thinker makes use of his predecessors and is in his turn made use of by those that follow him. But it is incorrect to accuse of Hegelianism the author of an anti-hegelian _Aesthetic_, of a _Logic_ where Hegel is only half accepted, and of a _Philosophy of the Practical_, which contains hardly a trace of Hegel. I give an instance. If the great conquest of Hegel be the dialectic of opposites, his great mistake lies in the confusion of opposites with things which are distinct but not opposite. If, says Croce, we take as an example the application of the Hegelian triad that formulates becoming (affirmation, negation and synthesis), we find it applicable for those opposites which are true and false, good and evil, being and not-being, but _not applicable_ to things which are distinct but not opposite, such as art and philosophy, beauty and truth, the useful and the moral. These confusions led Hegel to talk of the death of art, to conceive as possible a Philosophy of History, and to the application of the natural sciences to the absurd task of constructing a Philosophy of Nature. Croce has cleared away these difficulties by shewing that if from the meeting of opposites must arise a superior synthesis, such a synthesis cannot arise from things which are distinct _but not opposite_, since the former are connected together as superior and inferior, and the inferior can exist without the superior, but _not vice versa_. Thus we see how philosophy cannot exist without art, while art, occupying the lower place, can and does exist without philosophy. This brief example reveals Croce's independence in dealing with Hegelian problems. I know of no philosopher more generous than Croce in praise and elucidation of other workers in the same field, past and present. For instance, and apart from Hegel, _Kant_ has to thank him for drawing attention to the marvellous excellence of the _Critique of Judgment_, generally neglected in favour of the Critiques of _Pure Reason and of Practical Judgment_; _Baumgarten_ for drawing the attention of the world to his obscure name and for reprinting his Latin thesis in which the word _Aesthetic_ occurs for the first time; and _Schleiermacher_ for the tributes paid to his neglected genius in the History of Aesthetic. _La Critica_, too, is full of generous appreciation of contemporaries by Croce and by that profound thinker, Gentile. But it is not only philosophers who have reason to be grateful to Croce for his untiring zeal and diligence. Historians, economists, poets, actors, and writers of fiction have been rescued from their undeserved limbo by this valiant Red Cross knight, and now shine with due brilliance in the circle of their peers. It must also be admitted that a large number of false lights, popular will o' the wisps, have been ruthlessly extinguished with the same breath. For instance, Karl Marx, the socialist theorist and agitator, finds in Croce an exponent of his views, in so far as they are based upon the truth, but where he blunders, his critic immediately reveals the origin and nature of his mistakes. Croce's studies in Economic are chiefly represented by his work, the title of which may be translated "Historical Materialism and Marxist Economic." To indicate the breadth and variety of Croce's work I will mention the further monograph on the sixteenth century Neapolitan Pulcinella (the original of our Punch), and the personage of the Neapolitan in comedy, a monument of erudition and of acute and of lively dramatic criticism, that would alone have occupied an ordinary man's activity for half a lifetime. One must remember, however, that Croce's average working day is of ten hours. His interest is concentrated on things of the mind, and although he sits on several Royal Commissions, such as those of the Archives of all Italy and of the monument to King Victor Emmanuel, he has taken no university degree, and much dislikes any affectation of academic superiority. He is ready to meet any one on equal terms and try with them to get at the truth on any subject, be it historical, literary, or philosophical. "Truth," he says, "is democratic," and I can testify that the search for it, in his company, is very stimulating. As is well said by Prezzolini, "He has a new word for all." There can be no doubt of the great value of Croce's work as an _educative influence_, and if we are to judge of a philosophical system by its action on others, then we must place the _Philosophy of the Spirit_ very high. It may be said with perfect truth that since the death of the poet Carducci there has been no influence in Italy to compare with that of Benedetto Croce. His dislike of Academies and of all forms of prejudice runs parallel with his breadth and sympathy with all forms of thought. His activity in the present is only equalled by his reverence for the past. Naples he loves with the blind love of the child for its parent, and he has been of notable assistance to such Neapolitan talent as is manifested in the works of Salvatore di Giacomo, whose best poems are written in the dialect of Naples, or rather in a dialect of his own, which Croce had difficulty in persuading the author always to retain. The original jet of inspiration having been in dialect, it is clear that to amend this inspiration at the suggestion of wiseacres at the Café would have been to ruin it altogether. Of the popularity that his system and teaching have already attained we may judge by the fact that the _Aesthetic_[4], despite the difficulty of the subject, is already in its third edition in Italy, where, owing to its influence, philosophy sells better than fiction; while the French and Germans, not to mention the Czechs, have long had translations of the earlier editions. His _Logic_ is on the point of appearing in its second edition, and I have no doubt that the _Philosophy of the Practical_ will eventually equal these works in popularity. _The importance and value of Italian thought have been too long neglected in Great Britain_. Where, as in Benedetto Croce, we get the clarity of vision of the Latin, joined to the thoroughness and erudition of the best German tradition, we have a combination of rare power and effectiveness, which can by no means be neglected. The philosopher feels that he has a great mission, which is nothing less than the leading back of thought to belief in the spirit, deserted by so many for crude empiricism and positivism. His view of philosophy is that it sums up all the higher human activities, including religion, and that in proper hands it is able to solve any problem. But there is no finality about problems: the solution of one leads to the posing of another, and so on. Man is the maker of life, and his spirit ever proceeds from a lower to a higher perfection. Connected with this view of life is Croce's dislike of "Modernism." When once a problem has been correctly solved, it is absurd to return to the same problem. Roman Catholicism cannot march with the times. It can only exist by being conservative--its only Logic is to be illogical. Therefore, Croce is opposed to Loisy and Neo-Catholicism, and supports the Encyclical against Modernism. The Catholic religion, with its great stores of myth and morality, which for many centuries was the best thing in the world, is still there for those who are unable to assimilate other food. Another instance of his dislike for Modernism is his criticism of Pascoli, whose attempts to reveal enigmas in the writings of Dante he looks upon as useless. We do not, he says, read Dante in the twentieth century for his hidden meanings, but for his revealed poetry. I believe that Croce will one day be recognized as one of the very few great teachers of humanity. At present he is not appreciated at nearly his full value. One rises from a study of his philosophy with a sense of having been all the time as it were in personal touch with the truth, which is very far from the case after the perusal of certain other philosophies. Croce has been called the philosopher-poet, and if we take philosophy as Novalis understood it, certainly Croce does belong to the poets, though not to the formal category of those who write in verse. Croce is at any rate a born philosopher, and as every trade tends to make its object prosaic, so does every vocation tend to make it poetic. Yet no one has toiled more earnestly than Croce. "Thorough" might well be his motto, and if to-day he is admitted to be a classic without the stiffness one connects with that term, be sure he has well merited the designation. His name stands for the best that Italy has to give the world of serious, stimulating thought. I know nothing to equal it elsewhere. Secure in his strength, Croce will often introduce a joke or some amusing illustration from contemporary life, in the midst of a most profound and serious argument. This spirit of mirth is a sign of superiority. He who is not sure of himself can spare no energy for the making of mirth. Croce loves to laugh at his enemies and with his friends. So the philosopher of Naples sits by the blue gulf and explains the universe to those who have ears to hear. "One can philosophize anywhere," he says--but he remains significantly at Naples. Thus I conclude these brief remarks upon the author of the _Aesthetic_, confident that those who give time and attention to its study will be grateful for having placed in their hands this pearl of great price from the diadem of the antique Parthenope. DOUGLAS AINSLIE. THE ATHENAEUM, PALL MALL, _May_ 1909. [1] Napoli, Riccardo Ricciardi, 1909. [2] The reader will find this critique summarized in the historical portion of this volume. [3] _La Critica_ is published every other month by Laterza of Bari. [4] This translation is made from the third Italian edition (Bari, 1909), enlarged and corrected by the author. The _Theory of Aesthetic_ first appeared in 1900 in the form of a communication to the _Accademia Pontiana_ of Naples, vol. xxx. The first edition is dated 1902, the second 1904 (Palermo). I INTUITION AND EXPRESSION [Sidenote] _Intuitive knowledge._ Human knowledge has two forms: it is either intuitive knowledge or logical knowledge; knowledge obtained through the imagination or knowledge obtained through the intellect; knowledge of the individual or knowledge of the universal; of individual things or of the relations between them: it is, in fact, productive either of images or of concepts. In ordinary life, constant appeal is made to intuitive knowledge. It is said to be impossible to give expression to certain truths; that they are not demonstrable by syllogisms; that they must be learnt intuitively. The politician finds fault with the abstract reasoner, who is without a lively knowledge of actual conditions; the pedagogue insists upon the necessity of developing the intuitive faculty in the pupil before everything else; the critic in judging a work of art makes it a point of honour to set aside theory and abstractions, and to judge it by direct intuition; the practical man professes to live rather by intuition than by reason. But this ample acknowledgment, granted to intuitive knowledge in ordinary life, does not meet with an equal and adequate acknowledgment in the field of theory and of philosophy. There exists a very ancient science of intellective knowledge, admitted by all without discussion, namely, Logic; but a science of intuitive knowledge is timidly and with difficulty admitted by but a few. Logical knowledge has appropriated the lion's share; and if she does not quite slay and devour her companion, yet yields to her with difficulty the humble little place of maidservant or doorkeeper. What, it says, is intuitive knowledge without the light of intellective knowledge? It is a servant without a master; and though a master find a servant useful, the master is a necessity to the servant, since he enables him to gain his livelihood. Intuition is blind; Intellect lends her eyes. [Sidenote] _Its independence in respect to intellective knowledge._ Now, the first point to be firmly fixed in the mind is that intuitive knowledge has no need of a master, nor to lean upon any one; she does not need to borrow the eyes of others, for she has most excellent eyes of her own. Doubtless it is possible to find concepts mingled with intuitions. But in many other intuitions there is no trace of such a mixture, which proves that it is not necessary. The impression of a moonlight scene by a painter; the outline of a country drawn by a cartographer; a musical motive, tender or energetic; the words of a sighing lyric, or those with which we ask, command and lament in ordinary life, may well all be intuitive facts without a shadow of intellective relation. But, think what one may of these instances, and admitting further that one may maintain that the greater part of the intuitions of civilized man are impregnated with concepts, there yet remains to be observed something more important and more conclusive. Those concepts which are found mingled and fused with the intuitions, are no longer concepts, in so far as they are really mingled and fused, for they have lost all independence and autonomy. They have been concepts, but they have now become simple elements of intuition. The philosophical maxims placed in the mouth of a personage of tragedy or of comedy, perform there the function, not of concepts, but of characteristics of such personage; in the same way as the red in a painted figure does not there represent the red colour of the physicists, but is a characteristic element of the portrait. The whole it is that determines the quality of the parts. A work of art may be full of philosophical concepts; it may contain them in greater abundance and they may be there even more profound than in a philosophical dissertation, which in its turn may be rich to overflowing with descriptions and intuitions. But, notwithstanding all these concepts it may contain, the result of the work of art is an intuition; and notwithstanding all those intuitions, the result of the philosophical dissertation is a concept. The _Promessi Sposi_ contains copious ethical observations and distinctions, but it does not for that reason lose in its total effect its character of simple story, of intuition. In like manner the anecdotes and satirical effusions which may be found in the works of a philosopher like Schopenhauer, do not remove from those works their character of intellective treatises. The difference between a scientific work and a work of art, that is, between an intellective fact and an intuitive fact lies in the result, in the diverse effect aimed at by their respective authors. This it is that determines and rules over the several parts of each. [Sidenote] _Intuition and perception._ But to admit the independence of intuition as regards concept does not suffice to give a true and precise idea of intuition. Another error arises among those who recognize this, or who, at any rate, do not make intuition explicitly dependent upon the intellect. This error obscures and confounds the real nature of intuition. By intuition is frequently understood the _perception_ or knowledge of actual reality, the apprehension of something as _real_. Certainly perception is intuition: the perception of the room in which I am writing, of the ink-bottle and paper that are before me, of the pen I am using, of the objects that I touch and make use of as instruments of my person, which, if it write, therefore exists;--these are all intuitions. But the image that is now passing through my brain of a me writing in another room, in another town, with different paper, pen and ink, is also an intuition. This means that the distinction between reality and non-reality is extraneous, secondary, to the true nature of intuition. If we assume the existence of a human mind which should have intuitions for the first time, it would seem that it could have intuitions of effective reality only, that is to say, that it could have perceptions of nothing but the real. But if the knowledge of reality be based upon the distinction between real images and unreal images, and if this distinction does not originally exist, these intuitions would in truth not be intuitions either of the real or of the unreal, but pure intuitions. Where all is real, nothing is real. The child, with its difficulty of distinguishing true from false, history from fable, which are all one to childhood, can furnish us with a sort of very vague and only remotely approximate idea of this ingenuous state. Intuition is the indifferentiated unity of the perception of the real and of the simple image of the possible. In our intuitions we do not oppose ourselves to external reality as empirical beings, but we simply objectify our impressions, whatever they be. [Sidenote] _Intuition and the concepts of space and time._ Those, therefore, who look upon intuition as sensation formed and arranged simply according to the categories of space and time, would seem to approximate more nearly to the truth. Space and time (they say) are the forms of intuition; to have intuitions is to place in space and in temporal sequence. Intuitive activity would then consist in this double and concurrent function of spatiality and temporality. But for these two categories must be repeated what was said of intellectual distinctions, found mingled with intuitions. We have intuitions without space and without time: a tint of sky and a tint of sentiment, an Ah! of pain and an effort of will, objectified in consciousness. These are intuitions, which we possess, and with their making, space and time have nothing to do. In some intuitions, spatiality may be found without temporality, in others, this without that; and even where both are found, they are perceived by posterior reflexion: they can be fused with the intuition in like manner with all its other elements: that is, they are in it _materialiter_ and not _formaliter_, as ingredients and not as essentials. Who, without a similar act of interruptive reflexion, is conscious of temporal sequence while listening to a story or a piece of music? That which intuition reveals in a work of art is not space and time, but character, individual physiognomy. Several attempts may be noted in modern philosophy, which confirm the view here exposed. Space and time, far from being very simple and primitive functions, are shown to be intellectual constructions of great complexity. And further, even in some of those who do not altogether deny to space and time the quality of forming or of categories and functions, one may observe the attempt to unify and to understand them in a different manner from that generally maintained in respect of these categories. Some reduce intuition to the unique category of spatiality, maintaining that time also can only be conceived in terms of space. Others abandon the three dimensions of space as not philosophically necessary, and conceive the function of spatiality as void of every particular spatial determination. But what could such a spatial function be, that should control even time? May it not be a residuum of criticisms and of negations from which arises merely the necessity to posit a generic intuitive activity? And is not this last truly determined, when one unique function is attributed to it, not spatializing nor temporalizing, but characterizing? Or, better, when this is conceived as itself a category or function, which gives knowledge of things in their concretion and individuality? [Sidenote] _Intuition and sensation._ Having thus freed intuitive knowledge from any suggestion of intellectualism and from every posterior and external adjunct, we must now make clear and determine its limits from another side and from a different kind of invasion and confusion. On the other side, and before the inferior boundary, is sensation, formless matter, which the spirit can never apprehend in itself, in so far as it is mere matter. This it can only possess with form and in form, but postulates its concept as, precisely, a limit. Matter, in its abstraction, is mechanism, passivity; it is what the spirit of man experiences, but does not produce. Without it no human knowledge and activity is possible; but mere matter produces animality, whatever is brutal and impulsive in man, not the spiritual dominion, which is humanity. How often do we strive to understand clearly what is passing within us? We do catch a glimpse of something, but this does not appear to the mind as objectified and formed. In such moments it is, that we best perceive the profound difference between matter and form. These are not two acts of ours, face to face with one another; but we assault and carry off the one that is outside us, while that within us tends to absorb and make its own that without. Matter, attacked and conquered by form, gives place to concrete form. It is the matter, the content, that differentiates one of our intuitions from another: form is constant: it is spiritual activity, while matter is changeable. Without matter, however, our spiritual activity would not leave its abstraction to become concrete and real, this or that spiritual content, this or that definite intuition. It is a curious fact, characteristic of our times, that this very form, this very activity of the spirit, which is essentially ourselves, is so easily ignored or denied. Some confound the spiritual activity of man with the metaphorical and mythological activity of so-called nature, which is mechanism and has no resemblance to human activity, save when we imagine, with Aesop, that _arbores loquuntur non tantum ferae_. Some even affirm that they have never observed in themselves this "miraculous" activity, as though there were no difference, or only one of quantity, between sweating and thinking, feeling cold and the energy of the will. Others, certainly with greater reason, desire to unify activity and mechanism in a more general concept, though admitting that they are specifically distinct. Let us, however, refrain for the moment from examining if such a unification be possible, and in what sense, but admitting that the attempt may be made, it is clear that to unify two concepts in a third implies a difference between the two first. And here it is this difference that is of importance and we set it in relief. [Sidenote] _Intuition and association._ Intuition has often been confounded with simple sensation. But, since this confusion is too shocking to good sense, it has more frequently been attenuated or concealed with a phraseology which seems to wish to confuse and to distinguish them at the same time. Thus, it has been asserted that intuition is sensation, but not so much simple sensation as _association_ of sensations. The equivoque arises precisely from the word "association." Association is understood, either as memory, mnemonic association, conscious recollection, and in that case is evident the absurdity of wishing to join together in memory elements which are not intuified, distinguished, possessed in some way by the spirit and produced by consciousness: or it is understood as association of unconscious elements. In this case we remain in the world of sensation and of nature. Further, if with certain associationists we speak of an association which is neither memory nor flux of sensations, but is a _productive_ association (formative, constructive, distinguishing); then we admit the thing itself and deny only its name. In truth, productive association is no longer association in the sense of the sensualists, but _synthesis_, that is to say, spiritual activity. Synthesis may be called association; but with the concept of productivity is already posited the distinction between passivity and activity, between sensation and intuition. [Sidenote] _Intuition and representation._ Other psychologists are disposed to distinguish from sensation something which is sensation no longer, but is not yet intellective concept: _the representation or image_. What is the difference between their representation or image, and our intuitive knowledge? The greatest, and none at all. "Representation," too, is a very equivocal word. If by representation be understood something detached and standing out from the psychic base of the sensations, then representation is intuition. If, on the other hand, it be conceived as a complex sensation, a return is made to simple sensation, which does not change its quality according to its richness or poverty, operating alike in a rudimentary or in a developed organism full of traces of past sensations. Nor is the equivoque remedied by defining representation as a psychic product of secondary order in relation to sensation, which should occupy the first place. What does secondary order mean here? Does it mean a qualitative, a formal difference? If so, we agree: representation is elaboration of sensation, it is intuition. Or does it mean greater complexity and complication, a quantitative, material difference? In that case intuition would be again confused with simple sensation. [Sidenote] _Intuition and expression._ And yet there is a sure method of distinguishing true intuition, true representation, from that which is inferior to it: the spiritual fact from the mechanical, passive, natural fact. Every true intuition or representation is, also, _expression_. That which does not objectify itself in expression is not intuition or representation, but sensation and naturality. The spirit does not obtain intuitions, otherwise than by making, forming, expressing. He who separates intuition from expression never succeeds in reuniting them. _Intuitive activity possesses intuitions to the extent that it expresses them_.--Should this expression seem at first paradoxical, that is chiefly because, as a general rule, a too restricted meaning is given to the word "expression." It is generally thought of as restricted to verbal expression. But there exist also non-verbal expressions, such as those of line, colour, and sound; to all of these must be extended our affirmation. The intuition and expression together of a painter are pictorial; those of a poet are verbal. But be it pictorial, or verbal, or musical, or whatever else it be called, to no intuition can expression be wanting, because it is an inseparable part of intuition. How can we possess a true intuition of a geometrical figure, unless we possess so accurate an image of it as to be able to trace it immediately upon paper or on a slate? How can we have an intuition of the contour of a region, for example, of the island of Sicily, if we are not able to draw it as it is in all its meanderings? Every one can experience the internal illumination which follows upon his success in formulating to himself his impressions and sentiments, but only so far as he is able to formulate them. Sentiments or impressions, then, pass by means of words from the obscure region of the soul into the clarity of the contemplative spirit. In this cognitive process it is impossible to distinguish intuition from expression. The one is produced with the other at the same instant, because they are not two, but one. [Sidenote] _Illusions as to their difference._ The principal reason which makes our theme appear paradoxical as we maintain it, is the illusion or prejudice that we possess a more complete intuition of reality than we really do. One often hears people say that they have in their minds many important thoughts, but that they are not able to express them. In truth, if they really had them, they would have coined them into beautiful, ringing words, and thus expressed them. If these thoughts seem to vanish or to become scarce and poor in the act of expressing them, either they did not exist or they really were scarce and poor. People think that all of us ordinary men imagine and have intuitions of countries, figures and scenes, like painters; of bodies, like sculptors; save that painters and sculptors know how to paint and to sculpture those images, while we possess them only within our souls. They believe that anyone could have imagined a Madonna of Raphael; but that Raphael was Raphael owing to his technical ability in putting the Madonna upon the canvas. Nothing can be more false than this view. The world of which as a rule we have intuitions, is a small thing. It consists of little expressions which gradually become greater and more ample with the increasing spiritual concentration of certain moments. These are the sort of words which we speak within ourselves, the judgments that we tacitly express: "Here is a man, here is a horse, this is heavy, this is hard, this pleases me," etc. It is a medley of light and colour, which could not pictorially attain to any more sincere expression than a haphazard splash of colours, from among which would with difficulty stand out a few special, distinctive traits. This and nothing else is what we possess in our ordinary life; this is the basis of our ordinary action. It is the index of a book. The labels tied to things take the place of the things themselves. This index and labels (which are themselves expressions) suffice for our small needs and small actions. From time to time we pass from the index to the book, from the label to the thing, or from the slight to the greater intuitions, and from these to the greatest and most lofty. This passage is sometimes far from being easy. It has been observed by those who have best studied the psychology of artists, that when, after having given a rapid glance at anyone, they attempt to obtain a true intuition of him, in order, for example, to paint his portrait, then this ordinary vision, that seemed so precise, so lively, reveals itself as little better than nothing. What remains is found to be at the most some superficial trait, which would not even suffice for a caricature. The person to be painted stands before the artist like a world to discover. Michael Angelo said, "one paints, not with one's hands, but with one's brain." Leonardo shocked the prior of the convent delle Grazie by standing for days together opposite the "Last Supper" without touching it with the brush. He remarked of this attitude "that men of the most lofty genius, when they are doing the least work, are then the most active, seeking invention with their minds." The painter is a painter, because he sees what others only feel or catch a glimpse of, but do not see. We think we see a smile, but in reality we have only a vague impression of it, we do not perceive all the characteristic traits from which it results, as the painter perceives them after his internal meditations, which thus enable him to fix them on the canvas. Even in the case of our intimate friend, who is with us every day and at all hours, we do not possess intuitively more than, at the most, certain traits of his physiognomy, which enable us to distinguish him from others. The illusion is less easy as regards musical expression; because it would seem strange to everyone to say that the composer had added or attached notes to the motive, which is already in the mind of him who is not the composer. As if Beethoven's Ninth Symphony were not his own intuition and his own intuition the Ninth Symphony. Thus, just as he who is deceived as to his material wealth is confuted by arithmetic, which states its exact amount, so is he confuted who nourishes delusions as to the wealth of his own thoughts and images. He is brought back to reality, when he is obliged to cross the Bridge of Asses of expression. We say to the former, count; to the latter, speak, here is a pencil, draw, express yourself. We have each of us, as a matter of fact, a little of the poet, of the sculptor, of the musician, of the painter, of the prose writer: but how little, as compared with those who are so called, precisely because of the lofty degree in which they possess the most universal dispositions and energies of human nature! How little does a painter possess of the intuitions of a poet! How little does one painter possess those of another painter! Nevertheless, that little is all our actual patrimony of intuitions or representations. Beyond these are only impressions, sensations, feelings, impulses, emotions, or whatever else one may term what is outside the spirit, not assimilated by man, postulated for the convenience of exposition, but effectively inexistent, if existence be also a spiritual fact. [Sidenote] _Identity of intuition and expression._ We may then add this to the verbal variants descriptive of intuition, noted at the beginning: intuitive knowledge is expressive knowledge, independent and autonomous in respect to intellectual function; indifferent to discriminations, posterior and empirical, to reality and to unreality, to formations and perceptions of space and time, even when posterior: intuition or representation is distinguished as form from what is felt and suffered, from the flux or wave of sensation, or from psychic material; and this form this taking possession of, is expression. To have an intuition is to express. It is nothing else! (nothing more, but nothing less) than _to express_. II INTUITION AND ART [Sidenote] _Corollaries and explanations._ Before proceeding further, it seems opportune to draw certain consequences from what has been established and to add some explanation. [Sidenote] _Identity of art and intuitive knowledge._ We have frankly identified intuitive or expressive knowledge with the aesthetic or artistic fact, taking works of art as examples of intuitive knowledge and attributing to them the characteristics of intuition, and _vice versa_. But our identification is combated by the view, held even by many philosophers, who consider art to be an intuition of an altogether special sort. "Let us admit" (they say) "that art is intuition; but intuition is not always art: artistic intuition is of a distinct species differing from intuition in general by something _more_." [Sidenote] _No specific difference._ But no one has ever been able to indicate of what this something more consists. It has sometimes been thought that art is not a simple intuition, but an intuition of an intuition, in the same way as the concept of science has been defined, not as the ordinary concept, but as the concept of a concept. Thus man should attain to art, by objectifying, not his sensations, as happens with ordinary intuition, but intuition itself. But this process of raising to a second power does not exist; and the comparison of it with the ordinary and scientific concept does not imply what is wished, for the good reason that it is not true that the scientific concept is the concept of a concept. If this comparison imply anything, it implies just the opposite. The ordinary concept, if it be really a concept and not a simple representation, is a perfect concept, however poor and limited. Science substitutes concepts for representations; it adds and substitutes other concepts larger and more comprehensive for those that are poor and limited. It is ever discovering new relations. But its method does not differ from that by which is formed the smallest universal in the brain of the humblest of men. What is generally called art, by antonomasia, collects intuitions that are wider and more complex than those which we generally experience, but these intuitions are always of sensations and impressions. Art is the expression of impressions, not the expression of expressions. [Sidenote] _No difference of intensity._ For the same reason, it cannot be admitted that intuition, which is generally called artistic, differs from ordinary intuition as to intensity. This would be the case if it were to operate differently on the same matter. But since artistic function is more widely distributed in different fields, but yet does not differ in method from ordinary intuition, the difference between the one and the other is not intensive but extensive. The intuition of the simplest popular love-song, which says the same thing, or very nearly, as a declaration of love such as issues at every moment from the lips of thousands of ordinary men, may be intensively perfect in its poor simplicity, although it be extensively so much more limited than the complex intuition of a love-song by Leopardi. [Sidenote] _The difference is extensive and empirical._ The whole difference, then, is quantitative, and as such, indifferent to philosophy, _scientia qualitatum_. Certain men have a greater aptitude, a more frequent inclination fully to express certain complex states of the soul. These men are known in ordinary language as artists. Some very complicated and difficult expressions are more rarely achieved and these are called works of art. The limits of the expressions and intuitions that are called art, as opposed to those that are vulgarly called not-art, are empirical and impossible to define. If an epigram be art, why not a single word? If a story; why not the occasional note of the journalist? If a landscape, why not a topographical sketch? The teacher of philosophy in Molière's comedy was right: "whenever we speak we create prose." But there will always be scholars like Monsieur Jourdain, astonished at having created prose for forty years without knowing it, and who will have difficulty in persuading themselves that when they call their servant John to bring their slippers, they have spoken nothing less than--prose. We must hold firmly to our identification, because among the principal reasons which have prevented Aesthetic, the science of art, from revealing the true nature of art, its real roots in human nature, has been its separation from the general spiritual life, the having made of it a sort of special function or aristocratic circle. No one is astonished when he learns from physiology that every cellule is an organism and every organism a cellule or synthesis of cellules. No one is astonished at finding in a lofty mountain the same chemical elements that compose a small stone or fragment. There is not one physiology of small animals and one of large animals; nor is there a special chemical theory of stones as distinct from mountains. In the same way, there is not a science of lesser intuition distinct from a science of greater intuition, nor one of ordinary intuition distinct from artistic intuition. There is but one Aesthetic, the science of intuitive or expressive knowledge, which is the aesthetic or artistic fact. And this Aesthetic is the true analogy of Logic. Logic includes, as facts of the same nature, the formation of the smallest and most ordinary concept and the most complicated scientific and philosophical system. [Sidenote] _Artistic genius._ Nor can we admit that the word _genius_ or artistic genius, as distinct from the non-genius of the ordinary man, possesses more than a quantitative signification. Great artists are said to reveal us to ourselves. But how could this be possible, unless there be identity of nature between their imagination and ours, and unless the difference be only one of quantity? It were well to change _poeta nascitur_ into _homo nascitur poeta_: some men are born great poets, some small. The cult and superstition of the genius has arisen from this quantitative difference having been taken as a difference of quality. It has been forgotten that genius is not something that has fallen from heaven, but humanity itself. The man of genius, who poses or is represented as distant from humanity, finds his punishment in becoming or appearing somewhat ridiculous. Examples of this are the _genius_ of the romantic period and the _superman_ of our time. But it is well to note here, that those who claim unconsciousness as the chief quality of an artistic genius, hurl him from an eminence far above humanity to a position far below it. Intuitive or artistic genius, like every form of human activity, is always conscious; otherwise it would be blind mechanism. The only thing that may be wanting to the artistic genius is the _reflective_ consciousness, the superadded consciousness of the historian or critic, which is not essential to artistic genius. [Sidenote] _Content and form in Aesthetic._ The relation between matter and form, or between _content and form_, as it is generally called, is one of the most disputed questions in Aesthetic. Does the aesthetic fact consist of content alone, or of form alone, or of both together? This question has taken on various meanings, which we shall mention, each in its place. But when these words are taken as signifying what we have above defined, and matter is understood as emotivity not aesthetically elaborated, that is to say, impressions, and form elaboration, intellectual activity and expression, then our meaning cannot be doubtful. We must, therefore, reject the thesis that makes the aesthetic fact to consist of the content alone (that is, of the simple impressions), in like manner with that other thesis, which makes it to consist of a junction between form and content, that is, of impressions plus expressions. In the aesthetic fact, the aesthetic activity is not added to the fact of the impressions, but these latter are formed and elaborated by it. The impressions reappear as it were in expression, like water put into a filter, which reappears the same and yet different on the other side. The aesthetic fact, therefore, is form, and nothing but form. From this it results, not that the content is something superfluous (it is, on the contrary, the necessary point of departure for the expressive fact); but that _there is no passage_ between the quality of the content and that of the form. It has sometimes been thought that the content, in order to be aesthetic, that is to say, transformable into form, should possess some determinate or determinable quality. But were that so, then form and content, expression and impression, would be the same thing. It is true that the content is that which is convertible into form, but it has no determinable qualities until this transformation takes place. We know nothing of its nature. It does not become aesthetic content at once, but only when it has been effectively transformed. Aesthetic content has also been defined as what is _interesting_. That is not an untrue statement; it is merely void of meaning. What, then, is interesting? Expressive activity? Certainly the expressive activity would not have raised the content to the dignity of form, had it not been interested. The fact of its having been interested is precisely the fact of its raising the content to the dignity of form. But the word "interesting" has also been employed in another not illegitimate sense, which we shall explain further on. [Sidenote] _Critique of the imitation of nature and of the artistic illusion._ The proposition that art is _imitation of nature_ has also several meanings. Now truth has been maintained or at least shadowed with these words, now error. More frequently, nothing definite has been thought. One of the legitimate scientific meanings occurs when imitation is understood as representation or intuition of nature, a form of knowledge. And when this meaning has been understood, by placing in greater relief the spiritual character of the process, the other proposition becomes also legitimate: namely, that art is the _idealization_ or _idealizing_ imitation of nature. But if by imitation of nature be understood that art gives mechanical reproductions, more or less perfect duplicates of natural objects, before which the same tumult of impressions caused by natural objects begins over again, then the proposition is evidently false. The painted wax figures that seem to be alive, and before which we stand astonished in the museums where such things are shown, do not give aesthetic intuitions. Illusion and hallucination have nothing to do with the calm domain of artistic intuition. If an artist paint the interior of a wax-work museum, or if an actor give a burlesque portrait of a man-statue on the stage, we again have spiritual labour and artistic intuition. Finally, if photography have anything in it of artistic, it will be to the extent that it transmits the intuition of the photographer, his point of view, the pose and the grouping which he has striven to attain. And if it be not altogether art, that is precisely because the element of nature in it remains more or less insubordinate and ineradicable. Do we ever, indeed, feel complete satisfaction before even the best of photographs? Would not an artist vary and touch up much or little, remove or add something to any of them? [Sidenote] _Critique of art conceived as a sentimental not a theoretical fact. Aesthetic appearance and feeling._ The statements repeated so often, with others similar, that art is not knowledge, that it does not tell the truth, that it does not belong to the world of theory, but to the world of feeling, arise from the failure to realize exactly the theoretic character of the simple intuition. This simple intuition is quite distinct from intellectual knowledge, as it is distinct from the perception of the real. The belief that only the intellective is knowledge, or at the most also the perception of the real, also arises from the failure to grasp the theoretic character of the simple intuition. We have seen that intuition is knowledge, free of concepts and more simple than the so-called perception of the real. Since art is knowledge and form, it does not belong to the world of feeling and of psychic material. The reason why so many aestheticians have so often insisted that art is _appearance_ (_Schein_), is precisely because they have felt the necessity of distinguishing it from the more complex fact of perception by maintaining its pure intuitivity. For the same reason it has been claimed that art is _sentiment_. In fact, if the concept as content of art, and historical reality as such, be excluded, there remains no other content than reality apprehended in all its ingenuousness and immediateness in the vital effort, in _sentiment_, that is to say, pure intuition. [Sidenote] _Critique of theory of aesthetic senses._ The theory of the _aesthetic senses_ has also arisen from the failure to establish, or from having lost to view the character of the expression as distinct from the impression, of the form as distinct from the matter. As has just been pointed out, this reduces itself to the error of wishing to seek a passage from the quality of the content to that of the form. To ask, in fact, what the aesthetic senses may be, implies asking what sensible impressions may be able to enter into aesthetic expressions, and what must of necessity do so. To this we must at once reply, that all impressions can enter into aesthetic expressions or formations, but that none are bound to do so. Dante raised to the dignity of form not only the "sweet colour of the oriental sapphire" (visual impression), but also tactile or thermic impressions, such as the "thick air" and the "fresh rivulets" which "parch all the more" the throat of the thirsty. The belief that a picture yields only visual impressions is a curious illusion. The bloom of a cheek, the warmth of a youthful body, the sweetness and freshness of a fruit, the cutting of a sharpened blade, are not these, also, impressions that we have from a picture? Maybe they are visual? What would a picture be for a hypothetical man, deprived of all or many of his senses, who should in an instant acquire the sole organ of sight? The picture we are standing opposite and believe we see only with our eyes, would appear to his eyes as little more than the paint-smeared palette of a painter. Some who hold firmly to the aesthetic character of given groups of impressions (for example, the visual, the auditive), and exclude others, admit, however, that if visual and auditive impressions enter _directly_ into the aesthetic fact, those of the other senses also enter into it, but only as _associated_. But this distinction is altogether arbitrary. Aesthetic expression is a synthesis, in which it is impossible to distinguish direct and indirect. All impressions are by it placed on a level, in so far as they are aestheticised. He who takes into himself the image of a picture or of a poem does not experience, as it were, a series of impressions as to this image, some of which have a prerogative or precedence over others. And nothing is known of what happens prior to having received it, for the distinctions made after reflexion have nothing to do with art. The theory of the aesthetic senses has also been presented in another way; that is to say, as the attempt to establish what physiological organs are necessary for the aesthetic fact. The physiological organ or apparatus is nothing but a complex of cellules, thus and thus constituted, thus and thus disposed; that is to say, it is merely physical and natural fact or concept. But expression does not recognize physiological facts. Expression has its point of departure in the impressions, and the physiological path by which these have found their way to the mind is to it altogether indifferent. One way or another amounts to the same thing: it suffices that they are impressions. It is true that the want of given organs, that is, of given complexes of cells, produces an absence of given impressions (when these are not obtained by another path by a kind of organic compensation). The man born blind cannot express or have the intuition of light. But the impressions are not conditioned solely by the organ, but also by the stimuli which operate upon the organ. Thus, he who has never had the impression of the sea will never be able to express it, in the same way as he who has never had the impression of the great world or of the political conflict will never express the one or the other. This, however, does not establish a dependence of the expressive function on the stimulus or on the organ. It is the repetition of what we know already: expression presupposes impression. Therefore, given expressions imply given impressions. Besides, every impression excludes other impressions during the moment in which it dominates; and so does every expression. [Sidenote] _Unity and indivisibility of the work of art._ Another corollary of the conception of expression as activity is the _indivisibility_ of the work of art. Every expression is a unique expression. Activity is a fusion of the impressions in an organic whole. A desire to express this has always prompted the affirmation that the world of art should have _unity_, or, what amounts to the same thing, _unity in variety_. Expression is a synthesis of the various, the multiple, in the one. The fact that we divide a work of art into parts, as a poem into scenes, episodes, similes, sentences, or a picture into single figures and objects, background, foreground, etc., may seem to be an objection to this affirmation. But such division annihilates the work, as dividing the organism into heart, brain, nerves, muscles and so on, turns the living being into a corpse. It is true that there exist organisms in which the division gives place to more living things, but in such a case, and if we transfer the analogy to the aesthetic fact, we must conclude for a multiplicity of germs of life, that is to say, for a speedy re-elaboration of the single parts into new single expressions. It will be observed that expression is sometimes based on other expressions. There are simple and there are _compound_ expressions. One must admit some difference between the _eureka_, with which Archimedes expressed all his joy after his discovery, and the expressive act (indeed all the five acts) of a regular tragedy. Not in the least: expression is always directly based on impressions. He who conceives a tragedy puts into a crucible a great quantity, so to say, of impressions: the expressions themselves, conceived on other occasions, are fused together with the new in a single mass, in the same way as we can cast into a smelting furnace formless pieces of bronze and most precious statuettes. Those most precious statuettes must be melted in the same way as the formless bits of bronze, before there can be a new statue. The old expressions must descend again to the level of impressions, in order to be synthetized in a new single expression. [Sidenote] _Art as the deliverer._ By elaborating his impressions, man _frees_ himself from them. By objectifying them, he removes them from him and makes himself their superior. The liberating and purifying function of art is another aspect and another formula of its character of activity. Activity is the deliverer, just because it drives away passivity. This also explains why it is customary to attribute to artists alike the maximum of sensibility or _passion_, and the maximum insensibility or Olympic _serenity_. Both qualifications agree, for they do not refer to the same object. The sensibility or passion relates to the rich material which the artist absorbs into his psychic organism; the insensibility or serenity to the form with which he subjugates and dominates the tumult of the feelings and of the passions. III ART AND PHILOSOPHY [Sidenote] _Indissolubility of intellective from intuitive knowledge._ The two forms of knowledge, aesthetic and intellectual or conceptual, are indeed diverse, but this does not amount altogether to separation and disjunction, as we find with two forces going each its own way. If we have shown that the aesthetic form is altogether independent of the intellectual and suffices to itself without external support, we have not said that the intellectual can stand without the aesthetic. This _reciprocity_ would not be true. What is knowledge by concepts? It is knowledge of relations of things, and those things are intuitions. Concepts are not possible without intuitions, just as intuition is itself impossible without the material of impressions. Intuitions are: this river, this lake, this brook, this rain, this glass of water; the concept is: water, not this or that appearance and particular example of water, but water in general, in whatever time or place it be realized; the material of infinite intuitions, but of one single and constant concept. However, the concept, the universal, if it be no longer intuition in one respect, is in another respect intuition, and cannot fail of being intuition. For the man who thinks has impressions and emotions, in so far as he thinks. His impression and emotion will not be love or hate, but _the effort of his thought itself_, with the pain and the joy, the love and the hate joined to it. This effort cannot but become intuitive in form, in becoming objective to the mind. To speak, is not to think logically; but to _think logically_ is, at the same time, to _speak_. [Sidenote] _Critique of the negations of this thesis._ That thought cannot exist without speech, is a truth generally admitted. The negations of this thesis are all founded on equivoques and errors. The first of the equivoques is implied by those who observe that one can likewise think with geometrical figures, algebraical numbers, ideographic signs, without a single word, even pronounced silently and almost insensibly within one. They also affirm that there are languages in which the word, the phonetic sign, expresses nothing, unless the written sign also be looked at. But when we said "speech," we intended to employ a synecdoche, and that "expression" generically, should be understood, for expression is not only so-called verbal expression, as we have already noted. It may be admitted that certain concepts may be thought without phonetic manifestations. But the very examples adduced to show this also prove that those concepts never exist without expressions. Others maintain that animals, or certain animals, think or reason without speaking. Now as to how, whether, and what animals think, whether they be rudimentary, half-savage men resisting civilization, rather than physiological machines, as the old spiritualists would have it, are questions that do not concern us here. When the philosopher talks of animal, brutal, impulsive, instinctive nature and the like, he does not base himself on conjectures as to these facts concerning dogs or cats, lions or ants; but upon observations of what is called animal and brutal in man: of the boundary or animal basis of what we feel in ourselves. If individual animals, dogs or cats, lions or ants, possess something of the activity of man, so much the better, or so much the worse for them. This means that as regards them also we must talk, not of their nature as a whole, but of its animal basis, as being perhaps larger and more strong than the animal basis of man. And if we suppose that animals think, and form concepts, what is there in the line of conjecture to justify the admission that they do so without corresponding expressions? The analogy with man, the knowledge of the spirit, human psychology, which is the instrument of all our conjectures as to animal psychology, would oblige us to suppose that if they think in any way, they also have some sort of speech. It is from human psychology, that is, literary psychology, that comes the other objection, to the effect that the concept can exist without the word, because it is true that we all know books that are _well thought and badly written_: that is to say, a thought which remains thought _beyond_ the expression, _notwithstanding_ the imperfect expression. But when we talk of books well thought and badly written, we cannot mean other than that in those books are parts, pages, periods or propositions well thought out and well written, and other parts (perhaps the least important) ill thought out and badly written, not truly thought out and therefore not truly expressed. Where Vico's _Scienza nuova_ is really ill written, it is also ill thought out. If we pass from the consideration of big books to a short proposition, the error or the imprecision of this statement will be recognized at once. How could a proposition be clearly thought and confusedly written out? All that can be admitted is that sometimes we possess thoughts (concepts) in an intuitive form, or in an abbreviated or, better, peculiar expression, sufficient for us, but not sufficient to communicate it with ease to another or other definite individuals. Hence people say inaccurately, that we have the thought without the expression; whereas it should properly be said that we have, indeed, the expression, but in a form that is not easy of social communication. This, however, is a very variable and altogether relative fact. There are always people who catch our thought on the wing, and prefer it in this abbreviated form, and would be displeased with the greater development of it, necessary for other people. In other words, the thought considered abstractly and logically will be the same; but aesthetically we are dealing with two different intuition-expressions, into both of which enter different psychological elements. The same argument suffices to destroy, that is, to interpret correctly, the altogether empirical distinction between an _internal_ and an _external_ language. [Sidenote] _Art and science._ The most lofty manifestations, the summits of intellectual and of intuitive knowledge shining from afar, are called, as we know, Art and Science. Art and Science, then, are different and yet linked together; they meet on one side, which is the aesthetic side. Every scientific work is also a work of art. The aesthetic side may remain little noticed, when our mind is altogether taken up with the effort to understand the thought of the man of science, and to examine its truth. But it is no longer concealed, when we pass from the activity of understanding to that of contemplation, and behold that thought either developed before us, limpid, exact, well-shaped, without superfluous words, without lack of words, with appropriate rhythm and intonation; or confused, broken, embarrassed, tentative. Great thinkers are sometimes termed great writers, while other equally great thinkers remain more or less fragmentary writers, if indeed their fragments are scientifically to be compared with harmonious, coherent, and perfect works. [Sidenote] _Content and form: another meaning. Prose and poetry._ We pardon thinkers and men of science their literary mediocrity. The fragments console us for the failure of the whole, for it is far more easy to recover the well-arranged composition from the fragmentary work of genius than to achieve the discovery of genius. But how can we pardon mediocre expression in pure artists? _Mediocribus esse poetis non di, non homines, non concessere columnae_. The poet or painter who lacks form, lacks everything, because he lacks _himself_. Poetical material permeates the Soul of all: the expression alone, that is to say, the form, makes the poet. And here appears the truth of the thesis which denies to art all content, as content being understood just the intellectual concept. In this sense, when we take "content" as equal to "concept" it is most true, not only that art does not consist of content, but also that _it has no content_. In the same way the distinction between _poetry and prose_ cannot be justified, save in that of art and science. It was seen in antiquity that such distinction could not be founded on external elements, such as rhythm and metre, or on the freedom or the limitation of the form; that it was, on the contrary, altogether internal. Poetry is the language of sentiment; prose of the intellect; but since the intellect is also sentiment, in its concretion and reality, so all prose has a poetical side. [Sidenote] _The relation of first and second degree._ The relation between intuitive knowledge or expression, and intellectual knowledge or concept, between art and science, poetry and prose, cannot be otherwise defined than by saying that it is one of _double degree_. The first degree is the expression, the second the concept: the first can exist without the second, but the second cannot exist without the first. There exists poetry without prose, but not prose without poetry. Expression, indeed, is the first affirmation of human activity. Poetry is "the maternal language of the human race"; the first men "were by nature sublime poets." We also admit this in another way, when we observe that the passage from soul to mind, from animal to human activity, is effected by means of language. And this should be said of intuition or expression in general. But to us it appears somewhat inaccurate to define language or expression as an _intermediate_ link between nature and humanity, as though it were a mixture of the one and of the other. Where humanity appears, the rest has already disappeared; the man who expresses himself, certainly emerges from the state of nature, but he really does emerge: he does not stand half within and half without, as the use of the phrase "intermediate link" would imply. [Sidenote] _Inexistence of other forms of knowledge._ The cognitive intellect has no form other than these two. Expression and concept exhaust it completely. The whole speculative life of man is spent in passing from one to the other and back again. [Sidenote] _History. Its identity with and difference from art._ _Historicity_ is incorrectly held to be a third theoretical form. History is not form, but content: as form, it is nothing but intuition or aesthetic fact. History does not seek for laws nor form concepts; it employs neither induction nor deduction; it is directed _ad narrandum, non ad demonstrandum_; it does not construct universals and abstractions, but posits intuitions. The this, the that, the _individuum omni modo determinatum_, is its kingdom, as it is the kingdom of art. History, therefore, is included under the universal concept of art. Faced with this proposition and with the impossibility of conceiving a third mode of knowledge, objections have been brought forward which would lead to the affiliation of history to intellective or scientific knowledge. The greater portion of these objections is dominated by the prejudice that in refusing to history the character of conceptual science, something of its value and dignity has been taken from it. This really arises from a false idea of art, conceived, not as an essential theoretic function, but as an amusement, a superfluity, a frivolity. Without reopening a long debate, which so far as we are concerned, is finally closed, we will mention here one sophism which has been and still is widely repeated. It is intended to show the logical and scientific nature of history. The sophism consists in admitting that historical knowledge has for its object the individual; but not the representation, it is added, so much as the concept of the individual. From this it is argued that history is also a logical or scientific form of knowledge. History, in fact, should elaborate the concept of a personage such as Charlemagne or Napoleon; of an epoch, like the Renaissance or the Reformation; of an event, such as the French Revolution and the Unification of Italy. This it is held to do in the same way as Geometry elaborates the concepts of spatial form, or Aesthetic those of expression. But all this is untrue. History cannot do otherwise than represent Napoleon and Charlemagne, the Renaissance and the Reformation, the French Revolution and the Unification of Italy as individual facts with their individual physiognomy: that is, in the same way as logicians state, that one cannot have a concept of an individual, but only a representation. The so-called concept of the individual is always a universal or general concept, full of details, very rich, if you will, but however rich it be, yet incapable of attaining to that individuality, to which historical knowledge, as aesthetic knowledge, alone attains. Let us rather show how the content of history comes to be distinguished from that of art. The distinction is secondary. Its origin will be found in what has already been observed as to the ideal character of the intuition or first perception, in which all is real and therefore nothing is real. The mind forms the concepts of external and internal at a later stage, as it does those of what has happened and of what is desired, of object and subject, and the like. Thus it distinguishes historical from non-historical intuition, the _real_ from the _unreal_, real fancy from pure fancy. Even internal facts, what is desired and imagined, castles in the air, and countries of Cockagne, have their reality. The soul, too, has its history. His illusions form part of the biography of every individual. But the history of an individual soul is history, because in it is always active the distinction between the real and the unreal, even when the real is the illusions themselves. But these distinctive concepts do not appear in history as do scientific concepts, but rather like those that we have seen dissolved and melted in the aesthetic intuitions, although they stand out in history in an altogether new relief. History does not construct the concepts of the real and unreal, but makes use of them. History, in fact, is not the theory of history. Mere conceptual analysis is of no use in realizing whether an event in our lives were real or imaginary. It is necessary to reproduce the intuitions in the mind in the most complete form, as they were at the moment of production, in order to recognize the content. Historicity is distinguished in the concrete from pure imagination only as one intuition is distinguished from another: in the memory. [Sidenote] _Historical criticism._ [Sidenote] _Historical scepticism._ Where this is not possible, owing to the delicate and fleeting shades between the real and unreal intuitions, which confuse the one with the other, we must either renounce, for the time at least, the knowledge of what really happened (and this we often do), or we must fall back upon conjecture, verisimilitude, probability. The principle of verisimilitude and of probability dominates in fact all historical criticism. Examination of the sources and of authority is directed toward establishing the most credible evidence. And what is the most credible evidence, save that of the best observers, that is, of those who best remember and (be it understood) have not desired to falsify, nor had interest in falsifying the truth of things? From this it follows that intellectual scepticism finds it easy to deny the certainty of any history, for the certainty of history is never that of science. Historical certainty is composed of memory and of authority, not of analyses and of demonstration. To speak of historical induction or demonstration, is to make a metaphorical use of these expressions, which bear quite a different meaning in history to that which they bear in science. The conviction of the historian is the undemonstrable conviction of the juryman, who has heard the witnesses, listened attentively to the case, and prayed Heaven to inspire him. Sometimes, without doubt, he is mistaken, but the mistakes are in a negligible minority compared with the occasions when he gets hold of the truth. That is why good sense is right against the intellectualists, in believing in history, which is not a "fable agreed upon," but that which the individual and humanity remember of their past. We strive to enlarge and to render as precise as possible this record, which in some places is dim, in others very clear. We cannot do without it, such as it is, and taken as a whole, it is rich in truth. In a spirit of paradox only, can one doubt if there ever were a Greece or a Rome, an Alexander or a Caesar, a feudal Europe overthrown by a series of revolutions, that on the 1st of November 1517 the theses of Luther were seen fixed to the door of the church of Wittenberg, or that the Bastile was taken by the people of Paris on the 14th of July 1789. "What proof givest thou of all this?" asks the sophist, ironically. Humanity replies "I remember." [Sidenote] _Philosophy as perfect science. The so-called natural sciences, and their limits._ The world of what has happened, of the concrete, of history, is the world that is called real, natural, including in this definition the reality that is called physical, as well as that which is called spiritual and human. All this world is intuition; historical intuition, if it be realistically shown as it is, or imaginary intuition, artistic in the strict sense, if shown under the aspect of the possible, that is to say, of the imaginable. Science, true science, which is not intuition but concept, not individuality but universality, cannot be anything but a science of the spirit, that is, of what is universal in reality: Philosophy. If natural _sciences_ be spoken of, apart from philosophy, it is necessary to observe that these are not perfect sciences: they are complexes of knowledge, arbitrarily abstracted and fixed. The so-called natural sciences themselves recognize, in fact, that they are surrounded by limitations. These limitations are nothing more than historical and intuitive data. They calculate, measure, establish equalities, regularity, create classes and types, formulate laws, show in their own way how one fact arises out of other facts; but in their progress they are always met with facts which are known intuitively and historically. Even geometry now states that it rests altogether on hypotheses, since space is not three-dimensional or Euclidean, but this assumption is made use of by preference, because it is more convenient. What there is of truth in the natural sciences, is either philosophy or historical fact. What they contain proper to themselves is abstract and arbitrary. When the natural sciences wish to form themselves into perfect sciences, they must issue from their circle and enter the philosophical circle. This they do when they posit concepts which are anything but natural, such as those of the atom without extension in space, of ether or vibrating matter, of vital force, of space beyond the reach of intuition, and the like. These are true and proper philosophical efforts, when they are not mere words void of meaning. The concepts of natural science are, without doubt, most useful; but one cannot obtain from them that _system_, which belongs only to the spirit. These historical and intuitive assumptions, which cannot be separated from the natural sciences, furthermore explain, not only how, in the progress of knowledge, that which was once considered to be truth descends gradually to the grade of mythological beliefs and imaginary illusions, but also how, among natural scientists, there are some who term all that serves as basis of argument in their teaching _mythical facts, verbal expedients_, or _conventions_. The naturalists and mathematicians who approach the study of the energies of the spirit without preparation, are apt to carry thither these mental habits and to speak, in philosophy, of such and such conventions "as arranged by man." They make conventions of truth and morality, and their supreme convention is the Spirit itself! However, if there are to be conventions, something must exist about which there is no convention to be made, but which is itself the agent of the convention. This is the spiritual activity of man. The limitation of the natural sciences postulates the illimitation of philosophy. [Sidenote] _The phenomenon and the noumenon._ These explications have firmly established that the pure or fundamental forms of knowledge are two: the intuition and the concept--Art, and Science or Philosophy. With these are to be included History, which is, as it were, the product of intuition placed in contact with the concept, that is, of art receiving in itself philosophic distinctions, while remaining concrete and individual. All the other forms (natural sciences and mathematics) are impure, being mingled with extraneous elements of practical origin. The intuition gives the world, the phenomenon; the concept gives the noumenon, the Spirit. IV HISTORICISM AND INTELLECTUALISM IN AESTHETIC These relations between intuitive or aesthetic knowledge and the other fundamental or derivative forms of knowledge having been definitely established, we are now in a position to reveal the errors of a series of theories which have been, or are, presented, as theories of Aesthetic. [Sidenote] _Critique of verisimilitude and of naturalism._ From the confusion between the exigencies of art in general and the particular exigencies of history has arisen the theory (which has lost ground to-day, but used to dominate in the past) of _verisimilitude_ as the object of art. As is generally the case with erroneous propositions, the intention of those who employed and employ the concept of verisimilitude has no doubt often been much more reasonable than the definition given of the word. By verisimilitude used to be meant the artistic _coherence_ of the representation, that is to say, its completeness and effectiveness. If "verisimilar" be translated by "coherent," a most exact meaning will often be found in the discussions, examples, and judgments of the critics. An improbable personage, an improbable ending to a comedy, are really badly-drawn personages, badly-arranged endings, happenings without artistic motive. It has been said with reason that even fairies and sprites must have verisimilitude, that is to say, be really sprites and fairies, coherent artistic intuitions. Sometimes the word "possible" has been used instead of "verisimilar." As we have already remarked in passing, this word possible is synonymous with that which is imaginable or may be known intuitively. Everything which is really, that is to say, coherently, imagined, is possible. But formerly, and especially by the theoreticians, by verisimilar was understood historical credibility, or that historical truth which is not demonstrable, but conjecturable, not true, but verisimilar. It has been sought to impose a like character upon art. Who does not recall the great part played in literary history by the criticism of the verisimilar? For example, the fault found with the _Jerusalem Delivered_, based upon the history of the Crusades, or of the Homeric poems, upon that of the verisimilitude of the costume of the emperors and kings? At other times has been imposed upon art the duty of the aesthetic reproduction of historical reality. This is another of the erroneous significations assumed by the theory concerning _the imitation of nature_. Verism and naturalism have since afforded the spectacle of a confusion of the aesthetic fact with the processes of the natural sciences, by aiming at some sort of _experimental_ drama or romance. [Sidenote] _Critique of ideas in art, of theses in art, and of the typical._ The confusions between the methods of art and those of the philosophical sciences have been far more frequent. Thus it has often been held to be within the competence of art to develop concepts, to unite the intelligible with the sensible, to represent _ideas or universals_, putting art in the place of science, that is, confusing the artistic function in general with the particular case in which it becomes aesthetico-logical. The theory of art as supporting _theses_ can be reduced to the same error, as can be the theory of art considered as individual representation, exemplifying scientific laws. The example, in so far as it is an example, stands for the thing exemplified, and is thus an exposition of the universal, that is to say, a form of science, more or less popular or vulgarized. The same may be said of the aesthetic theory of the _typical_, when by type is understood, as it frequently is, just the abstraction or the concept, and it is affirmed that art should make _the species shine in the individual_. If by typical be here understood the individual, here, too, we have a merely verbal variation. To typify would signify, in this case, to characterize; that is, to determine and to represent the individual. Don Quixote is a type; but of whom is he a type, if not of all Don Quixotes? A type, that is to say, of himself. Certainly he is not a type of abstract concepts, such as the loss of the sense of reality, or of the love of glory. An infinite number of personages can be thought of under these concepts, who are not Don Quixote. In other words, we find our own impressions fully determined and verified in the expression of a poet (for example in a poetical personage). We call that expression typical, which we might call simply aesthetic. Poetical or artistic universals have been spoken of in like manner, in order to show that the artistic product is altogether spiritual and ideal in itself. [Sidenote] _Critique of the symbol and of the allegory._ Continuing to correct these errors, or to make clear equivoques, we will note that the _symbol_ has sometimes been given as essence of art. Now, if the symbol be given as inseparable from the artistic intuition, it is the synonym of the intuition itself, which always has an ideal character. There is no double-bottom to art, but one only; in art all is symbolical, because all is ideal. But if the symbol be looked upon as separable--if on the one side can be expressed the symbol, and on the other the thing symbolized, we fall back again into the intellectualist error: that pretended symbol is the exposition of an abstract concept, it is an _allegory_, it is science, or art that apes science. But we must be just toward the allegorical also. In some cases, it is altogether harmless. Given the _Gerusalemme liberata_, the allegory was imagined afterwards; given the _Adone_ of Marino, the poet of the lascivious insinuated afterwards that it was written to show how "immoderate indulgence ends in pain"; given a statue of a beautiful woman, the sculptor can write on a card that the statue represents _Clemency_ or _Goodness_. This allegory linked to a finished work _post festum_ does not change the work of art. What is it, then? It is an expression externally _added_ to another expression. A little page of prose is added to the _Gerusalemme_, expressing another thought of the poet; a verse or a strophe is added to the _Adone_, expressing what the poet would like to make a part of his public swallow; while to the statue nothing more than the single word is added: _Clemency_ or _Goodness_. [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of artistic and literary classes._ But the greatest triumph of the intellectualist error lies in the theory of artistic and literary classes, which still has vogue in literary treatises, and disturbs the critics and the historians of art. Let us observe its genesis. The human mind can pass from the aesthetic to the logical, just because the former is a first step, in respect to the latter. It can destroy the expressions, that is, the thought of the individual with the thought of the universal. It can reduce expressive facts to logical relations. We have already shown that this operation in its turn becomes concrete in an expression, but this does not mean that the first expressions have not been destroyed. They have yielded their place to the new aesthetico-logical expressions. When we are on the second step, we have left the first. He who enters a picture-gallery, or who reads a series of poems, may, after he has looked and read, go further: he may seek out the relations of the things there expressed. Thus those pictures and compositions, each of which is an individual inexpressible by logic, are resolved into universals and abstractions, such as _costumes, landscapes, portraits, domestic life, battles, animals, flowers, fruit, seascapes, lakes, deserts, tragic, comic, piteous, cruel, lyrical, epic, dramatic, knightly, idyllic facts_, and the like. They are often also resolved into merely quantitative categories, such as _little picture, picture, statuette, group, madrigal, song, sonnet, garland of sonnets, poetry, poem, story, romance_, and the like. When we think the concept _domestic life_, or _knighthood_, or _idyll_, or _cruelty_, or any other quantitative concept, the individual expressive fact from which we started is abandoned. From aesthetes that we were, we have been changed into logicians; from contemplators of expression, into reasoners. Certainly no objection can be made to such a process. In what other way could science be born, which, if aesthetic expressions be assumed in it, yet has for function to go beyond them? The logical or scientific form, as such, excludes the aesthetic form. He who begins to think scientifically has already ceased to contemplate aesthetically; although his thought will assume of necessity in its turn an aesthetic form, as has already been said, and as it would be superfluous to repeat. The error begins when we try to deduce the expression from the concept, and to find in the thing substituting the laws of the thing substituted; when the difference between the second and the first step has not been observed, and when, in consequence, we declare that we are standing on the first step, when we are really standing on the second. This error is known as _the theory of artistic and literary classes_. What is the aesthetic form of domestic life, of knighthood, of the idyll, of cruelty, and so forth? How should these contents be _represented_? Such is the absurd problem implied in the theory of artistic and literary classes. It is in this that consists all search after laws or rules of styles. Domestic life, knighthood, idyll, cruelty, and the like, are not impressions, but concepts. They are not contents, but logico-aesthetic forms. You cannot express the form, for it is already itself expression. And what are the words cruelty, idyll, knighthood, domestic life, and so on, but the expression of those concepts? Even the most refined of these distinctions, those that have the most philosophic appearance, do not resist criticism; as, for instance, when works of art are divided into the subjective and the objective styles, into lyric and epic, into works of feeling and works of design. It is impossible to separate in aesthetic analysis, the subjective from the objective side, the lyric from the epic, the image of feeling from that of things. [Sidenote] _Errors derived from this theory appearing in judgments on art._ From the theory of the artistic and literary classes derive those erroneous modes of judgment and of criticism, thanks to which, instead of asking before a work of art if it be expressive, and what it expresses, whether it speak or stammer, or be silent altogether, it is asked if it be obedient to the _laws_ of the epic poem, or to those of tragedy, to those of historical portraiture, or to those of landscape painting. Artists, however, while making a verbal pretence of agreeing, or yielding a feigned obedience to them, have really always disregarded these _laws of styles_. Every true work of art has violated some established class and upset the ideas of the critics, who have thus been obliged to enlarge the number of classes, until finally even this enlargement has proved too narrow, owing to the appearance of new works of art, which are naturally followed by new scandals, new upsettings, and-new enlargements. From the same theory come the prejudices, owing to which at one time (and is it really passed?) people used to lament that Italy had no tragedy (until a poet arose who gave to Italy that wreath which was the only thing wanting to her glorious hair), nor France the epic poem (until the _Henriade_, which slaked the thirsty throats of the critics). Eulogies accorded to the inventors of new styles are connected with these prejudices, so much so, that in the seventeenth century the invention of the _mock-heroic_ poem seemed an important event, and the honour of it was disputed, as though it were the discovery of America. But the works adorned with this name (the _Secchia rapita_ and the _Scherno degli Dei_) were still-born, because their authors (a slight draw-back) had nothing new or original to say. Mediocrities racked their brains to invent, artificially, new styles. The _piscatorial_ eclogue was added to the _pastoral_, and then, finally, the _military_ eclogue. The _Aminta_ was bathed and became the _Alceo_. Finally, there have been historians of art and literature, so much fascinated with these ideas of classes, that they claimed to write the history, not of single and effective literary and artistic works, but of their classes, those empty phantoms. They have claimed to portray, not the evolution of the _artistic spirit_, but the _evolution of classes_. The philosophical condemnation of artistic and literary classes is found in the formulation and demonstration of what artistic activity has ever sought and good taste ever recognized. What is to be done if good taste and the real fact, put into formulas, sometimes assume the air of paradoxes? [Sidenote] _Empirical sense of the divisions of classes._ Now if we talk of tragedies, comedies, dramas, romances, pictures of everyday life, battle-pieces, landscapes, seascapes, poems, versicles, lyrics, and the like, if it be only with a view to be understood, and to draw attention in general and approximatively to certain groups of works, to which, for one reason or another, it is desired to draw attention, in that case, no scientific error has been committed. We employ _vocables and phrases_; we do not establish _laws and definitions_. The mistake arises when the weight of a scientific definition is given to a word, when we ingenuously let ourselves be caught in the meshes of that phraseology. Pray permit me a comparison. It is necessary to arrange the books in a library in one way or another. This used generally to be done by means of a rough classification by subjects (among which the categories of miscellaneous and eccentric were not wanting); they are now generally arranged by sizes or by publishers. Who can deny the necessity and the utility of these groupings? But what should we say if some one began seriously to seek out the literary laws of miscellanies and of eccentricities from the Aldine or Bodonian collection, from size A or size B, that is to say, from these altogether arbitrary groupings whose sole object has been their practical use? Well, whoever should undertake an enterprise such as this, would be doing neither more nor less than those who seek out the aesthetic laws of literary and artistic classes. V ANALOGOUS ERRORS IN HISTORIC AND LOGIC The better to confirm these criticisms, it will be opportune to cast a rapid glance over analogous and opposite errors, born of ignorance as to the true nature of art, and of its relation to history and to science. These errors have injured alike the theory of history and of science, of Historic (or Historiology) and of Logic. [Sidenote] _Critique of the philosophy of history._ Historical intellectualism has been the cause of the many researches which have been made, especially during the last two centuries, researches which continue to-day, for _a philosophy of history_, for an _ideal history_, for a _sociology_, for a _historical psychology_, or however may be otherwise entitled or described a science whose object is to extract from history, universal laws and concepts. Of what kind must be these laws, these universals? Historical laws and historical concepts? In that case, an elementary criticism of knowledge suffices to make clear the absurdity of the attempt. When such expressions as a _historical law_, a _historical concept_ are not simply metaphors colloquially employed, they are true contradictions in terms: the adjective is as unsuitable to the substantive as in the expressions _qualitative quantity_ or _pluralistic monism_. History means concretion and individuality, law and concept mean abstraction and universality. If, on the other hand, the attempt to draw from history historical laws and concepts be abandoned, and it be merely desired to draw from it laws and concepts, the attempt is certainly not frivolous; but the science thus obtained will be, not a philosophy of history, but rather, according to the case, either philosophy in its various specifications of Ethic, Logic, etc., or empirical science in its infinite divisions and subdivisions. Thus are sought out either those philosophical concepts which are, as has already been observed, at the bottom of every historical construction and separate perception from intuition, historical intuition from pure intuition, history from art; or already formed historical intuitions are collected and reduced to types and classes, which is exactly the method of the natural sciences. Great thinkers have sometimes donned the unsuitable cloak of the philosophy of history, and notwithstanding the covering, they have conquered philosophical truths of the greatest magnitude. The cloak has been dropped, the truth has remained. Modern sociologists are rather to be blamed, not so much for the illusion in which they are involved when they talk of an impossible science of sociology, as for the infecundity which almost always accompanies their illusion. It is but a small evil that Aesthetic should be termed sociological Aesthetic, or Logic, social Logic. The grave evil is that their Aesthetic is an old-fashioned expression of sensualism, their Logic verbal and incoherent. The philosophical movement, to which we have referred, has borne two good fruits in relation to history. First of all has been felt the desire to construct a theory of historiography, that is, to understand the nature and the limits of history, a theory which, in conformity with the analyses made above, cannot obtain satisfaction, save in a general science of intuition, in an Aesthetic, from which Historic would be separated under a special head by means of the intervention of the universals. Furthermore, concrete truths relating to historical events have often been expressed beneath the false and presumptuous cloak of a philosophy of history; canons and empirical advice have been formulated by no means superfluous to students and critics. It does not seem possible to deny this utility to the most recent of philosophies of history, to so-called historical materialism, which has thrown a very vivid light upon many sides of social life, formerly neglected or ill understood. [Sidenote] _Aesthetic invasions into Logic._ The principle of authority, of the _ipse dixit_, is an invasion of historicity into the domains of science and philosophy which has raged in the schools. This substitutes for introspection and philosophical analyses, this or that evidence, document, or authoritative statement, with which history certainly cannot dispense. But Logic, the science of thought and of intellectual knowledge, has suffered the most grave and destructive disturbances and errors of all, through the imperfect understanding of the aesthetic fact. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, if logical activity come after and contain in itself aesthetic activity? An inexact Aesthetic must of necessity drag after it an inexact Logic. Whoever opens logical treatises, from the _Organum_ of Aristotle to the moderns, must admit that they all contain a haphazard mixture of verbal facts and facts of thought, of grammatical forms and of conceptual forms, of Aesthetic and of Logic. Not that attempts have been wanting to escape from verbal expression and to seize thought in its effective nature. Aristotelian logic itself did not become mere syllogistic and verbalism, without some stumbling and oscillation. The especially logical problem was often touched upon in the Middle Ages, by the nominalists, realists, and conceptualists, in their disputes. With Galileo and with Bacon, the natural sciences gave an honourable place to induction. Vico combated formalist and mathematical logic in favour of inventive methods. Kant called attention to _a priori_ syntheses. The absolute idealists despised the Aristotelian logic. The followers of Herbart, bound to Aristotle, on the other hand, set in relief those judgments which they called narrative, which are of a character altogether different from other logical judgments. Finally, the linguists insisted upon the irrationality of the word, in relation to the concept. But a conscious, sure, and radical movement of reform can find no base or starting-point, save in the science of Aesthetic. [Sidenote] _Logic in its essence._ In a Logic suitably reformed on this basis, it will be fitting to proclaim before all things this truth, and to draw from it all its consequences: the logical fact, _the only logical fact_, is _the concept_, the universal, the spirit that forms, and in so far as it forms, the universal. And if be understood by induction, as has sometimes been understood, the formation of universals, and by deduction the verbal development of these, then it is clear that true Logic can be nothing but inductive Logic. But since by the word "deduction" has been more frequently understood the special processes of mathematics, and by the word "induction" those of the natural sciences, it will be advisable to avoid the one and the other denomination, and to say that true Logic is the Logic of the concept. The Logic of the concept, adopting a method which is at once induction and deduction, will adopt neither the one nor the other exclusively, that is, will adopt the (speculative) method, which is intrinsic to it. The concept, the universal, is in itself, abstractly considered, _inexpressible_. No word is proper to it. So true is this, that the logical concept remains always the same, notwithstanding the variation of verbal forms. In respect to the concept, expression is a simple _sign_ or _indication_. There must be an expression, it cannot fail; but what it is to be, this or that, is determined by the historical and psychological conditions of the individual who is speaking. The quality of the expression is not deducible from the nature of the concept. There does not exist a true (logical) sense of words. He who forms a concept bestows on each occasion their true meaning on the words. [Sidenote] _Distinction between logical and non-logical judgements._ This being established, the only truly logical (that is, aesthetico-logical) propositions, the only rigorously logical judgments, can be nothing but those whose proper and exclusive content is the determination of a concept. These propositions or judgments are the _definitions_. Science itself is nothing but a complex of definitions, unified in a supreme definition; a system of concepts, or chief concept. It is therefore necessary to exclude from Logic all those propositions which do not affirm universals. Narrative judgments, not less than those termed non-enunciative by Aristotle, such as the expression of desires, are not properly logical judgments. They are either purely aesthetic propositions or historical propositions. "Peter is passing; it is raining to-day; I am sleepy; I want to read": these and an infinity of propositions of the same kind, are nothing but either a mere enclosing, in words the impression of the fact that Peter is passing, of the falling rain, of my organism inclining to sleep, and of my will directed to reading, or they are existential affirmation concerning those facts. They are expressions of the real or of the unreal, of historical or of pure imagination; they are certainly not definitions of universals. [Sidenote] _Syllogistic._ This exclusion cannot meet with great difficulties. It is already almost an accomplished fact, and the only thing required is to render it explicit, decisive, and coherent. But what is to be done with all that part of human experience which is called _syllogistic_, consisting of judgments and reasonings which are based on concepts. What is syllogistic? Is it to be looked down upon from above with contempt, as something useless, as has so often been done in the reaction of the humanists against scholasticism, in absolute idealism, in the enthusiastic admiration of our times for the methods of observation and experiment of the natural sciences? Syllogistic, reasoning _in forma_, is not a discovery of truth; it is the art of exposing, debating, disputing with oneself and others. Proceeding from concepts already formed, from facts already observed and making appeal to the persistence of the true or of thought (such is the meaning of the principle of identity and contradiction), it infers consequences from these data, that is, it represents what has already been discovered. Therefore, if it be an _idem per idem_ from the point of view of invention, it is most efficacious as a teaching and an exposition. To reduce affirmations to the syllogistic scheme is a way of controlling one's own thought and of criticizing that of others. It is easy to laugh at syllogisers, but, if syllogistic has been born and retains its place, it must have good roots of its own. Satire applied to it can concern only its abuses, such as the attempt to prove syllogistically questions of fact, observation, and intuition, or the neglect of profound meditation and unprejudiced investigation of problems, for syllogistic formality. And if so-called _mathematical Logic_ can sometimes aid us in our attempt to remember with ease, to manipulate the results of our own thought, let us welcome this form of the syllogism also, long prophesied by Leibnitz and essayed by many, even in our days. But precisely because syllogistic is the art of exposing and of debating, its theory cannot hold the first place in a philosophical Logic, usurping that belonging to the doctrine of the concept, which is the central and dominating doctrine, to which is reduced everything logical in syllogistic, without leaving a residuum (relations of concepts, subordination, co-ordination, identification, and so on). Nor must it ever be forgotten that the concept, the (logical) judgment, and the syllogism do not occupy the same position. The first alone is the logical fact, the second and third are the forms in which the first manifests itself. These, in so far as they are forms, cannot be examined save aesthetically (grammatically); in so far as they possess logical content, only by neglecting the forms themselves and passing to the doctrine of the concept. [Sidenote] _False Logic and true Aesthetic._ This shows the truth of the ordinary remark to the effect that he who reasons ill, also speaks and writes ill, that exact logical analysis is the basis of good expression. This truth is a tautology, for to reason well is in fact to express oneself well, because the expression is the intuitive possession of one's own logical thought. The principle of contradiction, itself, is at bottom nothing but the aesthetic principle of coherence. It will be said that starting from erroneous concepts it is possible to write and to speak exceedingly well, as it is also possible to reason well; that some who are dull at research may yet be most limpid writers. That is precisely because to write well depends upon having a clear intuition of one's own thought, even if it be erroneous; that is to say, not of its scientific, but of its aesthetic truth, since it is this truth itself. A philosopher like Schopenhauer can imagine that art is a representation of the Platonic ideas. This doctrine is absolutely false scientifically, yet he may develop this false knowledge in excellent prose, aesthetically most true. But we have already replied to these objections, when we observed that at that precise point where a speaker or a writer enunciates an ill-thought concept, he is at the same time speaking ill and writing ill. He may, however, afterwards recover himself in the many other parts of his thought, which consist of true propositions, not connected with the preceding errors, and lucid expressions may with him follow upon turbid expressions. [Sidenote] _Logic reformed._ All enquiries as to the forms of judgments and of syllogisms, on their conversion and on their various relations, which still encumber treatises on Logic, are therefore destined to become less, to be transformed, to be reduced to something else. The doctrine of the concept and of the organism of the concepts, of definition, of system, of philosophy, and of the various sciences, and the like, will fill the place of these and will constitute the only true and proper Logic. Those who first had some suspicion of the intimate connexion between Aesthetic and Logic and conceived Aesthetic as a _Logic of sensible knowledge_, were strangely addicted to applying logical categories to the new knowledge, talking of _aesthetic concepts, aesthetic judgments, aesthetic syllogisms_, and so on. We are less superstitious as regards the solidity of the traditional Logic of the schools, and better informed as to the nature of Aesthetic. We do not recommend the application of Logic to Aesthetic, but the liberation of Logic from aesthetic forms. These have given rise to non-existent forms or categories of Logic, due to the following of altogether arbitrary and crude distinctions. Logic thus reformed will always be _formal_ Logic; it will study the true form or activity of thought, the concept, excluding single and particular concepts. The old Logic is ill called formal; it were better to call it _verbal_ or _formalistic_. Formal Logic will drive out formalistic Logic. To attain this object, it will not be necessary to have recourse, as some have done, to a real or material Logic, which is not a science of thought, but thought itself in the act; not only a Logic, but the complex of Philosophy, in which Logic also is included. The science of thought (Logic) is that of the concept, as that of fancy (Aesthetic) is the science of expression. The well-being of both sciences lies in exactly following in every particular the distinction between the two domains. VI THEORETIC AND PRACTICAL ACTIVITY The intuitive and intellective forms exhaust, as we have said, all the theoretic form of the spirit. But it is not possible to know them thoroughly, nor to criticize another series of erroneous aesthetic theories, without first establishing clearly their relations with another form of the spirit, which is the _practical_ form. [Sidenote] _The will._ This form or practical activity is the _will_. We do not employ this word here in the sense of any philosophical system, in which the will is the foundation of the universe, the principle of things and the true reality. Nor do we employ it in the ample sense of other systems, which understand by will the energy of the spirit, the spirit or activity in general, making of every act of the human spirit an act of will. Neither such metaphysical nor such metaphorical meaning is ours. For us, the will is, as generally accepted, that activity of the spirit, which differs from the mere theoretical contemplation of things, and is productive, not of knowledge, but of actions. Action is really action, in so far as it is voluntary. It is not necessary to remark that in the will to do, is included, in the scientific sense, also what is vulgarly called not-doing: the will to resist, to reject, the prometheutic will, is also action. [Sidenote] _The will as an ulterior stage in respect to knowledge._ Man understands things with the theoretical form, with the practical form he changes them; with the one he appropriates the universe, with the other he creates it. But the first form is the basis of the second; and the relation of _double degree_, which we have already found existing between aesthetic and logical activity, is repeated between these two on a larger scale. Knowledge independent of the will is thinkable; will independent of knowledge is unthinkable. Blind will is not will; true will has eyes. How can we will, without having before us historical intuitions (perceptions) of objects, and knowledge of (logical) relations, which enlighten us as to the nature of those objects? How can we really will, if we do not know the world which surrounds us, and the manner of changing things by acting upon them? [Sidenote] _Objections and elucidations._ It has been objected that men of action, practical men in the eminent sense, are the least disposed to contemplate and to theorize: their energy is not delayed in contemplation, it rushes at once into will. And conversely, that contemplative men, philosophers, are often very mediocre in practical matters, weak willed, and therefore neglected and thrust aside in the tumult of life. It is easy to see that these distinctions are merely empirical and quantitative. Certainly, the practical man has no need of a philosophical system in order to act, but in the spheres where he does act, he starts from intuitions and concepts which are most clear to him. Otherwise he could not will the most ordinary actions. It would not be possible to will to feed oneself, for instance, without knowledge of the food, and of the link of cause and effect between certain movements and certain organic sensations. Rising gradually to the more complex forms of action, for example to the political, how could we will anything politically good or bad, without knowing the real conditions of society, and consequently the means and expedients to be adopted? When the practical man feels himself in the dark about one or more of these points, or when he is seized with doubt, action either does not begin or stops. It is then that the theoretical moment, which in the rapid succession of human actions is hardly noticed and rapidly forgotten, becomes important and occupies consciousness for a longer time. And if this moment be prolonged, then the practical man may become Hamlet, divided between desire for action and his small amount of theoretical clarity as regards the situation and the means to be employed. And if he develop a taste for contemplation and discovery, and leave willing and acting, to a more or less great extent, to others, there is formed in him the calm disposition of the artist, of the man of science, or of the philosopher, who are sometimes unpractical or altogether blameworthy. These observations are all obvious. Their exactitude cannot be denied. Let us, however, repeat that they are founded on quantitative distinctions and do not disprove, but confirm the fact that an action, however slight it be, cannot really be an action, that is, an action that is willed, unless it be preceded by cognoscitive activity. [Sidenote] _Critique of practical judgments or judgments of value._ Some psychologists, on the other hand, place before practical action an altogether special class of judgments, which they call _practical_ judgments or judgments _of value_. They say that in order to resolve to perform an action, it is necessary to have judged: "this action is useful, this action is good." And at first sight this seems to have the testimony of consciousness on its side. But he who observes better and analyses with greater subtlety, discovers that such judgments follow instead of preceding the affirmation of the will; they are nothing but the expression of the already exercised volition. A good or useful action is an action that is willed. It will always be impossible to distil from the objective study of things a single drop of usefulness or goodness. We do not desire things because we know them to be good or useful; but we know them to be good and useful, because we desire them. Here too, the rapidity, with which the facts of consciousness follow one another has given rise to an illusion. Practical action is preceded by knowledge, but not by practical knowledge, or better by the practical: to obtain this, it is first necessary to have practical action. The third moment, therefore, of practical judgments, or judgments of value, is altogether imaginary. It does not come between the two moments or degrees of theory and practice. That is why there exist no normative sciences in general, which regulate or command, discover and indicate values to the practical activity; because there is none for any other activity, assuming every science already realized and that activity developed, which it afterwards takes as its object. [Sidenote] _Exclusion of the practical from the aesthetic._ These distinctions established, we must condemn as erroneous every theory which confuses aesthetic with practical activity, or introduces the laws of the second into the first. That science is theory and art practice has been many times affirmed. Those who make this statement, and look upon the aesthetic fact as a practical fact, do not do so capriciously or because they are groping in the void; but because they have their eye on something which is really practical. But the practical which they are looking at is not Aesthetic, nor within Aesthetic; it is _outside and beside it_; and although they are often found united, they are not necessarily united, that is to say, by the bond of identity of nature. The aesthetic fact is altogether completed in the expressive elaboration of the impressions. When we have conquered the word within us, conceived definitely and vividly a figure or a statue, or found a musical motive, expression is born and is complete; there is no need for anything else. If after this we should open our mouths and _will_ to open them, to speak, or our throats to sing, and declare in a loud voice and with extended throat what we have completely said or sung to ourselves; or if we should stretch out and _will_ to stretch out our hands to touch the notes of the piano, or to take up the brushes and the chisel, making thus in detail those movements which we have already done rapidly, and doing so in such a way as to leave more or less durable traces; this is all an addition, a fact which obeys quite different laws to the first, and with these laws we have not to occupy ourselves for the moment. Let us, however, here recognize that this second movement is a production of things, a _practical_ fact, or a fact of _will_. It is customary to distinguish the internal from the external work of art: the terminology seems here to be infelicitous, for the work of art (the aesthetic work) is always _internal_; and that which is called _external_ is no longer a work of art. Others distinguish between _aesthetic_ fact and _artistic_ fact, meaning by the second the external or practical stage, which may and generally does follow the first. But in this case, it is simply a case of linguistic usage, doubtless permissible, although perhaps not opportune. [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the end of art and of the choice of the content._ For the same reasons the search for the _end of art_ is ridiculous, when it is understood of art as art. And since to fix an end is to choose, the theory that the content of art must be _selected_ is another form of the same error. A selection from among impressions and sensations implies that these are already expressions, otherwise, how can a selection be made among what is continuous and indistinct? To choose is to will: to will this and not to will that: and this and that must be before us, they must be expressed. Practice follows, it does not precede theory; expression is free inspiration. The true artist, in fact, finds himself big with his theme, he knows not how; he feels the moment of birth drawing near, but he cannot will it or not will it. If he were to wish to act in opposition to his inspiration, to make an arbitrary choice, if, born Anacreon, he were to wish to sing of Atreus and of Alcides, his lyre would warn him of his mistake, echoing only of Venus and of Love, notwithstanding his efforts to the contrary. [Sidenote] _Practical innocence of art._ The theme or content cannot, therefore, be practically or morally charged with epithets of praise or of blame. When critics of art remark that a theme is _badly selected_, in cases where that observation has a just foundation, it is a question of blaming, not the selection of the theme (which would be absurd), but the manner in which the artist has treated it. The expression has failed, owing to the contradictions which it contains. And when the same critics rebel against the theme or the content as being unworthy of art and blameworthy, in respect to works which they proclaim to be artistically perfect; if these expressions really are perfect, there is nothing to be done but to advise the critics to leave the artists in peace, for they cannot get inspiration, save from what has made an impression upon them. The critics should think rather of how they can effect changes in nature and in society, in order that those impressions may not exist. If ugliness were to vanish from the world, if universal virtue and felicity were established there, perhaps artists would no longer represent perverse or pessimistic sentiments, but sentiments that are calm, innocent, and joyous, like Arcadians of a real Arcady. But so long as ugliness and turpitude exist in nature and impose themselves on the artist, it is not possible to prevent the expression of these things also; and when it has arisen, _factum infectum fieri nequit_. We speak thus entirely from the aesthetic point of view, and from that of pure aesthetic criticism. We do not delay to pass here in review the damage which the criticism of choice does to artistic production, with the prejudices which it produces or maintains among the artists themselves, and with the contrast which it occasions between artistic impulse and critical exigencies. It is true that sometimes it seems to do some good also, by assisting the artists to discover themselves, that is, their own impressions and their own inspiration, and to acquire consciousness of the task which is, as it were, imposed upon them by the historical moment in which they live, and by their individual temperament. In these cases, criticism of choice merely recognizes and aids the expressions which are already being formed. It believes itself to be the mother, where, at most, it is only the midwife. [Sidenote] _The independence of art._ The impossibility of choice of content completes the theorem of the _independence of art_, and is also the only legitimate meaning of the expression: _art for art's sake_. Art is thus independent of science, as it is of the useful and the moral. Let it not be feared that thus may be justified art that is frivolous or cold, since that which is truly frivolous or cold is so because it has not been raised to expression; or in other words, frivolity and frigidity come always from the form of the aesthetic elaboration, from the lack of a content, not from the material qualities of the content. [Sidenote] _Critique of the saying: the style is the man._ The saying: _the style is the man_, can also not be completely criticized, save by starting from the distinction between the theoretic and the practical, and from the theoretic character of the aesthetic activity. Man is not simply knowledge and contemplation: he is also will, which contains in it the cognoscitive moment. Now the saying is either altogether void, as when it is understood that the man is the style, in so far as he is style, that is to say, the man, but only in so far as he is an expression of activity; or it is erroneous, when the attempt is made to deduce from what a man has seen and expressed, that which he has done and willed, inferring thereby that there is a necessary link between knowing and willing. Many legends in the biographies of artists have sprung from this erroneous identification, since it seemed impossible that a man who gives expression to generous sentiments should not be a noble and generous man in practical life; or that the dramatist who gives a great many stabs in his plays, should not himself have given a few at least in real life. Vainly do the artists protest: _lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba_. They are merely taxed in addition with lying and hypocrisy. O you poor women of Verona, how far more subtle you were, when you founded your belief that Dante had really descended to hell, upon his dusky countenance! Yours was at any rate a historical conjecture. [Sidenote] _Critique of the concept of sincerity in art._ Finally, _sincerity_ imposed upon the artist as a duty (this law of ethics which, they say, is also a law of aesthetic) arises from another equivoke. For by sincerity is meant either the moral duty not to deceive one's neighbour; and in that case Is foreign to the artist. For he, in fact, deceives no one, since he gives form to what is already in his mind. He would deceive, only if he were to betray his duty as an artist by a lesser devotion to the intrinsic necessity of his task. If lies and deceit are in his mind, then the form which he gives to these things cannot be deceit or lies, precisely because it is aesthetic. The artist, if he be a charlatan, a liar, or a miscreant, purifies his other self by reflecting it in art. Or by sincerity is meant, fulness and truth of expression, and it is clear that this second sense has nothing to do with the ethical concept. The law, which is at once ethical and aesthetic, reveals itself in this case in a word employed alike by Ethic and Aesthetic. VII ANALOGY BETWEEN THE THEORETIC AND THE PRACTICAL [Sidenote] _The two forms of practical activity._ The twofold grade of the theoretical activity, aesthetic and logical, has an important parallel in the practical activity, which has not yet been placed in due relief. The practical activity is also divided into a first and second degree, the second implying the first. The first practical degree is the simply _useful_ or _economical_ activity; the second the _moral_ activity. Economy is, as it were, the Aesthetic of practical life; Morality its Logic. [Sidenote] _The economically useful._ If this has not been clearly seen by philosophers; if its suitable place in the system of the mind has not been given to the economic activity, and it has been left to wander in the prolegomena to treatises on political economy, often uncertain and but slightly elaborated, this is due, among other reasons, to the fact that the useful or economic has been confused, now with the concept of _technique_, now with that of the _egoistic_. [Sidenote] _Distinction between the useful and the technical._ _Technique_ is certainly not a special activity of the spirit. Technique is knowledge; or better, it is knowledge itself, in general, that takes this name, as we have seen, in so far as it serves as basis for practical action. Knowledge which is not followed, or is presumed to be not easily followed by practical action, is called pure: the same knowledge, if effectively followed by action, is called applied; if it is presumed that it can be easily followed by the same action, it is called technical or applied. This word, then, indicates a _situation_ in which knowledge already is, or easily can be found, not a special form of knowledge. So true is this, that it would be altogether impossible to establish whether a given order of knowledge were, intrinsically, pure or applied. All knowledge, however abstract and philosophical one may imagine it to be, can be a guide to practical acts; a theoretical error in the ultimate principles of morals can be reflected and always is reflected in some way, in practical life. One can only speak roughly and unscientifically of truths that are pure and of others that are applied. The same knowledge which is called technical, can also be called _useful_. But the word "useful," in conformity with the criticism of judgments of value made above, is to be understood as used here in a linguistic or metaphorical sense. When we say that water is useful for putting out fire, the word "useful" is used in a non-scientific sense. Water thrown on the fire is the cause of its going out: this is the knowledge that serves for basis to the action, let us say, of firemen. There is a link, not of nature, but of simple succession, between the useful action of the person who extinguishes the conflagration, and this knowledge. The technique of the effects of the water is the theoretical activity which precedes; the _action_ of him who extinguishes the fire is alone useful. [Sidenote] _Distinction between the useful and the egoistic._ Some economists identify utility with _egoïsm_, that is to say, with merely economical action or desire, with that which is profitable to the individual, in so far as individual, without regard to and indeed in complete opposition to the moral law. The egoistic is the immoral. In this case Economy would be a very strange science, standing, not beside, but facing Ethic, like the devil facing God, or at least like the _advocatus diaboli_ in the processes of canonization. Such a conception of it is altogether inadmissible: the science of immorality is implied in that of morality, as the science of the false is implied in _Logic_, the science of the true, and a science of ineffectual expression in Aesthetic, the science of successful expression. If, then, Economy were the scientific treatment of egoism, it would be a chapter of Ethic, or Ethic itself; because every moral determination implies, at the same time, a negation of its contrary. Further, conscience tells us that to conduct oneself economically is not to conduct oneself egoistically; that even the most morally scrupulous man must conduct himself usefully (economically), if he does not wish to be inconclusive and, therefore, not truly moral. If utility were egoism, how could it be the duty of the altruist to behave like an egoist? [Sidenote] _Economic will and moral will._ If we are not mistaken, the difficulty is solved in a manner perfectly analogous to that in which is solved the problem of the relations between the expression and the concept, between Aesthetic and Logic. To will economically is to _will an end_; to will morally is to _will the rational end_. But whoever wills and acts morally, cannot but will and act usefully (economically). How could he will the _rational_, unless he willed it also _as his particular end_? [Sidenote] _Pure economicity._ The reciprocal is not true; as it is not true in aesthetic science that the expressive fact must of necessity be linked with the logical fact. It is possible to will economically without willing morally; and it is possible to conduct oneself with perfect economic coherence, while pursuing an end which is objectively irrational (immoral), or, better, an end which would be so judged in a superior grade of consciousness. Examples of the economic, without the moral character, are the Prince of Machiavelli, Caesar Borgia, or the Iago of Shakespeare. Who can help admiring their strength of will, although their activity is only economic, and is opposed to what we hold moral? Who can help admiring the ser Ciappelletto of Boccaccio, who, even on his death-bed, pursues and realizes his ideal of the perfect rascal, making the small and timid little thieves who are present at his burlesque confession exclaim: "What manner of man is this, whose perversity, neither age, nor infirmity, nor the fear of death, which he sees at hand, nor the fear of God, before whose judgment-seat he must stand in a little while, have been able to remove, nor to cause that he should not wish to die as he has lived?" [Sidenote] _The economic side of morality._ The moral man unites with the pertinacity and fearlessness of a Caesar Borgia, of an Iago, or of a ser Ciappelletto, the good will of the saint or of the hero. Or, better, good will would not be will, and consequently not good, if it did not possess, in addition to the side which makes it _good_, also that which makes it _will_. Thus a logical thought, which does not succeed in expressing itself, is not thought, but at the most, a confused presentiment of a thought yet to come. It is not correct, then, to conceive of the amoral man as also the anti-economical man, or to make of morality an element of coherence in the acts of life, and therefore of economicity. Nothing prevents us from conceiving (an hypothesis which is verified at least during certain periods and moments, if not during whole lifetimes) a man altogether without moral conscience. In a man thus organized, what for us is immorality is not so for him, because it is not so felt. The consciousness of the contradiction between what is desired as a rational end and what is pursued egoistically cannot be born in him. This contradiction is anti-economicity. Immoral conduct becomes also anti-economical only in the man who possesses moral conscience. The moral remorse which is the proof of this, is also economical remorse; that is to say, pain at not having known how to will completely and to attain to that moral ideal which was willed at the first moment, but was afterwards perverted by the passions. _Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor_. The _video_ and the _probo_ are here an initial will immediately contradicted and passed over. In the man deprived of moral sense, we must admit a remorse which is _merely economic_; like that of a thief or of an assassin who should be attacked when on the point of robbing or of assassinating, and should abstain from doing so, not owing to a conversion of his being, but owing to his impressionability and bewilderment, or even owing to a momentary awakening of the moral consciousness. When he has come back to himself, that thief or assassin will regret and be ashamed of his inconsequence; his remorse will not be due to having done wrong, but to not having done it; his remorse is, therefore, economic, not moral, since the latter is excluded by hypothesis. However, a lively moral conscience is generally found among the majority of men, and its total absence is a rare and perhaps non-existent monstrosity. It may, therefore, be admitted, that morality coincides with economicity in the conduct of life. [Sidenote] _The merely economic and the error of the morally indifferent._ There need be no fear lest the parallelism affirmed by us should introduce afresh into the category of the _morally indifferent_, of that which is in truth action and volition, but is neither moral nor immoral; the category in sum of the _licit_ and of the _permissible_, which has always been the cause or mirror of ethical corruption, as is the case with Jesuitical morality in which it dominated. It remains quite certain that indifferent moral actions do not exist, because moral activity pervades and must pervade every least volitional movement of man. But this, far from upsetting the parallelism, confirms it. Do there exist intuitions which science and the intellect do not pervade and analyse, resolving them into universal concepts, or changing them into historical affirmations? We have already seen that true science, philosophy, knows no external limits which bar its way, as happens with the so-called natural sciences. Science and morality entirely dominate, the one the aesthetic intuitions, the other the economic volitions of man, although neither of them can appear in the concrete, save in the intuitive form as regards the one, in the economic as regards the other. [Sidenote] _Critique of utilitarianism and the reform of Ethic and of Economic._ This combined identity and difference of the useful and of the moral, of the economic and of the ethic, explains the fortune enjoyed now and formerly by the utilitarian theory of Ethic. It is in fact easy to discover and to show a utilitarian side in every moral action; as it is easy to show an aesthetic side of every logical proposition. The criticism of ethical utilitarianism cannot escape by denying this truth and seeking out absurd and inexistent examples of _useless_ moral actions. It must admit the utilitarian side and explain it as the concrete form of morality, which consists of what is _within_ this form. Utilitarians do not see this within. This is not the place for a more ample development of such ideas. Ethic and Economic cannot but be gainers, as we have said of Logic and Aesthetic, by a more exact determination of the relations that exist between them. Economic science is now rising to the animating concept of the useful, as it strives to pass beyond the mathematical phase, in which it is still entangled; a phase which, when it superseded historicism, was in its turn a progress, destroying a series of arbitrary distinctions and false theories of Economic, implied in the confusion of the theoretical with the historical. With this conception, it will be easy on the one hand to absorb and to verify the semi-philosophical theories of so-called pure economy, and on the other, by the introduction of successive complications and additions, and by passing from the philosophical to the empirical or naturalistic method, to include the particular theories of the political or national economy of the schools. [Sidenote] _Phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity._ As aesthetic intuition knows the phenomenon or nature, and philosophic intuition the noumenon or spirit; so economic activity wills the phenomenon or nature, and moral activity the noumenon or spirit. _The spirit which desires itself_, its true self, the universal which is in the empirical and finite spirit: that is the formula which perhaps defines the essence of morality with the least impropriety. This will for the true self is _absolute liberty_. VIII EXCLUSION OF OTHER SPIRITUAL FORMS [Sidenote] _The system of the spirit._ In this summary sketch that we have given, of the entire philosophy of the spirit in its fundamental moments, the spirit is conceived as consisting of four moments or grades, disposed in such a way that the theoretical activity is to the practical as is the first theoretical grade to the second theoretical, and the first practical grade to the second practical. The four moments imply one another regressively by their concretion. The concept cannot be without expression, the useful without the one and the other, and morality without the three preceding grades. If the aesthetic fact is alone independent, and the others more or less dependent, then the logical is the least so and the moral will the most. Moral intention operates on given theoretic bases, which cannot be dispensed with, save by that absurd practice, the jesuitical _direction of intention_. Here people pretend to themselves not to know what at bottom they know perfectly well. [Sidenote] _The forms of genius._ If the forms of human activity are four, four also are the forms of genius. Geniuses in art, in science, in moral will or heroes, have certainly always been recognized. But the genius of pure Economic has met with opposition. It is not altogether without reason that a category of bad geniuses or of _geniuses of evil_ has been created. The practical, merely economic genius, which is not directed to a rational end, cannot but excite an admiration mingled with alarm. It would be a mere question of words, were we to discuss whether the word "genius" should be applied only to creators of aesthetic expression, or also to men of scientific research and of action. To observe, on the other hand, that genius, of whatever kind it be, is always a quantitative conception and an empirical distinction, would be to repeat what has already been explained as regards artistic genius. [Sidenote] _Non-existence of a fifth form of activity. Law; sociality._ A fifth form of spiritual activity does not exist. It would be easy to demonstrate how all the other forms, either do not possess the character of activity, or are verbal variants of the activities already examined, or are complex and derived facts, in which the various activities are mingled, or are filled with special contents and contingent data. The _judicial_ fact, for example, considered as what is called objective law, is derived both from the economic and from the logical activities. Law is a rule, a formula (whether oral or written matters little here) in which is contained an economic relation willed by an individual or by a collectivity. This economic side at once unites it with and distinguishes it from moral activity. Take another example. Sociology (among the many meanings the word bears in our times) is sometimes conceived as the study of an original element, which is called _sociality_. Now what is it that distinguishes sociality, or the relations which are developed in a meeting of men, not of subhuman beings, if it be not just the various spiritual activities which exist among the former and which are supposed not to exist, or to exist only in a rudimentary degree, among the latter? Sociality, then, far from being an original, simple, irreducible conception, is very complex and complicated. This could be proved by the impossibility, generally recognized, of enunciating a single sociological law, properly so-called. Those that are improperly called by that name are revealed as either empirical historical observations, or spiritual laws, that is to say judgments, into which are translated the conceptions of the spiritual activities; when they are not simply empty and indeterminate generalizations, like the so-called law of evolution. Sometimes, too, nothing more is understood by sociality than social rule, and so law; and thus sociology is confounded with the science or theory of law itself. Law, sociality, and like terms, are to be dealt with in a mode analogous to that employed by us in the consideration of historicity and technique. [Sidenote] _Religiosity._ It may seem fitting to form a different judgment as to _religious_ activity. But religion is nothing but knowledge, and does not differ from its other forms and subforms. For it is in truth and in turn either the expression of practical and ideal aspirations (religious ideals), or historical narrative (legend), or conceptual science (dogma). It can therefore be maintained with equal truth, both that religion is destroyed by the progress of human knowledge, and that it is always present there. Their religion was the whole patrimony of knowledge of primitive peoples: our patrimony of knowledge is our religion. The content has been changed, bettered, refined, and it will change and become better and more refined in the future also; but its function is always the same. We do not know what use could be made of religion by those who wish to preserve it side by side with the theoretic activity of man, with his art, with his criticism, and with his philosophy. It is impossible to preserve an imperfect and inferior kind of knowledge, like religion, side by side with what has surpassed and disproved it. Catholicism, which is always coherent, will not tolerate a Science, a History, an Ethic, in contradiction to its views and doctrines. The rationalists are less coherent. They are disposed to allow a little space in their souls for a religion which is in contradiction with their whole theoretic world. These affectations and religious susceptibilities of the rationalists of our times have their origin in the superstitious cult of the natural sciences. These, as we know and as is confessed by the mouth of their chief adepts, are all surrounded by _limits_. Science having been wrongly identified with the so-called natural sciences, it could be foreseen that the remainder would be asked of religion; that remainder with which the human spirit cannot dispense. We are therefore indebted to materialism, to positivism, to naturalism for this unhealthy and often disingenuous reflowering of religious exaltation. Such things are the business of the hospital, when they are not the business of the politician. [Sidenote] _Metaphysic._ Philosophy withdraws from religion all reason for existing, because it substitutes itself for religion. As the science of the spirit, it looks upon religion as a phenomenon, a transitory historical fact, a psychic condition that can be surpassed. Philosophy shares the domain of knowledge with the natural disciplines, with history and with art. It leaves to the first, narration, measurement and classification; to the second, the chronicling of what has individually happened; to the third, the individually possible. There is nothing left to share with religion. For the same reason, philosophy, as the science of the spirit, cannot be philosophy of the intuitive datum; nor, as has been seen, _Philosophy of History, nor Philosophy of Nature_; and therefore there cannot be a philosophic science of what is not form and universal, but material and particular. This amounts to affirming the impossibility of _metaphysic_. The Method or Logic of history followed the Philosophy of history; a gnoseology of the conceptions which are employed in the natural sciences succeeded natural philosophy. What philosophy can study of the one is its mode of construction (intuition, perception, document, probability, etc.); of the others she can study the forms of the conceptions which appear in them (space, time, motion, number, types, classes, etc.). Philosophy, which should become metaphysical in the sense above described, would, on the other hand, claim to compete with narrative history, and with the natural sciences, which in their field are alone legitimate and effective. Such a competition becomes in fact a labour spoiling labour. We are _antimetaphysical_ in this sense, while yet declaring ourselves _ultrametaphysical_, if by that word it be desired to claim and to affirm the function of philosophy as the autoconsciousness of the spirit, as opposed to the merely empirical and classificatory function of the natural sciences. [Sidenote] _Mental imagination and the intuitive intellect._ In order to maintain itself side by side with the sciences of the spirit, metaphysic has been obliged to assert the existence of a specific spiritual activity, of which it would be the product. This activity, which in antiquity was called _mental or superior imagination_, and in modern times more often _intuitive intellect or intellectual intuition_, would unite in an altogether special form the characters of imagination and of intellect. It would provide the method of passing, by deduction or dialectically, from the infinite to the finite, from form to matter, from the concept to the intuition, from science to history, operating by a method which should be at once unity and compenetration of the universal and the particular, of the abstract and the concrete, of intuition and of intellect. A faculty marvellous indeed and delightful to possess; but we, who do not possess it, have no means of proving its existence. [Sidenote] _Mystical aesthetic._ Intellectual intuition has sometimes been considered as the true aesthetic activity. At others a not less marvellous aesthetic activity has been placed beside, below, or above it, a faculty altogether different from simple intuition. The glories of this faculty have been sung, and to it have been attributed the fact of art, or at the least certain groups of artistic production, arbitrarily chosen. Art, religion, and philosophy have seemed in turn one only, or three distinct faculties of the spirit, now one, now another of these being superior in the dignity assigned to each. It is impossible to enumerate all the various attitudes assumed by this conception of Aesthetic, which we will call _mystical_. We are here in the kingdom, not of the science of imagination, but of imagination itself, which creates its world with the varying elements of the impressions and of the feelings. Let it suffice to mention that this mysterious faculty has been conceived, now as practical, now as a mean between the theoretic and the practical, at others again as a theoretic grade together with philosophy and religion. [Sidenote] _Mortality and immortality of art._ The immortality of art has sometimes been deduced from this last conception as belonging with its sisters to the sphere of absolute spirit. At other times, on the other hand, when religion has been looked upon as mortal and as dissolved in philosophy, then the mortality, even the actual death, or at least the agony of art has been proclaimed. These questions have no meaning for us, because, seeing that the function of art is a necessary grade of the spirit, to ask if art can be eliminated is the same thing as asking if sensation or intelligence can be eliminated. But metaphysic, in the above sense, since it transplants itself to an arbitrary world, is not to be criticized in detail, any more than one can criticize the botany of the garden of Alcina or the navigation of the voyage of Astolfo. Criticism can only be made by refusing to join the game; that is to say, by rejecting the very possibility of metaphysic, always in the sense above indicated. As we do not admit intellectual intuition in philosophy, we can also not admit its shadow or equivalent, aesthetic intellectual intuition, or any other mode by which this imaginary function may be called and represented. We repeat again that we do not know of a fifth grade beyond the four grades of spirit which consciousness reveals to us. IX INDIVISIBILITY OF EXPRESSION INTO MODES OR GRADES AND CRITIQUE OF RHETORIC [Sidenote] _The characteristics of art._ It is customary to give long enumerations of the characteristics of art. Having reached this point of the treatise, having studied the artistic function as spiritual activity, as theoretic activity, and as special theoretic activity (intuitive), we are able to discern that those various and copious descriptions mean, when they mean anything at all, nothing but a repetition of what may be called the qualities of the aesthetic function, generic, specific, and characteristic. To the first of these are referred, as we have already observed, the characters, or better, the verbal variants of _unity_, and of _unity_ in _variety_, those also of _simplicity_, of _originality_, and so on; to the second of these, the characteristics of _truth_, of _sincerity_, and the like; to the third, the characteristics of _life_, of _vivacity_, of _animation_, of _concretion_, of _individuality_, of _characteristicality_. The words may vary yet more, but they will not contribute anything scientifically new. The results which we have shown have altogether exhausted the analysis of expression as such. [Sidenote] _Inexistence of modes of expression._ But at this point, the question as to whether there be various _modes or grades_ of expression is still perfectly legitimate. We have distinguished two grades of activity, each of which is subdivided into two other grades, and there is certainly, so far, no visible logical reason why there should not exist two or more modes of the aesthetic, that is of expression.--The only objection is that these modes do not exist. For the present at least, it is a question of simple internal observation and of self consciousness. One may scrutinize aesthetic facts as much as one will: no formal differences will ever be found among them, nor will the aesthetic fact be divisible into a first and a second degree. This signifies that a philosophical classification of expressions is not possible. Single expressive facts are so many individuals, of which the one cannot be compared with the other, save generically, in so far as each is expression. To use the language of the schools, expression is a species which cannot in its turn perform the functions of genus. Impressions, that is to say contents, vary; every content differs from every other content, because nothing in life repeats itself; and the continuous variation of contents follows the irreducible variety of expressive facts, the aesthetic syntheses of the impressions. [Sidenote] _Impossibility of translations._ A corollary of this is the impossibility of _translations_, in so far as they pretend to effect the transference of one expression into another, like a liquid poured from a vase of a certain shape into a vase of another shape. We can elaborate logically what we have already elaborated in aesthetic form only; but we cannot reduce that which has already possessed its aesthetic form to another form also aesthetic. In truth, every translation either diminishes and spoils; or it creates a new expression, by putting the former back into the crucible and mixing it with other impressions belonging to the pretended translator. In the former case, the expression always remains one, that of the original, the translation being more or less deficient, that is to say, not properly expression: in the other case, there would certainly be two expressions, but with two different contents. "Ugly faithful ones or faithless beauties" is a proverb that well expresses the dilemma with which every translator is faced. In aesthetic translations, such as those which are word for word or interlinear, or paraphrastic translations, are to be looked upon as simple commentaries on the original. [Sidenote] _Critique of rhetorical categories._ The division of expressions into various classes is known in literature by the name of theory of _ornament_ or of _rhetorical categories_. But similar attempts at classification in the other forms of art are not wanting: suffice it to mention the _realistic and symbolic forms_, spoken of in painting and sculpture. The scientific value to be attached in Aesthetic and in aesthetic criticism to these distinctions of _realistic and symbolic_, of _style and absence of style_, of _objective and subjective_, of _classic and romantic_, of _simple and ornate_, of _proper and metaphorical_, of the fourteen forms of metaphor, of the figures of _word_ and of _sentence_, and further of _pleonasm_, of _ellipse_, of _inversion_, of _repetition_, of _synonyms and homonyms_, and so on; is _nil_ or altogether negative. To none of these terms and distinctions can be given a satisfactory aesthetic definition. Those that have been attempted, when they are not obviously erroneous, are words devoid of sense. A typical example of this is the very common definition of metaphor as of _another word used in place of the word itself_. Now why give oneself this trouble? Why take the worse and longer road when you know the shorter and better road? Perhaps, as is generally said, because the correct word is in certain cases not so _expressive_ as the so-called incorrect word or metaphor? But in that case the metaphor becomes exactly the right word, and the so-called right word, if it were used, would be _but little expressive_ and therefore most improper. Similar observations of elementary good sense can be made regarding the other categories, as, for example, the generic one of the ornate. One can ask oneself how an ornament can be joined to expression. Externally? In that case it must always remain separate. Internally? In that case, either it does not assist expression and mars it; or it does form part of it and is not ornament, but a constituent element of expression, indistinguishable from the whole. It is not necessary to dwell upon the harm done by these distinctions. Rhetoric has often been declaimed against, but although there has been rebellion against its consequences, its principles have been carefully preserved, perhaps in order to show proof of philosophic coherence. Rhetoric has contributed, if not to make dominant in literary production, at least to justify theoretically, that particular mode of writing ill which is called fine writing or writing according to rhetoric. [Sidenote] _Empirical sense of the rhetorical categories._ The terms above mentioned would never have gone beyond the schools, where we all of us learned them (certain of never finding the opportunity of using them in strictly aesthetic discussions, or even of doing so jocosely and with a comic intention), save when occasionally employed in one of the following significations: as _verbal variants _of the aesthetic concept; as indications of the _anti-aesthetic_, or, finally (and this is their most important use), in a sense which is no longer aesthetic and literary, _but merely logical_. [Sidenote] _Use of these categories as synonyms of the aesthetic fact._ Expressions are not divisible into classes, but some are successful, others half-successful, others failures. There are perfect and imperfect, complete and deficient expressions. The terms already cited, then, sometimes indicate the successful expression, sometimes the various forms of the failures. But they are employed in the most inconstant and capricious manner, for it often happens that the same word serves, now to proclaim the perfect, now to condemn the imperfect. An instance of this is found when someone, criticizing two pictures--the one without inspiration, in which the author has copied natural objects without intelligence; the other inspired, but without obvious likeness to existing objects--calls the first _realistic_, the second _symbolic_. Others, on the contrary, pronounce the word _realistic_ about a strongly felt picture representing a scene of ordinary life, while they talk of _symbolic_ in reference to another picture representing but a cold allegory. It is evident that in the first case symbolic means artistic, and realistic inartistic, while in the second, realistic is synonymous with artistic and symbolic with inartistic. How, then, can we be astonished when some hotly maintain that the true art form is the symbolic, and that the realistic is inartistic; others, that the realistic is the artistic, and the symbolic the inartistic? We cannot but grant that both are right, since each makes use of the same words in senses so diverse. The great disputes about the _classic_ and the _romantic_ are frequently based upon such equivokes. Sometimes the former was understood as the artistically perfect, and the second as lacking balance and imperfect; at others, the classic was cold and artificial, the romantic sincere, warm, efficacious, and truly expressive. Thus it was always possible to take the side of the classic against the romantic, or of the romantic against the classic. The same thing happens as regards the word _style_. Sometimes it is affirmed that every writer should have style. Here style is synonymous with form or expression. Sometimes the form of a code of laws or of a mathematical work is said to be devoid of style. Here the error of admitting diverse modes of expression is again committed, of admitting an ornate and a naked form of expression, because, since style is form, the code and the mathematical treatise must also, strictly speaking, have each its style. At other times, one hears the critics blaming someone for "having too much style" or for "writing a style." Here it is clear that style signifies, not the form, nor a mode of it, but improper and pretentious expression, which is one form of the inartistic. [Sidenote] _Their use to indicate various aesthetic imperfections._ Passing to the second, not altogether insignificant, use of these words and distinctions, we sometimes find in the examination of a literary composition such remarks as follow: here is a pleonasm, here an ellipse, there a metaphor, here again a synonym or an equivoke. This means that in one place is an error consisting of using a larger number of words than is necessary (pleonasm); that in another the error arises from too few having been used (ellipse), elsewhere from the use of an unsuitable word (metaphor), or from the use of two words which seem to express two different things, where they really express the same thing (synonym); or that, on the contrary, it arises from having employed one which seems to express the same thing where it expresses two different things (equivoke). This pejorative and pathological use of the terms is, however, more uncommon than the preceding. [Sidenote] _Their use in a sense transcending aesthetic, in the service of science._ Finally, when rhetorical terminology possesses no aesthetic signification similar or analogous to those passed in review, and yet one is aware that it is not void of meaning and designates something that deserves to be noted, it is then used in the service of logic and of science. If it be granted that a concept used in a scientific sense by a given writer is expressed with a definite term, it is natural that other words formed by that writer as used to signify the same concept, or incidentally made use of by him, become, _in respect to_ the vocabulary fixed upon by him as true, metaphors, synecdoches, synonyms, elliptic forms, and the like. We, too, in the course of this treatise, have several times made use of, and intend again to make use of such terms, in order to make clear the sense of the words we employ, or may find employed. But this proceeding, which is of value in the disquisitions of scientific and intellectual criticism, has none whatever in aesthetic criticism. For science there exist appropriate words and metaphors. The same concept may be psychologically formed in various circumstances and therefore be expressed with various intuitions. When the scientific terminology of a given writer has been established, and one of these modes has been fixed as correct, then all other uses of it become improper or tropical. But in the aesthetic fact exist only appropriate words. The same intuition can only be expressed in one way, precisely because it is an intuition and not a concept. [Sidenote] _Rhetoric in the schools._ Some, while they admit the aesthetic insufficiency of the rhetorical categories, yet make a reserve as regards their utility and the service they are supposed to render, especially in schools of literature. We confess that we fail to understand how error and confusion can educate the mind to logical clearness, or aid the teaching of a science which they disturb and obscure. Perhaps it may be desired to say that they can aid memory and learning as empirical classes, as was admitted above for literary and artistic styles. But there is another purpose for which the rhetorical categories should certainly continue to be admitted to the schools: to be criticized there. We cannot simply forget the errors of the past, and truth cannot be kept alive, save by making it fight against error. Unless a notion of the rhetorical categories be given, accompanied by a suitable criticism of these, there is a risk of their springing up again. For they are already springing up with certain philologists, disguised as most recent _psychological_ discoveries. [Sidenote] _The resemblances of expressions._ It would seem as though we wished to deny all bond of likeness among themselves between expressions and works of art. The likenesses exist, and owing to them, works of art can be arranged in this or that group. But they are likenesses such as are observed among individuals, and can never be rendered with abstract definitions. That is to say, these likenesses have nothing to do with identification, subordination, co-ordination, and the other relations of concepts. They consist wholly in what is called a _family likeness_, and are connected with those historical conditions existing at the birth of the various works, or in an affinity of soul between the artists. [Sidenote] _The relative possibility of translations._ It is in these resemblances that lies the _relative_ possibility of translations. This does not consist of the reproduction of the same original expressions (which it would be vain to attempt), but in the measure that expressions are given, more or less nearly resembling those. The translation that passes for good is an approximation which has original value as a work of art and can stand by itself. X AESTHETIC FEELINGS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE UGLY AND THE BEAUTIFUL Passing on to the study of more complex concepts, where the aesthetic activity is found in conjunction with other orders of facts, and showing the mode of this union or complication, we find ourselves at once face to face with the concept of _feeling_ and with the feelings which are called _aesthetic_. [Sidenote] _Various significances of the word feeling._ The word "feeling" is one of the richest in meanings. We have already had occasion to meet with it once, among those used to designate the spirit in its passivity, the matter or content of art, and also as synonym of _impressions_. Once again (and then the meaning was altogether different), we have met with it as designating the _non-logical_ and _non-historical_ character of the aesthetic fact, that is to say pure intuition, a form of truth which defines no concept and states no fact. [Sidenote] _Feeling as activity._ But feeling is not here understood in either of these two senses, nor in the others in which it has nevertheless been used to designate other _cognoscitive_ forms of spirit. Its meaning here is that of a special activity, of non-cognoscitive nature, but possessing its two poles, positive and negative, in _pleasure_ and _pain_. This activity has always greatly embarrassed philosophers, who have attempted either to deny it as an activity, or to attribute it to _nature_ and to exclude it from spirit. Both solutions bristle with difficulties, and these are of such a kind that the solutions prove themselves finally unacceptable to anyone who examines them with care. For of what could a non-spiritual activity consist, an _activity of nature_, when we have no other knowledge of activity save as spiritual, and of spirituality save as activity? Nature is, in this case, by definition, the merely passive, inert, mechanical and material. On the other hand, the negation of the character of activity to feeling is energetically disproved by those very poles of pleasure and of pain which appear in it and manifest activity in its concreteness, and, we will say, all aquiver. [Sidenote] _Identification of feeling with economic activity._ This critical conclusion ought to place us in the greatest embarrassment, for in the sketch of the system of the spirit given above, we have left no room for the new activity, of which we are now obliged to recognize the existence. But activity of feeling, if it be activity, is not specially new. It has already had its place assigned to it in the system which we have sketched, where, however, it has been indicated under another name, as _economic_ activity. What is called the activity of feeling is nothing but that more elementary and fundamental practical activity, which we have distinguished from ethical activity, and made to consist of the appetite and desire for some individual end, without any moral determination. [Sidenote] _Critique of hedonism._ If feeling has been sometimes considered as organic or natural activity, this has happened precisely because it does not coincide either with logical, aesthetic, or ethical activity. Looked at from the standpoint of these three (which were the only ones admitted), it has seemed to lie _outside_ the true and real spirit, the spirit in its aristocracy, and to be almost a determination of nature and of the soul, in so far as it is nature. Thus the thesis, several times maintained, that the aesthetic activity, like the ethical and intellectual activities, is not feeling, becomes at once completely proved. This thesis was inexpugnable, when sensation had already been reduced confusedly and implicitly to economic volition. The view which has been refuted is known by the name of _hedonism_. For hedonism, all the various forms of the spirit are reduced to one, which thus itself also loses its own distinctive character and becomes something turbid and mysterious, like "the shades in which all cows are black." Having effected this reduction and mutilation, the hedonists naturally do not succeed in seeing anything else in any activity but pleasure and pain. They find no substantial difference between the pleasure of art and that of an easy digestion, between the pleasure of a good action and that of breathing the fresh air with wide-expanded lungs. [Sidenote] _Feeling as a concomitant to every form of activity._ But if the activity of feeling in the sense here defined must not be substituted for all the other forms of spiritual activity, we have not said that it cannot _accompany_ them. Indeed it accompanies them of necessity, because they are all in close relation, both with one another and with the elementary volitional form. Therefore each of them has for concomitants individual volitions and volitional pleasures and pains which are known as feeling. But we must not confound what is concomitant, with the principal fact, and take the one for the other. The discovery of the truth, or the satisfaction of a moral duty fulfilled, produces in us a joy which makes our whole being vibrate, for, by attaining to those forms of spiritual activity, it attains at the same time that to which it was _practically_ tending, as to its end, during the effort. Nevertheless, economic or hedonistic satisfaction, ethical satisfaction, aesthetic satisfaction, intellectual satisfaction, remain always distinct, even when in union. Thus is solved at the same time the much-debated question, which has seemed, not wrongly, a matter of life or death for aesthetic science, namely, whether the feeling and the pleasure precede or follow, are cause or effect of the aesthetic fact. We must enlarge this question, to include the relation between the various spiritual forms, and solve it in the sense that in the unity of the spirit one cannot talk of cause and effect and of what comes first and what follows it in time. And once the relation above exposed is established, the statements, which it is customary to make, as to the nature of aesthetic, moral, intellectual, and even, as is sometimes said, economic feelings, must also fall. In this last case, it is clear that it is a question, not of two terms, but of one, and the quest of economic feeling can be but that same one concerning the economic activity. But in the other cases also, the search can never be directed to the substantive, but to the adjective: aesthetic, morality, logic, explain the colouring of the feelings as aesthetic, moral, and intellectual, while feeling, studied alone, will never explain those refractions. [Sidenote] _Meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of feelings._ A further consequence is, that we can free ourselves from the distinction between values or feelings _of value_, and feelings that are merely hedonistic and _without value_; also from other similar distinctions, like those between _disinterested_ feelings and _interested_ feelings, between _objective _feelings and the others that are not _objective_ but simply _subjective_, between feelings of _approval_ and others of _mere pleasure_ (_Gefallen_ and _Vergnügen_ of the Germans). Those distinctions strove hard to save the three spiritual forms, which have been recognised as the triad of the _True_, the _Good_, and the _Beautiful_, from confusion with the fourth form, still unknown, yet insidious through its indeterminateness, and mother of scandals. For us this triad has finished its task, because we are capable of reaching the distinction far more directly, by welcoming even the selfish, subjective, merely pleasurable feelings, among the respectable forms of the spirit; and where formerly antitheses were conceived of by ourselves and others, between value and feelings, as between spirituality and naturality, henceforth we see nothing but difference between value and value. [Sidenote] _Value and disvalue: the contraries and their union._ As has already been said, the economic feeling or activity reveals itself as divided into two poles, positive and negative, pleasure and pain, which we can now translate into useful, and useless or hurtful. This bipartition has already been noted above, as a mark of the active character of feeling, precisely because the same bipartition is found in all forms of activity. If each of these is a _value_, each has opposed to it _antivalue or disvalue_. Absence of value is not sufficient to cause disvalue, but activity and passivity must be struggling between themselves, without the one getting the better of the other; hence the contradiction, and the disvalue of the activity that is embarrassed, contested, or interrupted. Value is activity that unfolds itself freely: disvalue is its contrary. We will content ourselves with this definition of the two terms, without entering into the problem of the relation between value and disvalue, that is, between the problem of contraries. (Are these to be thought of dualistically, as two beings or two orders of beings, like Ormuzd and Ahriman, angels and devils, enemies to one another; or as a unity, which is also contrariety?) This definition of the two terms will be sufficient for our purpose, which is to make clear aesthetic activity in particular, and one of the most obscure and disputed concepts of Aesthetic which arises at this point: the concept of the _Beautiful_. [Sidenote] _The Beautiful as the value of expression, or expression and nothing more._ Aesthetic, intellectual, economic, and ethical values and disvalues are variously denominated in current speech: _beautiful, true, good, useful, just_, and so on--these words designate the free development of spiritual activity, action, scientific research, artistic production, when they are successful; _ugly, false, bad, useless, unbecoming, unjust, inexact_ designate embarrassed activity, the product of which is a failure. In linguistic usage, these denominations are being continually shifted from one order of facts to another, and from this to that. _Beautiful_, for instance, is said not only of a successful expression, but also of a scientific truth, of an action successfully achieved, and of a moral action: thus we talk of an _intellectual beauty_, of a _beautiful action_, of a _moral beauty_. Many philosophers, especially aestheticians, have lost their heads in their pursuit of these most varied uses: they have entered an inextricable and impervious verbal labyrinth. For this reason it has hitherto seemed convenient studiously to avoid the use of the word beautiful to indicate successful expression. But after all the explanations that have been given, and all danger of misunderstanding being now dissipated, and since, on the other hand, we cannot fail to recognize that the prevailing tendency, alike in current speech and in philosophy, is to limit the meaning of the vocable _beautiful_ altogether to the aesthetic value, we may define beauty as _successful expression_, or better, as _expression_ and nothing more, because expression, when it is not successful, is not expression. [Sidenote] _The ugly, and the elements of beauty which compose it._ Consequently, the ugly is unsuccessful expression. The paradox is true, that, in works of art that are failures, the beautiful is present as _unity_ and the ugly as _multiplicity_. Thus, with regard to works of art that are more or less failures, we talk of qualities, that is to say of _those parts of them that are beautiful_. We do not talk thus of perfect works. It is in fact impossible to enumerate their qualities or to designate those parts of them that are beautiful. In them there is complete fusion: they have but one quality. Life circulates in the whole organism: it is not withdrawn into certain parts. The qualities of works that are failures may be of various degrees. They may even be very great. The beautiful does not possess degrees, for there is no conceiving a more beautiful, that is, an expressive that is more expressive, an adequate that is more than adequate. Ugliness, on the other hand, does possess degrees, from the rather ugly (or almost beautiful) to the extremely ugly. But if the ugly were _complete_, that is to say, without any element of beauty, it would for that very reason cease to be ugly, because in it would be absent the contradiction which is the reason of its existence. The disvalue would become nonvalue; activity would give place to passivity, with which it is not at war, save when there effectively is war. [Sidenote] _Illusions that there exist expressions which are neither beautiful nor ugly._ And because the distinctive consciousness of the beautiful and of the ugly is based on the contrasts and contradictions in which aesthetic activity is developed, it is evident that this consciousness becomes attenuated to the point of disappearing altogether, as we descend from the more complicated to the more simple and to the simplest cases of expression. From this arises the illusion that there are expressions which are neither beautiful nor ugly, those which are obtained without sensible effort and appear easy and natural being so considered. [Sidenote] _True aesthetic feelings and concomitant or accidental feelings._ The whole mystery of the _beautiful_ and the _ugly_ is reduced to these henceforth most easy definitions. Should any one object that there exist perfect aesthetic expressions before which no pleasure is felt, and others, perhaps even failures, which give him the greatest pleasure, it is necessary to advise him to pay great attention, as regards the aesthetic fact, to that only which is truly aesthetic pleasure. Aesthetic pleasure is sometimes reinforced by pleasures arising from extraneous facts, which are only casually found united with it. The poet or any other artist affords an instance of purely aesthetic pleasure, during the moment in which he sees (or has the intuition of) his work for the first time; that is to say, when his impressions take form and his countenance is irradiated with the divine joy of the creator. On the other hand, a mixed pleasure is experienced by any one who goes to the theatre, after a day's work, to witness a comedy: when the pleasure of rest and amusement, and that of laughingly snatching a nail from the gaping coffin, is accompanied at a certain moment by real aesthetic pleasure, obtained from the art of the dramatist and of the actors. The same may be said of the artist who looks upon his labour with pleasure, when it is finished, experiencing, in addition to the aesthetic pleasure, that very different one which arises from the thought of self-love satisfied, or of the economic gain which will come to him from his work. Examples could be multiplied. [Sidenote] _Critique of apparent feelings._ A category of _apparent_ aesthetic feelings has been formed in modern Aesthetic. These have nothing to do with the aesthetic sensations of pleasure arising from the form, that is to say from the work of art. On the contrary, they arise from the content of the work of art. It has been observed that "artistic representations arouse pleasure and pain in their infinite variety and gradations. We tremble with anxiety, we rejoice, we fear, we laugh, we weep, we desire, with the personages of a drama or of a romance, with the figures in a picture, or with the melody of music. But these feelings are not those that would give occasion to the real fact outside art; that is to say, they are the same in quality, but they are quantitively an attenuation. Aesthetic and _apparent_ pleasure and pain are slight, of little depth, and changeable." We have no need to treat of these _apparent feelings_, for the good reason that we have already amply discussed them; indeed, we have treated of them alone. What are ever feelings that become apparent or manifest, but feelings objectified, intensified, expressed? And it is natural that they do not trouble and agitate us passionately, as do those of real life, because those were matter, these are form and activity; those true and proper feelings, these intuitions and expressions. The formula, then, of _apparent feelings_ is nothing but a tautology. The best that can be done is to run the pen through it. XI CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC HEDONISM As we are opposed to hedonism in general, that is to say, to the theory which is based on the pleasure and pain intrinsic to Economy and accompanies every other form of activity, confounding the content and that which contains it, and fails to recognize any process but the hedonistic; so we are opposed to aesthetic hedonism in particular, which looks upon the aesthetic at any rate, if not also upon all other activities, as a simple fact of feeling, and confounds the _pleasurable of expression_, which is the beautiful, with the pleasurable and nothing more, and with the pleasurable of all sorts. [Sidenote] _Critique of the beautiful as that which pleases the higher senses._ The aesthetic-hedonistic point of view has been presented in several forms. One of the most ancient conceives the beautiful as that which pleases the sight and hearing, that is to say, the so-called superior senses. When analysis of aesthetic facts first began, it was, in fact, difficult to avoid the mistake of thinking that a picture and a piece of music are impressions of sight or of hearing: it was and is an indisputable fact that the blind man does not enjoy the picture, nor the deaf man the music. To show, as we have shown, that the aesthetic fact does not depend upon the nature of the impressions, but that all sensible impressions can be raised to aesthetic expression and that none need of necessity be so raised, is an idea which presents itself only when all the other ways out of the difficulty have been tried. But whoso imagines that the aesthetic fact is something pleasing to the eyes or to the hearing, has no line of defence against him who proceeds logically to identify the beautiful with the pleasurable in general, and includes cooking in Aesthetic, or, as some positivist has done, the viscerally beautiful. [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of play._ The theory of _play_ is another form of aesthetic hedonism. The conception of play has sometimes helped towards the realization of the actifying character of the expressive fact: man (it has been said) is not really man, save when he begins to play; that is to say, when he frees himself from natural and mechanical causality and operates spiritually; and his first game is art. But since the word _play_ also means that pleasure which arises from the expenditure of the exuberant energy of the organism (that is to say, from a practical act), the consequence of this theory has been, that every game has been called an aesthetic fact, and that the aesthetic function has been called a game, in so far as it is possible to play with it, for, like science and every other thing, Aesthetic can be made part of a game. But morality cannot be provoked at the intention of playing, on the ground that it does not consent; on the contrary, it dominates and regulates the act of playing itself. [Sidenote] _Critique of the theories of sexuality and of the triumph._ Finally, there have been some who have tried to deduce the pleasure of art from the reaction of the sexual organs. There are some very modern aestheticians who place the genesis of the aesthetic fact in the pleasure of _conquering_, of _triumphing_, or, as others add, in the desire of the male, who wishes to conquer the female. This theory is seasoned with much anecdotal erudition, Heaven knows of what degree of credibility! on the customs of savage peoples. But in very truth there was no necessity for such important aid, for one often meets in ordinary life poets who adorn themselves with their poetry, like cocks that raise their crests, or turkeys that spread their tails. But he who does such things, in so far as he does them, is not a poet, but a poor devil of a cock or turkey. The conquest of woman does not suffice to explain the art fact. It would be just as correct to term poetry _economic_, because there have been aulic and stipendiary poets, and there are poets the sale of whose verses helps them to gain their livelihood, if it does not altogether provide it. However, this definition has not failed to win over some zealous neophytes of historical materialism. [Sidenote] _Critique of the Aesthetic of the sympathetic. Meaning in it of content and form._ Another less vulgar current of thought considers Aesthetic to be the science of the _sympathetic_, of that with which we sympathize, which attracts, rejoices, gives us pleasure and excites admiration. But the sympathetic is nothing but the image or representation of what pleases. And, as such, it is a complex fact, resulting from a constant element, the aesthetic element of representation, and from a variable element, the pleasing in its infinite forms, arising from all the various classes of values. In ordinary language, there is sometimes a feeling of repugnance at calling an expression beautiful, which is not an expression of the sympathetic. Hence the continual contrast between the point of view of the aesthetician or of the art critic and that of the ordinary person, who cannot succeed in persuading himself that the image of pain and of turpitude can be beautiful, or, at least, can be beautiful with as much right as the pleasing and the good. The opposition could be solved by distinguishing two different sciences, one of expression and the other of the sympathetic, if the latter could be the object of a special science; that is to say, if it were not, as has been shown, a complex fact. If predominance be given to the expressive fact, it becomes a part of Aesthetic as science of expression; if to the pleasurable content, we fall back to the study of facts which are essentially hedonistic (utilitarian), however complicated they may appear. The origin, also, of the connexion between content and form is to be sought for in the Aesthetic of the sympathetic, when this is conceived as the sum of two values. [Sidenote] _Aesthetic hedonism and moralism._ In all the doctrines just now discussed, the art fact is posited as merely hedonistic. But this view cannot be maintained, save by uniting it with a philosophic hedonism that is complete and not partial, that is to say, with a hedonism which does not admit any other form of value. Hardly has this hedonistic conception of art been received by philosophers, who admit one or more spiritual values, of truth or of morality, than the following question must necessarily be asked: What should be done with art? To what use should it be put? Should a free course be allowed to its pleasures? And if so, to what extent? The question of the _end of art_, which in the Aesthetic of expression would be a contradiction of terms, here appears in place, and altogether logical. [Sidenote] _The rigoristic negation, and the pedagogic justification of art._ Now it is evident that, admitting the premisses, but two solutions of such a question can be given, the one altogether negative, the other restrictive. The first, which we shall call _rigoristic_ or _ascetic_, appears several times, although not frequently, in the history of ideas. It looks upon art as an inebriation of the senses, and therefore, not only useless, but harmful. According to this theory, then, it is necessary to drive it with all our strength from the human soul, which it troubles. The other solution, which we shall call _pedagogic_ or _moralistico-utilitarian_, admits art, but only in so far as it concurs with the end of morality; in so far as it assists with innocent pleasure the work of him who leads to the true and the good; in so far as it sprinkles with dulcet balm the sides of the vase of wisdom and of morality. It is well to observe that it would be an error to divide this second view into intellectualist and moralistico-utilitarian, according to whether the end of leading to the true or to what is practically good, be assigned to art. The task of instructing, which is imposed upon it, precisely because it is an end which is sought after and advised, is no longer merely a theoretical fact, but a theoretical fact become the material for practical action; it is not, therefore, intellectualism, but pedagogism and practicism. Nor would it be more exact to subdivide the pedagogic view into the pure utilitarian and the moralistico-utilitarian; because those who admit only the individually useful (the desire of the individual), precisely because they are absolute hedonists, have no motive for seeking an ulterior justification for art. But to enunciate these theories at the point to which we have attained is to confute them. We therefore restrict ourselves to observing that in the pedagogic theory of art is to be found another of the reasons why it has been erroneously claimed that the content of art should be _chosen_ with a view to certain practical effects. [Sidenote] _Critique of pure beauty._ The thesis, re-echoed by the artists, that art consists of _pure beauty_, has often been brought forward against hedonistic and pedagogic Aesthetic: "Heaven places All our joy in _pure beauty_, and the Verse is everything." If it is wished that this should be understood in the sense that art is not to be confounded with sensual pleasure, that is, in fact, with utilitarian practicism, nor with moralism, then our Aesthetic also must be permitted to adorn itself with the title of _Aesthetic of pure beauty_. But if (as is often the case) something mystical and transcendental be meant by this, something that is unknown to our poor human world, or something spiritual and beatific, but not expressive, we must reply that while applauding the conception of a beauty, free of all that is not the spiritual form of expression, we are yet unable to conceive a beauty altogether purified of expression, that is to say, separated from itself. XII THE AESTHETIC OF THE SYMPATHETIC AND PSEUDO-AESTHETIC CONCEPTS [Sidenote] _Pseudo-aesthetic concepts, and the aesthetic of the sympathetic._ The doctrine of the sympathetic (very often animated and seconded in this by the capricious metaphysical and mystical Aesthetic, and by that blind tradition which assumes an intimate connection between things by chance treated of together by the same authors and in the same books), has introduced and rendered familiar in systems of Aesthetic, a series of concepts, of which one example suffices to justify our resolute expulsion of them from our own treatise. Their catalogue is long, not to say interminable: _tragic, comic, sublime, pathetic, moving, sad, ridiculous, melancholy, tragi-comic, humoristic, majestic, dignified, serious, grave, imposing, noble, decorous, graceful, attractive, piquant, coquettish, idyllic, elegiac, cheerful, violent, ingenuous, cruel, base, horrible, disgusting, dreadful, nauseating_; the list can be increased at will. Since that doctrine took as its special object the sympathetic, it was naturally unable to neglect any of the varieties of this, or any of the combinations or gradations which lead at last from the sympathetic to the antipathetic. And seeing that the sympathetic content was held to be the _beautiful_ and the antipathetic the _ugly_, the varieties (tragic, comic, sublime, pathetic, etc.) constituted for it the shades and gradations intervening between the beautiful and the ugly. [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the ugly in art and of the ugly surmounted._ Having enumerated and defined, as well as it could, the chief among these varieties, the Aesthetic of the sympathetic set itself the problem of the place to be assigned to the _ugly in art_. This problem is without meaning for us, who do not recognize any ugliness save the anti-aesthetic or inexpressive, which can never form part of the aesthetic fact, being, on the contrary, its antithesis. But the question for the doctrine which we are here criticizing was to reconcile in some way the false and defective idea of art from which it started, reduced to the representation of the agreeable, with effective art, which occupies a far wider field. Hence the artificial attempt to settle what examples of the ugly (antipathetic) could be admitted in artistic representation, and for what reasons, and in what ways. The answer was: that the ugly is admissible, only when it can be _overcome_, an unconquerable ugliness, such as the _disgusting_ or the _nauseating_, being altogether excluded. Further, that the duty of the ugly, when admitted in art, is to contribute towards heightening the effect of the beautiful (sympathetic), by producing a series of contrasts, from which the pleasurable shall issue more efficacious and pleasure-giving. It is, in fact, a common observation that pleasure is more vividly felt when It has been preceded by abstinence or by suffering. Thus the ugly in art was looked upon as the servant of the beautiful, its stimulant and condiment. That special theory of hedonistic refinement, which used to be pompously called the _surmounting of the ugly_, falls with the general theory of the sympathetic; and with it the enumeration and the definition of the concepts mentioned above remain completely excluded from Aesthetic. For Aesthetic does not recognize the sympathetic or the antipathetic In their varieties, but only the spiritual activity of the representation. [Sidenote] _Pseudo-aesthetic concepts belong to Psychology._ However, the large space which, as we have said, those concepts have hitherto occupied in aesthetic treatises makes opportune a rather more copious explanation of what they are. What will be their lot? As they are excluded from Aesthetic, in what other part of Philosophy will they be received? Truly, in none. All those concepts are without philosophical value. They are nothing but a series of classes, which can be bent in the most various ways and multiplied at pleasure, to which it is sought to reduce the infinite complications and shadings of the values and disvalues of life. Of those classes, there are some that have an especially positive significance, like the beautiful, the sublime, the majestic, the solemn, the serious, the weighty, the noble, the elevated; others have a significance especially negative, like the ugly, the horrible, the dreadful, the tremendous, the monstrous, the foolish, the extravagant; in others prevails a mixed significance, as is the case with the comic, the tender, the melancholy, the humorous, the tragi-comic. The complications are infinite, because the individuations are infinite; hence it is not possible to construct the concepts, save in the arbitrary and approximate manner of the natural sciences, whose duty it is to make as good a plan as possible of that reality which they cannot exhaust by enumeration, nor understand and surpass speculatively. And since _Psychology_ is the naturalistic discipline, which undertakes to construct types and plans of the spiritual processes of man (of which, in fact, it is always accentuating in our day the merely empirical and descriptive character), these concepts do not appertain to Aesthetic, nor, in general, to Philosophy. They must simply be handed over to Psychology. [Sidenote] _Impossibility of rigoristic definitions of them._ As is the case with all other psychological constructions, so is it with those concepts: no rigorous definitions are possible; and consequently the one cannot be deduced from the other and they cannot be connected in a system, as has, nevertheless, often been attempted, at great waste of time and without result. But it can be claimed as possible to obtain, apart from philosophical definitions recognised as impossible, empirical definitions, universally acceptable as true. Since there does not exist a unique definition of a given fact, but innumerable definitions can be given of it, according to the cases and the objects for which they are made, so it is clear that if there were only one, and that the true one, this would no longer be an empirical, but a rigorous and philosophical definition. Speaking exactly, every time that one of the terms to which we have referred has been employed, or any other of the innumerable series, a definition of it has at the same time been given, expressed or understood. And each one of these definitions has differed somewhat from the others, in some particular, perhaps of very small importance, such as tacit reference to some individual fact or other, which thus became especially an object of attention and was raised to the position of a general type. So it happens that not one of such definitions satisfies him who hears it, nor does it satisfy even him who constructs it. For, the moment after, this same individual finds himself face to face with a new case, for which he recognizes that his definition is more or less insufficient, ill-adapted, and in need of remodelling. It is necessary, therefore, to leave writers and speakers free to define the sublime or the comic, the tragic or the humoristic, on every occasion, as they please and as may seem suitable to their purpose. And if you insist upon obtaining an empirical definition of universal validity, we can but submit this one:--The sublime (comic, tragic, humoristic, etc.) is _everything_ that is or will be so _called_ by those who have employed or shall employ this _word_. [Sidenote] _Examples: definitions of the sublime, the comic, and the humoristic._ What is the sublime? The unexpected affirmation of an ultra-powerful moral force: that is one definition. But that other definition is equally good, which also recognizes the sublime where the force which declares itself is an ultra-powerful, but immoral and destructive will. Both remain vague and assume no precise form, until they are applied to a concrete case, which makes clear what is here meant by _ultra-powerful_, and what by _unexpected_. They are quantitative concepts, but falsely quantitative, since there is no way of measuring them; they are, at bottom, metaphors, emphatic phrases, or logical tautologies. The humorous will be laughter mingled with tears, bitter laughter, the sudden passage from the comic to the tragic, and from the tragic to the comic, the comic romantic, the inverted sublime, war declared against every attempt at insincerity, compassion which is ashamed to lament, the mockery not of the fact, but of the ideal itself; and whatever else may better please, according as it is desired to get a view of the physiognomy of this or that poet, of this or that poem, which is, in its uniqueness, its own definition, and though momentary and circumscribed, yet the sole adequate. The comic has been defined as the displeasure arising from the perception of a deformity immediately followed by a greater pleasure arising from the relaxation of our psychical forces, which were strained in anticipation of a perception whose importance was foreseen. While listening to a narrative, which, for example, should describe the magnificent and heroic purpose of a definite person, we anticipate in imagination the occurrence of an action both heroic and magnificent, and we prepare ourselves to receive it, by straining our psychic forces. If, however, in a moment, instead of the magnificent and heroic action, which the premises and the tone of the narrative had led us to expect, by an unexpected change there occur a slight, mean, foolish action, unequal to our expectation, we have been deceived, and the recognition of the deceit brings with it an instant of displeasure. But this instant is as it were overcome by the one immediately following, in which we are able to discard our strained attention, to free ourselves from the provision of psychic energy accumulated and, henceforth superfluous, to feel ourselves reasonable and relieved of a burden. This is the pleasure of the comic, with its physiological equivalent, laughter. If the unpleasant fact that has occurred should painfully affect our interests, pleasure would not arise, laughter would be at once choked, the psychic energy would be strained and overstrained by other more serious perceptions. If, on the other hand, such more serious perceptions do not arise, if the whole loss be limited to a slight deception of our foresight, then the supervening feeling of our psychic wealth affords ample compensation for this very slight displeasure.--This, stated in a few words, is one of the most accurate modern definitions of the comic. It boasts of containing, justified or corrected, the manifold attempts to define the comic, from Hellenic antiquity to our own day. It includes Plato's dictum in the _Philebus_, and Aristotle's, which is more explicit. The latter looks upon the comic as an _ugliness without pain_. It contains the theory of Hobbes, who placed it in the feeling of _individual superiority_; of Kant, who saw in it a _relaxation of tension_; and those of other thinkers, for whom it was _the contrast between great and small, between the finite and the infinite_. But on close observation, the analysis and definition above given, although most elaborate and rigorous in appearance, yet enunciates characteristics which are applicable, not only to the comic, but to every spiritual process; such as the succession of painful and agreeable moments and the satisfaction arising from the consciousness of force and of its free development. The differentiation here given is that of quantitative determinations, to which limits cannot be assigned. They remain vague phrases, attaining to some meaning from their reference to this or that single comic fact. If such definitions be taken too seriously, there happens to them what Jean Paul Richter said of all the definitions of the comic: namely, that their sole merit is _to be themselves comic_ and to produce, in reality, the fact, which they vainly try to define logically. And who will ever determine logically the dividing line between the comic and the non-comic, between smiles and laughter, between smiling and gravity; who will cut into clearly divided parts that ever-varying continuity into which life melts? [Sidenote] _Relations between those concepts and aesthetic concepts._ The facts, classified as well as possible in the above-quoted psychological concepts, bear no relation to the artistic fact, beyond the generic that all of them, in so far as they designate the material of life, can be represented by art; and the other accidental relation, that aesthetic facts also may sometimes enter into the processes described, as in the impression of the sublime that the work of a Titanic artist such as Dante or Shakespeare may produce, and that of the comic produced by the effort of a dauber or of a scribbler. The process is external to the aesthetic fact In this case also; for the only feeling linked with that is the feeling of aesthetic value and disvalue, of the beautiful and of the ugly. The Dantesque Farinata is aesthetically beautiful, and nothing but beautiful: if, in addition, the force of will of this personage appear sublime, or the expression that Dante gives him, by reason of his great genius, seem sublime by comparison with that of a less energetic poet, all this is not a matter for aesthetic consideration. This consists always and only in adequation to truth; that is, in beauty. XIII THE SO-CALLED PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE AND ART [Sidenote] _Aesthetic activity and physical concepts._ Aesthetic activity is distinct from practical activity but when it expresses itself is always physical accompanied by practical activity. Hence its utilitarian or hedonistic side, and the pleasure and pain, which are, as it were, the practical echo of aesthetic values and disvalues, of the beautiful and of the ugly. But this practical side of the aesthetic activity has also, in its turn, a _physical_ or _psychophysical_ accompaniment, which consists of sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours, and so on. Does it _really_ possess this side, or does it only seem to possess it, as the result of the construction which we raise in physical science, and of the useful and arbitrary methods, which we have shown to be proper to the empirical and abstract sciences? Our reply cannot be doubtful, that is, it cannot be affirmative as to the first of the two hypotheses. However, it will be better to leave it at this point in suspense, for it is not at present necessary to prosecute this line of inquiry any further. The mention already made must suffice to prevent our having spoken of the physical element as of something objective and existing, for reasons of simplicity and adhesion to ordinary language, from leading to hasty conclusions as to the concepts and the connexion between spirit and nature. [Sidenote] _Expression in the aesthetic sense, and expression in the naturalistic sense._ It is important to make clear that as the existence of the hedonistic side in every spiritual activity has given rise to the confusion between the aesthetic activity and the useful or pleasurable, so the existence, or, better, the possibility of constructing this physical side, has generated the confusion between _aesthetic_ expression and expression _in the naturalistic sense_; between a spiritual fact, that is to say, and a mechanical and passive fact (not to say, between a concrete reality and an abstraction or fiction). In common speech, sometimes it is the words of the poet that are called _expressions_, the notes of the musician, or the figures of the painter; sometimes the blush which is wont to accompany the feeling of shame, the pallor resulting from fear, the grinding of the teeth proper to violent anger, the glittering of the eyes, and certain movements of the muscles of the mouth, which reveal cheerfulness. A certain degree of heat is also said to be the _expression_ of fever, as the falling of the barometer is of rain, and even that the height of the rate of exchange _expresses_ the discredit of the paper-money of a State, or social discontent the approach of a revolution. One can well imagine what sort of scientific results would be attained by allowing oneself to be governed by linguistic usage and placing in one sheaf facts so widely different. But there is, in fact, an abyss between a man who is the prey of anger with all its natural manifestations, and another man who expresses it aesthetically; between the aspect, the cries, and the contortions of one who is tortured with sorrow at the loss of a dear one, and the words or song with which the same individual portrays his torture at another moment; between the distortion of emotion and the gesture of the actor. Darwin's book on the expression of the feelings in man and animals does not belong to Aesthetic; because there is nothing in common between the science of spiritual expression and a _Semiotic_, whether it be medical, meteorological, political, physiognomic, or chiromantic. Expression in the naturalistic sense simply lacks expression in the spiritual sense, that is to say, the characteristic itself of activity and of spirituality, and therefore the bipartition into poles of beauty and of ugliness. It is nothing more than a relation between cause and effect, fixed by the abstract intellect. The complete process of aesthetic production can be symbolized in four steps, which are: _a_, impressions; _b_, expression or spiritual aesthetic synthesis; _c_, hedonistic accompaniment, or pleasure of the beautiful (aesthetic pleasure); _d_, translation of the aesthetic fact into physical phenomena (sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours, etc.). Anyone can see that the capital point, the only one that is properly speaking aesthetic and truly real, is in that _b_, which is lacking to the mere manifestation or naturalistic construction, metaphorically also called expression. The expressive process is exhausted when those four steps have been taken. It begins again with new impressions, a new aesthetic synthesis, and relative accompaniments. [Sidenote] _Intuitions and memory._ Expressions or representations follow and expel one another. Certainly, this passing away, this disassociation, is not perishing, it is not total elimination: nothing of what is born dies with that complete death which would be identical with never having been born. Though all things pass away, yet none can die. The representations which we have forgotten, also persist in some way in our spirit, for without them we could not explain acquired habits and capacities. Thus, the strength of life lies in this apparent forgetting: one forgets what has been absorbed and what life has superseded. But many other things, many other representations, are still efficacious elements in the actual processes of our spirit; and it is incumbent on us not to forget them, or to be capable of recalling them when necessity demands them. The will is always vigilant in this work of preservation, for it aims at preserving (so to say) the greater and more fundamental part of all our riches. Certainly its vigilance is not always sufficient. Memory, we know, leaves or betrays us in various ways. For this very reason, the vigilant will excogitates expedients, which help memory in its weakness, and are its _aids_. [Sidenote] _The production of aids to memory._ We have already explained how these aids are possible. Expressions or representations are, at the same time, practical facts, which are also called physical facts, in so far as to the physical belongs the task of classifying them and reducing them to types. Now it is clear, that if we can succeed in making those facts in some way permanent, it will always be possible (other conditions remaining equal) to reproduce in us, by perceiving it, the already produced expression or intuition. If that in which the practical concomitant acts, or (to use physical terms) the movements have been isolated and made in some sort permanent, be called the object or physical stimulus, and if it be designated by the letter _e_; then the process of reproduction will take place in the following order: _e_, the physical stimulus; _d-b_, perceptions of physical facts (sounds, tones, mimic, combinations of lines and colours, etc.), which form together the aesthetic synthesis, already produced; _c_, the hedonistic accompaniment, which is also reproduced. And what are those combinations of words which are called poetry, prose, poems, novels, romances, tragedies or comedies, but _physical stimulants of reproduction_ (the _e_ stage); what are those combinations of sound which are called operas, symphonies, sonatas; and what those of lines and of colours, which are called pictures, statues, architecture? The spiritual energy of memory, with the assistance of those physical facts above mentioned, makes possible the preservation and the reproduction of the intuitions produced, often so laboriously, by ourselves and by others. If the physiological organism, and with it memory, become weakened; if the monuments of art be destroyed; then all the aesthetic wealth, the fruit of the labours of many generations, becomes lessened and rapidly disappears. [Sidenote] _The physically beautiful._ Monuments of art, which are the stimulants of aesthetic reproduction, are called _beautiful things or the physically beautiful_. This combination of words constitutes a verbal paradox, because the beautiful is not a physical fact; it does not belong to things, but to the activity of man, to spiritual energy. But henceforth it is clear through what wanderings and what abbreviations, physical things and facts, which are simply aids to the reproduction of the beautiful, end by being called, elliptically, beautiful things and physically beautiful. And now that we have made the existence of this ellipse clear, we shall ourselves make use of it without hesitation. [Sidenote] _Content and form: another meaning._ The intervention of the physically beautiful serves to explain another meaning of the words _content and form_, as employed by aestheticians. Some call "content" the internal fact or expression (which is for us already form), and they call "form" the marble, the colours, the rhythm, the sounds (for us form no longer); thus they look upon the physical fact as the form, which may or may not be joined to the content. This serves to explain another aspect of what is called aesthetic ugliness. He who has nothing definite to express may try to hide his internal emptiness with a flood of words, with sounding verse, with deafening polyphony, with painting that dazzles the eye, or by collocating great architectonic masses, which arrest and disturb, although, at bottom, they convey nothing. Ugliness, then, is the arbitrary, the charlatanesque; and, in reality, if the practical will do not intervene in the theoretic function, there may be absence of beauty, but never effective presence of the ugly. [Sidenote] _Natural and artificial beauty._ Physical beauty is wont to be divided into _natural_ and _artificial_ beauty. Thus we reach one of the facts, which has given great labour to thinkers: _the beautiful in nature_. These words often designate simply facts of practical pleasure. He alludes to nothing aesthetic who calls a landscape beautiful where the eye rests upon verdure, where bodily motion is easy, and where the warm sun-ray envelops and caresses the limbs. But it is nevertheless indubitable, that on other occasions the adjective "beautiful," applied to objects and scenes existing in nature, has a completely aesthetic signification. It has been observed, that in order to enjoy natural objects aesthetically, we should withdraw them from their external and historical reality, and separate their simple appearance or origin from existence; that if we contemplate a landscape with our head between our legs, in such a way as to remove ourselves from our wonted relations with it, the landscape appears as an ideal spectacle; that nature is beautiful only for him who contemplates her _with the eye of the artist_; that zoologists and botanists do not recognize beautiful animals and flowers; that natural beauty is _discovered_ (and examples of discovery are the points of view, pointed out by men of taste and imagination, and to which more or less aesthetic travellers and excursionists afterwards have recourse in pilgrimage, whence a more or less collective _suggestion_); that, _without the aid of the imagination_, no part of nature is beautiful, and that with such aid the same natural object or fact is now expressive, according to the disposition of the soul, now insignificant, now expressive of one definite thing, now of another, sad or glad, sublime or ridiculous, sweet or laughable; finally, that _natural beauty_, which an artist would not _to some extent correct, does not exist_. All these observations are most just, and confirm the fact that natural beauty is simply a _stimulus_ to aesthetic reproduction, which presupposes previous production. Without preceding aesthetic intuitions of the imagination, nature cannot arouse any at all. As regards natural beauty, man is like the mythical Narcissus at the fountain. They show further that since this stimulus is accidental, it is, for the most part, imperfect or equivocal. Leopardi said that natural beauty is "rare, scattered, and fugitive." Every one refers the natural fact to the expression which is in his mind. One artist is, as it were, carried away by a laughing landscape, another by a rag-shop, another by the pretty face of a young girl, another by the squalid countenance of an old ruffian. Perhaps the first will say that the rag-shop and the ugly face of the old ruffian are _disgusting_; the second, that the laughing landscape and the face of the young girl are _insipid_. They may dispute for ever; but they will never agree, save when they have supplied themselves with a sufficient dose of aesthetic knowledge, which will enable them to recognize that they are both right. _Artificial_ beauty, created by man, is a much more ductile and efficacious aid to reproduction. [Sidenote] _Mixed beauty._ In addition to these two classes, aestheticians also sometimes talk in their treatises of a _mixed_ beauty. Of what is it a mixture? Just of natural and artificial. Whoso fixes and externalizes, operates with natural materials, which he does not create, but combines and transforms. In this sense, every artificial product is a mixture of nature and artifice; and there would be no occasion to speak of a mixed beauty, as of a special category. But it happens that, in certain cases, combinations already given in nature can be used a great deal more than in others; as, for instance, when we design a beautiful garden and include in our design groups of trees or ponds which are already there. On other occasions externalization is limited by the impossibility of producing certain effects artificially. Thus we may mix the colouring matters, but we cannot create a powerful voice or a personage and an appearance appropriate to this or that personage of a drama. We must therefore seek for them among things already existing, and make use of them when we find them. When, therefore, we adopt a great number of combinations already existing in nature, such as we should not be able to produce artificially if they did not exist, the result is called _mixed_ beauty. [Sidenote] _Writings._ We must distinguish from artificial beauty those instruments of reproduction called _writings_, such as alphabets, musical notes, hieroglyphics, and all pseudo-languages, from the language of flowers and flags, to the language of patches (so much the vogue in the society of the eighteenth century). Writings are not physical facts which arouse directly impressions answering to aesthetic expressions; they are simple _indications_ of what must be done in order to produce such physical facts. A series of graphic signs serves to remind us of the movements which we must execute with our vocal apparatus in order to emit certain definite sounds. If, through practice, we become able to hear the words without opening our mouths and (what is much more difficult) to hear the sounds by running the eye down the page of the music, all this does not alter anything of the nature of the writings, which are altogether different from direct physical beauty. No one calls the book which contains the _Divine Comedy_, or the portfolio which contains _Don Giovanni_, beautiful in the same sense as the block of marble which contains Michael Angelo's _Moses_, or the piece of coloured wood which contains the _Transfiguration_ are metaphorically called beautiful. Both serve for the reproduction of the beautiful, but the former by a far longer and far more indirect route than the latter. [Sidenote] _The beautiful as free and not free._ Another division of the beautiful, which is still found in treatises, is that into _free and not free_. By beauties that are not free, are understood those objects which have to serve a double purpose, extra-aesthetic and aesthetic (stimulants of intuitions); and since it appears that the first purpose limits and impedes the second, the beautiful object resulting therefrom has been considered as a beauty that is not free. Architectural works are especially cited; and precisely for this reason, has architecture often been excluded from the number of the so-called fine arts. A temple must be above all things adapted to the use of a cult; a house must contain all the rooms requisite for commodity of living, and they must be arranged with a view to this commodity; a fortress must be a construction capable of resisting the attacks of certain armies and the blows of certain instruments of war. It is therefore held that the architect's field is limited: he may be able to _embellish_ to some extent the temple, the house, the fortress; but his hands are bound by the _object_ of these buildings, and he can only manifest that part of his vision of beauty in their construction which does not impair their extrinsic, but fundamental, objects. Other examples are taken from what is called art applied to industry. Plates, glasses, knives, guns, and combs can be made beautiful; but it is held that their beauty must not so far exceed as to prevent our eating from the plate, drinking from the glass, cutting with the knife, firing off the gun, or combing one's hair with the comb. The same is said of the art of printing: a book should be beautiful, but not to the extent of its being difficult or impossible to read it. [Sidenote] _Critique of the beautiful that is not free._ In respect to all this, we must observe, in the first place, that the external purpose, precisely because it is such, does not of necessity limit or trammel the other purpose of being a stimulus to aesthetic reproduction. Nothing, therefore, can be more erroneous than the thesis that architecture, for example, is by its nature not free and imperfect, since it must also fulfil other practical objects. Beautiful architectural works, however, themselves undertake to deny this by their simple presence. In the second place, not only are the two objects not necessarily in opposition; but, we must add, the artist always has the means of preventing this contradiction from taking place. In what way? By taking, as the material of his intuition and aesthetic externalization, precisely the _destination_ of the object, which serves a practical end. He will not need to add anything to the object, in order to make it the instrument of aesthetic intuitions: it will be so, if perfectly adapted to its practical purpose. Rustic dwellings and palaces, churches and barracks, swords and ploughs, are beautiful, not in so far as they are embellished and adorned, but in so far as they express the purpose for which they were made. A garment is only beautiful because it is quite suitable to a given person in given conditions. The sword bound to the side of the warrior Rinaldo by the amorous Armida was not beautiful: "so adorned that it seemed a useless ornament, not the warlike instrument of a warrior." It was beautiful, if you will, in the eyes and imagination of the sorceress, who loved her lover in this effeminate way. The aesthetic fact can always accompany the practical fact, because expression is truth. It cannot, however, be denied that aesthetic contemplation sometimes hinders practical use. For instance, it is a quite common experience to find certain new things so well adapted to their purpose, and yet so beautiful, that people occasionally feel scruples in maltreating them by using after contemplating them, which amounts to consuming them. It was for this reason that King Frederick William of Prussia evinced repugnance to ordering his magnificent grenadiers, so well suited for war, to endure the strain of battle; but his less aesthetic son, Frederick the Great, obtained from them excellent services. [Sidenote] _The stimulants of production._ It might be objected to the explanation of the physically beautiful as a simple adjunct for the reproduction of the internally beautiful, that is to say, of expressions, that the artist creates his expressions by painting or by sculpturing, by writing or by composing, and that therefore the physically beautiful, instead of following, sometimes precedes the aesthetically beautiful. This would be a somewhat superficial mode of understanding the procedure of the artist, who never makes a stroke with his brush without having previously seen it with his imagination; and if he has not yet seen it, he will make the stroke, not in order to externalize his expression (which does not yet exist), but as though to have a rallying point for ulterior meditation and for internal concentration. The physical point on which he leans is not the physically beautiful, instrument of reproduction, but what may be called a pedagogic means, similar to retiring into solitude, or to the many other expedients, frequently very strange, adopted by artists and philosophers, who vary in these according to their various idiosyncrasies. The old aesthetician Baumgarten advised poets to ride on horseback, as a means of inspiration, to drink wine in moderation, and (provided they were chaste) to look at beautiful women. XIV MISTAKES ARISING FROM THE CONFUSION BETWEEN PHYSIC AND AESTHETIC It is necessary to mention a series of scientific mistakes which have arisen from the failure to understand the purely external relation between the aesthetic fact or artistic vision, and the physical fact or instrument, which serves as an aid to reproduce it. We must here indicate the proper criticism, which derives from what has already been said. [Sidenote] _Critique of aesthetic associationism_ That form of associationism which identifies the aesthetic fact with the _association of two_ images finds a place among these errors. By what path has it been possible to arrive at such a mistake, against which our aesthetic consciousness, which is a consciousness of perfect unity, never of duality, rebels? Just because the physical and the aesthetic facts have been considered separately, as two distinct images, which enter the spirit, the one drawn forth from the other, the one first and the other afterwards. A picture is divided into the image of the _picture_ and the image of the _meaning_ of the picture; a poem, into the image of the words and the image of the _meaning_ of the words. But this dualism of images is non-existent: the physical fact does not enter the spirit as an image, but causes the reproduction of the image (the only image, which is the aesthetic fact), in so far as it blindly stimulates the psychic organism and produces an impression answering to the aesthetic expression already produced. The efforts of the associationists (the usurpers of to-day in the field of Aesthetic) to emerge from the difficulty, and to reaffirm in some way the unity which has been destroyed by their principle of associationism, are highly instructive. Some maintain that the image called back again is unconscious; others, leaving unconsciousness alone, hold that, on the contrary, it is vague, vaporous, confused, thus reducing the _force_ of the aesthetic fact to the _weakness_ of bad memory. But the dilemma is inexorable: either keep association and give up unity, or keep unity and give up association. No third way out of the difficulty exists. [Sidenote] _Critique of aesthetic physic._ From the failure to analyze so-called natural beauty thoroughly, and to recognize that it is simply an incident of aesthetic reproduction, and from having, on the contrary, looked upon it as given in nature, is derived all that portion of treatises upon Aesthetic which is entitled _The Beautiful in Nature or Aesthetic Physic_; sometimes even subdivided, save the mark! into Aesthetic Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology. We do not wish to deny that such treatises contain many just remarks, and are sometimes themselves works of art, in so far as they represent beautifully the imaginings and fantasies, that is the impressions, of their authors. But we must state that it is scientifically false to ask oneself if the dog be beautiful, and the ornithorhynchus ugly; if the lily be beautiful, and the artichoke ugly. Indeed, the error is here double. On one hand, aesthetic Physic falls back into the equivoke of the theory of artistic and literary classes, by attempting to determine aesthetically the abstractions of our intellect; on the other, fails to recognize, as we said, the true formation of so-called natural beauty; for which the question as to whether some given individual animal, flower, or man be beautiful or ugly, is altogether excluded. What is not produced by the aesthetic spirit, or cannot be referred to it, is neither beautiful nor ugly. The aesthetic process arises from the ideal relations in which natural objects are arranged. [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the beauty of the human body._ The double error can be exemplified by the question, upon which whole volumes have been written, as to the _Beauty of the human body_. Here it is necessary, above all things, to urge those who discuss this subject from the abstract toward the concrete, by asking: "What do you mean by the human body, that of the male, of the female, or of the androgyne?" Let us assume that they reply by dividing the inquiry into two distinct inquiries, as to the virile and feminine beauty (there really are writers who seriously discuss whether man or woman is the more beautiful); and let us continue: "Masculine or feminine beauty; but of what race of men--the white, the yellow, or the black, and whatever others there may be, according to the division of races?" Let us assume that they limit themselves to the white race, and let us continue: "What sub-species of the white race?" And when we have restricted them gradually to one section of the white world, that is to say, to the Italian, Tuscan, Siennese, or Porta Camollia section, we will continue: "Very good; but at what age of the human body, and in what condition and state of development--that of the new-born babe, of the child, of the boy, of the adolescent, of the man of middle age, and so on? and is the man at rest or at work, or is he occupied as is Paul Potter's cow, or the Ganymede of Rembrandt?" Having thus arrived, by successive reductions, at the individual _omnimode determinatum_, or, better, at the man pointed out with the finger, it will be easy to expose the other error, by recalling what has been said about the natural fact, which is now beautiful, now ugly, according to the point of view, according to what is passing in the mind of the artist. Finally, if the Gulf of Naples have its detractors, and if there be artists who declare it inexpressive, preferring the "gloomy firs," the "clouds and perpetual north winds," of the northern seas; let it be believed, if possible, that such relativity does not exist for the human body, source of the most various suggestions! [Sidenote] _Critique of the beauty of geometric figures._ The question of the _beauty of geometrical figures_ is connected with aesthetic Physic. But if by geometrical figures be understood the concepts of geometry, the concept of the triangle, the square, the cone, these are neither beautiful nor ugly: they are concepts. If, on the other hand, by such figures be understood bodies which possess definite geometrical forms, these will be ugly or beautiful, like every natural fact, according to the ideal connexions in which they are placed. Some hold that those geometrical figures are beautiful which point upwards, since they give the suggestion of firmness and of force. It is not denied that such may be the case. But neither must it be denied that those also which give the impression of instability and of being crushed down may possess their beauty, where they represent just the ill-formed and the crushed; and that in these last cases the firmness of the straight line and the lightness of the cone or of the equilateral triangle would, on the contrary, seem elements of ugliness. Certainly, such questions as to the beauty of nature and the beauty of geometry, like the others analogous of the historically beautiful and of human beauty, seem less absurd in the Aesthetic of the sympathetic, which means, at bottom, by the words "aesthetic beauty" the representation of what is pleasing. But the pretension to determine scientifically what are the sympathetic contents, and what are the irremediably antipathetic, is none the less erroneous, even in the sphere of that doctrine and after the laying down of those premises. One can only answer such questions by repeating with an infinitely long postscript the _Sunt quos_ of the first ode of the first book of Horace, and the _Havvi chi_ of Leopardi's letter to Carlo Pepoli. To each man his beautiful ( = sympathetic), as to each man his fair one. Philography is not a science. [Sidenote] _Critique of another aspect of the imitation of nature._ The artist sometimes has naturally existing facts before him, in producing the artificial instrument, or physically beautiful. These are called his _models_: bodies, stuffs, flowers, and so on. Let us run over the sketches, the studies, and the notes of the artists: Leonardo noted down in his pocket-book, when he was working on the Last Supper: "Giovannina, fantastic appearance, is at St. Catherine's, at the Hospital; Cristofano di Castiglione is at the Pietà, he has a fine head; Christ, Giovan Conte, is of the suite of Cardinal Mortaro." And so on. From this comes the illusion that the artist _imitates nature_; when it would perhaps be more exact to say that nature imitates the artist, and obeys him. The theory that _art imitates nature_ has sometimes been grounded upon and found sustenance in this illusion, as also its variant, more easily to be defended, which makes art the _idealizer of nature_. This last theory presents the process in a disorderly manner, indeed inversely to the true order; for the artist does not proceed from extrinsic reality, in order to modify it by approaching it to the ideal; but he proceeds from the impression of external nature to expression, that is to say, to his ideal, and from this he passes to the natural fact, which he employs as the instrument of reproduction of the ideal fact. [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the elementary forms of the beautiful._ Another consequence of the confusion between the aesthetic and the physical fact is the theory of the _elementary forms of the beautiful_. If expression, if the beautiful, be indivisible, the physical fact, in which it externalizes itself, can well be divided and subdivided; for example, a painted surface, into lines and colours, groups and curves of lines, kinds of colours, and so on; a poem, into strophes, verses, feet, syllables; a piece of prose, into chapters, paragraphs, headings, periods, phrases, words, and so on. The parts thus obtained are not aesthetic facts, but smaller physical facts, cut up in an arbitrary manner. If this path were followed, and the confusion persisted in, we should end by concluding that the true forms of the beautiful are _atoms_. The aesthetic law, several times promulgated, that beauty must have _bulk_, could be invoked against the atoms. It cannot be the imperceptibility of the too small, nor the unapprehensibility of the too large. But a bigness which depends upon perceptibility, not measurement, derives from a concept widely different from the mathematical. For what is called imperceptible and incomprehensible does not produce an impression, because it is not a real fact, but a concept: the requisite of bulk in the beautiful is thus reduced to the effective reality of the physical fact, which serves for the reproduction of the beautiful. [Sidenote] _Critique of the search for the objective conditions of the beautiful._ Continuing the search for the _physical laws_ or for the _objective conditions of the beautiful_, it has been asked: To what physical facts does the beautiful correspond? To what the ugly? To what unions of tones, colours, sizes, mathematically determinable? Such inquiries are as if in Political Economy one were to seek for the laws of exchange in the physical nature of the objects exchanged. The constant infecundity of the attempt should have at once given rise to some suspicion as to its vanity. In our times, especially, has the necessity for an _inductive_ Aesthetic been often proclaimed, of an Aesthetic starting _from below_, which should proceed like natural science and not hasten its conclusions. Inductive? But Aesthetic has always been both inductive and deductive, like every philosophical science; induction and deduction cannot be separated, nor can they separately avail to characterize a true science. But the word "inductive" was not here pronounced accidentally and without special intention. It was wished to imply by its use that the aesthetic fact is nothing, at bottom, but a physical fact, which should be studied by applying to it the methods proper to the physical and natural sciences. With such a presupposition and in such a faith did inductive Aesthetic or Aesthetic of the inferior (what pride in this modesty!) begin its labours. It has conscientiously begun by making a collection of _beautiful things_, for example of a great number of envelopes of various shapes and sizes, and has asked which of these give the impression of the beautiful and which of the ugly. As was to be expected, the inductive aestheticians speedily found themselves in a difficulty, for the same objects that appeared ugly in one aspect would appear beautiful in another. A yellow, coarse envelope, which would be extremely ugly for the purpose of enclosing a love-letter, is, however, just what is wanted for a writ served by process on stamped paper. This in its turn would look very bad, or seem at any rate an irony, if enclosed in a square English envelope. Such considerations of simple common sense should have sufficed to convince inductive aestheticians, that the beautiful has no physical existence, and cause them to remit their vain and ridiculous quest. But no: they have had recourse to an expedient, as to which we would find it difficult to say how far it belongs to natural science. They have sent their envelopes round from one to the other and opened a _referendum_, thus striving to decide by the votes of the majority in what consists the beautiful and the ugly. We will not waste time over this argument, because we should seem to be turning ourselves into narrators of comic anecdotes rather than expositors of aesthetic science and of its problems. It is an actual fact, that the inductive aestheticians have not yet discovered _one single law_. [Sidenote] _Astrology of Aesthetic._ He who dispenses with doctors is prone to abandon himself to charlatans. Thus it has befallen those who have believed in the natural laws of the beautiful. Artists sometimes adopt empirical canons, such as that of the proportions of the human body, or of the golden section, that is to say, of a line divided into two parts in such a manner that the less is to the greater as is the greater to the whole line (_bc: ac=ac: ab_). Such canons easily become their superstitions, and they attribute to such the success of their works. Thus Michael Angelo left as a precept to his disciple Marco del Pino of Siena that "he should always make a pyramidal serpentine figure multiplied by one, two, three," a precept which did not enable Marco di Siena to emerge from that mediocrity which we can yet observe in his many works, here in Naples. Others extracted from the sayings of Michael Angelo the precept that serpentine undulating lines were the true _lines of beauty_. Whole volumes have been composed on these laws of beauty, on the golden section and on the undulating and serpentine lines. These should in our opinion be looked upon as the _astrology of Aesthetic_. XV THE ACTIVITY OF EXTERNALIZATION, TECHNIQUE AND THE THEORY OF THE ARTS [Sidenote] _The practical activity of externalization._ The fact of the production of the physically beautiful implies, as has already been remarked, a vigilant will, which persists in not allowing certain visions, intuitions, or representations, to be lost. Such a will must be able to act with the utmost rapidity, and as it were instinctively, and also be capable of long and laborious deliberations. Thus and only thus does the practical activity enter into relations with the aesthetic, that is to say, in effecting the production of physical objects, which are aids to memory. Here it is not merely a concomitant, but really a distinct moment of the aesthetic activity. We cannot will or not will our aesthetic vision: we can, however, will or not will to externalize it, or better, to preserve and communicate, or not, to others, the externalization produced. [Sidenote] _The technique of externalization._ This volitional fact of externalization is preceded by a complex of various kinds of knowledge. These are known as _techniques_, like all knowledge which precedes the practical activity. Thus we talk of an artistic technique in the same metaphorical and elliptic manner that we talk of the physically beautiful, that is to say (in more precise language), _knowledge employed by the practical activity engaged in producing stimuli to aesthetic reproduction_. In place of employing so lengthy a phrase, we shall here avail ourselves of the vulgar terminology, since we are henceforward aware of its true meaning. The possibility of this technical knowledge, at the service of artistic reproduction, has caused people to imagine the existence of an aesthetic technique of internal expression, which is tantamount to saying, _a doctrine of the means of internal expression_, which is altogether inconceivable. And we know well the reason why it is inconceivable; expression, considered in itself, is primary theoretic activity, and, in so far as it is this, it precedes the practical activity and the intellectual knowledge which illumines the practical activity, and is thus independent alike of the one and of the other. It also helps to illumine the practical activity, but is not illuminated by it. Expression does not employ _means_, because it has not an _end_; it has intuitions of things, but does not will them, and is thus indivisible into means and end. Thus if it be said, as sometimes is the case, that a certain writer has invented a new technique of fiction or of drama, or that a painter has discovered a new mode of distribution of light, the word is used in a false sense; because the so-called _new technique is really that romance itself, or that new picture_ itself. The distribution of light belongs to the vision itself of the picture; as the technique of a dramatist is his dramatic conception itself. On other occasions, the word "technique" is used to designate certain merits or defects in a work which is a failure; and it is said, euphemistically, that the conception is bad, but the technique good, or that the conception is good, and the technique bad. On the other hand, when the different ways of painting in oils, or of etching, or of sculpturing in alabaster, are discussed, then the word "technique" is in its place; but in such a case the adjective "artistic" is used metaphorically. And if a dramatic technique in the artistic sense be impossible, a theatrical technique is not impossible, that is to say, processes of externalization of certain given aesthetic works. When, for instance, women were introduced on the stage in Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century, in place of men dressed as women, this was a true and real discovery in theatrical technique; such too was the perfecting in the following century by the impresarios of Venice, of machines for the rapid changing of the scenes. [Sidenote] _The theoretic techniques of the individual arts._ The collection of technical knowledge at the service of artists desirous of externalizing their expressions, can be divided into groups, which may be entitled _theories of the arts_. Thus is born a theory of Architecture, comprising mechanical laws, information relating to the weight or to the resistance of the materials of construction or of fortification, manuals relating to the method of mixing chalk or stucco; a theory of Sculpture, containing advice as to the instruments to be used for sculpturing the various sorts of stone, for obtaining a successful fusion of bronze, for working with the chisel, for the exact copying of the model in chalk or plaster, for keeping chalk damp; a theory of Painting, on the various techniques of tempera, of oil-painting, of water-colour, of pastel, on the proportions of the human body, on the laws of perspective; a theory of Oratory, with precepts as to the method of producing, of exercising and of strengthening the voice, of mimic and gesture; a theory of Music, on the combinations and fusions of tones and sounds; and so on. Such collections of precepts abound in all literatures. And since it soon becomes impossible to say what is useful and what useless to know, books of this sort become very often a sort of encyclopaedias or catalogues of desiderata. Vitruvius, in his treatise on Architecture, claims for the architect a knowledge of letters, of drawing, of geometry, of arithmetic, of optic, of history, of natural and moral philosophy, of jurisprudence, of medicine, of astrology, of music, and so on. Everything is worth knowing: learn the art and lay it aside. It should be evident that such empirical collections are not reducible to a science. They are composed of notions, taken from various sciences and teachings, and their philosophical and scientific principles are to be found in them. To undertake the construction of a scientific theory of the different arts, would be to wish to reduce to the single and homogeneous what is by nature multiple and heterogeneous; to wish to destroy the existence as a collection of what was put together precisely to form a collection. Were we to give a scientific form to the manuals of the architect, the painter, or the musician, it is clear that nothing would remain in our hands but the general principles of Mechanic, Optic, or Acoustic. Or if the especially artistic observations disseminated through it be extracted and isolated, and a science be made of them, then the sphere of the individual art is deserted and that of Aesthetic entered upon, for Aesthetic is always general Aesthetic, or better, it cannot be divided into general and special. This last case (that is, the attempt to furnish a technique of Aesthetic) is found, when men possessing strong scientific instincts and a natural tendency to philosophy, set themselves to work to produce such theories and technical manuals. [Sidenote] _Critique of the aesthetic theories of the individual arts._ But the confusion between Physic and Aesthetic has attained to its highest degree, when aesthetic theories of the different arts are imagined, to answer such questions as: What are the _limits_ of each art? What can be represented with colours, and what with sounds? What with simple monochromatic lines, and what with touches of various colours? What with notes, and what with metres and rhymes? What are the limits between the figurative and the auditional arts, between painting and sculpture, poetry and music? This, translated into scientific language, is tantamount to asking: What is the connexion between Acoustic and aesthetic expression? What between the latter and Optic?--and the like. Now, if _there is no passage_ from the physical fact to the aesthetic, how could there be from the aesthetic to particular groups of aesthetic facts, such as the phenomena of Optic or of Acoustic? [Sidenote] _Critique of the classifications of the arts._ The things called _Arts_ have no aesthetic limits, because, in order to have them, they would need to have also aesthetic existence; and we have demonstrated the altogether empirical genesis of those divisions. Consequently, any attempt at an aesthetic classification of the arts is absurd. If they be without limits, they are not exactly determinable, and consequently cannot be philosophically classified. All the books dealing with classifications and systems of the arts could be burned without any loss whatever. (We say this with the utmost respect to the writers who have expended their labours upon them.) The impossibility of such classifications finds, as it were, its proof in the strange methods to which recourse has been had to carry them out. The first and most common classification is that into arts of _hearing, sight_, and _imagination_; as if eyes, ears, and imagination were on the same level, and could be deduced from the same logical variable, as foundation of the division. Others have proposed the division into arts of _space and time_, and arts of _rest_ and _motion_; as if the concepts of space, time, rest, and motion could determine special aesthetic forms, or have anything in common with art as such. Finally, others have amused themselves by dividing them into _classic and romantic_, or into _oriental, classic, and romantic_, thereby conferring the value of scientific concepts on simple historical denominations, or adopting those pretended partitions of expressive forms, already criticized above; or by talking of arts _that can only be seen from one side_, like painting, and of arts _that can be seen from all sides_, like sculpture--and similar extravagances, which exist neither in heaven nor on the earth. The theory of the limits of the arts was, perhaps, at the time when it was put forward, a beneficial critical reaction against those who believed in the possibility of the flowing of one expression into another, as of the _Iliad_ or of _Paradise Lost_ into a series of paintings, and thus held a poem to be of greater or lesser value, according as it could or could not be translated into pictures by a painter. But if the rebellion were reasonable and victorious, this does not mean that the arguments adopted and the theories made as required were sound. [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the union of the arts._ Another theory which is a corollary to that of the limits of the arts, falls with them; that of the _union of the arts_. Granted different arts, distinct and limited, the questions were asked: Which is the most powerful? Do we not obtain more powerful effects by uniting several? We know nothing of this: we know only, in each individual case, that certain given artistic intuitions have need of definite physical means for their reproduction, and that other artistic intuitions have need of other physical means. We can obtain the effect of certain dramas by simply reading them; others need declamation and scenic display: some artistic intuitions, for their full extrinsication, need words, song, musical instruments, colours, statuary, architecture, actors; while others are beautiful and complete in a single delicate sweep of the pen, or with a few strokes of the pencil. But it is false to suppose that declamation and scenic effects, and all the other things we have mentioned together, are _more powerful_ than simply reading, or than the simple stroke with the pen and with the pencil; because each of these facts or groups of facts has, so to say, a different object, and the power of the different means employed cannot be compared when the objects are different. [Sidenote] _Connexion of the activity of externalization with utility and morality._ Finally, it is only from the point of view of a clear and rigorous distinction between the true and proper aesthetic activity, and the practical activity of externalization, that we can solve the involved and confused questions as to the relations between _art and utility_, and _art and morality_. That art as art is independent alike of utility and of morality, as also of every volitional form, we have above demonstrated. Without this independence, it would not be possible to speak of an intrinsic value of art, nor indeed to conceive an aesthetic science, which demands the autonomy of the aesthetic fact as a necessity of its existence. But it would be erroneous to maintain that this independence of the vision or intuition or internal expression of the artist should be at once extended to the practical activity of externalization and of communication, which may or may not follow the aesthetic fact. If art be understood as the externalization of art, then utility and morality have a perfect right to deal with it; that is to say, the right one possesses to deal with one's own household. We do not, as a matter of fact, externalize and fix all of the many expressions and intuitions which we form in our mind; we do not declare our every thought in a loud voice, or write down, or print, or draw, or colour, or expose it to the public gaze. _We select_ from the crowd of intuitions which are formed or at least sketched within us; and the selection is governed by selection of the economic conditions of life and of its moral direction. Therefore, when we have formed an intuition, it remains to decide whether or no we should communicate it to others, and to whom, and when, and how; all of which considerations fall equally under the utilitarian and ethical criterion. Thus we find the concepts of _selection_, of the _interesting_, of _morality_, of an _educational end_, of _popularity_, etc., to some extent justified, although these can in no wise be justified as imposed upon art as art, and we have ourselves denounced them in pure Aesthetic. Error always contains an element of truth. He who formulated those erroneous aesthetic propositions had his eye on practical facts, which attach themselves externally to the aesthetic fact in economic and moral life. By all means, be partisans of a yet greater liberty in the vulgarization of the means of aesthetic reproduction; we are of the same opinion, and let us leave the proposals for legislative measures, and for actions to be instigated against immoral art, to hypocrites, to the ingenuous, and to idlers. But the proclamation of this liberty, and the fixation of its limits, how wide soever they be, is always the affair of morality. And it would in any case be out of place to invoke that highest principle, that _fundamentum Aesthetices_, which is the independence of art, in order to deduce from it the guiltlessness of the artist, who, in the externalization of his imaginings, should calculate upon the unhealthy tastes of his readers; or that licenses should be granted to the hawkers who sell obscene statuettes in the streets. This last case is the affair of the police; the first must be brought before the tribunal of the moral conscience. The aesthetic judgment on the work of art has nothing to do with the morality of the artist, in so far as he is a practical man, nor with the precautions to be taken that art may not be employed for evil purposes alien to its essence, which is pure theoretic contemplation. XVI TASTE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF ART [Sidenote] _Aesthetic judgment. Its identity with aesthetic reproduction._ When the entire aesthetic and externalizing process has been completed, when a beautiful expression has been produced and fixed in a definite physical material, what is meant by _judging it_? _To reproduce it in oneself_, answer the critics of art, almost with one voice. Very good. Let us try thoroughly to understand this fact, and with that object in view, let us represent it schematically. The individual A is seeking the expression of an impression, which he feels or has a presentiment of, but has not yet expressed. Behold him trying various words and phrases, which may give the sought-for expression, which must exist, but which he does not know. He tries the combination _m_, but rejects it as unsuitable, inexpressive, incomplete, ugly: he tries the combination _n_, with a like result. _He does not see anything, or he does not see clearly_. The expression still flies from him. After other vain attempts, during which he sometimes approaches, sometimes leaves the sign that offers itself, all of a sudden (almost as though formed spontaneously of itself) he creates the sought-for expression, and _lux facta est_. He enjoys for an instant aesthetic pleasure or the pleasure of the beautiful. The ugly, with its correlative displeasure, was the aesthetic activity, which had not succeeded in conquering the obstacle; the beautiful is the expressive activity, which now displays itself triumphant. We have taken this example from the domain of speech, as being nearer and more accessible, and because we all talk, though we do not all draw or paint. Now if another individual, whom we shall term B, desire to judge this expression and decide whether it be beautiful or ugly, he _must of necessity place himself at A's point of view_, and go through the whole process again, with the help of the physical sign, supplied to him by A. If A has seen clearly, then B (who has placed himself at A's point of view) will also see clearly and will find this expression beautiful. If A has not seen clearly, then B also will not see clearly, and will find the expression more or less ugly, _just as A did_. [Sidenote] _Impossibility of divergences._ It may be observed that we have not taken into consideration two other cases: that of A having a clear and B an obscure vision; and that of A having an obscure and B a clear vision. Philosophically speaking, these two cases are _impossible_. Spiritual activity, precisely because it is activity, is not a caprice, but a spiritual necessity; and it cannot solve a definite aesthetic problem, save in one way, which is the right way. Doubtless certain facts may be adduced, which appear to contradict this deduction. Thus works which seem beautiful to artists, are judged to be ugly by the critics; while works with which the artists were displeased and judged imperfect or failures, are held to be beautiful and perfect by the critics. But this does not mean anything, save that one of the two is wrong: either the critics or the artists, or in one case the artist and in another the critic. In fact, the producer of an expression does not always fully realize what has happened in his soul. Haste, vanity, want of reflexion, theoretic prejudices, make people say, and sometimes others almost believe, that works of ours are beautiful, which, if we were truly to turn inwards upon ourselves, we should see ugly, as they really are. Thus poor Don Quixote, when he had mended his helmet as well as he could with cardboard--the helmet that had showed itself to possess but the feeblest force of resistance at the first encounter,--took good care not to test it again with a well-delivered sword-thrust, but simply declared and maintained it to be (says the author) _por celada finisima de encaxe_. And in other cases, the same reasons, or opposite but analogous ones, trouble the consciousness of the artist, and cause him to disapprove of what he has successfully produced, or to strive to undo and do again worse, what he has done well, in his artistic spontaneity. An example of this is the _Gerusalemme conquistata_. In the same way, haste, laziness, want of reflexion, theoretic prejudices, personal sympathies, or animosities, and other motives of a similar sort, sometimes cause the critics to proclaim beautiful what is ugly, and ugly what is beautiful. Were they to eliminate such disturbing elements, they would feel the work of art as it really is, and would not leave to posterity, that more diligent and more dispassionate judge, to award the palm, or to do that justice, which they have refused. [Sidenote] _Identity of taste and genius._ It is clear from the preceding theorem, that the judicial activity, which criticizes and recognizes the beautiful, is identical with that which produces it. The only difference lies in the diversity of circumstances, since in the one case it is a question of aesthetic production, in the other of reproduction. The judicial activity is called _taste_; the productive activity is called _genius_: genius and taste are therefore substantially _identical_. The common remark, that the critic should possess some of the genius of the artist and that the artist should possess taste, reveals a glimpse of this identity; or that there exists an active (productive) taste and a passive (reproductive) taste. But a denial of this is contained in other equally common remarks, as when people speak of taste without genius, or of genius without taste. These last observations are meaningless, unless they be taken as alluding to quantitative differences. In this case, those would be called geniuses without taste who produce works of art, inspired in their culminating parts and neglected and defective in their secondary parts, and those men of taste without genius, who succeed in obtaining certain isolated or secondary effects, but do not possess the power necessary for a vast artistic synthesis. Analogous explanations can easily be given of other similar propositions. But to posit a substantial difference between genius and taste, between artistic production and reproduction, would render communication and judgment alike inconceivable. How could we judge what remained extraneous to us? How could that which is produced by a given activity be judged by a different activity? The critic will be a small genius, the artist a great genius; the one will have the strength of ten, the other of a hundred; the former, in order to raise himself to the altitude of the latter, will have need of his assistance; but the nature of both must be the same. In order to judge Dante, we must raise ourselves to his level: let it be well understood that empirically we are not Dante, nor Dante we; but in that moment of judgment and contemplation, our spirit is one with that of the poet, and in that moment we and he are one single thing. In this identity alone resides the possibility that our little souls can unite with the great souls, and become great with them, in the universality of the spirit. [Sidenote] _Analogy with the other activities._ Let us remark in passing that what has been said of the aesthetic _judgment_ holds good equally for every other activity and for every other judgment; and that scientific, economic, and ethical criticism is effected in a like manner. To limit ourselves to this last, it is only if we place ourselves ideally in the same conditions in which he who took a given resolution found himself, that we can form a judgment as to whether his resolution were moral or immoral. An action would otherwise remain incomprehensible, and therefore impossible to judge. A homicide may be a rascal or a hero: if this be, within limits, indifferent as regards the safety of society, which condemns both to the same punishment, it is not indifferent to him who wishes to distinguish and to judge from the moral point of view, and we cannot dispense with studying again the individual psychology of the homicide, in order to determine the true nature of his deed, not merely in its judicial, but also in its moral aspect. In Ethic, a moral taste or tact is sometimes referred to, which answers to what is generally called moral conscience, that is to say, to the activity itself of good-will. [Sidenote] _Critique of absolutism (intellectualism) and of aesthetic relativism._ The explanation above given of aesthetic judgment or reproduction at once affirms and denies the position of the absolutists and relativists, of those, that is to say, who affirm and of those who deny the existence of an absolute taste. The absolutists, who affirm that they can judge of the beautiful, are right; but the theory on which they found their affirmation is not maintainable. They conceive of the beautiful, that is, of aesthetic value, as of something placed outside the aesthetic activity; as if it were a model or a concept which an artist realizes in his work, and of which the critic avails himself afterwards in order to judge the work itself. Concepts and models alike have no existence in art, for by proclaiming that every art can be judged only in itself, and has its own model in itself, they have attained to the denial of the existence of objective models of beauty, whether they be intellectual concepts, or ideas suspended in the metaphysical sky. In proclaiming this, the adversaries, the relativists, are perfectly right, and accomplish a progress. However, the initial rationality of their thesis becomes in its turn a false theory. Repeating the old adage that there is no accounting for tastes, they believe that aesthetic expression is of the same nature as the pleasant and the unpleasant, which every one feels in his own way, and as to which there is no disputing. But we know that the pleasant and the unpleasant are utilitarian and practical facts. Thus the relativists deny the peculiarity of the aesthetic fact, again confounding expression with impression, the theoretic with the practical. The true solution lies in rejecting alike relativism or psychologism, and false absolutism; and in recognizing that the criterion of taste is absolute, but absolute in a different way from that of the intellect, which is developed by reason. The criterion of taste is absolute, with the intuitive absoluteness of the imagination. Thus every act of expressive activity, which is so really, will be recognized as beautiful, and every fact in which expressive activity and passivity are found engaged with one another in an unfinished struggle, will be recognized as ugly. [Sidenote] _Critique of relative relativism._ There lies, between absolutists and relativists, a third class, which may be called that of the relative relativists. These affirm the existence of absolute values in other fields, such as Logic and Ethic, but deny their existence in the field of Aesthetic. To them it appears natural and justifiable to dispute about science and morality; because science rests on the universal, common to all men, and morality on duty, which is also a law of human nature; but how, they say, can one dispute about art, which rests on imagination? Not only, however, is the imaginative activity universal and belongs to human nature, like the logical concept and practical duty; but we must oppose a capital objection to this intermediary thesis. If the absolute nature of the imagination were denied, we should be obliged to deny also that of intellectual or conceptual truth, and, implicitly, of morality. Does not morality presuppose logical distinctions? How could these be known, otherwise than by expressions and words, that is to say, in imaginative form? If the absoluteness of the imagination were removed, spiritual life would tremble to its base. One individual would no longer understand another, nor indeed his own self of a moment before, which, when considered a moment after, is already another individual. [Sidenote] _Objection founded on the variation of the stimulus and on the psychic disposition._ Nevertheless, variety of judgments is an indisputable fact. Men are at variance in their logical, ethical, and economical appreciations; and they are equally, or even more at variance in their aesthetic appreciations. If certain reasons detailed by us, above, such as haste, prejudices, passions, etc., may be held to lessen the importance of this disagreement, they do not thereby annul it. We have been cautious, when speaking of the stimuli of reproduction, for we said that reproduction takes place, _if all the other conditions remain equal_. Do they remain equal? Does the hypothesis correspond to reality? It would appear not. In order to reproduce several times an impression by employing a suitable physical stimulus, it is necessary that this stimulus be not changed, and that the organism remain in the same psychical conditions as those in which was experienced the impression that it is desired to reproduce. Now it is a fact, that the physical stimulus is continually changing, and in like manner the psychological conditions. Oil paintings grow dark, frescoes pale, statues lose noses, hands, and legs, architecture becomes totally or partially a ruin, the tradition of the execution of a piece of music is lost, the text of a poem is corrupted by bad copyists or bad printing. These are obvious instances of the changes which daily occur in objects or physical stimuli. As regards psychological conditions, we will not dwell upon the cases of deafness or blindness, that is to say, upon the loss of entire orders of psychical impressions; these cases are secondary and of less importance compared with the fundamental, daily, inevitable, and perpetual changes of the society around us, and of the internal conditions of our individual life. The phonic manifestations, that is, the words and verses of the Dantesque _Commedia_, must produce a very different impression on a citizen engaged in the politics of the third Rome, to that experienced by a well-informed and intimate contemporary of the poet. The Madonna of Cimabue is still in the Church of Santa Maria Novella; but does she speak to the visitor of to-day as she spoke to the Florentines of the thirteenth century? Even though she were not also darkened by time, would not the impression be altogether different? And finally, how can a poem composed in youth make the same impression on the same individual poet when he re-reads it in his old age, with his psychic dispositions altogether changed? [Sidenote] _Critique of the division of signs into natural and conventional._ It is true, that certain aestheticians have attempted a distinction between stimuli and stimuli, between _natural and conventional_ signs. They would grant to the former a constant effect on all; to the latter, only on a limited circle. In their belief, signs employed in painting are natural, while the words of poetry are conventional. But the difference between the one and the other is only of degree. It has often been affirmed that painting is a language which all understand, while with poetry it is otherwise. Here, for example, Leonardo placed one of the prerogatives of his art, "which hath not need of interpreters of different languages as have letters," and in it man and brute find satisfaction. He relates the anecdote of that portrait of the father of a family, "which the little grandchildren were wont to caress while they were still in swaddling-clothes, and the dogs and cats of the house in like manner." But other anecdotes, such as those of the savages who took the portrait of a soldier for a boat, or considered the portrait of a man on horseback as furnished with only one leg, are apt to shake one's faith in the understanding of painting by sucklings, dogs, and cats. Fortunately, no arduous researches are necessary to convince oneself that pictures, poetry, and every work of art, produce no effects save on souls prepared to receive them. Natural signs do not exist; because they are all conventional in a like manner, or, to speak with greater exactitude, all are _historically conditioned_. [Sidenote] _The surmounting of variety._ This being so, how are we to succeed in causing the expression to be reproduced by means of the physical object? How obtain the same effect, when the conditions are no longer the same? Would it not, rather, seem necessary to conclude that expressions cannot be reproduced, despite the physical instruments made by man for the purpose, and that what is called reproduction consists in ever new expressions? Such would indeed be the conclusion, if the variety of physical and psychic conditions were intrinsically unsurmountable. But since the insuperability has none of the characteristics of necessity, we must, on the contrary, conclude: that the reproduction always occurs, when we can replace ourselves in the conditions in which the stimulus (physical beauty) was produced. Not only can we replace ourselves in these conditions, as an abstract possibility, but as a matter of fact we do so continually. Individual life, which is communion with ourselves (with our past), and social life, which is communion with our like, would not otherwise be possible. [Sidenote] _Restorations and historical interpretation._ As regards the physical object, paleographers and philologists, who _restore_ to texts their original physiognomy, _restorers_ of pictures and of statues, and similar categories of workers, exert themselves to preserve or to give back to the physical object all its primitive energy. These efforts certainly do not always succeed, or are not completely successful, for never, or hardly ever, is it possible to obtain a restoration complete in its smallest details. But the unsurmountable is only accidentally present, and cannot cause us to fail to recognize the favourable results which are nevertheless obtained. _Historical interpretation_ likewise labours to reintegrate in us historical conditions which have been altered in the course of history. It revives the dead, completes the fragmentary, and affords us the opportunity of seeing a work of art (a physical object) as its author saw it, at the moment of production. A condition of this historical labour is tradition, with the help of which it is possible to collect the scattered rays and cause them to converge on one centre. With the help of memory, we surround the physical stimulus with all the facts among which it arose; and thus we make it possible for it to react upon us, as it acted upon him who produced it. When the tradition is broken, interpretation is arrested; in this case, the products of the past remain _silent_ for us. Thus the expressions contained in the Etruscan or Messapian inscriptions are unattainable; thus we still hear discussions among ethnographers as to certain products of the art of savages, whether they be pictures or writings; thus archaeologists and prehistorians are not always able to establish with certainty, whether the figures found on the ceramic of a certain region, and on other instruments employed, be of a religious or of a profane nature. But the arrest of interpretation, as that of restoration, is never a definitely unsurmountable barrier; and the daily discoveries of historical sources and of new methods of better exploiting antiquity, which we may hope to see ever improving, link up broken tradition. We do not wish to deny that erroneous historical interpretation produces at times what we may term _palimpsests_, new expressions imposed upon the antique, artistic imaginings instead of historical reproductions. The so-called fascination of the past depends in part upon these expressions of ours, which we weave into historical expressions. Thus in hellenic plastic art has been discovered the calm and serene intuition of life of those peoples, who feel, nevertheless, so poignantly, the universality of sorrow; thus has recently been discerned on the faces of the Byzantine saints "the terror of the millennium," a terror which is an equivoke, or an artificial legend invented by modern scholars. But _historical criticism_ tends precisely to circumscribe _vain imaginings_ and to establish with exactitude the point of view from which we must look. Thus we live in communication with other men of the present and of the past; and we must not conclude, because sometimes, and indeed often, we find ourselves face to face with the unknown or the badly known, that when we believe we are engaged in a dialogue, we are always speaking a monologue; nor that we are unable even to repeat the monologue which, in the past, we held with ourselves. XVII THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE AND ART [Sidenote] _Historical criticism in literature and art. Its importance._ This brief exposition of the method by which is obtained reintegration of the original conditions in which the work of art was produced, and by which reproduction and judgment are made possible, shows how important is the function fulfilled by historical research concerning artistic and literary works; that is to say, by what is usually called _historical criticism_, or method, in literature and art. Without tradition and historical criticism, the enjoyment of all or nearly all works of art produced by humanity, would be irrevocably lost: we should be little more than animals, immersed in the present alone, or in the most recent past. Only fools despise and laugh at him who reconstitutes an authentic text, explains the sense of words and customs, investigates the conditions in which an artist lived, and accomplishes all those labours which revive the qualities and the original colouring of works of art. Sometimes the depreciatory or negative judgment refers to the presumed or proved uselessness of many researches, made to recover the correct meaning of artistic works. But, it must be observed, in the first place, that historical research does not only fulfil the task of helping to reproduce and judge artistic works: the biography of a writer or of an artist, for example, and the study of the costume of a period, also possess their own interest, foreign to the history of art, but not foreign to other forms of history. If allusion be made to those researches which do not appear to have interest of any kind, nor to fulfil any purpose, it must be replied that the historical student must often reconcile himself to the useful, but little glorious, office of a cataloguer of facts. These facts remain for the time being formless, incoherent, and insignificant, but they are preserves, or mines, for the historian of the future and for whomsoever may afterwards want them for any purpose. In the same way, books which nobody asks for are placed on the shelves and are noted in the catalogues, because they may be asked for at some time or other. Certainly, in the same way that an intelligent librarian gives the preference to the acquisition and to the cataloguing of those books which he foresees may be of more or better service, so do intelligent students possess the instinct as to what is or may more probably be useful from among the mass of facts which they are investigating. Others, on the other hand, less well-endowed, less intelligent, or more hasty in producing, accumulate useless selections, rejections and erasures, and lose themselves in refinements and gossipy discussions. But this appertains to the economy of research, and is not our affair. At the most, it is the affair of the master who selects the subjects, of the publisher who pays for the printing, and of the critic who is called upon to praise or to blame the students for their researches. On the other hand, it is evident, that historical research, directed to illuminate a work of art by placing us in a position to judge it, does not alone suffice to bring it to birth in our spirit: taste, and an imagination trained and awakened, are likewise presupposed. The greatest historical erudition may accompany a taste in part gross or defective, a lumbering imagination, or, as it is generally phrased, a cold, hard heart, closed to art. Which is the lesser evil?--great erudition and defective taste, or natural good taste and great ignorance? The question has often been asked, and perhaps it will be best to deny its possibility, because one cannot tell which of two evils is the less, or what exactly that means. The merely learned man never succeeds in entering into communication with the great spirits, and keeps wandering for ever about the outer courts, the staircases, and the antechambers of their palaces; but the gifted ignoramus either passes by masterpieces which are to him inaccessible, or instead of understanding the works of art, as they really are, he invents others, with his imagination. Now, the labour of the former may at least serve to enlighten others; but the ingenuity of the latter remains altogether sterile. How, then, can we fail to prefer the conscientious learned man to the inconclusive man of talent, who is not really talented, if he resign himself, and in so far as he resigns himself, to come to no conclusion? [Sidenote] _Literary and artistic history. Its distinction from historical criticism and from artistic judgement._ It is necessary to distinguish accurately _the history, of art and literature_ from those historical labours which make use of works of art, but for extraneous purposes (such as biography, civil, religious, and political history, etc.), and also from historical erudition, whose object is preparation for the Aesthetic synthesis of reproduction. The difference between the first of these is obvious. The history of art and literature has the works of art themselves for principal subject; the other branches of study call upon and interrogate works of art, but only as witnesses, from which to discover the truth of facts which are not aesthetic. The second difference to which we have referred may seem less profound. However, it is very great. Erudition devoted to rendering clear again the understanding of works of art, aims simply at making appear a certain internal fact, an aesthetic reproduction. Artistic and literary history, on the other hand, does not appear until such reproduction has been obtained. It demands, therefore, further labour. Like all other history, its object is to record precisely such facts as have really taken place, that is, artistic and literary facts. A man who, after having acquired the requisite historical erudition, reproduces in himself and tastes a work of art, may remain simply a man of taste, or express at the most his own feeling, with an exclamation of beautiful or ugly. This does not suffice for the making of a historian of literature and art. There is further need that the simple act of reproduction be followed in him by a second internal operation. What is this new operation? It is, in its turn, an expression: the expression of the reproduction; the historical description, exposition, or representation. There is this difference, then, between the man of taste and the historian: the first merely reproduces in his spirit the work of art; the second, after having reproduced it, represents it historically, thus applying to it those categories by which, as we know, history is differentiated from pure art. Artistic and literary history is, therefore, _a historical work of art founded upon one or more works of art_. The denomination of artistic or literary critic is used in various senses: sometimes it is applied to the student who devotes his services to literature; sometimes to the historian who reveals the works of art of the past in their reality; more often to both. By critic is sometimes understood, in a more restricted sense, he who judges and describes contemporary literary works; and by historian, he who is occupied with less recent works. These are but linguistic usages and empirical distinctions, which may be neglected; because the true difference lies _between the learned man, the man of taste, and the historian of art_. These words designate, as it were, three successive stages of work, of which each is relatively independent of the one that follows, but not of that which precedes. As we have seen, a man may be simply learned, yet possess little capacity for understanding works of art; he may indeed be both learned and possess taste, yet be unable to write a page of artistic and literary history. But the true and complete historian, while containing in himself, as necessary pre-requisites, both the learned man and the man of taste, must add to their qualities the gift of historical comprehension and representation. [Sidenote] _The method of artistic and literary history._ The method of artistic and literary history presents problems and difficulties, some common to all historical method, others peculiar to it, because they derive from the concept of art itself. [Sidenote] _Critique of the problem of the origin of art._ History is wont to be divided into the history of man, the history or nature, and the mixed history of both the preceding. Without examining here the question of the solidity of this division, it is clear that artistic and literary history belongs in any case to the first, since it concerns a spiritual activity, that is to say, an activity proper to man. And since this activity is its subject, the absurdity of propounding the historical _problem of the origin of art_ becomes at once evident. We should note that by this formula many different things have in turn been included on many different occasions. _Origin_ has often meant _nature_ or _disposition_ of the artistic fact, and here was a real scientific or philosophic problem, the very problem, in fact, which our treatise has tried to solve. At other times, by origin has been understood the ideal genesis, the search for the reason of art, the deduction of the artistic fact from a first principle containing in itself both spirit and nature. This is also a philosophical problem, and it is complementary to the preceding, indeed it coincides with it, though it has sometimes been strangely interpreted and solved by means of an arbitrary and semi-fantastic metaphysic. But when it has been sought to discover further exactly in what way the artistic function was _historically formed_, this has resulted in the absurdity to which we have referred. If expression be the first form of consciousness, how can the historical origin be sought of what is _presupposed_ not to be a product of nature and of human history? How can we find the historical genesis of that which is a category, by means of which every historical genesis and fact are understood? The absurdity has arisen from the comparison with human institutions, which have, in fact, been formed in the course of history, and which have disappeared or may disappear in its course. There exists between the aesthetic fact and a human institution (such as monogamic marriage or the fief) a difference to some extent comparable with that between simple and compound bodies in chemistry. It is impossible to indicate the formation of the former, otherwise they would not be simple, and if this be discovered, they cease to be simple and become compound. The problem of the origin of art, historically understood, is only justified when it is proposed to seek, not for the formation of the function, but where and when art has appeared for the first time (appeared, that is to say, in a striking manner), at what point or in what region of the globe, and at what point or epoch of its history; when, that is to say, not the origin of art, but its most antique or primitive history, is the object of research. This problem forms one with that of the appearance of human civilization on the earth. Data for its solution are certainly wanting, but there yet remains the abstract possibility, and certainly attempts and hypotheses for its solution abound. [Sidenote] _History and the criterion of progress._ Every form of human history has the concept of _progress_ for foundation. But by progress must not be understood the imaginary and metaphysical _law of progress_, which should lead the generations of man with irresistible force to some unknown destiny, according to a providential plan which we can logically divine and understand. A supposed law of this sort is the negation of history itself, of that accidentality, that empiricity, that contingency, which distinguish the concrete fact from the abstraction. And for the same reason, progress has nothing to do with the so-called _law of evolution_. If evolution mean the concrete fact of reality which evolves (that is, which is reality), it is not a law. If, on the other hand, it be a law, it becomes confounded with the law of progress in the sense just described. The progress of which we speak here, is nothing but the _concept of human activity itself_, which, working upon the material supplied to it by nature, conquers obstacles and bends nature to its own ends. Such conception of progress, that is to say, of human activity applied to a given material, is the _point of view_ of the historian of humanity. No one but a mere collector of stray facts, a simple seeker, or an incoherent chronicler, can put together the smallest narrative of human deeds, unless he have a definite point of view, that is to say, an intimate personal conviction regarding the conception of the facts which he has undertaken to relate. The historical work of art cannot be achieved among the confused and discordant mass of crude facts, save by means of this point of view, which makes it possible to carve a definite figure from that rough and incoherent mass. The historian of a practical action should know what is economy and what morality; the historian of mathematics, what are mathematics; the historian of botany, what is botany; the historian of philosophy, what is philosophy. But if he do not really know these things, he must at least have the illusion of knowing them; otherwise he will never be able to delude himself that he is writing history. We cannot delay here to demonstrate the necessity and the inevitability of this subjective criterion in every narrative of human affairs. We will merely say that this criterion is compatible with the utmost objectivity, impartiality, and scrupulosity in dealing with data, and indeed forms a constitutive element of such subjective criterion. It suffices to read any book of history to discover at once the point of view of the author, if he be a historian worthy of the name and know his own business. There exist liberal and reactionary, rationalist and catholic historians, who deal with political or social history; for the history of philosophy there are metaphysical, empirical, sceptical, idealist, and spiritualist historians. Absolutely historical historians do not and cannot exist. Can it be said that Thucydides and Polybius, Livy and Tacitus, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, Giannone and Voltaire, were without moral and political views; and, in our time, Guizot or Thiers, Macaulay or Balbo, Ranke or Mommsen? And in the history of philosophy, from Hegel, who was the first to raise it to a great elevation, to Ritter, Zeller, Cousin, Lewes, and our Spaventa, was there one who did not possess his conception of progress and criterion of judgment? Is there one single work of any value in the history of Aesthetic, which has not been written from this or that point of view, with this or that bias (Hegelian or Herbartian), from a sensualist or from an eclectic point of view, and so on? If the historian is to escape from the inevitable necessity of taking a side, he must become a political and scientific eunuch; and history is not the business of eunuchs. They would at most be of use in compiling those great tomes of not useless erudition, _elumbis atque fracta_, which are called, not without reason, monkish. If, then, the concept of progress, the point of view, the criterion, be inevitable, the best to be done is not to try and escape from them, but to obtain the best possible. Everyone strives for this end, when he forms his own convictions, seriously and laboriously. Historians who profess to wish to interrogate the facts, without adding anything of their own to them, are not to be believed. This, at the most, is the result of ingenuousness and illusion on their part: they will always add what they have of personal, if they be truly historians, though it be without knowing it, or they will believe that they have escaped doing so, only because they have referred to it by innuendo, which is the most insinuating and penetrative of methods. [Sidenote] _Non-existence of a unique line of progress in artistic and literary history._ Artistic and literary history cannot dispense with the criterion of progress any more easily than other history. We cannot show what a given work of art is, save by proceeding from a conception of art, in order to fix the artistic problem which the author of such work of art had to solve, and by determining whether or no he have solved it, or by how much and in what way he has failed to do so. But it is important to note that the criterion of progress assumes a different form in artistic and literary history to that which it assumes (or is believed to assume) in the history of science. The whole history of knowledge can be represented by one single line of progress and regress. Science is the universal, and its problems are arranged in one single vast system, or complex problem. All thinkers weary themselves over the same problem as to the nature of reality and of knowledge: contemplative Indians and Greek philosophers, Christians and Mohammedans, bare heads and heads with turbans, wigged heads and heads with the black berretta (as Heine said); and future generations will weary themselves with it, as ours has done. It would take too long to inquire here if this be true or not of science. But it is certainly not true of art; art is intuition, and intuition is individuality, and individuality is never repeated. To conceive of the history of the artistic production of the human race as developed along a single line of progress and regress, would therefore be altogether erroneous. At the most, and working to some extent with generalizations and abstractions, it may be admitted that the history of aesthetic products shows progressive cycles, but each cycle has its own problem, and is progressive only in respect to that problem. When many are at work on the same subject, without succeeding in giving to it the suitable form, yet drawing always more nearly to it, there is said to be progress. When he who gives to it definite form appears, the cycle is said to be complete, progress ended. A typical example of this would be the progress in the elaboration of the mode of using the subject-matter of chivalry, during the Italian Renaissance, from Pulci to Ariosto. (If this instance be made use of, excessive simplification of it must be excused.) Nothing but repetition and imitation could be the result of employing that same material after Ariosto. The result was repetition or imitation, diminution or exaggeration, a spoiling of what had already been achieved; in sum, decadence. The Ariostesque epigoni prove this. Progress begins with the commencement of a new cycle. Cervantes, with his more open and conscious irony, is an instance of this. In what did the general decadence of Italian literature at the end of the sixteenth century consist? Simply in having nothing more to say, and in repeating and exaggerating motives already found. If the Italians of this period had even been able to express their own decadence, they would not have been altogether failures, but have anticipated the literary movement of the Renaissance. Where the subject-matter is not the same, a progressive cycle does not exist. Shakespeare does not represent a progress as regards Dante, nor Goethe as regards Shakespeare. Dante, however, represents a progress in respect to the visionaries of the Middle Ages, Shakespeare to the Elizabethan dramatists, Goethe, with _Werther_ and the first part of _Faust_, in respect to the writers of the _Sturm und Drang_. This mode of presenting the history of poetry and art contains, however, as we have remarked, something of abstract, of merely practical, and is without rigorous philosophical value. Not only is the art of savages not inferior, as art, to that of civilized peoples, provided it be correlative to the impressions of the savage; but every individual, indeed every moment of the spiritual life of an individual, has its artistic world; and all those worlds are, artistically, incomparable with one another. [Sidenote] _Errors committed in respect to this law._ Many have sinned and continue to sin against this special form of the criterion of progress in artistic and literary history. Some, for instance, talk of the infancy of Italian art in Giotto, and of its maturity in Raphael or in Titian; as though Giotto were not quite perfect and complete, in respect to his psychic material. He was certainly incapable of drawing a figure like Raphael, or of colouring it like Titian; but was Raphael or Titian by any chance capable of creating the _Matrimonio di San Francesco con la Povertà_, or the _Morte di San Francesco_? The spirit of Giotto had not felt the attraction of the body beautiful, which the Renaissance studied and raised to a place of honour; but the spirits of Raphael and of Titian were no longer curious of certain movements of ardour and of tenderness, which attracted the man of the fourteenth century. How, then, can a comparison be made, where there is no comparative term? The celebrated divisions of the history of art suffer from the same defect. They are as follows: an oriental period, representing a disequilibrium between idea and form, with prevalence of the second; a classical, representing an equilibrium between idea and form; a romantic, representing a new disequilibrium between idea and form, with prevalence of the idea. There are also the divisions into oriental art, representing imperfection of form; classical, perfection of form; romantic or modern, perfection of content and of form. Thus classic and romantic have also received, among their many other meanings, that of progressive or regressive periods, in respect to the realization of some indefinite artistic ideal of humanity. [Sidenote] _Other meanings of the word "progress" in respect to Aesthetic._ There is no such thing, then, as an _aesthetic_ progress of humanity. However, by aesthetic progress is sometimes meant, not what the two words coupled together really signify, but the ever-increasing accumulation of our historical knowledge, which makes us able to sympathize with all the artistic products of all peoples and of all times, or, as is said, to make our taste more catholic. The difference appears very great, if the eighteenth century, so incapable of escaping from itself, be compared with our own time, which enjoys alike Hellenic and Roman art, now better understood, Byzantine, mediaeval, Arabic, and Renaissance art, the art of the Cinque Cento, baroque art, and the art of the seventeenth century. Egyptian, Babylonian, Etruscan, and even prehistoric art, are more profoundly studied every day. Certainly, the difference between the savage and civilized man does not lie in the human faculties. The savage has speech, intellect, religion, and morality, in common with civilized man, and he is a complete man. The only difference lies in that civilized man penetrates and dominates a larger portion of the universe with his theoretic and practical activity. We cannot claim to be more spiritually alert than, for example, the contemporaries of Pericles; but no one can deny that we are richer than they--rich with their riches and with those of how many other peoples and generations besides our own? By aesthetic progress is also meant, in another sense, which is also improper, the greater abundance of artistic intuitions and the smaller number of imperfect or decadent works which one epoch produces in respect to another. Thus it may be said that there was aesthetic progress, an artistic awakening, at the end of the thirteenth or of the fifteenth centuries. Finally, aesthetic progress is talked of, with an eye to the refinement and to the psychical complications exhibited in the works of art of the most civilized peoples, as compared with those of less civilized peoples, barbarians and savages. But in this case, the progress is that of the complex conditions of society, not of the artistic activity, to which the material is indifferent. These are the most important points concerning the method of artistic and literary history. XVIII CONCLUSION: IDENTITY OF LINGUISTIC AND AESTHETIC [Sidenote] _Summary of the inquiry._ A glance over the path traversed will show that we have completed the entire programme of our treatise. We have studied the nature of intuitive or expressive knowledge, which is the aesthetic or artistic fact (I. and II.), and we have described the other form of knowledge, namely, the intellectual, with the secondary complications of its forms (III.). Having done this, it became possible to criticize all erroneous theories of art, which arise from the confusion between the various forms, and from the undue transference of the characteristics of one form to those of another (IV.), and in so doing to indicate the inverse errors which are found in the theory of intellectual knowledge and of historiography (V.). Passing on to examine the relations between the aesthetic activity and the other spiritual activities, no longer theoretic but practical, we have indicated the true character of the practical activity and the place which it occupies in respect to the theoretic activity, which it follows: hence the critique of the invasion of aesthetic theory by practical concepts (VI.). We have also distinguished the two forms of the practical activity, as economic and ethic (VII.), adding to this the statement that there are no other forms of the spirit beyond the four which we have analyzed; hence (VIII.) the critique of every metaphysical Aesthetic. And, seeing that there exist no other spiritual forms of equal degree, therefore there are no original subdivisions of the four established, and in particular of Aesthetic. From this arises the impossibility of classes of expressions and the critique of Rhetoric, that is, of the partition of expressions into simple and ornate, and of their subclasses (IX.). But, by the law of the unity of the spirit, the aesthetic fact is also a practical fact, and as such, occasions pleasure and pain. This led us to study the feelings of value in general, and those of aesthetic value, or of the beautiful, in particular (X.), to criticize aesthetic hedonism in all its various manifestations and complications (XI.), and to expel from the system of Aesthetic the long series of pseudo-aesthetic concepts, which had been introduced into it (XII.). Proceeding from aesthetic production to the facts of reproduction, we began by investigating the mode of fixing externally the aesthetic expression, with the view of reproduction. This is the so-called physically beautiful, whether it be natural or artificial (XIII.). We then derived from this distinction the critique of the errors which arise from confounding the physical with the aesthetic side of things (XIV.). We indicated the meaning of artistic technique, that which is the technique serving for reproduction, thus criticizing the divisions, limits, and classifications of the individual arts, and establishing the connections between art, economy, and morality (XV.). Because the existence of the physical objects does not suffice to stimulate to the full aesthetic reproduction, and because, in order to obtain this result, it is necessary to recall the conditions in which the stimulus first operated, we have also studied the function of historical erudition, directed toward the end of re-establishing our communication with the works of the past, and toward the creation of a base for aesthetic judgment (XVI.). We have closed our treatise by showing how the reproduction thus obtained is afterwards elaborated by the intellectual categories, that is to say, by an excursus on the method of literary and artistic history (XVII.). The aesthetic fact has thus been considered both in itself and in its relations with the other spiritual activities, with the feelings of pleasure and of pain, with the facts that are called physical, with memory, and with historical elaboration. It has passed from the position of _subject_ to that of _object_, that is to say, from the moment of _its birth_, until gradually it becomes changed for the spirit into _historical argument_. Our treatise may appear to be somewhat meagre, when compared with the great volumes usually consecrated to Aesthetic. But it will not seem so, when it is observed that these volumes, as regards nine-tenths of their contents, are full of matter which does not appertain to Aesthetic, such as definitions, either psychical or metaphysical, of pseudo-aesthetic concepts (of the sublime, the comic, the tragic, the humorous, etc.), or of the exposition of the supposed Zoology, Botany, and Mineralogy of Aesthetic, and of universal history judged from the aesthetic standpoint. The whole history of concrete art and literature has also been dragged into those Aesthetics and generally mangled; they contain judgments upon Homer and Dante, upon Ariosto and Shakespeare, upon Beethoven and Rossini, Michelangelo and Raphael. When all this has been deducted from them, our treatise will no longer be held to be too meagre, but, on the contrary, far more copious than ordinary treatises, for these either omit altogether, or hardly touch at all, the greater part of the difficult problems proper to Aesthetic, which we have felt it to be our duty to study. [Sidenote] _Identity of Linguistic and Aesthetic._ Aesthetic, then, as the science of expression, has been here studied by us from every point of view. But there yet remains to justify the sub-title, which we have joined to the title of our book, _General Linguistic_, and to state and make clear the thesis that the science of art is that of language. Aesthetic and Linguistic, in so far as they are true sciences, are not two different sciences, but one single science. Not that there is a special Linguistic; but the linguistic science sought for, general Linguistic, _in so far as what it contains is reducible to philosophy_, is nothing but Aesthetic. Whoever studies general Linguistic, that is to say, philosophical Linguistic, studies aesthetic problems, and _vice versa_. _Philosophy of language and philosophy of art are the same thing_. Were Linguistic a _different_ science from Aesthetic, it should not have expression, which is the essentially aesthetic fact, for its object. This amounts to saying that it must be denied that language is expression. But an emission of sounds, which expresses nothing, is not language. Language is articulate, limited, organized sound, employed in expression. If, on the other hand, language were a _special_ science in respect to Aesthetic, it would necessarily have for its object a _special class_ of expressions. But the inexistence of classes of expression is a point which we have already demonstrated. [Sidenote] _Aesthetic formulization of linguistic problems. Nature of language._ The problems which Linguistic serves to solve, and the errors with which Linguistic strives and has striven, are the same that occupy and complicate Aesthetic. If it be not always easy, it is, on the other hand, always possible, to reduce the philosophic questions of Linguistic to their aesthetic formula. The disputes as to the nature of the one find their parallel in those as to the nature of the other. Thus it has been disputed, whether Linguistic be a scientific or a historical discipline, and the scientific having been distinguished from the historical, it has been asked whether it belong to the order of the natural or of the psychological sciences, by the latter being understood empirical Psychology, as much as the science of the spirit. The same has happened with Aesthetic, which some have looked upon as a natural science, confounding aesthetic expression with physical expression. Others have looked upon it as a psychological science, confounding expression in its universality, with the empirical classification of expressions. Others again, denying the very possibility of a science of such a subject, have looked upon it as a collection of historical facts. Finally, it has been realized that it belongs to the sciences of activity or of values, which are the spiritual sciences. Linguistic expression, or speech, has often seemed to be a fact of _interjection_, which belongs to the so-called physical expressions of the feelings, common alike to men and animals. But it was soon admitted that an abyss yawns between the "Ah!" which is a physical reflex of pain, and a word; as also between that "Ah!" of pain and the "Ah!" employed as a word. The theory of the interjection being abandoned (jocosely termed the "Ah! Ah!" theory by German linguists), the theory of _association or convention_ appeared. This theory was refuted by the same objection which destroyed aesthetic associationism in general: speech is unity, not multiplicity of images, and multiplicity does not explain, but presupposes the existence of the expression to explain. A variant of linguistic associationism is the imitative, that is to say, the theory of the onomatopoeia, which the same philologists deride under the name of the "bow-wow" theory, after the imitation of the dog's bark, which, according to the onomatopoeists, gives its name to the dog. The most usual theory of our times as regards language (apart from mere crass naturalism) consists of a sort of eclecticism or mixture of the various theories to which we have referred. It is assumed that language is in part the product of interjections and in part of onomatopes and conventions. This doctrine is altogether worthy of the scientific and philosophic decadence of the second half of the nineteenth century. [Sidenote] _Origin of language and its development._ We must here note a mistake into which have fallen those very philologists who have best penetrated the active nature of language. These, although they admit that language was _originally a spiritual creation_, yet maintain that it was largely increased later by _association_. But the distinction does not prevail, for origin in this case cannot mean anything but nature or essence. If, therefore, language be a spiritual creation, it will always be a creation; if it be association, it will have been so from the beginning. The mistake has arisen from not having grasped the general principle of Aesthetic, which we have noted: namely, that expressions already produced must redescend to the rank of impressions before they can give rise to new impressions. When we utter new words, we generally transform the old ones, varying or enlarging their meaning; but this process is not associative. It is creative, although the creation has for material the impressions, not of the hypothetical primitive man, but of man who has lived long ages in society, and who has, so to say, stored so many things in his psychic organism, and among them so much language. [Sidenote] _Relation between Grammar and Logic._ The question of the distinction between the aesthetic and the intellectual fact has appeared in Linguistic as that of the relations between Grammar and Logic. This question has found two solutions, which are partially true: that of the indissolubility of Logic and Grammar, and that of their dissolubility. The complete solution is this: if the logical form be indissoluble from the grammatical (aesthetic), the grammatical is dissoluble from the logical. [Sidenote] _Grammatical classes or parts of speech._ If we look at a picture which, for example, portrays a man walking on a country road, we can say: "This picture represents a fact of movement, which, if conceived as volitional, is called _action_. And because every movement implies _matter_, and every action a being that acts, this picture also represents either _matter_ or a _being_. But this movement takes place in a definite place, which is a part of a given _star_ (the Earth), and precisely in that part of it which is called _terra-firma_, and more properly in a part of it that is wooded and covered with grass, which is called _country_, cut naturally or artificially, in a manner which is called _road_. Now, there is only one example of that given star, which is called Earth: Earth is an _individual_. But _terra-firma_, _country_, _road_, are _classes or universals_, because there are other terra-firmas, other countries, other roads." And it would be possible to continue for a while with similar considerations. By substituting a phrase for the picture that we have imagined, for example, one to this effect, "Peter is walking on a country road," and by making the same remarks, we obtain the concepts of _verb_ (motion or action), of _noun_ (matter or agent), of _proper noun_, of _common nouns_; and so on. What have we done in both cases? Neither more nor less than to submit to logical elaboration what was first elaborated only aesthetically; that is to say, we have destroyed the aesthetical by the logical. But, as in general Aesthetic, error begins when It is wished to return from the logical to the aesthetical, and it is asked what is the expression of movement, action, matter, being, of the general, of the individual, etc.; thus in like manner with language, error begins when motion or action are called verb, being, or matter, noun or substantive, and when linguistic categories, or _parts of speech_, are made of all these, noun and verb and so on. The theory of parts of speech is at bottom altogether the same as that of artistic and literary classes, already criticized in the Aesthetic. It is false to say that the verb or the noun is expressed in definite words, truly distinguishable from others. Expression is an indivisible whole. Noun and verb do not exist in themselves, but are abstractions made by our destroying the sole linguistic reality, which is _the proposition_. This last is to be understood, not in the usual mode of grammarians, but as an organism expressive of a complete meaning, from an exclamation to a poem. This sounds paradoxical, but is nevertheless a most simple truth. And as in Aesthetic, the artistic productions of certain peoples have been looked upon as imperfect, owing to the error above mentioned, because the supposed kinds have seemed still to be indiscriminate or absent with them; so, in Linguistic, the theory of the parts of speech has caused the analogous error of dividing languages into formed and unformed, according to whether there appear in them or not some of those supposed parts of speech; for example, the verb. [Sidenote] _The individuality of speech and the classification of languages._ Linguistic also discovered the irreducible individuality of the aesthetic fact, when it affirmed that the word is what is really spoken, and that two truly identical words do not exist. Thus were synonyms and homonyms destroyed, and thus was shown the impossibility of really translating one word into another, from so-called dialect into so-called language, and from a so-called mother-tongue into a so-called foreign tongue. But the attempt to classify languages agrees ill with this correct view. Languages have no reality beyond the propositions and complexes of propositions really written and pronounced by given peoples for definite periods. That is to say, they have no existence outside the works of art, in which they exist concretely. What is the art of a given people but the complex of all its artistic products? What is the character of an art (say, Hellenic art or Provençal literature), but the complex physiognomy of those products? And how can such a question be answered, save by giving the history of their art (of their literature, that is to say, of their language in action)? It will seem that this argument, although possessing value as against many of the wonted classifications of languages, yet is without any as regards that queen of classifications, the historico-genealogical, that glory of comparative philology. And this is certainly true. But why? Precisely because the historico-genealogical method is not a classification. He who writes history does not classify, and the philologists themselves have hastened to say that the languages which can be arranged in a historical series (those whose series have been traced) are, not distinct and definite species, but a complex of facts in the various phases of its development. [Sidenote] _Impossibility of a normative grammar._ Language has sometimes been looked upon as an act of volition or of choice. But others have discovered the impossibility of creating language artificially, by an act of will. _Tu, Caesar, civitatem dare potes homini, verbo non poles!_ was once said to the Roman Emperor. The aesthetic (and therefore theoretic) nature of expression supplies the method of correcting the scientific error which lies in the conception of a (normative) _Grammar_, containing the rules of speaking well. Good sense has always rebelled against this error. An example of such rebellion is the "So much the worse for grammar" of Voltaire. But the impossibility of a normative grammar is also recognized by those who teach it, when they confess that to write well cannot be learned by rules, that there are no rules without exceptions, and that the study of Grammar should be conducted practically, by reading and by examples, which form the literary taste. The scientific reason of this impossibility lies in what we have already proved: that a technique of the theoretical amounts to a contradiction in terms. And what could a (normative) grammar be, but just a technique of linguistic expression, that is to say, of a theoretic fact? [Sidenote] _Didactic purposes._ The case in which Grammar is understood merely as an empirical discipline, that is to say, as a collection of groups useful for learning languages, without any claim whatever to philosophic truth, is quite different. Even the abstractions of the parts of speech are in this case both admissible and of assistance. Many books entitled treatises of Linguistic have a merely didactic purpose; they are simply scholastic manuals. We find in them, in truth, a little of everything, from the description of the vocal apparatus and of the artificial machines (phonographs) which can imitate it, to summaries of the most important results obtained by Indo-European, Semitic, Coptic, Chinese, or other philologies; from philosophic generalizations on the origin or nature of language, to advice on calligraphy, and the arrangement of schedules for philological spoils. But this mass of notions, which is here taught in a fragmentary and incomplete manner as regards the language in its essence, the language as expression, resolves itself into notions of Aesthetic. Nothing exists outside _Aesthetic_, which gives knowledge of the nature of language, and _empirical Grammar_, which is a pedagogic expedient, save the _History of languages_ in their living reality, that is, the history of concrete literary productions, which is substantially identical with the _History of literature_. [Sidenote] _Elementary linguistic facts or roots._ The same mistake of confusing the physical with the aesthetic, from which the elementary forms of the beautiful originate, is made by those who seek for elementary aesthetic facts, decorating with that name the divisions of the longer series of physical sounds into shorter series. Syllables, vowels, and consonants, and the series of syllables called words which give no definite sense when taken alone, are not facts of language, but simple physical concepts of sounds. Another mistake of the same sort is that of roots, to which the most able philologists now accord but a very limited value. Having confused physical with linguistic or expressive facts, and observing that, in the order of ideas, the simple precedes the complex, they necessarily ended by thinking that _the smaller_ physical facts were _the more simple_. Hence the imaginary necessity that the most antique, primitive languages, had been monosyllabic, and that the progress of historical research must lead to the discovery of monosyllabic roots. But (to follow up the imaginary hypothesis) the first expression that the first man conceived may also have had a mimetic, not a phonic reflex: it may have been exteriorised, not in a sound but in a gesture. And assuming that it was exteriorised in a sound, there is no reason to suppose that sound to have been monosyllabic rather than plurisyllabic. Philologists frequently blame their own ignorance and impotence, if they do not always succeed in reducing plurisyllabism to monosyllabism, and they trust in the future. But their faith is without foundation, as their blame of themselves is an act of humility arising from an erroneous presumption. Furthermore, the limits of syllables, as those of words, are altogether arbitrary, and distinguished, as well as may be, by empirical use. Primitive speech, or the speech of the uncultured man, is _continuous_, unaccompanied by any reflex consciousness of the divisions of the word and of the syllables, which are taught at school. No true law of Linguistic can be founded on such divisions. Proof of this is to be found in the confession of linguists, that there are no truly phonetic laws of the hiatus, of cacophony, of diaeresis, of synaeresis, but merely laws of taste and convenience; that is to say, _aesthetic_ laws. And what are the laws of _words_ which are not at the same time laws of _style_? [Sidenote] _Aesthetic judgment and the model language._ The search for a _model language_, or for a method of reducing linguistic usage to _unity_, arises from the misconception of a rationalistic measurement of the beautiful, from the concept which we have termed that of false aesthetic absoluteness. In Italy, we call this question that of the _unity of the language_. Language is perpetual creation. What has been linguistically expressed cannot be repeated, save by the reproduction of what has already been produced. The ever-new impressions give rise to continuous changes of sounds and of meanings, that is, to ever-new expressions. To seek the model language, then, is to seek the immobility of motion. Every one speaks, and should speak, according to the echoes which things arouse in his soul, that is, according to his impressions. It is not without reason that the most convinced supporter of any one of the solutions of the problem of the unity of language (be it by the use of Latin, of fourteenth-century Italian, or of Florentine) feels a repugnance in applying his theory, when he is speaking in order to communicate his thoughts and to make himself understood. The reason for this is that he feels that were he to substitute Latin, fourteenth-century Italian, or Florentine speech for that of a different origin, but which answers to his impressions, he would be falsifying the latter. He would become a vain listener to himself, instead of a speaker, a pedant in place of a serious man, a histrion instead of a sincere person. To write according to a theory is not really to write: at the most, it is _making literature_. The question of the unity of language is always reappearing, because, put as it is, there can be no solution to it, owing to its being based upon a false conception of what language is. Language is not an arsenal of ready-made arms, and it is not _vocabulary_, which, in so far as it is thought of as progressive and in living use, is always a cemetery, containing corpses more or less well embalmed, that is to say, a collection of abstractions. Our mode of settling the question of the model language, or of the unity of the language, may seem somewhat abrupt, and yet we would not wish to appear otherwise than respectful towards the long line of literary men who have debated this question in Italy for centuries. But those ardent debates were, at bottom, debates upon aestheticity, not upon aesthetic science, upon literature rather than upon literary theory, upon effective speaking and writing, not upon linguistic science. Their error consisted in transforming the manifestation of a want into a scientific thesis, the need of understanding one another more easily among a people dialectically divided, in the philosophic search for a language, which should be one or ideal. Such a search was as absurd as that other search for a _universal language_, with the immobility of the concept and of the abstraction. The social need for a better understanding of one another cannot be satisfied save by universal culture, by the increase of communications, and by the interchange of thought among men. [Sidenote] _Conclusion._ These observations must suffice to show that all the scientific problems of Linguistic are the same as those of Aesthetic, and that the truths and errors of the one are the truths and errors of the other. If Linguistic and Aesthetic appear to be two different sciences, this arises from the fact that people think of the former as grammar, or as a mixture between philosophy and grammar, that is, an arbitrary mnemonic scheme. They do not think of it as a rational science and as a pure philosophy of speech. Grammar, or something grammatical, also causes the prejudice in people's minds, that the reality of language lies in isolated and combinable words, not in living discourse among expressive organisms, rationally indivisible. Those linguists, or glottologists with philosophical endowments, who have best fathomed questions of language, resemble (to employ a worn but efficacious figure) workmen piercing a tunnel: at a certain point they must hear the voices of their companions, the philosophers of Aesthetic, who have been piercing it from the other side. At a certain stage of scientific elaboration, Linguistic, in so far as it is philosophy, must be merged in Aesthetic; and indeed it is merged in it, without leaving a residue. HISTORICAL SUMMARY I AESTHETIC IDEAS IN GRAECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY The question, as to whether Aesthetic should be looked upon as ancient or modern, has often been discussed. The answer will depend upon the view taken of the nature of Aesthetic. Benedetto Croce has proved that Aesthetic is _the science of expressive activity_. But this knowledge cannot be reached, until has been defined the nature of imagination, of representation, of expression, or whatever we may term that faculty which is theoretic, but not intellectual, which gives knowledge of the individual, but not of the universal. Now the deviations from this, the correct theory, may arise in two ways: by _defect_ or by _excess_. Negation of the special aesthetic activity, or of its autonomy, is an instance of the former. This amounts to a mutilation of the reality of the spirit. Of the latter, the substitution or superposition of another mysterious and non-existent activity is an example. These errors each take several forms. That which errs by defect may be: (_a_) pure hedonism, which looks upon art as merely sensual pleasure; (_b_) rigoristic hedonism, agreeing with (_a_), but adding that art is irreconcilable with the loftiest activities of man; (_c_) moralistic or pedagogic hedonism, which admits, with the two former, that art is mere sensuality, but believes that it may not only be harmless, but of some service to morals, if kept in proper subjection and obedience. The error by excess also assumes several forms, but these are indeterminable _a priori_. This view is fully dealt with under the name of _mystic_, in the Theory and in the Appendix. Graeco-Roman antiquity was occupied with the problem in all these forms. In Greece, the problem of art and of the artistic faculty arose for the first time after the sophistic movement, as a result of the Socratic polemic. With the appearance of the word _mimesis_ or _mimetic_, we have a first attempt at grouping the arts, and the expression, allegoric, or its equivalent, used in defence of Homer's poetry, reminds us of what Plato called "the old quarrel between philosophy and poetry." But when internal facts were all looked upon as mere phenomena of opinion or feeling, of pleasure or of pain, of illusion or of arbitrary caprice, there could be no question of beautiful or ugly, of difference between the true and the beautiful, or between the beautiful and the good. The problem of the nature of art assumes as solved those problems concerning the difference between rational and irrational, material and spiritual, bare fact and value, etc. This was first done in the Socratic period, and therefore the aesthetic problem could only arise after Socrates. And in fact it does arise, with Plato, _the author of the only great negation of art which appears in the history of ideas_. Is art rational or irrational? Does it belong to the noble region of the soul, where dwell philosophy and virtue, or does it cohabit with sensuality and with crude passion in the lower regions? This was the question that Plato asked, and thus was the aesthetic problem stated for the first time. His Gorgias remarks with sceptical acumen, that tragedy is a deception, which brings honour alike to deceived and to deceiver, and therefore it is blameworthy not to know how to deceive and not to allow oneself to be deceived. This suffices for Gorgias, but Plato, the philosopher, must resolve the doubt. If it be in fact deception, down with tragedy and the other arts! If it be not deception, then what is the place of tragedy in philosophy and in the righteous life? His answer was that art or mimetic does not realize the ideas, or the truth of things, but merely reproduces natural or artificial things, which are themselves mere shadows of the ideas. Art, then, is but a shadow of a shadow, a thing of third-rate degree. The artificer fashions the object which the painter paints. The artificer copies the divine idea and the painter copies him. Art therefore does not belong to the rational, but to the irrational, sensual sphere of the soul. It can serve but for sensual pleasure, which disturbs and obscures. Therefore must mimetic, poetry, and poets be excluded from the perfect Republic. Plato observed with truth, that imitation does not rise to the logical or conceptual sphere, of which poets and painters, as such, are, in fact, ignorant. But he _failed to realize_ that there could be any form of knowledge other than the intellectual. We now know that Intuition lies on this side or outside the Intellect, from which it differs as much as it does from passion and sensuality. Plato, with his fine aesthetic sense, would have been grateful to anyone who could have shown him how to place art, which he loved and practised so supremely himself, among the lofty activities of the spirit. But in his day, no one could give him such assistance. His conscience and his reason saw that art makes the false seem the true, and therefore he resolutely banished it to the lower regions of the spirit. The tendency among those who followed Plato in time was to find some means of retaining art and of depriving it of the baleful influence which it was believed to exercise. Life without art was to the beauty-loving Greek an impossibility, although he was equally conscious of the demands of reason and of morality. Thus it happened that art, which, on the purely hedonistic hypothesis, had been treated as a beautiful courtezan, became in the hands of the moralist, a pedagogue. Aristophanes and Strabo, and above all Aristotle, dwell upon the didactic and moralistic possibility of poetry. For Plutarch, poetry seems to have been a sort of preparation for philosophy, a twilight to which the eyes should grow accustomed, before emerging into the full light of day. Among the Romans, we find Lucretius comparing the beauties of his great poem to the sweet yellow honey, with which doctors are wont to anoint the rim of the cup containing their bitter drugs. Horace, as so frequently, takes his inspiration from the Greek, when he offers the double view of art: as courtezan and as pedagogue. In his _Ad Pisones_ occur the passages, in which we find mingled with the poetic function, that of the orator--the practical and the aesthetic. "Was Virgil a poet or an orator?" The triple duty of pleasing, moving, and teaching, was imposed upon the poet. Then, with a thought for the supposed meretricious nature of their art, the ingenious Horace remarks that both must employ the seductions of form. The _mystic_ view of art appeared only in late antiquity, with Plotinus. The curious error of looking upon Plato as the head of this school and as the Father of Aesthetic assumes that he who felt obliged to banish art altogether from the domain of the higher functions of the spirit, was yet ready to yield to it the highest place there. The mystical view of Aesthetic accords a lofty place indeed to Aesthetic, placing it even above philosophy. The enthusiastic praise of the beautiful, to be found in the _Gorgias_, _Philebus_, _Phaedrus_, and _Symposium_ is responsible for this misunderstanding, but it is well to make perfectly clear that the beautiful, of which Plato discourses in those dialogues, has nothing to do with the _artistically_ beautiful, nor with the mysticism of the neo-Platonicians. Yet the thinkers of antiquity were aware that a problem lay in the direction of Aesthetic, and Xenophon records the sayings of Socrates that the beautiful is "that which is fitting and answers to the end required." Elsewhere he says "it is that which is loved." Plato likewise vibrates between various views and offers several solutions. Sometimes he appears almost to confound the beautiful with the true, the good and the divine; at others he leans toward the utilitarian view of Socrates; at others he distinguishes between what is beautiful In itself and what possesses but a relative beauty. At other times again, he is a hedonist, and makes it to consist of pure pleasure, that is, of pleasure with no shadow of pain; or he finds it in measure and proportion, or in the very sound, the very colour itself. The reason for all this vacillation of definition lay in Plato's exclusion of the artistic or mimetic fact from the domain of the higher spiritual activities. The _Hippias major_ expresses this uncertainty more completely than any of the other dialogues. What is the beautiful? That is the question asked at the beginning, and left unanswered at the end. The Platonic Socrates and Hippias propose the most various solutions, one after another, but always come out by the gate by which they entered in. Is the beautiful to be found in ornament? No, for gold embellishes only where it is in keeping. Is the beautiful that which seems ugly to no man? But it is a question of being, not of seeming. Is it their fitness which makes things seem beautiful? But in that case, the fitness which makes them appear beautiful is one thing, the beautiful another. If the beautiful be the useful or that which leads to an end, then evil would also be beautiful, because the useful may also end evilly. Is the beautiful the helpful, that which leads to the good? No, for in that case the good would not be beautiful, nor the beautiful good, because cause and effect are different. Thus they argued in the Platonic dialogues, and when we turn to the pages of Aristotle, we find him also uncertain and inclined to vary his definitions.[5] Sometimes for him the good and pleasurable are the beautiful, sometimes it lies in actions, at others in things motionless, or in bulk and order, or is altogether undefinable. Antiquity also established canons of the beautiful, and the famous canon of Polycleitus, on the proportions of the human body, fitly compares with that of later times on the golden line, and with the Ciceronian phrase from the Tusculan Disputations. But these are all of them mere empirical observations, mere happy remarks and verbal substitutions, which lead to unsurmountable difficulties when put to philosophical test. One important identification is absent in all those early attempts at truth. The beautiful is never identified with art, and the artistic fact is always clearly distinguished from beauty, mimetic from its content. Plotinus first identified the two, and with him the beautiful and art are dissolved together in a passion and mystic elevation of the spirit. The beauty of natural objects is the archetype existing in the soul, which is the fountain of all natural beauty. Thus was Plato (he said) in error, when he despised the arts for imitating nature, for nature herself imitates the idea, and art also seeks her inspiration directly from those ideas whence nature proceeds. We have here, with Plotinus and with Neoplatonism, the first appearance in the world of mystical Aesthetic, destined to play so important a part in later aesthetic theory. Aristotle was far more happy in his attempts at defining Aesthetic as the science of representation and of expression than in his definitions of the beautiful. He felt that some element of the problem had been overlooked, and in attempting in his turn a solution, he had the advantage over Plato of looking upon the ideas as simple concepts, not as hypostases of concepts or of abstractions. Thus reality was more vivid for Aristotle: it was the synthesis of matter and form. He saw that art, or mimetic, was a theoretic fact, or a mode of contemplation. "But if Poetry be a theoretic fact, in what way is it to be distinguished from science and from historical knowledge?" Thus magnificently does the great philosopher pose the problem at the commencement of his _Poetics_, and thus alone can it be posed successfully. We ask the same question in the same words to-day. But the problem is difficult, and the masterly statement of it was not equalled by the method of solution then available. He made an excellent start on his voyage of discovery, but stopped half way, irresolute and perplexed. Poetry, he says, differs from history, by portraying the possible, while history deals with what has really happened. Poetry, like philosophy, aims at the universal, but in a different way, which the philosopher indicates as something more (_mallon tha katholon_) which differentiates poetry from history, occupied with the particular (_malon tha kath ekaston_). What, then, is the possible, the something more, and the particular of poetry? Aristotle immediately falls into error and confusion, when he attempts to define these words. Since art has to deal with the absurd and with the impossible, it cannot be anything rational, but a mere imitation of reality, in accordance with the Platonic theory--a fact of sensual pleasure. Aristotle does not, however, attain to so precise a definition as Plato, whose erroneous definition he does not succeed in supplanting. The truth is that he failed of his self-imposed task; he failed to discern the true nature of Aesthetic, although he restated and re-examined the problem with such marvellous acumen. After Aristotle, there comes a lull in the discussion, until Plotinus. The _Poetics_ were generally little studied, and the admirable statement of the problem generally neglected by later writers. Antique psychology knew the fancy or imagination, as preserving or reproducing sensuous impressions, or as an intermediary between the concepts and feeling: its autonomous productive activity was not yet understood. In the _Life of Apollonius of Tyana_, Philostratus is said to have been the first to make clear the difference between mimetic and creative imagination. But this does not in reality differ from the Aristotelian mimetic, which is concerned, not only with the real, but also with the possible. Cicero too, before Philostratus, speaks of a kind of exquisite beauty lying hidden in the soul of the artist, which guides his hand and art. Antiquity seems generally to have been entrammelled in the meshes of the belief in mimetic, or the duplication of natural objects by the artist Philostratus and the other protagonists of the imagination may have meant to combat this error, but the shadows lie heavy until we reach Plotinus. We find already astir among the sophists the question as to the nature of language. Admitting that language is a sign, are we to take that as signifying a spiritual necessity (_phusis_) or as a psychological convention (_nomos_)? Aristotle made a valuable contribution to this difficult question, when he spoke of a kind of proposition other than those which predicate truth or falsehood, that is, logic. With him _euchae_ is the term proper to designate desires and aspirations, which are the vehicle of poetry and of oratory. (It must be remembered that for Aristotle words, like poetry, belonged to mimetic.) The profound remark about the third mode of proposition would, one would have thought, have led naturally to the separation of linguistic from logic, and to its classification with poetry and art. But the Aristotelian logic assumed a verbal and formal character, which set back the attainment of this position by many hundred years. Yet the genius of Epicurus had an intuition of the truth, when he remarked that the diversity of names for the same things arose, not from arbitrary caprice, but from the diverse impression derived from the same object. The Stoics, too, seem to have had an inkling of the non-logical nature of speech, but their use of the word _lekton_ leaves it doubtful whether they distinguished by it the linguistic representation from the abstract concept, or rather, generically, the meaning from the sound. [5] In the Appendix will be found further striking quotations from and references to Aristotle.--(D.A.) II AESTHETIC IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGE AND IN THE RENAISSANCE Well-nigh all the theories of antique Aesthetic reappear in the Middle Ages, as it were by spontaneous generation. Duns Scotus Erigena translated the Neoplatonic mysticism of the pseudo-Dionysus. The Christian God took the place of the chief Good or Idea: God, wisdom, goodness, supreme beauty are the fountains of natural beauty, and these are steps in the stair of contemplation of the Creator. In this manner speculation began to be diverted from the art fact, which had been so prominent with Plotinus. Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle in distinguishing the beautiful from the good, and applied his doctrine of imitation to the beauty of the second person of the Trinity (_in quantum est imago expressa Patris_). With the troubadours, we may find traces of the hedonistic view of art, and the rigoristic hypothesis finds in Tertullian and in certain Fathers of the Church staunch upholders. The retrograde Savonarola occupied the same position at a later period. But the narcotic, moralistic, or pedagogic view mostly prevailed, for it best suited an epoch of relative decadence in culture. It suited admirably the Middle Age, offering at once an excuse for the new-born Christian art, and for those works of classical or pagan art which yet survived. Specimens of this view abound all through the Middle Age. We find it, for instance, in the criticism of Virgil, to whose work were attributed four distinct meanings: literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogic. For Dante poetry was _nihil aliud quam fictio rhetorica in musicaque posita_. "If the vulgar be incapable of appreciating my inner meaning, then they shall at least incline their minds to the perfection of my beauty. If from me ye cannot gather wisdom, at the least shall ye enjoy me as a pleasant thing." Thus spoke the Muse of Dante, whose _Convivio_ is an attempt to aid the understanding in its effort to grasp the moral and pedagogic elements of verse. Poetry was the _gaia scienza_, "a fiction containing many useful things covered or veiled." It would be inexact to identify art in the Middle Age with philosophy and theology. Its pleasing falsity could be adapted to useful ends, much in the same way as matrimony excuses love and sexual union. This, however, implies that for the Middle Age the ideal state was celibacy; that is, pure knowledge, divorced from art. The only line of explanation that was altogether neglected in the Middle Age was the right one. The _Poetics_ of Aristotle were badly rendered into Latin, from the faulty paraphrase of Averroes, by one Hermann (1256). The nominalist and realist dispute brought again into the arena the relations between thought and speech, and we find Duns Scotus occupied with the problem in his _De modis significandi seu grammatica speculativa_. Abelard had defined sensation as _confusa conceptio_, and with the importance given to intuitive knowledge, to the perception of the individual, of the _species specialissima_ in Duns Scotus, together with the denomination of the forms of knowledge as _confusae, indistinctae_, and _distinctae_, we enter upon a terminology, which we shall see appearing again, big with results, at the commencement of modern Aesthetic. The doctrine of the Middle Age, in respect to art and letters, may thus be regarded as of interest rather to the history of culture than to that of general knowledge. A like remark holds good of the Renaissance. Theories of antiquity are studied, countless treatises in many forms are written upon them, but no really new Ideas as regards aesthetic science appear on the horizon. We find among the spokesmen of mystical Aesthetic in the thirteenth century such names as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. Bembo and many others wrote on the Beautiful and on Love in the century that followed. The _Dialogi di Amore_, written in Italian by a Spanish Jew named Leone and published in 1535, had a European success, being translated into many languages. He talks of the universality of love and of its origin, of beauty that is grace, which delights the soul and impels it to love. Knowledge of lesser beauties leads to loftier spiritual beauties. Leone called these remarks _Philographia_. Petrarch's followers versified similar intuitions, while others wrote parodies and burlesques of this style; Luca Paciolo, the friend of Leonardo, made the (false) discovery of the golden section, basing his speculating upon mathematics; Michael Angelo established an empirical canon for painting, attempting to give rules for imparting grace and movement to figures, by means of certain arithmetical proportions; others found special meanings in colours; while the Platonicians placed the seat of beauty in the soul, the Aristotelians in physical qualities. Agostino Nifo, the Averroist, after some inconclusive remarks, is at last fortunate enough to discover where natural beauty really dwells: its abode is the body of Giovanna d'Aragona, Princess of Tagliacozzo, to whom he dedicates his book. Tasso mingled the speculations of the _Hippias major_ with those of Plotinus. Tommaso Campanella, in his _Poetica_, looks upon the beautiful as _signum boni_, the ugly as _signum mali_. By goodness, he means Power, Wisdom, and Love. Campanella was still under the influence of the erroneous Platonic conception of the beautiful, but the use of the word _sign_ in this place represents progress. It enabled him to see that things in themselves are neither beautiful nor ugly. Nothing proves more clearly that the Renaissance did not overstep the limits of aesthetic theory reached in antiquity, than the fact that the pedagogic theory of art continued to prevail, in the face of translations of the _Poetics_ of Aristotle and of the diffuse labours expended upon that work. This theory was even grafted upon the _Poetics_, where one is surprised to find it. There are a few hedonists standing out from the general trend of opinion. The restatement of the pedagogic position, reinforced with examples taken from antiquity, was disseminated throughout Europe by the Italians of the Renaissance. France, Spain, England, and Germany felt its influence, and we find the writers of the period of Louis XIV. either frankly didactic, like Le Bossu (1675), for whom the first object of the poet is to instruct, or with La Ménardière (1640) speaking of poetry as "cette science agréable qui mêle la gravité des préceptes avec la douceur du langage." For the former of these critics, Homer was the author of two didactic manuals relating to military and political matters: the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. Didacticism has always been looked upon as the Poetic of the Renaissance, although the didactic is not mentioned among the kinds of poetry of that period. The reason of this lies in the fact that for the Renaissance all poetry was didactic, in addition to any other qualities which it might possess. The active discussion of poetic theory, the criticism of Aristotle and of Plato's exclusion of poetry, of the possible and of the verisimilar, if it did not contribute much original material to the theory of art, yet at any rate sowed the seeds which afterwards germinated and bore fruit. Why, they asked with Aristotle, at the Renaissance, does poetry deal with the universal, history with the particular? What is the reason for poetry being obliged to seek verisimilitude? What does Raphael mean by the "certain idea," which he follows in his painting? These themes and others cognate were dealt with by Italian and by Spanish writers, who occasionally reveal wonderful acumen, as when Francesco Patrizio, criticizing Aristotle's theory of imitation, remarks: "All languages and all philosophic writings and all other writings would be poetry, because they are made of words, and words are imitations." But as yet no one dared follow such a clue to the labyrinth, and the Renaissance closes with the sense of a mystery yet to be revealed. III SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES The seventeenth century is remarkable for the ferment of thought upon this difficult problem. Such words as genius, taste, imagination or fancy, and feeling, appear in this literature, and deserve a passing notice. As regards the word "genius," we find the Italian "ingegno" opposed to the intellect, and Dialectic adorned with the attributes of the latter, while Rhetoric has the advantage of "ingegno" in all its forms, such as "concetti" and "acutezze." With these the English word ingenious has an obvious connection, especially in its earlier use as applied to men of letters. The French worked upon the word "ingegno" and evolved from it in various associations the expressions "esprit," "beaux Esprits." The manual of the Spanish Jesuit, Baltasar Gracian, became celebrated throughout Europe, and here we find "ingegno" described as the truly inventive faculty, and from it the English word "genius," the Italian "genio," the French "génie," first enter into general use. The word "gusto" or taste, "good taste," in its modern sense, also sprang into use about this time. Taste was held to be a judicial faculty, directed to the beautiful, and thus to some extent distinct from the intellectual judgment. It was further bisected into active and passive; but the former ran into the definition of "ingegno," the latter described sterility. The word "gusto," or taste as judgment, was in use in Italy at a very early period; and in Spain we find Lope di Vega and his contemporaries declaring that their object is to "delight the taste" of their public. These uses of the word are not of significance as regards the problem of art, and we must return to Baltasar Gracian (1642) for a definition of taste as a special faculty or attitude of the soul. Italian writers of the period echo the praises of this laconic moralist, who, when he spoke of "a man of taste," meant to describe what we call to-day "a man of tact" in the conduct of life. The first use of the word in a strictly aesthetic sense occurs in France in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. La Bruyère writes in his _Caractères_ (1688): "Il y a dans l'art un point de perfection, comme de bonté ou de maturité dans la nature: celui qui le sent et qui l'aime, a le goût parfait; celui qui ne le sent pas, et qui aime au deçà ou au delà, a le goût défectueux. Il y a donc un bon et un mauvais goût, et l'on dispute des goûts avec fondement." Delicacy and variability or variety were appended as attributes of taste. This French definition of the Italian word was speedily adopted in England, where it became "good taste," and we find it used in this sense in Italian and German writers of about this period. The words "imagination" and "fancy" were also passed through the crucible in this century. We find the Cardinal Sforza-Pallavicino (1644) blaming those who look for truth or falsehood, for the verisimilar or for historical truth, in poetry. Poetry, he holds, has to do with the primary apprehensions, which give neither truth nor falsehood. Thus the fancy takes the place of the verisimilar of certain students of Aristotle. The Cardinal continues his eloquence with the clinching remark that if the intention of poetry were to be believed true, then its real end would be falsehood, which is absolutely condemned by the law of nature and by God. The sole object of poetic fables is, he says, to adorn our intellect with sumptuous, new, marvellous, and splendid imaginings, and so great has been the benefits accruing from this to the human race, that poets have been rewarded with a glory superior to any other, and their names have been crowned with divine honours. This, he says in his treatise, _Del Bene_, has been the just reward of poets, albeit they have not been bearers of knowledge, nor have they manifested truth. This throwing of the bridle on the neck of Pegasus seemed to Muratori sixty years later to be altogether too risky a proceeding--although advocated by a Prince of the Church! He reinserts the bit of the verisimilar, though he talks with admiration of the fancy, that "inferior apprehensive" faculty, which is content to "represent" things, without seeking to know if they be true or false, a task which it leaves to the "superior apprehensive" faculty of the intellect. The severe Gravina, too, finds his heart touched by the beauty of poetry, when he calls it "a witch, but wholesome." As early as 1578, Huarte had maintained that eloquence is the work of the imagination, not of the intellect; in England, Bacon (1605) attributed knowledge to the intellect, history to memory, and poetry to the imagination or fancy; Hobbes described the manifestations of the latter; and Addison devoted several numbers of the _Spectator_ to the analysis of "the pleasures of the imagination." During the same period, the division between those who are accustomed "à juger par le sentiment" and those who "raisonnent par les principes" became marked in France, Du Bos (1719) is an interesting example of the upholder of the feelings as regards the production of art. Indeed, there is in his view no other criterion, and the feeling for art is a sixth sense, against which intellectual argument is useless. This French school of thought found a reflex in England with the position assigned there to emotion in artistic work. But the confusion of such words as imagination, taste, feeling, wit, shows that at this time there was a suspicion that these words were all applicable to the same fact. Alexander Pope thus distinguished wit and judgment: For wit and judgment often are at strife, Though meant each other's aid like man and wife. But there was a divergence of opinion as to whether the latter should be looked upon as part of the intellect or not. There was the same divergence of opinion as to taste and intellectual judgment. As regards the former, the opposition to the intellectual principle was reinforced in the eighteenth century by Kant in his _Kritik der Urtheilskraft_. But Voltaire and writers anterior to him frequently fell back into intellectualist definitions of a word invented precisely to avoid them. Dacier (1684) writes of taste as "Une harmonie, un accord de l'esprit et de la raison." The difficulties surrounding a true definition led to the creation of the expression _non so che_, or _je ne sais quoi_, or _no se qué_, which throws into clear relief the confusion between taste and intellectual judgment. As regards imagination and feeling, or sentiment, there was a strong tendency to sensualism. The Cardinal Sforza-Pallavicino talks of poetry as ignoring alike truth or falsehood and yet delighting the senses. He approves of the remark that poetry should make us "raise our eyebrows," but in later life this keen-eyed prince seems to have fallen back from the brilliant intuition of his earlier years into the pedagogic theory. Muratori was convinced that fancy was entirely sensual, and therefore he posted the intellect beside it, "to refrain its wild courses, like a friend having authority." Gravina practically coincides in this view of poetic fancy, as a subordinate faculty, incapable of knowledge, fit only to be used by moral philosophy for the introduction into the mind of the true, by means of novelty and the marvellous. In England, also, Bacon held poetry to belong to the fancy, and assigned to it a place between history and science. Epic poetry he awarded to the former, "parabolic" poetry to the latter. Elsewhere he talks of poetry as a dream, and affirms that it is to be held "rather as an amusement of the intelligence than as a science." For him music, painting, sculpture, and the other arts are merely pleasure-giving. Addison reduced the pleasures of the imagination to those caused by visible objects, or by ideas taken from them. These pleasures he held to be inferior to those of the senses and less refined than those of the intellect. He looked upon imaginative pleasure as consisting in resemblances discovered between imitations and things imitated, between copies and originals, an exercise adapted to sharpen the spirit of observation. The sensualism of the writers headed by Du Bos, who looked upon art as a mere pastime, like a tournament or a bull-fight, shows that the truth about Aesthetic had not yet succeeded in emerging from the other spiritual activities. Yet the new words and the new views of the seventeenth century have great importance for the origins of Aesthetic; they were the direct result of the restatement of the problem by the writers of the Renaissance, who themselves took it up where Antiquity had left it. These new words, and the discussions which arose from them, were the demands of Aesthetic for its theoretical justification. But they were not able to provide this justification, and it could not come from elsewhere. With Descartes, we are not likely to find much sympathy for such studies as relate to wit, taste, fancy, or feelings. He ignored the famous _non so che_; he abhorred the imagination, which he believed to result from the agitation of the animal spirits. He did not altogether condemn poetry, but certainly looked upon it as the _folle du logis_, which must be strictly supervised by the reason. Boileau is the aesthetic equivalent of Cartesian intellectualism, Boileau _que la raison à ses règles engage_, Boileau the enthusiast for allegory. France was infected with the mathematical spirit of Cartesianism and all possibility of a serious consideration of poetry and of art was thus removed. Witness the diatribes of Malebranche against the imagination, and listen to the Italian, Antonio Conti, writing from France in 1756 on the theme of the literary disputes that were raging at the time: "They have introduced the method of M. Descartes into belles-lettres; they judge poetry and eloquence independently of their sensible qualities. Thus they also confound the progress of philosophy with that of the arts. The Abbé Terrasson says that the moderns are greater geometricians than the ancients; therefore they are greater orators and greater poets." La Motte, Fontenelle, Boileau, and Malebranche carried on this battle, which was taken up by the Encyclopaedists, and when Du Bos published his daring book, Jean Jacques le Bel published a reply to it (1726), in which he denied to sentiment its claim to judge of art. Thus Cartesianism could not possess an Aesthetic of the imagination. The Cartesian J.P. de Crousaz (1715) found the beautiful to consist in what is approved of, and thereby reduced it to ideas, ignoring the pleasing and sentiment. Locke was as intellectualist in the England of this period as was Descartes in France. He speaks of wit as combining ideas in an agreeable variety, which strikes the imagination, while the intellect or judgment seeks for differences according to truth. The wit, then, consists of something which is not at all in accordance with truth and reason. For Shaftesbury, taste is a sense or instinct of the beautiful, of order and proportion, identical with the moral sense and with its "preconceptions" anticipating the recognition of reason. Body, spirit, and God are the three degrees of beauty. Francis Hutcheson proceeded from Shaftesbury and made popular "the internal sense of beauty, which lies somewhere between sensuality and rationality and is occupied with discussing unity in variety, concord in multiplicity, and the true, the good, and the beautiful in their substantial identity." Hutcheson allied the pleasure of art with this sense, that is, with the pleasure of imitation and of the likeness of the copy to the original. This he looked upon as relative beauty, to be distinguished from absolute beauty. The same view dominates the English writers of the eighteenth century, among whom may be mentioned Reid, the head of the Scottish school, and Adam Smith. With far greater philosophical vigour, Leibnitz in Germany opened the door to that crowd of psychic facts which Cartesian intellectualism had rejected with horror. His conception of reality as _continuous_ (_natura non facit saltus_) left room for imagination, taste, and their congeners. Leibnitz believed that the scale of being ascended from the lowliest to God. What we now term aesthetic facts were then identified with what Descartes and Leibnitz had called "confused" knowledge, which might become "clear," but not distinct. It might seem that when he applied this terminology to aesthetic facts, Leibnitz had recognized their peculiar essence, as being neither sensual nor intellectual. They are not sensual for him, because they have their own "clarity," differing from pleasure and sensual emotion, and from intellectual "distinctio." But the Leibnitzian law of continuity and intellectualism did not permit of such an interpretation. Obscurity and clarity are here to be understood as quantitative grades of a _single_ form of knowledge, the distinct or intellectual, toward which they both tend and reach at a superior grade. Though artists judge with confused perceptions, which are clear but not distinct, these may yet be corrected and proved true by intellective knowledge. The intellect clearly and distinctly knows the thing which the imagination knows confusedly but clearly. This view of Leibnitz amounts to saying that the realization of a work of art can be perfected by intellectually determining its concept. Thus Leibnitz held that there was only one true form of knowledge, and that all other forms could only reach perfection in that. His "clarity" is not a specific difference; it is merely a partial anticipation of his intellective "distinction." To have posited this grade is an important achievement, but the view of Leibnitz is not fundamentally different from that of the creators of the words and intuitions already studied. All contributed to attract attention to the peculiarity of aesthetic facts. Speculation on language at this period revealed an equally determined intellectualist attitude. Grammar was held to be an exact science, and grammatical variations to be explainable by the ellipse, by abbreviation, and by failure to grasp the typical logical form. In France, with Arnauld (1660), we have the rigorous Cartesian intellectualism; Leibnitz and Locke both, speculated upon this subject, and the former all his life nourished the thought of a universal language. The absurdity of this is proved in this volume. A complete change of the Cartesian system, upon which Leibnitz based his own, was necessary, if speculation were ever to surpass the Leibnitzian aesthetic. But Wolff and the other German pupils of Leibnitz were as unable to shake themselves free of the all-pervading intellectualism as were the French pupils of Descartes. Meanwhile a young student of Berlin, named Alexander Amedeus Baumgarten, was studying the Wolffian philosophy, and at the same time lecturing in poetry and Latin rhetoric. While so doing, he was led to rethink and pose afresh the problem of how to reduce the precepts of rhetoric to a rigorous philosophical system. Thus it came about that Baumgarten published in September 1735, at the age of twenty-one, as the thesis for his degree of Doctor, an opuscule entitled, _Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poèma pertinentibus_, and in it we find written _for the first time_ the word "Aesthetic," as the name of a special science. Baumgarten ever afterwards attached great importance to his juvenile discovery, and lectured upon it by request in 1742, at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and again in 1749. It is interesting to know that in this way Emmanuel Kant first became acquainted with the theory of Aesthetic, which he greatly altered when he came to treat of it in his philosophy. In 1750, Baumgarten published the first volume of a more ample treatise, and a second part in 1762. But illness, and death in 1762, prevented his completing his work. What is Aesthetic for Baumgarten? It is the science of sensible knowledge. Its objects are the sensible facts (_aisthaeta_), which the Greeks were always careful to distinguish from the mental facts (_noaeta_). It is therefore _scientia cognitionis sensitivae, theoria liberalium artium, gnoseologia inferior, ars pulcre cogitandi, ars analogi rationis_. Rhetoric and Poetic are for him special cases of Aesthetic, which is a general science, embracing both. Its laws are diffused among all the arts, like the mariner's star (_cynosura quaedam_), and they must be always referred to in all cases, for they are universal, not empirical or merely inductive (_falsa regula pejor est quam nulla_). Aesthetic must not be confounded with Psychology, which supplies only suppositions. Aesthetic is an independent science, which gives the rules for knowing sensibly, and is occupied with the perfection of sensible knowledge, which is beauty. Its contrary is ugliness. The beauty of objects and of matter must be excluded from the beauty of sensible knowledge, because beautiful objects can be badly thought and ugly objects beautifully thought. Poetic representations are those which are confused or imaginative. Distinction and intellectuality are not poetic. The greater the determination, the greater the poetry; individuals absolutely determined (_omnimodo determinata_) are very poetical, as are images or fancies, and everything which refers to feeling. The judgment of sensible and imaginative representations is taste. Such are, in brief, the truths which Baumgarten stated in his _Meditationes_, and further developed and exemplified in his _Aesthetica_. Close study of the two works above-mentioned leads to the conviction that Baumgarten did not succeed in freeing himself from the unity of the Leibnitzian monadology. He obtained from Leibnitz his conception of the poetic as consisting of the confused, but German critics are wrong in believing that he attributed to it a positive, not a negative quality. Had he really done this, he would have broken at a blow the unity of the Leibnitzian monad, and conquered the science of Aesthetic. This giant's step he did not take: he failed to banish the contradictions of Leibnitz and of the other intellectualists. To posit a _perfection_ did not suffice. It was necessary to maintain it against the _lex continui_ of Leibnitz and to proclaim its independence of all intellectualism. Aesthetic truths for Baumgarten were those which did not seem altogether false or altogether true: in fact, the verisimilar. If it were objected to Baumgarten that one should not occupy oneself with what, like poetry, he defines as confused and obscure, he would reply that confusion is a condition of finding the truth, that we do not pass at once from night to dawn. Thus he did not surpass the thought of Leibnitz in this respect. Poor Baumgarten was always in suspense lest he should be held to occupy himself with things unworthy of a philosopher! "How can you, a professor of philosophy, dare to praise lying and the mixture of truth and falsehood?" He imagined that some such reproach might be addressed to him on account of his purely philosophical speculations, and true enough he actually received a criticism of his theory, in which it was argued, that if poetry consisted of sensual perfection, then it was a bad thing for mankind. Baumgarten contemptuously replied that he had not the time to argue with those capable of confounding his _oratio perfecta sensitiva_ with an _oratio perfecte (omnino!) sensitiva_. The fact about Baumgarten is that apart from baptizing the new science Aesthetic, and apart from his first definitions, he does not stray far from the old ruts of scholastic thought. The excellent Baumgarten, with all his ardour and all his convictions, is a sympathetic and interesting figure in the history of Aesthetic not yet formed, but in process of formation. The revolutionary who set aside the old definitions of Aesthetic, and for the first time revealed the true nature of art and poetry, is the Italian, Giambattista Vico. What were the ideas developed by Vico in his _Scienza nuova_ (1725)? They were neither more nor less than the solution of the problem, posed by Plato, attempted in vain by Aristotle, again posed and again unsolved at the Renaissance. Is poetry a rational or an irrational thing? Is it spiritual or animal? If it be spiritual, what is its true nature, and in what way does it differ from art and science? Plato, we know, banished poetry to the inferior region of the soul, among the animal spirits. Vico on the contrary raises up poetry, and makes of it a period in the history of humanity. And since Vico's is an ideal history, whose periods are not concerned with contingent facts, but with spiritual forms, he makes of it a moment of the ideal history of the spirit, a form of knowledge. Poetry comes before the intellect, but _after_ feeling. Plato had _confused_ it with feeling, and for that reason banished it from his Republic. "Men _feel_," says Vico, "before observing, then they observe with perturbation of the soul, finally they reflect with the pure intellect," He goes on to say, that poetry being composed of passion and of feeling, the nearer it approaches to the _particular_, the more _true_ it is, while exactly the reverse is true of philosophy. Imagination is independent and autonomous as regards the intellect. Not only does the intellect fail of perfection, but all it can do is to destroy it. "The studies of Poetry and Metaphysic are _naturally opposed_. Poets are the feeling, philosophers the intellect of the human race." The weaker the reason, the stronger the imagination. Philosophy, he says, deals with abstract thought or universals, poetry with the particular. Painters and poets differ only in their material. Homer and the great poets appear in barbaric times. Dante, for instance, appeared in "the renewed barbarism of Italy." The poetic ages preceded the philosophical, and poetry is the father of prose, by "necessity of nature," not by the "caprice of pleasure." Fables or "imaginary universals" were conceived before "reasoned or philosophical universals." To Homer, says Vico, belongs wisdom, but only poetic wisdom. "His beauties are not those of a spirit softened and civilized by any philosophy." If any one make poetry in epochs of reflexion, he becomes a child again; he does not reflect with his intellect, but follows his fancy and dwells upon particulars. If the true poet make use of philosophic ideas, he only does so that he may change logic into imagination. Here we have a profound statement of the line of demarcation between science and art. _They cannot be confused again_. His statement of the difference between poetry and history is a trifle less clear. He explains why to Aristotle poetry seemed more philosophical than history, and at the same time he refutes Aristotle's error that poetry deals with the universal, history with the particular. Poetry equals science, not because it is occupied with the intellectual concept, but because, like science, it is ideal. A good poetical fable must be all ideal: "With the idea the poet gives their being to things which are without it. Poetry is all fantastic, as being the art of painting the idea, not icastic, like the art of painting portraits. That is why poets, like painters, are called divine, because in that respect they resemble God the Creator." Vico ends by identifying poetry and history. The difference between them is posterior and accidental. "But, as it is impossible to impart false ideas, because the false consists of a vicious combination of ideas, so it is impossible to impart a tradition, which, though it be false, has not at first contained some element of truth. Thus mythology appears for the first time, not as the invention of an individual, but as the spontaneous vision of the truth as it appears to primitive man." Poetry and language are for Vico substantially identical. He finds in the origins of poetry the origins of languages and letters. He believed that the first languages consisted in mute acts or acts accompanied by bodies which had natural relations to the ideas that it was desired to signify. With great cleverness he compared these pictured languages to heraldic arms and devices, and to hieroglyphs. He observed that during the barbarism of the Middle Age, the mute language of signs must return, and we find it in the heraldry and blazonry of that epoch. Hence come three kinds of languages: divine silent languages, heroic emblematic languages, and speech languages. Formal logic could never satisfy a man with such revolutionary ideas upon poetry and language. He describes the Aristotelian syllogism as a method which explains universals In their particulars, rather than unites particulars to obtain universals, looks upon Zeno and the sorites as a means of subtilizing rather than sharpening the intelligence, and concludes that Bacon is a great philosopher, when he advocates and illustrates _induction_, "which has been followed by the English to the great advantage of experimental philosophy." Hence he proceeds to criticize mathematics, which, had hitherto always been looked upon as the type of the _perfect science_. Vico is indeed a revolutionary, a pioneer. He knows very well that he is in direct opposition to all that has been thought before about poetry. "My new principles of poetry upset all that first Plato and then Aristotle have said about the origin of poetry, all that has been said by the Patrizzi, by the Scaligers, and by the Castelvetri. I have discovered that It was through lack of human reason that poetry was born so sublime that neither the Arts, nor the Poetics, nor the Critiques could cause another equal to it to be born, I say equal, and not superior." He goes as far as to express shame at having to report the stupidities of great philosophers upon the origin of song and verse. He shows his dislike for the Cartesian philosophy and its tendency to dry up the imagination "by denying all the faculties of the soul which come to it from the body," and talks of his own time as of one "which freezes all the generous quality of the best poetry and thus precludes it from being understood." As regards grammatical forms, Vico may be described as an adherent of the great reaction of the Renaissance against scholastic verbalism and formalism. This reaction brought back as a value the experience of feeling, and afterwards with Romanticism gave its right place to the imagination. Vico, in his _Scienza nuova_, may be said to have been the first to draw attention to the imagination. Although he makes many luminous remarks on history and the development of poetry among the Greeks, his work is not really a history, but a science of the spirit or of the ideal. It is not the ethical, logical, or economic moment of humanity which interests him, but the _imaginative_ moment. _He discovered the creative imagination_, and it may almost be said of the _Scienza nuova_ of Vico that it is Aesthetic, the discovery of a new world, of a new mode of knowledge. This was the contribution of the genius of Vico to the progress of humanity: he showed Aesthetic to be an autonomous activity. It remained to distinguish the science of the spirit from history, the modifications of the human spirit from the historic vicissitudes of peoples, Aesthetic from Homeric civilization. But although Goethe, Herder, and Wolf were acquainted with the _Scienza nuova_, the importance of this wonderful book did not at first dawn upon the world. Wolf, in his prolegomena to Homer, thought that he was dealing merely with an ingenious speculator on Homeric themes. He did not realize that the intellectual stature of Vico far surpassed that of the most able philologists. The fortunes of Aesthetic after Vico were very various, and the list of aestheticians who fell back into the old pedagogic definition, or elaborated the mistakes of Baumgarten, is very long. Yet with C.H. Heydenreich in Germany and Sulzer in Switzerland we find that the truths contained in Baumgarten have begun to bear fruit. J.J. Herder (1769) was more important than these, and he placed Baumgarten upon a pedestal, though criticizing his pretension of creating an _ars pulchre cogitandi_ instead of a simple _scientia de pulchro et pulchris philosophice cogitans_. Herder admitted Baumgarten's definition of poetry as _oratio sensitiva perfecta_, perfect sensitived speech, and this is _probably the best definition of poetry that has ever been given_. It touches the real essence of poetry and opens to thought the whole of the philosophy of the beautiful. Herder, although he does not cite Vico upon aesthetic questions, yet praises him as a philosopher. His remarks about poetry as "the maternal language of humanity, as the garden is more ancient than the cultivated field, painting than writing, song than declamation, exchange than commerce," are replete with the spirit of the Italian philosopher. But despite similar happy phrases, Herder is philosophically the inferior of the great Italian. He is a firm believer in the Leibnitzian law of continuity, and does not surpass the conclusions of Baumgarten. Herder and his friend Hamann did good service as regards the philosophy of language. The French encyclopaedists, J.J. Rousseau, d'Alembert, and many others of this period, were none of them able to get free of the idea that a word is either a natural, mechanical fact, or a sign attached to a thought. The only way out of this difficulty is to look upon the imagination as itself active and expressive in _verbal imagination_, and language as the language of _intuition_, not of the intelligence. Herder talks of language as "an understanding of the soul with itself." Thus language begins to appear, not as an arbitrary invention or a mechanical fact, but as a primitive affirmation of human activity, as a _creation_. But all unconscious of the discoveries of Vico, the great mass of eighteenth century writers try their hands at every sort of solution. The Abbé Batteux published in 1746 _Les Beaux-arts réduits a un seul principe_, which is a perfect little bouquet of contradictions. The Abbé finds himself confronted with difficulties at every turn, but with "un peu d'esprit on se tire de tout," and when for instance he has to explain artistic enjoyment of things displeasing, he remarks that the imitation never being perfect like reality, the horror caused by reality disappears. But the French were equalled and indeed surpassed by the English in their amateur Aesthetics. The painter Hogarth was one day reading in Italian a speech about the beauty of certain figures, attributed to Michael Angelo. This led him to imagine that the figurative arts depend upon a principle which consists of conforming to a given line. In 1745 he produced a serpentine line as frontispiece of his collection of engravings, which he described as "the line of beauty." Thus he succeeded in exciting universal curiosity, which he proceeded to satisfy with his "Analysis of Beauty." Here he begins by rightly combating the error of judging paintings by their subject and by the degree of their imitation, instead of by their form, which is the essential in art. He gives his definition of form, and afterwards proceeds to describe the waving lines which are beautiful and those which are not, and maintains that among them all there is but one that is really worthy to be called "the line of beauty," and one definite serpentine line "the line of grace." The pig, the bear, the spider, and the frog are ugly, because they do not possess serpentine lines. E. Burke, with a like assurance in his examples, was equally devoid of certainty in his general principles. He declares that the natural properties of an object cause pleasure or pain to the imagination, but that the latter also procures pleasure from their resemblance to the original. He does not speak further of the second of these, but gives a long list of the natural properties of the sensible, beautiful object. Having concluded his list, he remarks that these are in his opinion the qualities upon which beauty depends and which are the least liable to caprice and confusion. But "comparative smallness, delicate structure, colouring vivid but not too much so," are all mere empirical observations of no more value than those of Hogarth, with whom Burke must be classed as an aesthetician. Their works are spoken of as "classics." Classics indeed they are, but of the sort that arrive at no conclusion. Henry Home (Lord Kaimes) is on a level a trifle above the two just mentioned. He seeks "the true principles of the beaux-arts," in order to transform criticism into "a rational science." He selects facts and experience for this purpose, but in his definition of beauty, which he divides into two parts, relative and intrinsic, he is unable to explain the latter, save by a final cause, which he finds in the Almighty. Such theories as the three above mentioned defy classification, because they are not composed by any scientific method. Their authors pass from physiological sensualism to moralism, from imitation of nature to finalism, and to transcendental mysticism, without consciousness of the incongruity of their theses, at variance each with itself. The German, Ernest Platner, at any rate did not suffer from a like confusion of thought. He developed his researches on the lines of Hogarth, but was only able to discover a prolongation of sexual pleasure in aesthetic facts. "Where," he exclaims, "is there any beauty that does not come from the feminine figure, the centre of all beauty? The undulating line is beautiful, because it is found in the body of woman; essentially feminine movements are beautiful; the notes of music are beautiful, when they melt into one another; a poem is beautiful, when one thought embraces another with lightness and facility." French sensualism shows itself quite incapable of understanding aesthetic production, and the associationism of David Hume is not more fortunate in this respect. The Dutchman Hemsterhuis (1769) developed an ingenious theory, mingling mystical and sensualist theory with some just remarks, which afterwards, in the hands of Jacobi, became sentimentalism. Hemsterhuis believed beauty to be a phenomenon arising from the meeting by the sentimentalism, which gives multiplicity, with the internal sense, which tends to unity. Consequently the beautiful will be that which presents the greatest number of ideas in the shortest space of time. To man is denied supreme unity, but here he finds approximative unity. Hence the joy arising from the beautiful, which has some analogy with the joy of love. With Winckelmann (1764) Platonism or Neo-platonism was vigorously renewed. The creator of the history of the figurative arts saw in the divine indifference and more than human elevation of the works of Greek sculpture a beauty which had descended from the seventh heaven and become incarnate in them. Mendelssohn, the follower of Baumgarten, had denied beauty to God: Winckelmann, the Neoplatonician, gave it back to Him. He holds that perfect beauty is to be found only in God. "The conception of human beauty becomes the more perfect in proportion as it can be thought as in agreement with the Supreme Being, who is distinguished from matter by His unity and indivisibility." To the other characteristics of supreme beauty, Winckelmann adds "the absence of any sort of signification" (Unbezeichnung). Lines and dots cannot explain beauty, for it is not they alone which form it. Its form is not proper to any definite person, it expresses no sentiment, no feeling of passion, for these break up unity and diminish or obscure beauty. According to Winckelmann, beauty must be like a drop of pure water taken from the spring, which is the more healthy the less it has of taste, because it is purified of all foreign elements. A special faculty is required to appreciate this beauty, which Winckelmann is inclined to call intelligence, or a delicate internal sense, free of all instinctive passions, of pleasure, and of friendship. Since it becomes a question of perceiving something immaterial, Winckelmann banishes colour to a secondary place. True beauty, he says, is that of form, a word which describes lines and contours, as though lines and contours could not also be perceived by the senses, or could appear to the eye without any colour. It is the destiny of error to be obliged to contradict itself, when it does not decide to dwell in a brief aphorism, in order to live as well as may be with facts and concrete problems. The "History" of Winckelmann dealt with historic concrete facts, with which it was necessary to reconcile the idea of a supreme beauty. His admission of the contours of lines and his secondary admission of colours is a compromise. He makes another with regard to the principle of expression. "Since there is no intermediary between pain and pleasure in human nature, and since a human being without these feelings is inconceivable, we must place the human figure in a moment of action and of passion, which is what is termed expression in art." So Winckelmann studied expression after beauty. He makes a third compromise between his one, indivisible, supreme, and constant beauty and individual beauties. Winckelmann preferred the male to the female body as the most complete incarnation of supreme beauty, but he was not able to shut his eyes to the indisputable fact that there also exist beautiful bodies of women and even of animals. Raphael Mengs, the painter, was an intimate friend of Winckelmann and associated himself with him in his search for a true definition of the beautiful. His ideas were generally in accordance with those of Winckelmann. He defines beauty as "the visible idea of perfection, which is to perfection what the visible is to the mathematical point." He falls under the influence of the argument from design. The Creator has ordained the multiplicity of beauties. Things are beautiful according to our ideas of them, and these ideas come from the Creator. Thus each beautiful thing has its own type, and a child would appear ugly if it resembled a man. He adds to his remarks in this sense: "As the diamond is alone perfect among stones, gold among metals, and man among living creatures, so there is distinction in each species, and but little is perfect." In his _Dreams of Beauty_, he looks upon beauty as "an intermediate disposition," which contains a part of perfection and a part of the agreeable, and forms a _tertium quid_, which differs from the other two and deserves a special name. He names four sources of the art of painting: beauty, significant or expressive character, harmony, and colouring. The first of these he finds among the ancients, the second with Raphael, the third with Correggio, the fourth with Titian. Mengs does not succeed in rising above this empiricism of the studio, save to declaim about the beauty of nature, virtue, forms, and proportions, and indeed everything, including the First Cause, which is the most beautiful of all. The name of G.E. Lessing (1766) is well known to all concerned with art problems. The ideas of Winckelmann reappear in Lessing, with less of a metaphysical tinge. For Lessing, the end of art is the pleasing, and since this is "a superfluous thing," he thought that the legislator should not allow to art the liberty indispensable to science, which seeks the truth, necessary to the soul. For the Greeks painting was, as it should always be, "imitation of beautiful bodies." Everything disagreeable or ill-formed should be excluded from painting. "Painting, as clever imitation, may imitate deformity. Painting, as a fine art, does not permit this." He was more inclined to admit deformity in poetry, as there it is less shocking, and the poet can make use of it to produce in us certain feelings, such as the ridiculous or the terrible. In his _Dramaturgie_ (1767), Lessing followed the Peripatetics, and believed that the rules of Aristotle were as absolute as the theorems of Euclid. His polemic against the French school is chiefly directed to claiming a place in poetry for the verisimilar, as against absolute historical exactitude. He held the universal to be a sort of mean of what appears in the individual, the catharsis was in his view a transformation of the passions into virtuous dispositions, and he held the duty of poetry to be inspiration of the love of virtue. He followed Winckelmann in believing that the expression of physical beauty was the supreme object of painting. This beauty exists only as an ideal, which finds its highest expression in man. Animals possess it to a slighter extent, vegetable and inanimate nature not at all. Those mistaken enough to occupy themselves with depicting the latter are imitating beauties deprived of all ideal. They work only with eye and hand; genius has little if any share in their productions. Lessing found the physical ideal to reside chiefly in form, but also in the ideal of colour, and in permanent expression. Mere colouring and transitory expression were for him without ideal, "because nature has not imposed upon herself anything definite as regards them." At bottom he does not care for colouring, finding in the pen drawings of artists "a life, a liberty, a delicacy, lacking to their pictures." He asks "whether even the most wonderful colouring can make up for such a loss, and whether it be not desirable that the art of oil-painting had never been invented." This "ideal beauty," wonderfully constructed from divine quintessence and subtle pen and brush strokes, this academic mystery, had great success. In Italy it was much discussed in the environment of Mengs and of Winckelmann, who were working there. The first counterblast to their aesthetic Neo-platonism came from an Italian named Spalletti, and took the form of a letter addressed to Mengs. He represents the _characteristic_ as the true principle of art. The pleasure obtained from beauty is intellectual, and truth is its object. When the soul meets with what is characteristic, and what really suits the object to be represented, the work is held to be beautiful. A well-made man with a woman's face is ugly. Harmony, order, variety, proportion, etc.--these are elements of beauty, and man enjoys the widening of his knowledge before disagreeable things characteristically represented. Spalletti defines beauty as "that modification inherent to the object observed, which presents it, as it should appear, with an infallible characteristic." Thus the Aristotelian thesis found a supporter in Italy, some years before any protestation was heard in Germany. Louis Hirt, the historian of art (1797) observed that ancient monuments represented all sorts of forms, from the most beautiful and sublime to the most ugly and most common. He therefore denied that ideal beauty was the principle of art, and for it substituted the _characteristic_, applicable equally to gods, heroes, and animals. Wolfgang Goethe, in 1798, forgetting the juvenile period, during which he had dared to raise a hymn to Gothic architecture, now began seriously to seek a middle term between beauty and expression. He believed that he had found it, in certain characteristic contents presenting to the artist beautiful shapes, which the artist would then develop and reduce to perfect beauty. Thus for Goethe at this period, the characteristic was simply the _starting-point_, or framework, from which the beautiful arose, through the power of the artist. But these writers mentioned after J.B. Vico are not true philosophers. Winckelmann, Mengs, Hogarth, Lessing, and Goethe are great in other ways. Meier called himself a historian of art, but he was inferior both to Herder and to Hamann. From J.B. Vico to Emmanuel Kant, European thought is without a name of great importance as regards this subject. Kant took up the problem, where Vico had left it, not in the historical, but in the ideal sense. He resembled the Italian philosopher, in the gravity and the tenacity of his studies in Aesthetic, but he was far less happy in his solutions, which did not attain to the truth, and to which he did not succeed in giving the necessary unity and systematization. The reader must bear in mind that Kant is here criticized solely as an aesthetician: his other conclusions do not enter directly into the discussion. What was Kant's idea of art? The answer is: the same in substance as Baumgarten's. This may seem strange to those who remember his sustained polemic against Wolf and the conception of beauty as confused perception. But Kant always thought highly of Baumgarten. He calls him "that excellent analyst" in the _Critique of Pure Reason_, and he used Baumgarten's text for his University lectures on Metaphysic. Kant looked upon Logic and Aesthetic as cognate studies, and in his scheme of studies for 1765, and in the _Critique of Pure Reason_, he proposes to cast a glance at the Critique of Taste, that is to say, Aesthetic, "since the study of the one is useful for the other and they are mutually illuminative." He followed Meier in his distinctions between logical and aesthetic truth. He even quoted the Instance of the young girl, whose face when distinctly seen, i.e. with a microscope, is no longer beautiful. It is true, aesthetically, he said, that when a man is dead he cannot come to life, although this be opposed both to logical and to moral truth. It is aesthetically true that the sun plunges into the sea, although that is not true logically or objectively. No one, even among the greatest, can yet tell to what extent logical truth should mingle with aesthetic truth. Kant believed that logical truth must wear the habit of Aesthetic, in order to become _accessible_. This habit, he thought, was discarded only by the rational sciences, which tend to depth. Aesthetic certainly is subjective. It is satisfied with authority or with an appeal to great men. We are so feeble that Aesthetic must eke out our thoughts. Aesthetic is a vehicle of Logic. But there are logical truths which are not aesthetic. We must exclude from philosophy exclamations and other emotions, which belong to aesthetic truth. For Kant, poetry is the harmonious play of thought and sensation, differing from eloquence, because in poetry thoughts are fitted to suggestions, in eloquence the reverse is true. Poetry should make virtue and intellect visible, as was done by Pope in his _Essay on Man_. Elsewhere, he says frankly that logical perfection is the foundation of all the rest. The confirmation of this is found in his _Critique of Judgment_, which Schelling looked upon as the most important of the three _Critiques_, and which Hegel and other metaphysical idealists always especially esteemed. For Kant art was always "a sensible and imaged covering for an intellectual concept." He did not look upon art as pure beauty without a concept. He looked upon it as a beauty adherent and fixed about a concept. The work of genius contains two elements: imagination and intelligence. To these must be added taste, which combines the two. Art may even represent the ugly in nature, for artistic beauty "is not a beautiful thing but a beautiful representation of a thing." But this representation of the ugly has its limits in the arts (here Kant remembers Lessing and Winckelmann), and an absolute limit in the disgusting and the repugnant, which kills the representation itself. He believes that there may be artistic productions without a concept, such as are flowers in nature, and these would be ornaments to frameworks, music without words, etc., etc., but since they represent nothing reducible to a definite concept, they must be classed, like flowers, with free beauties. This would certainly seem to exclude them from Aesthetic, which, according to Kant, should combine imagination and intelligence. Kant is shut in with intellectualist barriers. A complete definition of the _imagination_ is _wanting_ to his system. He does not admit that the imagination belongs to the powers of the mind. He relegates it to the facts of sensation. He is aware of the reproductive and combinative imagination, but he does not recognize _fancy_ (_fantasia_), which is the true productive imagination. Yet Kant was aware that there exists an activity other than the intellective. Intuition is referred to by him as preceding intellective activity and differing from sensation. He does not speak of it, however, in his critique of art, but in the first section of the _Critique of Pure Reason_. Sensations do not enter the mind, until it has given them _form_. This is neither sensation nor intelligence. It is _pure intuition_, the sum of the _a priori_ principles of sensibility. He speaks thus: "There must, then, exist a science that forms the first part of the transcendental doctrine of the elements, distinct from that which contains the principles of pure thought and is called transcendental Logic." What does he call this new science? He calls it _Transcendental Aesthetic_, and refuses to allow the term to be used for the Critique of Taste, which could never become a science. But although he thus states so clearly the necessity of a science of the form of the sensations, that is of _pure intuition_, Kant here appears to fall into grave error. This arises from _his inexact idea_ of the _essence of the aesthetic faculty or of art_, which, as we now know, is pure intuition. He conceives the form of sensibility to be reducible to the _two categories of space and time_. Benedetto Croce has shown that space and time are far from being categories or functions: they are complex posterior formations. Kant, however, looked upon density, colour, etc., as material for sensations; but the mind only observes colour or hardness when it has _already_ given a form to its sensations. Sensations, in so far as they are _crude matter_, are _outside_ the mind: they are a _limit_. Colour, hardness, density, etc., are _already_ intuitions. _They are the aesthetic activity in its rudimentary manifestation._ Characterizing or qualifying imagination, that is, _aesthetic activity_, should therefore _take the place occupied by the study of space and time_ in the _Critique of Pure Reason_, and constitute the true _Transcendental Aesthetic_, prologue to Logic. Had Kant done this, he would have surpassed Leibnitz and Baumgarten; he would have equalled Vico. Kant did not identify the Beautiful with art. He established what he called "the four moments of Beauty," amounting to a definition of it. The two negative moments are, "That is beautiful which pleases _without interest_"; this thesis was directed against the sensualist school of English writers, with whom Kant had for a time agreed; and "That is beautiful which pleases without a concept," directed against the intellectualists. Thus he affirmed the existence of a spiritual domain, distinct from that of organic pleasure, of the useful, the good, and the true. The two other moments are, "That is beautiful which has the form of finality without the representation of an end," and "That is beautiful which is the object of universal pleasure." What is this disinterested pleasure that we experience before pure colours, pure sounds, and flowers? Benedetto Croce replies that this mysterious domain has no existence; that the instances cited represent, either instances of organic pleasure, or are artistic facts of expression. Kant was less severe with the Neoplatonicians than with the two schools of thought above mentioned. His _Critique of Judgment_ contains some curious passages, in one of which he gives his distinction of form from matter: "In music, the melody is the matter, harmony the form: in a flower, the scent is the matter, the shape or configuration the form." In the other arts, he found that the design was the essential. "Not what pleases in sensation, but what is approved for its form, is the foundation of taste." In his pursuit of the phantom of a beauty, which is neither that of art nor of sensual pleasure, exempt alike from expression and from enjoyment, he became enveloped in inextricable contradictions. Little disposed as he was to let himself be carried away by the imagination, he expressed his contempt for philosopher-poets like Herder, and kept saying and unsaying, affirming and then immediately criticizing his own affirmations as to this mysterious beauty. The truth is that _this mystery is simply his own individual uncertainty before a problem which he could not solve_, owing to his having no clear idea of an activity of sentiment. Such an activity represented for him a logical contradiction. Such expressions as "necessary universal pleasure," "finality without the idea of end," are verbal proofs of his uncertainty. How was he to emerge from this uncertainty, this contradiction? He fell back upon the concept of a base of subjective finality as the base of the judgment of taste, that is of the subjective finality of nature by the judgment. But nothing can be known or disclosed to the object by means of this concept, which is indeterminate in itself and not adapted for knowledge. Its determining reason is perhaps situated in "the suprasensible substratum of humanity." Thus beauty becomes a symbol of morality. "The subjective principle alone, that is, the indeterminate idea of the suprasensible in us, can be indicated as the sole key to reveal this faculty, which remains unknown to us in its origin. Nothing but this principle can make that hidden faculty comprehensible." Kant had a tendency to mysticism, which this statement does not serve to conceal, but it was a mysticism without enthusiasm, a mysticism almost against the grain. His failure to penetrate thoroughly the nature of the aesthetic activity led him to see double and even triple, on several occasions. Art being unknown to him in its essential nature, he invents the functions of _space_ and _time_ and terms this _transcendental aesthetic_; he develops the theory of the imaginative beautifying of the intellectual concept by genius; he is finally forced to admit a mysterious power of feeling, intermediate between the theoretic and the practical activity. This power is cognoscitive and non-cognoscitive, moral and indifferent to morality, agreeable and yet detached from the pleasure of the senses. His successors hastened to make use of this mysterious power, for they were glad to be able to find some sort of justification for their bold speculations in the severe philosopher of Königsberg. In addition to Schelling and Hegel, for whom, as has been said, the _Critique of Judgment_ seemed the most important of the three Critiques, we must now mention the name of a poet who showed himself as great in philosophical as in aesthetic achievement. _Friedrich Schiller_ first elaborated that portion of the Kantian thought contained in the _Critique of Judgment_. Before any professional philosopher, Schiller studied that sphere of activity which unites feeling with reason. Hegel talks with admiration of this artistic genius, who was also so profoundly philosophical and first announced the principle of reconciliation between life as duty and reason on the one hand, and the life of the senses and feeling on the other. To Schiller belongs the great merit of having opposed the subjective idealism of Kant and of having made the attempt to surpass it. The exact relations between Kant and Schiller, and the extent to which the latter may have been influenced by Leibnitz and Herder, are of less importance to the history of Aesthetic than the fact that Schiller _unified_ once for all art and beauty, which had been separated by Kant, with his distinctions between adherent and pure beauty. Schiller's artistic sense must doubtless have stood him here in good stead. Schiller found a very unfortunate and misleading term to apply to the aesthetic sphere. He called it the sphere of _play_ (Spiel). He strove to explain that by this he did not mean ordinary games, nor material amusement. For Schiller, this sphere of play lay intermediate between thought and feeling. Necessity in art gives place to a free disposition of forces; mind and nature, matter and form are here reconciled. The beautiful is life, but not physiological life. A beautiful statue may have life, and a living man be without it. Art conquers nature with form. The great artist effaces matter with form. The less we are sensible of the material in a work of art, the greater the triumph of the artist. The soul of the spectator should leave the magic sphere of art as pure and as perfect as when it left the hands of the Creator. The most frivolous theme should be so treated that we can pass at once from it to the most rigorous, and _vice versa_. Only when man has placed himself outside the world and contemplates it aesthetically, can he know the world. While he is merely the passive receiver of sensations, he is one with the world, and therefore cannot realize it. Art is indeterminism. With the help of art, man delivers himself from the yoke of the senses, and is at the same time free of any rational or moral duty: he may enjoy for a moment the luxury of serene contemplation. Schiller was well aware that the moment art is employed to teach morals directly, it ceases to be art. All other teachings give to the soul a special imprint. Art alone is favourable to all without prejudice. Owing to this indifference of art, it possesses a great educative power, by opening the path to morality without preaching or persuasion; without determining, it produces determinability. This was the main theme of the celebrated "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man," which Schiller wrote to his patron the Duke of Holstein-Augustenburg. Here, and in his lectures at the University of Jena, it is clear that Schiller addresses himself to a popular audience. He began a work, on scientific Aesthetic, which he intended to entitle "Kallias," but unfortunately died without completing it. We possess only a few fragments, contained in his correspondence with his friend Körner. Körner did not feel satisfied with the formula of Schiller, and asks for some more precise and objective mark of the beautiful. Schiller tells him that he has found it, but what he had found we shall never know, as there is no document to inform us. The fault of Schiller's aesthetic theory was its lack of precision. His artistic faculty enabled him to give unsurpassable descriptions of the catharsis and of other effects of art, but he fails to give a precise definition of the aesthetic function. True, he disassociates it from morality, yet admits that it may in a measure be associated with it. The only formal activities that he recognizes are the moral and the intellectual, and he denies altogether (against the sensualists) that art can have anything to do with passion or sensuality. His intellectual world consisted only of the logical and the intellectual, leaving out the imaginative activity. What is art for Schiller? He admits four modes of relation between man and external things. They are the physical, the logical, the moral, and the aesthetic. He describes this latter as a mode by which things affect the whole of our different forces, without being a definite object for any one in particular. Thus a man may be said to please aesthetically, "when he does so without appealing to any one of the senses directly, and without any law or end being thought of in connection with him." Schiller cannot be made to say anything more definite than this. His general position was probably much like Kant's (save in the case above mentioned, where he made a happy correction), and he probably looked upon Aesthetic as a mingling of several faculties, as a play of sentiment. Schiller was faithful to Kant's teaching in its main lines, and his uncertainty was largely due to this. The existence of a _third sphere_ uniting form and matter was for Schiller rather an ideal conformable to reason than a _definite_ activity; it was supposititious, rather than effective. But the Romantic movement in literature, which was at that time gaining ground, with its belief in a superhuman faculty called imagination, in genius breaker of rules, found no such need for restraint. Schiller's modest reserve was set aside, and with J.P. Richter we approach a mythology of the imagination. Many of his observations are, however, just, and his distinction between productive and reproductive imagination is excellent. How could humanity appreciate works of genius, he asks, were it without some common measure? All men who can go as far as saying "this is beautiful" before a beautiful thing, are capable of the latter. He then proceeds to establish to his own satisfaction categories of the imagination, leading from simple talent to the supreme form of male genius in which all faculties flourish together: a faculty of faculties. The Romantic conception of art is, in substance, that of idealist German philosophy, where we find it in a more coherent and systematic form. It is the conception of Schelling, Solger, and Hegel. Fichte, Kant's first great pupil, cannot be included with these, for his view of Aesthetic, largely influenced by Schiller, is transformed in the Fichtian system to a moral activity, to a representation of the ethical ideal. The subjective idealism of Fichte, however, generated an Aesthetic: that of irony as the base of art. The I that has created the universe can also destroy it. The universe is a vain appearance, smiled at by the Ego its creator, who surveys it as an artist his work, from without and from above. For Friedrich Schlegel, art was a perpetual farce, a parody of itself; and Tieck defined irony as a force which allows the poet to dominate his material. Novalis, that Romantic Fichtian, dreamed of a magical idealism, an art of creating by an instantaneous act of the Ego. But Schelling's "system of transcendental idealism" was the first great philosophical affirmation of Romanticism and of conscious Neo-platonism reborn in Aesthetic. Schelling has obviously studied Schiller, but he brings to the problem a mind more purely philosophical and a method more exactly scientific. He even takes Kant to task for faultiness of method. His remarks as to Plato's position are curious, if not conclusive. He says that Plato condemned the art of his time, because it was realistic and naturalistic: like all antique art, it exhibited a _finite_ character. Plato's judgment would have been quite different had he known Christian art, of which the character is _infinity_. Schelling held firm to the fusion of art and beauty effected by Schiller, but he combated Winckelmann's theory of abstract beauty with its negative conception of the characteristic, assigning to art the limits of the individual. Art is characteristic beauty; it is not the individual, but the living conception of the individual. When the artist recognizes the eternal idea in an individual, and expresses it outwardly, he transforms the individual into a world apart, into a species, into an eternal idea. Characteristic beauty is the fulness of form which slays form: it does not silence passion, but restrains it as the banks of a river the waters that flow between them, but do not overflow. Schelling's starting-point is the criticism of teleological judgment, as stated by Kant in his third Critique. Teleology is the union of theoretic with practical philosophy. But the system would not be complete, unless we could show the identity of the two worlds, theoretic and practical, in the subject itself. He must demonstrate the existence of an activity, which is at once unconscious as nature and conscious as spirit. This activity we find in Aesthetic, which is therefore "the general organ of philosophy, the keystone of the whole building." Poetry and philosophy alone possess the world of the ideal, in which the real world vanishes. True art is not the impression of the moment, but the representation of infinite life: it is transcendental intuition objectified. The time will come when philosophy will return to poetry, which was its source, and on the new philosophy will arise a new mythology. Philosophy does not depict real things, but their ideas; so too, art. Those same ideas, of which real things are, as philosophy shows, the imperfect copies, reappear in art objectified as ideas, and therefore in their perfection. Art stands nearest to philosophy, which itself stands nearest to the Idea, and therefore nearest to perfection. Art differs from philosophy only by its _specialization_: in all other ways it is the ideal world in its most complete expression. The three Ideas of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty correspond to the three powers of the ideal and of the real world. Beauty is not the universal whole, which is truth, nor is it the only reality, which is action: it is the perfect mingling of the two. "Beauty exists where the real or particular is so adequate to its concept that this infinite thing enters into the finite, and is contemplated in the concrete." Philosophy unites truth, morality, and beauty, in what they possess in common, and deduces them from their unique Source, which is God. If philosophy assume the character of science and of truth, although it be superior to truth, the reason for this lies in the fact that science and truth are simply the formal determination of philosophy. Schelling looked upon mythology as a necessity for every art. Ideas are Gods, considered from the point of view of reality; for the essence of each is equal to God in a _particular_ form. The characteristics of all Gods, including the Christian, are _pure limitation and absolute indivisibility_. Minerva has wisdom and strength, but lacks womanly tenderness; Juno has power and wisdom, but is without amorous charm, which she borrows with the girdle of Venus, who in her turn is without the wisdom of Minerva. What would these Gods become without their limitations? They would cease to be the objects of Fancy. Fancy is a faculty, apart from the pure intellect and from the reason. Distinct from imagination, which develops the products of art, Fancy has intuitions of them, grasps them herself, and herself represents them. Fancy is to imagination as intellectual intuition is to reason. Fancy, then, is intellectual intuition in art. In the thought of Schelling, fancy, the new or artistic intuition, sister of intellectual intuition, came to dominate alike the intellect and the old conception of the fancy and the imagination, in a system for which reason alone did not suffice. C.G. Solger followed Schelling and agreed with him in finding but little truth in the theories of Kant, and especially of Fichte. He held that their dialectic had failed to solve the difficulty of intellectual intuition. He too conceived of fancy as distinct from imagination, and divided the former into three degrees. Imagination he held to appertain to ordinary knowledge, "which re-establishes the original intuition to infinity." Fancy "originates from the original antithesis in the idea, and so operates that the opposing elements which are separated from the idea become perfectly united in reality. By means of fancy, we are able to understand things more lofty than those of common knowledge, and in them we recognize the idea itself as real. In art, fancy is the faculty of transforming the idea into reality." For Solger as for Schelling, beauty belongs to the region of Ideas, which are inaccessible to common knowledge. Art is nearly allied to religion, for as religion is the abyss of the idea, into which our consciousness plunges, that it may become essential, so Art and the Beautiful resolve, in their way, the world of distinctions, the universal and the particular. Artistic activity is more than theoretical: it is practical, realized and perfect, and therefore belongs to practical, not to theoretic philosophy, as Kant wrongly believed. Since art must touch infinity on one side, it cannot have ordinary nature for its object. Art therefore _ceases_ in the portrait, and this explains why the ancients generally chose Gods or Heroes as models for sculpture. Every deity, even in a limited and particular form, expresses a definite modification of the Idea. G.G.F. Hegel gives the same definition of art as Solger and Schelling, All three were mystical aestheticians, and the various shades of mystical Aesthetic, presented by these three writers, are not of great interest. Schelling forced upon art the abstract Platonic ideas, while Hegel reduced it to the _concrete idea_. This concrete idea was for Hegel the first and lowest of the three forms of the liberty of the spirit. It represented immediate, sensible, objectified knowledge; while Religion filled the second place, as representative consciousness with adoration, which is an element foreign to art alone. The third place was of course occupied by Philosophy, the free thought of the absolute spirit. Beauty and Truth are one for Hegel; they are united in the Idea. The beautiful he defined as _the sensible appearance of the Idea_. Some writers have erroneously believed that the views of the three philosophers above mentioned lead back to those of Baumgarten. But that is not correct. They well understood that art cannot be made a medium for the expression of philosophic concepts. Not only are they opposed to the moralistic and intellectualistic view, but they are its active opponents. Schelling says that aesthetic production is in its essence absolutely free, and Hegel that art does not contain the universal as such. Hegel accentuated the _cognoscitive_ character of art, more than any of his predecessors. We have seen that he placed it with Philosophy and Religion in the sphere of the absolute Spirit. But he does not allow either to Art or to Religion any difference of function from that of Philosophy, which occupies the highest place in his system. They are therefore inferior, necessary, grades of the Spirit. Of what use are they? Of none whatever, or at best, they merely represent transitory and historical phases of human life. Thus we see that the tendency of Hegelianism is _anti-artistic_, as it is rationalistic and anti-religious. This result of thought was a strange and a sad thing for one who loved art so fervently as Hegel. Our memories conjure up Plato, who also loved art well, and yet found himself logically obliged to banish the poet from his ideal Republic, after crowning him with roses. But the German philosopher was as staunch to the (supposed) command of reason as the Greek, and felt himself obliged to announce the death of art. Art, he says, occupies a lofty place in the human spirit, but not the most lofty, for it is limited to a restricted content and only a certain grade of truth can be expressed in art. Such are the Hellenic Gods, who can be transfused in the sensible and appear in it adequately. The Christian conception of truth is among those which cannot be so expressed. The spirit of the modern world, and more precisely the spirit of our religion and rational development, seem to have gone beyond the point at which art is the chief way of apprehending the Absolute. The peculiarity of artistic production no longer satisfies our highest needs. Thought and reflexion have surpassed art, the beautiful. He goes on to say that the reason generally given for this is the prevalence of material and political interests. But the true reason is the inferiority in degree of art as compared with pure thought. Art is dead, and Philosophy can therefore supply its complete biography. Hegel's _Vorlesungen �ber Aesthetik_ amounts therefore to a funeral oration upon Art. Romanticism and metaphysical idealism had placed art, sometimes above the clouds, sometimes within them, and believing that it was no good there to anyone, Hegel provided a decent burial. Nothing perhaps better shows how well this fantastic conception of art suited the spirit of the time, than the fact that even the adversaries of Schelling, Solger, and Hegel either admit agreement with that conception, or find themselves involuntarily in agreement with it, while believing themselves to be very remote. They too are mystical aestheticians. We all know with what virulence Arthur Schopenhauer attacked and combated Schelling, Hegel, and all the "charlatans" and "professors" who had divided among them the inheritance of Kant. Well, Schopenhauer's theory of art starts, just like Hegel's, from the difference between the abstract and the concrete concept, which is the _Idea_. Schopenhauer's ideas are the Platonic ideas, although in the form which he gives to them, they have a nearer resemblance to the Ideas of Schelling than to the Idea of Hegel. Schopenhauer takes much trouble to differentiate his ideas from intellectual concepts. He calls the idea "unity which has become plurality by means of space and time. It is the form of our intuitive apperception. The concept is, on the contrary, unity extracted from plurality by means of abstraction, which is an act of our intellect. The concept may be called _unitas post rem_, the idea _unitas ante rem_." The origin of this psychological illusion of the ideas or types of things is always to be found in the changing of the empirical classifications created for their own purposes by the natural sciences, into living realities. Thus each art has for its sphere a special category of ideas. Architecture and its derivatives, gardening (and strange to say landscape-painting is included with it), sculpture and animal-painting, historical painting and the higher forms of sculpture, etc., all possess their special ideas. Poetry's chief object is man as idea. Music, on the contrary, does not belong to the hierarchy of the other arts. Schelling had looked upon music as expressing the rhythm of the universe itself. For Schopenhauer, music does not express ideas, but the _Will itself_. The analogies between music and the world, between fundamental notes and crude matter, between the scale and the scale of species, between melody and conscious will, lead Schopenhauer to the conclusion that music is not only an arithmetic, as it appeared to Leibnitz, but indeed a metaphysic: "the occult metaphysical exercise of a soul not knowing that it philosophizes." For Schopenhauer, as for his idealist predecessors, art is beatific. It is the flower of life; he who is plunged in artistic contemplation ceases to be an individual; he is the conscious subject, pure, freed from will, from pain, and from time. Yet in Schopenhauer's system exist elements for a better and a more profound treatment of the problem of art. He could sometimes show himself to be a lucid and acute analyst. For instance, he continually remarks that the categories of space and time are not applicable to art, _but only the general form of representation_. He might have deduced from this that art is the most immediate, not the most lofty grade of consciousness, since it precedes even the ordinary perceptions of space and time. Vico had already observed that this freeing oneself from ordinary perception, this dwelling in imagination, does not really mean an ascent to the level of the Platonic Ideas, but, on the contrary, a redescending to the sphere of immediate intuition, a return to childhood. On the other hand, Schopenhauer had begun to submit the Kantian categories to impartial criticism, and finding the two forms of intuition insufficient, added a third, causality. He also drew comparisons between art and history, and was more successful here than the idealist excogitators of a philosophy of history. Schopenhauer rightly saw that history was irreducible to concepts, that it is the contemplation of the individual, and therefore not a science. Having proceeded thus far, he might have gone further, and realized that the material of history is always the particular in its particularity, that of art what is and always is identical. But he preferred to execute a variation on the general motive that was in fashion at this time. The fashion of the day! It rules in philosophy as elsewhere, and we are now about to see the most rigid and arid of analysts, the leader of the so-called _realist_ school, or school of _exact science_ in Germany in the nineteenth century, plunge headlong into aesthetic mysticism. G.F. Herbart (1813) begins his Aesthetic by freeing it from the discredit attaching to Metaphysic and to Psychology. He declares that the only true way of understanding art is to study particular examples of the beautiful and to note what they reveal as to its essence. We shall now see what came of Herbart's analysis of these examples of beauty, and how far he succeeded in remaining free of Metaphysic. For Herbart, beauty consists of _relations_. The science of Aesthetic consists of an enumeration of all the fundamental relations between colours, lines, tones, thoughts, and will. But for him these relations are not empirical or physiological. They cannot therefore be studied in a laboratory, because thought and the will form part of them, and these belong as much to Ethics as to the external world. But Herbart explicitly states that no true beauty is sensible, although sensation may and does often precede and follow the intuition of beauty. There is a profound distinction between the beautiful and the agreeable or pleasant: the latter does not require a representation, while the former consists in representations of relations, which are immediately followed by a judgment expressing unconditioned approval. Thus the merely pleasurable becomes more and more indifferent, but the beautiful appears always as of more and more permanent value. The judgment of taste is universal, eternal, immutable. The complete representation of the same relations always carries with it the same judgment. For Herbart, aesthetic judgments are the general class containing the sub-class of ethical judgments. The five ethical ideas, of internal liberty, of perfection, of benevolence, of equity, and of justice, are five aesthetic ideas; or better, they are aesthetic concepts applied to the will in its relations. Herbart looked upon art as a complex fact, composed of an external element possessing logical or psychological value, the content, and of a true aesthetic element, which is the form. Entertainment, instruction, and pleasure of all sorts are mingled with the beautiful, in order to obtain favour for the work in question. The aesthetic judgment, calm and serene in itself, may be accompanied by all sorts of psychic emotions, foreign to it. But the content is always transitory, relative, subject to moral laws, and judged by them. The form alone is perennial, absolute, and free. The true catharsis can only be effected by separating the form from the content. Concrete art may be the sum of two values, _but the aesthetic fact is form alone_. For those capable of penetrating beneath appearances, the aesthetic doctrines of Herbart and of Kant will appear very similar. Herbart is notable as insisting, in the manner of Kant, on the distinction between free and adherent beauty (or adornment as sensuous stimulant), on the existence of pure beauty, object of necessary and universal judgments, and on a certain mingling of ethical with his aesthetic theory. Herbart, indeed, called himself "a Kantian, but of the year 1828." Kant's aesthetic theory, though it be full of errors, yet is rich in fruitful suggestions. Kant belongs to a period when philosophy is still young and pliant. Herbart came later, and is dry and one-sided. The romantics and the metaphysical idealists had unified the theory of the beautiful and of art. Herbart restored the old duality and mechanism, and gave us an absurd, unfruitful form of mysticism, void of all artistic inspiration. Herbart may be said to have taken all there was of false in the thought of Kant and to have made it into a system. The beginning of the nineteenth century in Germany is notable for the great number of philosophical theories and of counter-theories, broached and rapidly discussed, before being discarded. None of the most prominent names in the period belong to philosophers of first-rate importance, though they made so much stir in their day. The thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher was obscured and misunderstood amid those crowding mediocrities; yet it is perhaps the most interesting and the most noteworthy of the period. Schleiermacher looked upon Aesthetic as an altogether modern form of thought. He perceived a profound difference between the "Poetics" of Aristotle, not yet freed from empirical precepts, and the tentative of Baumgarten in the eighteenth century. He praised Kant as having been the first to include Aesthetic among the philosophical disciplines. He admitted that with Hegel it had attained to the highest pinnacle, being connected with religion and with philosophy, and almost placed upon their level. But he was dissatisfied with the absurdity of the attempt made by the followers of Baumgarten to construct a science or theory of sensuous pleasure. He disapproved of Kant's view of taste as being the principle of Aesthetic, of Fichte's art as moral teaching, and of the vague conception of the beautiful as the centre of Aesthetic. He approved of Schiller's marking of the moment of spontaneity in productive art, and he praised Schelling for having drawn attention to the figurative arts, as being less liable than poetry to be diverted to false and illusory moralistic ends. Before he begins the study of the place due to the artistic activity in Ethic, he carefully excludes from the study of Aesthetic all practical rules (which, being empirical, are incapable of scientific demonstration). For Schleiermacher, the sphere of Ethic included the whole Philosophy of the Spirit, in addition to morality. These are the two forms of human activity--that which, like Logic, is the same in all men, and is called activity of identity, and the activity of difference or individuality. There are activities which, like art, are internal or immanent and individual, and others which are external or practical. _The true work of art is the internal picture_. Measure is what differentiates the artist's portrayal of anger on the stage and the anger of a really angry man. Truth is not sought in poetry, or if it be sought there, it is truth of an altogether different kind. The truth of poetry lies in coherent presentation. Likeness to a model does not compose the merit of a picture. Not the smallest amount of knowledge comes from art, which expresses only the truth of a particular consciousness. Art has for its field the immediate consciousness of self, which must be carefully distinguished from the thought of the Ego. This last is the consciousness of identity in the diversity of moments as they pass; the immediate consciousness of self is the diversity itself of the moments, of which we should be aware, for life is nothing but the development of consciousness. In this field, art has sometimes been confused with two facts which accompany it there: these are sentient consciousness (that is, the feelings of pleasure and of pain) and religion. Schleiermacher here alludes to the sensualistic aestheticians of the eighteenth century, and to Hegel, who had almost identified art and religion. He refutes both points of view by pointing out that sentient pleasure and religious sentiment, however different they may be from other points of view, are yet both determined by an objective fact; while art, on the contrary, is free productivity. Dream is the best parallel and proof of this free productivity. All the essential elements of art are found in dream, which is the result of free thoughts and of sensible intuitions, consisting simply of images. But dream, as compared with art, is chaotic: when measure and order is established in dream, it becomes art. Thoughts and images are alike essential to art, and to both is necessary ponderation, reflexion, measure, and unity, because otherwise every image would be confused with every other image. Thus the moments of inspiration and of ponderation are both necessary to art. Schleiermacher's thought, so firm and lucid up to this point, begins to become less secure, with the discussion of typicity and of the extent to which the artist should follow Nature. He says that ideal figures, which Nature would give, were she not impeded by external obstacles, are the products of art. He notes that when the artist represents something really given, such as a portrait or a landscape, he renounces freedom of production and adheres to the real. In the artist is a double tendency, toward the perfection of the type and toward the representation of natural reality. He should not fall into the abstraction of the type, nor into the insignificance of empirical reality. Schleiermacher feels all the difficulty of such a problem as whether there be one or several ideals of the human figure. This problem may be transferred to the sphere of art, and we may ask whether the poet is to represent only the ideal, or whether he should also deal with those obstacles to it that impede Nature in her efforts to attain. Both views contain half the truth. To art belongs the representation of the ideal as of the real, of the subjective and of the objective alike. The representation of the comic, that is of the anti-ideal and of the imperfect ideal, belongs to the domain of art. For the human form, both morally and physically, oscillates between the ideal and caricature. He arrives at a most important definition as to the independence of art in respect to morality. The nature of art, as of philosophic speculation, excludes moral and practical effects. Therefore, _there is no other difference between works of art than their respective artistic perfection (Vollkommenheit in der Kunst)_. If we could correctly predicate volitional acts in respect of works of art, then we should find ourselves admiring only those works which stimulated the will, and there would thus be established a difference of valuation, independent of artistic perfection. The true work of art depends upon the degree of perfection with which the external in it agrees with the internal. Schleiermacher rightly combats Schiller's view that art is in any sense a game. That, he says, is the view held by mere men of business, to whom business alone is serious. But artistic activity is universal, and a man completely deprived of it unthinkable, although the difference here between man and man, is gigantic, ranging from the simple desire to taste of art to the effective tasting of it, and from this, by infinite gradations, to productive genius. The regrettable fact that Schleiermacher's thought has reached us only in an imperfect form, may account for certain of its defects, such as his failure to eliminate aesthetic classes and types, his retention of a certain residue of abstract formalism, his definition of art as the activity of difference. Had he better defined the moment of artistic reproduction, realized the possibility of tasting the art of various times and of other nations, and examined the true relation of art to science, he would have seen that this difference is merely empirical and to be surmounted. He failed also to recognize the identity of the aesthetic activity, with language as the base of all other theoretic activity. But Schleiermacher's merits far outweigh these defects. He removed from Aesthetic its _imperativistic_ character; he distinguished _a form of thought_ different from logical thought. He attributed to our science a _non-metaphysical, anthropological_ character. He _denied_ the concept of the beautiful, substituting for it _artistic perfection_, and maintaining the aesthetic equality of a small with a great work of art, he looked upon the aesthetic fact as an exclusively _human productivity_. Thus Schleiermacher, the theologian, in this period of metaphysical orgy, of rapidly constructed and as rapidly destroyed systems, perceived, with the greatest philosophical acumen, what is really characteristic of art, and distinguished its properties and relations. Even where he fails to see clearly his way, he never abandons analysis for mere guess-work. Schleiermacher, thus exploring the obscure region of the _immediate consciousness_, or of the aesthetic fact, can almost be heard crying out to his straying contemporaries: _Hic Rhodus, hi salta_! Speculation upon the origin and nature of language was rife at this time in Germany. Many theories were put forward, among the most curious being that of Schelling, who held language and mythology to be the product of a pre-human consciousness, allegorically expressed as the diabolic suggestions which had precipitated the Ego from the infinite to the finite. Even Wilhelm von Humboldt was unable to free himself altogether from the intellectualistic prejudice of the substantial identity and the merely historical and accidental diversity of logical thought and language. He speaks of a _perfect_ language, broken up and diminished with the lesser capacities of lesser peoples. He believed that language is something standing outside the individual, independent of him, and capable of being revived by use. But there were two men in Humboldt, an old man and a young one. The latter was always suggesting that language should be looked upon as a living, not as a dead thing, as an activity, not as a word. This duality of thought sometimes makes his writing difficult and obscure. Although he speaks of an internal form of speech, he fails to identify this with art as expression. The reason is that he looks upon the word in too unilateral a manner, as a means of developing logical thought, and his ideas of Aesthetic are too vague and too inexact to enable him to discover their identity. Despite his perception of the profound truth that poetry precedes prose, Humboldt gives grounds for doubt as to whether he had clearly recognized and firmly grasped the fact that language is always poetry, and that prose (science) is a distinction, not of aesthetic form, but of content, that is, of logical form. Steinthal, the greatest follower of Humboldt, solved his master's contradictions, and in 1855 sustained successfully against the Hegelian Becker the thesis that words are necessary for thought. He pointed to the deaf-mute with his signs, to the mathematician with his formulae, to the Chinese language, where the figurative portion is an essential of speech, and declared that Becker was wrong in believing that the Sanskrit language was derived from twelve cardinal concepts. He showed effectively that the concept and the word, the logical judgment and the proposition, are not comparable. The proposition is not a judgment, but the representation of a judgment; and all propositions do not represent logical judgments. Several judgments can be expressed with one proposition. The logical divisions of judgments (the relations of concepts) have no correspondence in the grammatical division of propositions. "If we speak of a logical form of the proposition, we fall into a contradiction in terms not less complete than his who should speak of the angle of a circle, or of the periphery of a triangle." He who speaks, in so far as he speaks, has not thoughts, but language. When Steinthal had several times solemnly proclaimed the independence of language as regards Logic, and that it produces its forms in complete autonomy, he proceeded to seek the origin of language, recognizing with Humboldt that the question of Its origin is the same as that of its nature. Language, he said, belongs to the great class of reflex movements, but this only shows one side of it, not its true nature. Animals, like men, have reflex actions and sensations, though nature enters the animal by force, takes it by assault, conquers and enslaves it. With man is born language, because he is resistance to nature, governance of his own body, and liberty. "Language is liberation; even to-day we feel that our soul becomes lighter, and frees itself from a weight, when we speak." Man, before he attains to speech, must be conceived of as accompanying all his sensations with bodily movements, mimetic attitudes, gestures, and particularly with articulate sounds. What is still lacking to him, that he may attain to speech? The connexion between the reflex movements of the body and the state of the soul. If his sentient consciousness be already consciousness, then he lacks the consciousness of consciousness; if it be already intuition, then he lacks the intuition of intuition. In sum, he lacks the _internal form of language_. With this comes speech, which forms the connexion. Man does not choose the sound of his speech. This is given to him and he adopts it instinctively. When we have accorded to Steinthal the great merit of having rendered coherent the ideas of Humboldt, and of having clearly separated linguistic from logical thought, we must note that he too failed to perceive the _identity_ of the internal form of language, or "intuition of the intuition," as he called it, with the aesthetic _imagination_. Herbart's psychology, to which Steinthal adhered, did not afford him any means for this identification. Herbart separated logic from psychology, calling it a normative science; he failed to discern the exact limits between feeling and spiritual formation, psyche or soul, and spirit, and to see that one of these spiritual formations is logical thought or activity, which is not a code of laws imposed from without. For Herbart, Aesthetic, as we know, was a code of beautiful formal relations. Thus Steinthal, following Herbart in psychology, was bound to look upon Art as a beautifying of thought, Linguistic as the science of speech, Rhetoric and Aesthetic as the science of beautiful speech. Steinthal never realized that to speak is to speak well or beautifully, under penalty of _not_ speaking, and that the revolution which he and Humboldt had effected in the conception of language must inevitably react upon and transform Poetic, Rhetoric, and Aesthetic. Thus, despite so many efforts of conscientious analysis on the part of Humboldt and of Steinthal, the unity of language and of poetry, and the identification of the science of language and the science of poetry still found its least imperfect expression in the prophetic aphorisms of Vico. The philosophical movement in Germany from the last quarter of the eighteenth century to the first half of the nineteenth, notwithstanding its many errors, is yet so notable and so imposing with the philosophers already considered, as to merit the first place in the European thought of that period. This is even more the case as regards Aesthetic than as regards philosophy in general. France was the prey of Condillac's sensualism, and therefore incapable of duly appreciating the spiritual activity of art. We hardly get a glimpse of Winckelmann's transcendental spiritualism in Quatremère de Quincy, and the frigid academics of Victor Cousin were easily surpassed by Theodore Jouffroy, though he too failed of isolating the aesthetic fact. French Romanticism defined literature as "the expression of society," admired under German influence the grotesque and the characteristic, declared the independence of art in the formula of "art for art's sake," but did not succeed in surpassing philosophically the old doctrine of the "imitation of nature." F. Schlegel and Solger indeed were largely responsible for the Romantic movement in France--Schlegel with his belief in the characteristic or _interesting_ as the principle of modern art, which led him to admire the cruel and the ugly; Solger with his dialectic arrangement, whereby the finite or terrestrial element is absorbed and annihilated in the divine and thus becomes the tragic, or _vice versa_, and the result is the comic. Rosenkranz published in Königsberg an Aesthetic of the Ugly, and the works of Vischer and Zeising abound in subtleties relating to the Idea and to its expression in the beautiful and sublime. These writers conceived of the Idea as the Knight Purebeautiful, constrained to abandon his tranquil ease through the machinations of the Ugly; the Ugly leads him into all sorts of disagreeable adventures, from all of which he eventually emerges victorious. The Sublime, the Comic, the Humorous, and so on, are his Marengo, Austerlitz, and Jena. Another version of their knight's adventures might be described as his conquest by his enemies, but at the moment of conquest he transforms and irradiates his conquerors. To such a mediocre and artificial mythology led the much-elaborated theory of the Modifications of the Beautiful. In England, the associationist psychology continued to hold sway, and showed, with Dugald Stewart's miserable attempt at establishing two forms of association, its incapacity to rise to the conception of the imagination. With the poet Coleridge, England also showed the influence of German thought, and Coleridge elaborated with Wordsworth a more correct conception of poetry and of its difference from science. But the most notable contribution in English at that period came from another poet, P.B. Shelley, whose _Defence of Poetry_ contains profound, though unsystematic views, as to the distinction between reason and imagination, prose and poetry, on primitive language, and on the poetic power of objectification. In Italy, Francesco de Sanctis gave magnificent expression to the independence of art. He taught literature in Naples from 1838 to 1848, in Turin and Zurich from 1850 to 1860, and after 1870 he was a professor in the University of Naples. His _Storia della letteratura italiana_ is a classic, and in it and in monographs on individual writers he exposed his doctrines. Prompted by a natural love of speculation, he began to examine the old grammarians and rhetoricians, with a view to systematize them. But very soon he proceeded to criticize and to surpass their theories. The cold rules of reason did not find favour with him, and he advised young men to go direct to the original works. The philosophy of Hegel began to penetrate Italy, and the study of Vico was again taken up. De Sanctis translated the _Logic_ of Hegel in prison, where the Bourbon Government had thrown him for his liberalism. Benard had begun his translation of the _Aesthetic_ of Hegel, and so completely in harmony was De Sanctis with the thought of this master, that he is said to have guessed from a study of the first volume what the unpublished volumes must contain, and to have lectured upon them to his pupils. Traces of mystical idealism and of Hegelianism persist even in his later works, and the distinction, which he always maintained, between imagination and fancy certainly came to him from Hegel and Schelling. He held fancy alone to be the true poetic faculty. De Sanctis absorbed all the juice of Hegel, but rejected the husks of his pedantry, of his formalism, of his apriority. Fancy for De Sanctis was not the mystical transcendental apperception of the German philosophers, but simply the faculty of poetic synthesis and creation, opposed to the imagination, which reunites details and always has something mechanical about it. Faith and poetry, he used to say, are not dead, but transformed. His criticism of Hegel amounted in many places to the correction of Hegel; and as regards Vico, he is careful to point out, that when, in dealing with the Homeric poems, Vico talks of generic types, he is no longer the critic of art, but the historian of civilization. De Sanctis saw that, _artistically_, Achilles must always be Achilles, never a force or an abstraction. Thus De Sanctis succeeded in keeping himself free from the Hegelian domination, at a moment when Hegel was the acknowledged master of speculation. But his criticism extended also to other German aestheticians. By a curious accident, he found himself at Zurich in the company of Theodore Vischer, that ponderous Hegelian, who laughed disdainfully at the mention of poetry, of music, and of the decadent Italian race. De Sanctis laughed at Vischer's laughter. Wagner appeared to him a corrupter of music, and "nothing in the world more unaesthetic than the Aesthetic of Theodore Vischer." His lectures on Ariosto and Petrarch, before an international public at Zurich, were delivered with the desire of correcting the errors of these and of other German philosophers and learned men. He gave his celebrated definitions of French and German critics. The French critic does not indulge in theories: one feels warmth of impression and sagacity of observation in his argument. He never leaves the concrete; he divines the quality of the writer's genius and the quality of his work, and studies the man, in order to understand the writer. His great fault is shown in substituting for criticism of the actual art work a historical criticism of the author and of his time. For the German, on the other hand, there is nothing so simple that he does not contrive to distort and to confuse it. He collects shadows around him, from which shoot vivid rays. He laboriously brings to birth that morsel of truth which he has within him. He would seize and define what is most fugitive and impalpable in a work of art. Although nobody talks so much of life as he does, yet no one so much delights in decomposing and generalizing it. Having thus destroyed the particular, he is able to show you as the result of this process, final in appearance, but in reality preconceived and apriorist, one measurement for all feet, one garment for all bodies. About this time he studied Schopenhauer, who was then becoming the fashion. Schopenhauer said of this criticism of De Sanctis: "That Italian has absorbed me _in succum et sanguinem_." What weight did he attach to Schopenhauer's much-vaunted writings on art? Having exposed the theory of Ideas, he barely refers to the third volume, "which contains an exaggerated theory of Aesthetic." In his criticism of Petrarch, De Sanctis finally broke with metaphysical Aesthetic, saying of Hegel's school that it believed the beautiful to become art when it surpassed form and revealed the concept or pure idea. This theory and the subtleties derived from it, far from characterizing art, represent its contrary: the impotent velleity for art, which cannot slay abstractions and come in contact with life. De Sanctis held that outside the domain of art all Is shapeless. The ugly is of the domain of art, if art give it form. Is there anything more beautiful than Iago? If he be looked upon merely as a contrast to Othello, then we are in the position of those who looked upon the stars as placed where they are to serve as candles for the earth. Form was for De Sanctis the word which should be inscribed over the entrance to the Temple of Art. In the work of art are form and content, but the latter is no longer chaotic: the artist has given to it a new value, has enriched it with the gift of his own personality. But if the content has not been assimilated and made his own by the artist, then the work lacks generative power: it is of no value as art or literature, though as history or scientific document its value may be great. The Gods of Homer's _Iliad_ are dead, but the _Iliad_ remains. Guelf and Ghibelline have disappeared from Italy: not so the _Divine Comedy_, which is as vigorous to-day as when Dante first took pen in hand. Thus De Sanctis held firmly to the independence of art, but he did not accept the formula of "art for art's sake," in so far as it meant separation of the artist from life, mutilation of the content, art reduced to mere dexterity. For De Sanctis, form was identical with imagination, with the artist's power of expressing or representing his artistic vision. This much must be admitted by his critics. But he never attained to a clear definition of art. His theory of Aesthetic always remained a sketch: wonderful indeed, but not clearly developed and deduced. The reason for this was De Sanctis' love of the concrete. No sooner had he attained from general ideas a sufficient clarity of vision for his own purposes, than he plunged again into the concrete and particular. He did not confine his activity to literature, but was active also in politics and in the prosecution and encouragement of historical studies. As a critic of literature, De Sanctis is far superior to Sainte-Beuve, Lessing, Macaulay, or Taine. Flaubert's genial intuition adumbrated what De Sanctis achieved. In one of his letters to Georges Sand, Flaubert speaks of the lack of an _artistic_ critic. "In Laharpe's time, criticism was grammatical; in the time of Sainte-Beuve and of Taine, it is historical. They analyse with great subtlety the historical environment in which the work appeared and the causes which have produced it. But the _unconscious_ element In poetry? Whence does It come? And composition? And style? And the point of view of the author? Of all that they never speak. For such a critic, great imagination and great goodness are necessary. I mean an ever-ready faculty of enthusiasm, and then _taste_, a quality so rare, even among the best, that it is never mentioned." De Sanctis alone fulfilled the conditions of Flaubert, and Italy has in his writings a looking-glass for her literature unequalled by any other country. But with De Sanctis, the philosopher of art, the aesthetician, is not so great as the critic of literature. The one is accessory to the other, and his use of aesthetic terminology is so inconstant that a lack of clearness of thought might be found in his work by anyone who had not studied it with care. But his want of system is more than compensated by his vitality, by his constant citation of actual works, and by his intuition of the truth, which never abandoned him. His writings bear the further charm of suggesting new kingdoms to conquer, new mines of richness to explore. While the cry of "Down with Metaphysic" was resounding in Germany, and a furious reaction had set in against the sort of Walpurgisnacht to which the later Hegelians had reduced science and history, the pupils of Herbart came forward and with an insinuating air they seemed to say: "What is this? Why, it is a rebellion against Metaphysic, the very thing our master wished for and tried to achieve, half a century ago! But here we are, his heirs and successors, and we want to be your allies! An understanding between us will be easy. Our Metaphysic is in agreement with the atomic theory, our Psychology with mechanicism, our Ethic and Aesthetic with hedonism." Herbart, who died in 1841, would probably have disdained and rejected his followers, who thus courted popularity and cheapened Metaphysic, putting a literal interpretation on his realities, his ideas and representations, and upon all his most lofty excogitations. The protagonist of these neo-Herbartians was Robert Zimmermann. He constructed his system of Aesthetic out of Herbart, whom he perverted to his own uses, and even employed the much-abused Hegelian dialectic in order to introduce modifications of the beautiful into pure beauty. The beautiful, he said, is a model which possesses greatness, fulness, order, correction, and definite compensation. Beauty appears to us in a characteristic form, as a copy of this model. Vischer, against whom was directed this work of Zimmermann, found it easy to reply. He ridiculed Zimmermann's meaning of the symbol as the object around which are clustered beautiful forms. "Does an artist paint a fox, simply that he may depict an object of animal nature. No, no, my dear sir, far from it. This fox is a symbol, because the painter here employs lines and colours, in order to express something different from lines and colours. 'You think I am a fox,' cries the painted animal. 'You are mightily mistaken; I am, on the contrary, a portmanteau, an exhibition by the painter of red, white, grey, and yellow tints.'" Vischer also made fun of Zimmermann's enthusiasm for the aesthetic value of the sense of touch. "What joy it must be to touch the back of the bust of Hercules in repose! To stroke the sinuous limbs of the Venus of Milo or of the Faun of Barberini must give a pleasure to the hand equal to that of the ear as it listens to the puissant fugues of Bach or to the suave melodies of Mozart." Vischer defined the formal Aesthetic of Zimmermann as a queer mixture of mysticism and mathematic. Lotze, in common with the great majority of thinkers, was dissatisfied with Zimmermann, but could only oppose his formalism with a variety of the old mystical Aesthetic. Who, he asked, could believe that the human form pleases only by its external proportions, regardless of the spirit within. Art, like beauty, should "enclose the world of values in the world of forms." This struggle between the Aesthetic of the content and the Aesthetic of the form attained its greatest height in Germany between 1860 and 1870, with Zimmermann, Vischer, and Lotze as protagonists. These writers were followed by J. Schmidt, who in 1875 ventured to say that both Lotze and Zimmermann had failed to see that the problem of Aesthetic concerned, not the beauty or ugliness of the content or of the form as mathematical relations, but their representation; Köstlin, who erected an immense artificial structure with the materials of his predecessors modified; Schasler, who is interesting as having converted the old Vischer to his thesis of the importance of the Ugly, as introducing modifications into the beautiful and being the principle of movement there. Vischer confesses that at one time he had followed the Hegelian method and believed that in the essence of beauty is born a disquietude, a fermentation, a struggle: the Idea conquers, hurls the image into the unlimited, and the Sublime is born; but the image, offended in its finitude, declares war upon the Idea, and the Comic appears. Thus the fight is finished and the Beautiful returns to itself, as the result of these struggles. But now, he says, Schasler has persuaded him that the Ugly is the leaven which is necessary to all the special forms of the Beautiful. E. von Hartmann is in close relation with Schasler. His Aesthetic (1890) also makes great use of the Ugly. Since he insists upon appearance as a necessary characteristic of the beautiful, he considers himself justified in calling his theory concrete idealism. Hartmann considers himself in opposition to the formalism of Herbart, inasmuch as he insists upon the idea as an indispensable and determining element of beauty. Beauty, he says, is truth, but it is not historical truth, nor scientific nor reflective truth: it is metaphysical and ideal. "Beauty is the prophet of idealistic truth in an age without faith, hating Metaphysic, and acknowledging only realistic truth." Aesthetic truth is without method and without control: it leaps at once from the subjective appearance to the essence of the ideal. But in compensation for this, it possesses the fascination of conviction, which immediate intuition alone possesses. The higher Philosophy rises, the less need has she of passing through the world of the senses and of science: she approaches ever more nearly to art. Thus Philosophy starts on the voyage to the ideal, like Baedeker's traveller, "without too much baggage." In the Beautiful is immanent logicity, the microcosmic idea, the unconscious. By means of the unconscious, the process of intellectual intuition takes place in it. The Beautiful is a mystery, because its root is in the Unconscious. No philosopher has ever made so great a use of the Ugly as Hartmann. He divides Beauty into grades, of which the one below is ugly as compared with that above it. He begins with the mathematical, superior to the sensibly agreeable, which is unconscious. Thence to formal beauty of the second order, the dynamically agreeable, to formal beauty of the third order, the passive teleological; to this degree belong utensils, and language, which in Hartmann's view is a dead thing, inspired with seeming life, only at the moment of use. Such things did the philosopher of the Unconscious dare to print in the country of a Humboldt during the lifetime of a Steinthal! He proceeds in his list of things beautiful, with formal beauty of the fourth degree, which is the active or living teleological, with the fifth, which is that of species. Finally he reaches concrete beauty, or the individual microcosm, the highest of all, because the individual idea is superior to the specific, and is beauty, no longer formal, but of content. All these degrees of beauty are, as has been said, connected with one another by means of the ugly, and even in the highest degree, which has nothing superior to it, the ugly continues its office of beneficent titillation. The outcome of this ultimate phase is the famous theory of the Modifications of the Beautiful. None of these modifications can occur without a struggle, save the sublime and the graceful, which appear without conflict at the side of supreme beauty. Hartmann gives four instances: the solution is either immanent, logical, transcendental, or combined. The idyllic, the melancholy, the sad, the glad, the elegiac, are instances of the immanent solution; the comic in all its forms is the logical solution; the tragic is the transcendental solution; the combined form is found in the humorous, the tragi-comic. When none of these solutions is possible, we have the ugly; and when an ugliness of content is expressed by a formal ugliness, we have the maximum of ugliness, the true aesthetic devil. Hartmann is the last noteworthy representative of the German metaphysical school. His works are gigantic in size and appear formidable. But if one be not afraid of giants and venture to approach near, one finds nothing but a big Morgante, full of the most commonplace prejudices, quite easily killed with the bite of a crab! During this period, Aesthetic had few representatives in other countries. The famous conference of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, held in Paris in 1857, gave to the world the "Science du Beau" of Lévèque. No one is interested in it now, but it is amusing to note that Lévèque announced himself to be a disciple of Plato, and went on to attribute eight characteristics to the beautiful. These he discovered by closely examining the lily! No wonder he was crowned with laurels! He proved his wonderful theory by instancing a child playing with its mother, a symphony of Beethoven, and the life of Socrates! One of his colleagues, who could not resist making fun of his learned friend, remarked that he would be glad to know what part was played in the life of a philosopher by the normal vivacity of colour! Thus German theory made no way in France, and England proved even more refractory. J. Ruskin showed a poverty, an incoherence, and a lack of system in respect to Aesthetic, which puts him almost out of court. His was the very reverse of the philosophic temperament. His pages of brilliant prose contain his own dreams and caprices. They are the work of an artist and should be enjoyed as such, being without any value for philosophy. His theoretic faculty of the beautiful, which he held to be distinct alike from the intelligence and from feeling, is connected with his belief in beauty as a revelation of the divine intentions, "the seal which God sets upon his works." Thus the natural beauty, which is perceived by the pure heart, when contemplating some object untouched by the hand of man, is far superior to the work of the artist. Ruskin was too little capable of analysis to understand the complicated psychologico-aesthetic process taking place within him, as he contemplated some streamlet, or the nest of some small bird. At Naples flourished between 1861 and 1884 Antonio Tari, who kept himself in touch with the movement of German thought, and followed the German idealists in placing Aesthetic in a sort of middle kingdom, a temperate zone, between the glacial, inhabited by the Esquimaux of thought, and the torrid, dwelt in by the giants of action. He dethroned the Beautiful, and put Aesthetic in its place, for the Beautiful is but the first moment; the later ones are the Comic, the Humorous, and the Dramatic. His fertile imagination found metaphors and similes in everything: for instance, he called the goat the Devil, opposed to the lamb, Jesus. His remarks on men and women are full of quaint fancies. He granted to women grace, but not beauty, which resides in equilibrium. This is proved by her falling down so easily when she walks; by her bow legs, which have to support her wide hips, made for gestation; by her narrow shoulders, and her opulent breast. She is therefore a creature altogether devoid of equilibrium! I wish that it were possible to record more of the sayings of the excellent Tari, "the last joyous priest of an arbitrary Aesthetic, source of confusion." The ground lost to the German school of metaphysicians was occupied during the second half of the nineteenth century by the evolutionary and positivist metaphysicians, of whom Herbert Spencer is the most notable representative. The peculiarity of this school lies in repeating at second or third hand certain idealist views, deprived of the element of pure philosophy, given to them by a Schelling or a Hegel, and in substituting a quantity of minute facts and anecdotes, with a view to providing the positivist varnish. These theories are dear to vulgar minds, because they correspond to inveterate religious beliefs, and the lustre of the varnish explains the good fortune of Spencerian positivism in our time. Another notable trait of this school is its barbaric contempt for history, especially for the history of philosophy, and its consequent lack of all link with the series composed of the secular efforts of so many thinkers. Without this link, there can be no fruitful labour and no possibility of progress. Spencer is colossal in his ignorance of all that has been written or thought on the subject of Aesthetic (to limit ourselves to this branch alone). He actually begins his work on the Philosophy of Style with these words: "No one, I believe, has ever produced a complete theory of the art of writing." This in 1852! He begins his chapter on aesthetic feelings in the _Principles of Psychology_ by admitting that he has heard of the observation made by a German author, whose name he forgets (Schiller!), on the connexion between art and play. Had Spencer's remarks on Aesthetic been written in the eighteenth century, they might have occupied a humble place among the first rude attempts at aesthetic speculation, but appearing in the nineteenth century, they are without value, as the little of value they contain had been long said by others. In his _Principles of Psychology_ Spencer looks upon aesthetic feelings as arising from the discharge of the exuberant energy of the organism. This he divides into degrees, and believes that we attain complete enjoyment when these degrees are all working satisfactorily each on its own plane, and when what is painful in excessive activity has been avoided. His degrees are sensation, sensation accompanied by representative elements, perception accompanied by more complex elements of representation, then emotion, and that state of consciousness which surpasses sensations and perceptions. But Spencer has no suspicion of what art really is. His views oscillate between sensualism and moralism, and he sees little in the whole art of antiquity, of the Middle Ages, or of modern times, which can be looked upon as otherwise than imperfect! The Physiology of Aesthetics has also had its votaries in Great Britain, among whom may be mentioned J. Sully, A. Bain, and Allen. These at any rate show some knowledge of the concrete fact of art. Allen harks back to the old distinction between necessary and vital activities and superfluous activities, and gives a physiological definition, which may be read in his _Physiological Aesthetics_. More recent writers also look upon the physiological fact as the cause of the pleasure of art; but for them it does not alone depend upon the visual organ, and the muscular phenomena associated with it, but also on the participation of some of the most important bodily functions, such as respiration, circulation, equilibrium, intimate muscular accommodation. They believe that art owes its origin to the pleasure that some prehistoric man must have experienced in breathing regularly, without having to re-adapt his organs, when he traced for the first time on a bone or on clay regular lines separated by regular intervals. A similar order of physico-aesthetic researches has been made in Germany, under the auspices of Helmholtz, Brücke, and Stumpf. But these writers have succeeded better than the above-mentioned, by restricting themselves to the fields of optic and acoustic, and have supplied information as to the physical processes of artistic technique and as to the pleasure of visual and auditive impressions, without attempting to melt Aesthetic into Physic, or to deprive the former of its spiritual character. They have even occasionally indicated the difference between the two kinds of research. Even the degenerate Herbartians, converting the metaphysical forms of their master into physiological phenomena, made soft eyes at the new sensualists and aesthetico-physiologists. The Natural Sciences have become in our day a sort of superstition, allied to a certain, perhaps unconscious, hypocrisy. Not only have chemical, physical, and physiological laboratories become a sort of Sibylline grots, where resound the most extraordinary questions about everything that can interest the spirit of man, but even those who really do prosecute their researches with the old inevitable method of internal observation, have been unable to free themselves from the illusion that they are, on the contrary, employing _the method of the natural sciences_. Hippolyte Taine's Philosophy of Art represents such an illusion. He declares that when we have studied the diverse manifestations of art in all peoples and at all epochs, we shall then possess a complete Aesthetic. Such an Aesthetic would be a sort of Botany applied to the works of man. This mode of study would provide moral science with a basis equally as sure as that which the natural sciences already possess. Taine then proceeds to define art without regard to the natural sciences, by analysing, like a simple mortal, what passes in the human soul when brought face to face with a work of art. But what analysis and what definitions! Art, he says, is imitation, but of a sort that tries to express an essential characteristic. Thus the principal characteristic of a lion is to be "a great carnivore," and we observe this characteristic in all its limbs. Holland has for essential characteristic that of being a land formed of alluvial soil. Now without staying to consider these two remarkable instances, let us ask, what is this essential characteristic of Taine? It is the same as the ideas, types, or concepts that the old aesthetic teaching assigned to art as its object. Taine himself removes all doubt as to this, by saying that this characteristic is what philosophers call the essence of things, and for that reason they declare that the purpose of art is to manifest things. He declares that he will not employ the word essence, which is technical. But he accepts and employs the thought that the word expresses. He believes that there are two routes by which man can attain to the superior life: science and art. By the first, he apprehends fundamental laws and causes, and expresses them in abstract terms; by the second, he expresses these same laws and causes in a manner comprehensible to all, by appealing to the heart and feeling, as well as to the reason of man. Art is both superior and popular; it makes manifest what is highest, and makes it manifest to all. That Taine here falls into the old pedagogic theory of Aesthetic is evident. Works of art are arranged for him in a scale of values, as for the aesthetic metaphysicians. He began by declaring the absurdity of all judgment of taste, "à chacun son goût," but he ends by declaring that personal taste is without value, that we must establish a common measure before proceeding to praise or blame. His scale of values is double or triple. We must first fix the degree of importance of the characteristic, that is, the greater or less generality of the idea, and the degree of good in it, that is to say, its greater or lesser moral value. These, he says, are two degrees of the same thing, strength, seen from different sides. We must also establish the degree of convergence of the effects, that is, the fulness of expression, the harmony between the idea and the form. This half-moral, half-metaphysical exposition is accompanied with the usual protestations, that the matter in hand is to be studied methodically, analytically, as the naturalist would study it, that he will try to reach "a law, not a hymn." As if these protestations could abolish the true nature of his thought! Taine actually went so far as to attempt dialectic solutions of works of art! "In the primitive period of Italian art, we find the soul without the body: Giotto. At the Renaissance, with Verrocchio and his school, we find the body without the soul. With Raphael, in the sixteenth century, we find expression and anatomy in harmony: body and soul." Thesis, antithesis, synthesis! With G.T. Fechner we find the like protestations and the like procedure. He will study Aesthetic inductively, from beneath. He seeks clarity, not loftiness. Proceeding thus inductively, he discovers a long series of laws or principles of Aesthetic, such as unity in variety, association and contrast, change and persistence, the golden mean, etc. He exhibits this chaos with delight at showing himself so much of a physiologist, and so inconclusive. Then he proceeds to describe his experiments in Aesthetics. These consist of attempts to decide, for instance, by methods of choice, which of certain rectangles of cardboard is the most agreeable, and which the most disagreeable, to a large number of people arbitrarily chosen. Naturally, these results do not agree with others obtained on other occasions, but Fechner knows that errors correct themselves, and triumphantly publishes long lists of these valuable experiments. He also communicates to us the shapes and measurements of a large number of pictures in museums, as compared with their respective subjects! Such are the experiments of physiological aestheticians. But Fechner, when he comes to define what beauty and what art really are, is, like everyone else, obliged to fall back upon introspection. But his definition is trivial, and his comparison of his three degrees of beauty to a family is simply grotesque in its _naïveté_. He terms this theory the eudemonistic theory, and we are left wondering why, when he had this theory all cut and dried in his mind, he should all the same give himself the immense trouble of compiling his tables and of enumerating his laws and principles, which do not agree with his theory. Perhaps it was all a pastime for him, like playing at patience, or collecting postage-stamps? Another example of superstition in respect to the natural sciences is afforded by Ernest Grosse. Grosse abounds in contempt for what he calls speculative Aesthetic. Yet he desires a Science of Art (Kunstwissenschaft), which shall formulate its laws from those historical facts which have hitherto been collected. But Grosse wishes us to complete the collection of historical evidence with ethnographical and prehistoric materials, for we cannot obtain really general laws of art from the exclusive study of cultivated peoples, "just as a theory of reproduction exclusively based upon the form it takes with mammifers, must necessarily be imperfect!" He is, however, aware that the results of experiences among savages and prehistoric races do not alone suffice to furnish us with an equipment for such investigations as that concerning the nature of Art, and, like any ordinary mortal, he feels obliged to interrogate, before starting, the spirit of man. He therefore proceeds to define Aesthetic on apriorist principles, which, he remarks, can be discarded when we shall have obtained the complete theory, in like manner with the scaffolding that has served for the erection of a house. Words! Words! Vain words! He proceeds to define Aesthetic as the activity which in its development and result has the immediate value of feeling, and is, therefore, an end in itself. Art is the opposite of practice; the activity of games stands intermediate between the two, having also its end in its own activity. The Aesthetics of Taine and of Grosse have been called sociological. Seeing that any true definition of sociology as a science is impossible, for it is composed of psychological elements, which are for ever varying, we do not delay to criticize the futile attempts at definition, but pass at once to the objective results attained by the sociologists. This superstition, like the naturalistic, takes various forms in practical life. We have, for instance, Proudhon (1875), who would hark back to Platonic Aesthetic, class the aesthetic activity among the merely sensual, and command the arts to further the cause of virtue, on pain of judicial proceedings in case of contumacy. But M. Guyau is the most important of sociological aestheticians. His works, published in Paris toward the end of last century, and his posthumous work, entitled _Les problèmes de l'Esthétique contemporaine_, substitute for the theory of play, that of _life_, and the posthumous work above-mentioned makes it evident that by life he means social life. Art is the development of social sympathy, but the whole of art does not enter into sociology. Art has two objects; the production of agreeable sensations (colours, sounds, etc.) and of phenomena of psychological induction, which include ideas and feelings of a more complex nature than the foregoing, such as sympathy for the personages represented, interest, piety, indignation, etc. Thus art becomes the expression of life. Hence arise two tendencies: one for harmony, consonance, for all that delights the ear and eye; the other transforming life, under the dominion of art. True genius is destined to balance these two tendencies; but the decadent and the unbalanced deprive art of its sympathetic end, setting aesthetic sympathy against human sympathy. If we translate this language into that with which we are by this time quite familiar, we shall see that Guyau admits an art that is merely hedonistic, and places above it another art, also hedonistic, but serving the ends of morality. M. Nordau wages war against the decadent and unbalanced, in much the same manner as Guyau. He assigns to art the function of re-establishing the integrity of life, so much broken up and specialized in our industrial civilization. He remarks that there is such a thing as art for art's sake, the simple expression of the internal states of the individual, but it is the art of the cave-dweller. C. Lombroso's theory of genius as degeneration may be grouped with the naturalistic theories. His argument is in essence the following. Great mental efforts, and total absorption in one dominant thought, often produce physiological disorders or atrophy of important vital functions. Now these disorders often lead to madness; therefore, genius may be identified with madness. This proof, from the particular to the general, does not follow that of traditional Logic. But with Lombroso, Büchner, Nordau, and the like we have come to the boundary between specious and vulgar error. They confuse scientific analysis with historical research. Such inquiries may have value for history, but they have none for Aesthetic. Thus, too, A. Lang maintains that the doctrine of the origin of art as disinterested expression of the mimetic faculty is not confirmed in what we know of primitive art, which is rather decorative than expressive. But primitive art, which is a given fact to be interpreted, cannot ever become its own criterion of interpretation. The naturalistic misunderstanding has had a bad effect on linguistic researches, which have not been carried out on the lofty plane to which Humboldt and Steinthal had brought them. Max Müller is popular and exaggerated. He fails clearly to distinguish thought from logical thought, although in one place he remarks that the formation of names has a more intimate connexion with wit than with judgment. He holds that the science of language is not historical, but natural, because language is not the invention of man, altogether ignoring the science of the spirit, philosophy, of which language is a part. For Max Müller, the natural sciences were the only sciences. The consciousness of the science of the spirit becomes ever more obscured, and we find the philologist W.D. Whitney combating Max Müller's "miracles" and maintaining the separability of thought and speech. With Hermann Paul (1880) we have an awakening of Humboldt's spirit. Paul maintains that the origin of language is the speech of the individual man, and that a language has its origin every time it is spoken. Paul also showed the fallacies contained in the _Völkerpsychologie_ of Steinthal and Lazarus, demonstrating that there is no such thing as a collective soul, and that there is no language save that of the individual. W. Wundt (1886), on the other hand, commits the error of connecting language with Ethnopsychology and other non-existent sciences, and actually terms the glorious doctrine of Herder and of Humboldt _Wundertheorie_, or theory of miracle, accusing them of mystical obscurity. Wundt confuses the question of the historical appearance of language with that of its internal nature and genesis. He looks upon the theory of evolution as having attained to its complete triumph, in its application to organic nature in general, and especially to man. He has no suspicion whatever of the function of fancy, and of the true relation between thought and expression, between expression in the naturalistic, and expression in the spiritual and linguistic sense. He looks upon speech as a specially developed form of psycho-physical vital manifestations, of expressive animal movements. Language is developed continuously from such facts, and thus is explained how, "beyond the general concept of expressive movement, there is no specific quality which delimits language in a non-arbitrary manner." Thus the philosophy of Wundt reveals its weak side, showing itself incapable of understanding the spiritual nature of language and of art. In the _Ethic_ of the same author, aesthetic facts are presented as a mixture of logical and ethical elements, a special normative aesthetic science is denied, and Aesthetic is merged in Logic and Ethic. The neo-critical and neo-Kantian movement in thought was not able to maintain the concept of the spirit against the hedonistic, moralistic, and psychological views of Aesthetic, in vogue from about the middle of last century. Neo-criticism inherited from Kant his view as to the slight importance of the creative imagination, and appears indeed to have been ignorant of any form of knowledge, other than the intellective. Kirchmann (1868) was one of the early adherents to psychological Aesthetic, defining the beautiful as the idealized image of pleasure, the ugly as that of pain. For him the aesthetic fact is the idealized image of the real. Failing to apprehend the true nature of the aesthetic fact, Kirchmann invented a new psychological category of ideal or apparent feelings, which he thought were attenuated images from those of real life. The aged Theodore Fischer describes Aesthetic in his auto-criticism as the union of mimetic and harmony, and the beautiful as the harmony of the universe, which is never realized in fact, because it is infinite. When we think to grasp the beautiful, we experience that exquisite illusion, which is the aesthetic fact. Robert Fischer, son of the foregoing, introduced the word _Einfühlung_, to express the vitality which he believed that man inspired into things with the help of the aesthetic process. E. Siebeck and M. Diez, the former writing in 1875, the latter in 1892, unite a certain amount of idealistic influence, derived from Kant and Herbart, with the merely empirical and psychological views that have of late been the fashion. Diez, for instance, would explain the artistic function as the ideal of feeling, placing it parallel to science; the ideal of thought, morality; the ideal of will and religion, the ideal of the personality. But this ideal of feeling escapes definition, and we see that these writers have not had the courage of their ideas: they have not dared to push their thought to its logical conclusion. The merely psychological and associationist view finds in Theodore Lipps its chief exponent. He criticizes and rejects a series of aesthetic theories, such as those of play, of pleasure, of art as recognition of real life, even if disagreeable, of emotionality, of syncretism, which attaches to art a number of other ends, in addition to those of play and of pleasure. The theory of Lipps does not differ very greatly from that of Jouffroy, for he assumes that artistic beauty is the sympathetic. "Our ego, transplanted, objectified, and recognized in others, is the object of sympathy. We feel ourselves in others, and others in us." Thus the aesthetic pleasure is entirely composed of sympathy. This extends even to the pleasure derived from architecture, geometrical forms, etc. Whenever we meet with the positive element of human personality, we experience this feeling of beatitude, which is the aesthetic emotion. But the value of the personality is an ethical value: the whole sphere of ethic is included in it. Therefore all artistic or aesthetic pleasure is the enjoyment of something which has ethical value, but this value is not an element of a compound, but the object of aesthetic intuition. Thus is aesthetic activity deprived of all autonomous existence and reduced to a mere retainer of Ethic. C. Groos (1895) shows some signs of recognizing aesthetic activity as a theoretic value. Feeling and intellect, he says, are the two poles of knowledge, and he recognizes the aesthetic fact as internal imitation. Everything beautiful belongs to aestheticity, but not every aesthetic fact is beautiful. The beautiful is the representation of sensible pleasure, and the ugly of sensible displeasure. The sublime is the representation of something powerful, in a simple form. The comic is the representation of an inferiority, which provokes in us the pleasurable feeling of "superiority." Groos very wisely makes mock of the supposed function of the Ugly, which Hartmann and Schasler had inherited and developed from a long tradition. Lipps and Groos agree in denying aesthetic value to the comic, but Lipps, although he gives an excellent analysis of the comic, is nevertheless in the trammels of his moralistic thesis, and ends by sketching out something resembling the doctrine of the overcoming of the ugly, by means of which may be attained a higher aesthetic and (sympathetic) value. Labours such as those of Lipps have been of value, since they have cleared away a number of errors that blocked the way, and restrained speculation to the field of the internal consciousness. Similar is the merit of E. Véron's treatise (1883) on the double form of Aesthetic, in which he combats the academic view of the absolute beauty, and shows that Taine confuses Art and Science, Aesthetic and Logic. He acutely remarks that if the object of art were to reveal the essence of things, the greatest artists would be those who best succeeded in doing this, and the greatest works would all be _identical_; whereas we know that the very opposite is the case. Véron was a precursor of Guyau, and we seek for scientific system in vain in his book. Véron looks upon art as two things: the one _decorative_, pleasing eye and ear, the other _expressive_, "l'expression émue de la personalité humaine." He thought that decorative art prevailed in antiquity, expressive art in modern times. We cannot here dwell upon the aesthetic theories of men of letters, such as that of E. Zola, developing his thesis of natural science and history mixed, which is known as that of the human document or as the experimental theory, or of Ibsen and the moralization of the art problem, as presented by him and by the Scandinavian school. Perhaps no French writer has written more profoundly upon art than Gustave Flaubert. His views are contained in his Correspondence, which has been published. L. Tolstoï wrote his book on art while under the influence of Véron and his hatred of the concept of the beautiful. Art, he says, communicates the feelings, as the word communicates the thoughts. But his way of understanding this may be judged from the comparison which he institutes between Art and Science. According to this, "Art has for its mission to make assimilable and sensible what may not have been assimilated in the form of argument. There is no science for science's sake, no art for art's sake. Every human effort should be directed toward increasing morality and suppressing violence." This amounts to saying that well-nigh all the art that the world has hitherto seen is false. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Bach, Beethoven, are all, according to Tolstoï, "false reputations, made by the critics." We must also class F. Nietzsche with the artists, rather than with the philosophers. We should do him an injustice (as with J. Ruskin) were we to express in intellectual terminology his aesthetic affirmations. The criticism which they provoke would be too facile. Nowhere has Nietzsche given a complete theory of art, not even in his first book, _Die Geburt der Tragödie oder Griechentum und Pessimismus_. What seems to be theory there, is really the confession of the feelings and aspirations of the writer. Nietzsche was the last, splendid representative of the romantic period. He was, therefore, deeply preoccupied with the art problem and with the relation of art to natural science and to philosophy, though he never succeeded in definitely fixing those relations. From Romanticism, rather than from Schopenhauer, he gathered those elements of thought out of which he wove his conception of the two forms of art: the Apollonian, all serene contemplation, as expressed in the epic and in sculpture; the Dionysaïc, all tumult and agitation, as expressed in music and the drama. These doctrines are not rigorously proved, and their power of resistance to criticism is therefore but slender, but they serve to transport the mind to a more lofty spiritual level than any others of the second half of the nineteenth century. The most noteworthy thought on aesthetic of this period is perhaps to be found among the aestheticians of special branches of the arts, and since we know that laws relating only to special branches are not conceivable, this thought may be considered as bearing upon the general theory of Aesthetic. The Bohemian critic E. Hanslick (1854) is perhaps the most important of these writers. His work _On Musical Beauty_ has been translated into several languages. His polemic is chiefly directed against R. Wagner and the pretension of finding in music a determined content of ideas and feelings. He expresses equal contempt for those sentimentalists who derive from music merely pathological effects, passionate excitement, or stimulus for practical activity, in place of enjoying the musical works. "If a few Phrygian notes sufficed to instil courage into the soldier facing the enemy, or a Doric melody to assure the fidelity of a wife whose husband was absent, then the loss of Greek music may cause pain to generals and to husbands, but aestheticians and composers will have no reason to deplore it." "If every Requiem, every lamenting Adagio, possessed the power to make us sad, who would be able to support existence in such conditions? But if a true musical work look upon us with the clear and brilliant eyes of beauty, we feel ourselves bound by its invincible fascination, though its theme be all the sorrows of the century." For Hanslick, the only end of music was form, or musical beauty. The followers of Herbart showed themselves very tender towards this unexpected and vigorous ally, and Hanslick, not to be behindhand in politeness, returned their compliments, by referring to Herbart and to R. Zimmermann, in the later editions of his work, as having "completely developed the great aesthetic principle of form." Unfortunately Hanslick meant something altogether different from the Herbartians by his use of the word form. Symmetry, merely acoustic relations, and the pleasure of the ear, did not constitute the musically beautiful for him. Mathematics were in his view useless in the Aesthetic of music. "Sonorous forms are not empty, but perfectly full; they cannot be compared to simple lines enclosing a space; they are the spirit, which takes form, making its own bodily configuration. Music is more of a picture than is an arabesque; but it is a picture of which the subject is inexpressible in words, nor is it to be enclosed in a precise concept. In music, there is a meaning and a connexion, but of a specially musical nature: it is a language which we speak and understand, but which it is impossible to translate." Hanslick admits that music, if it do not render the quality of sentiments, renders their tone or dynamic side; it renders adjectives, if it fail to render substantives; if not "murmuring tenderness" or "impetuous courage," at any rate the "murmuring" and the "impetuous." The essence of his book is contained in the negation that it is possible to separate form and content in music. "Take any motive you will, and say where form begins and content ends. Are we to call the sounds content? Very good, but they have already received form. What are we to call form? Sounds again? But they are already form filled, that is to say, possessing a content." These observations testify to an acute penetration of the nature of art. Hanslick's belief that they were characteristics peculiar to music, not common to every form of art, alone prevented him from seeing further. C. Fiedler, published in German (in 1887) an extremely luminous work on the origin of artistic activity. He describes eloquently how the passive spectator seems to himself to grasp all reality, as the shows of life pass before him; but at the moment that he tries to realize this artistically, all disappears, and leaves him with the emptiness of his own thoughts. Yet by concentration alone do we attain to expression; art is a language that we gradually learn to speak. Artistic activity is only to be attained by limiting ourselves; it must consist of "forms precisely determined, tangible, sensibly demonstrable, precisely because it is spiritual." Art does not imitate nature, for what is nature, but that vast confusion of perceptions and representations that were referred to above? Yet in a sense art does imitate nature; it uses nature to produce values of a kind peculiar to itself. Those values are true visibility. Fiedler's views correspond with those of his predecessor, Hanslick, but are more rigorously and philosophically developed. The sculptor A. Hildebrand may be mentioned with these, as having drawn attention to the nature of art as architectonic rather than imitative, with special application to the art of sculpture. What we miss with these and with other specialists, is a broad view of art and language, as one and the same thing, the inheritance of all humanity, not of a few persons, specially endowed. H. Bergson in his book on laughter (1900) falls under the same criticism. He develops his theory of art in a manner analogous to Fiedler, and errs like him in looking upon it as something different and exceptional in respect to the language of every moment. He declares that in life the individuality of things escapes us: we see only as much as suffices for our practical ends. The influence of language aids this rude simplification: all but proper names are abstractions. Artists arise from time to time, who recover the riches hidden beneath the labels of ordinary life. Amid the ruin of idealist metaphysics, is to be desired a healthy return to the doctrine of Baumgarten, corrected and enriched with the discoveries that have been made since his time, especially by romanticism and psychology. C. Hermann (1876) announced this return, but his book is a hopeless mixture of empirical precepts and of metaphysical beliefs regarding Logic and Aesthetic, both of which, he believes, deal not with the empirical thought and experience of the soul, but with the pure and absolute. B. Bosanquet (1892) gives the following definition of the beautiful, as "that which has a characteristic or individual expressivity for the sensible perception, or for the imagination, subject to the conditions of general or abstract expressivity for the same means." The problem as posed by this writer by the antithesis of the two German schools of form and content, appears to us insoluble. Though De Sanctis left no school in Italy, his teaching has been cleared of the obscurities that had gathered round it during the last ten years; and the thesis of the true nature of history, and of its nature, altogether different from natural science, has been also dealt with in Germany, although its precise relation to the aesthetic problem has not been made clear. Such labours and such discussions constitute a more favourable ground for the scientific development of Aesthetic than the stars of mystical metaphysic or the stables of positivism and of sensualism. We have now reached the end of the inquiry into the history of aesthetic speculation, and we are struck with the smallness of the number of those who have seen clearly the nature of the problem. No doubt, amid the crowd of artists, critics, and writers on other subjects, many have incidentally made very just remarks, and if all these were added to the few philosophers, they would form a gallant company. But if, as Schiller truly observed, the rhythm of philosophy consist in a withdrawal from public opinion, in order to return to it with renewed vigour, it is evident that this withdrawal is essential, and indeed that in it lies the whole progress of philosophy. During our long journey, we have witnessed grave aberrations from the truth, which were at the same time attempts to reach it; such were the hedonism of the sophists and rhetoricians of antiquity, of the sensualists of the eighteenth and second half of the nineteenth centuries; the moralistic hedonism of Aristophanes and the Stoics, of the Roman eclectics, of the writers of the Middle Age and of the Renaissance; the ascetic and logical hedonism of Plato and the Fathers of the Church; the aesthetic mysticism of Plotinus, reborn to its greatest triumphs, during the classic period of German thought. Through the midst of these variously erroneous theories, that traverse the field of thought in all directions, runs a tiny rivulet of golden truth. Starting from the subtle empiricism of Aristotle, it flows in the profound penetration of Vico to the nineteenth century, where it appears again in the masterly analyses of Schleiermacher, Humboldt, and De Sanctis. This brief list shows that the science of Aesthetic is no longer to be discovered, but it also shows _that it is only at its beginning_. The birth of a science is like the birth of a human being. In order to live, a science, like a man, has to withstand a thousand attacks of all sorts. These appear in the form of errors, which must be extirpated, if the science is not to perish. And when one set has been weeded, another crops up; when these have been dealt with, the former errors often return. Therefore _scientific criticism_ is always necessary. No science can repose on its laurels, complete, unchallenged. Like a human being, it must maintain its position by constant efforts, constant victories over error. The general errors which reveal a negation of the very concept of art have already been dealt with in the Historical Summary. The particular errors have been exposed in the Theory. They may be divided under three heads: (i.) Errors as to the characteristic quality of the aesthetic fact, or (ii.) as to its specific quality, or (iii.) as to its generic quality. These are contradictions of the characteristics of intuition, of theoretic contemplation, and of spiritual activity, which constitute the aesthetic fact. The principal bar to a proper understanding of the true nature of language has been and still is Rhetoric, with the modern form it has assumed, as style. The rhetorical categories are still mentioned in treatises and often referred to, as having definite existence among the parts of speech. Side by side with such phrases goes that of the double form, or metaphor, which implies that there are two ways of saying the same thing, the one simple, the other ornate. Kant, Herbart, Hegel, and many minor personages, have been shown to be victims of the rhetorical categories, and in our own day we have writers in Italy and in Germany who devote much attention to them, such as R. Bonghi and G. Gröber; the latter employs a phraseology which he borrows from the modern schools of psychology, but this does not alter the true nature of his argument. De Sanctis gave perhaps the clearest and most stimulating advice in his lectures on Rhetoric, which he termed Anti-rhetoric. But even he failed to systematize his thought, and we may say that the true critique of Rhetoric can only be made from the point of view of the aesthetic activity, which is, as we know, _one_, and therefore does not give rise to divisions, and _cannot express the same content now in one form, now in another_. Thus only can we drive away the double monster of naked form deprived of imagination, and of decorated form, which would represent something more than imagination. The same remarks apply to artistic and literary styles, and to their various laws or rules. In modern times they have generally been comprised with rhetoric, and although now discredited, they cannot be said to have altogether disappeared. J.C. Scaliger may be entitled the protagonist of the unities in comparatively modern times: he it was who "laid the foundations of the classical Bastille," and supplied tyrants of literature, like Boileau, with some of their best weapons. Lessing opposed the French rules and restrictions with German rules and restrictions, giving as his opinion that Corneille and others had wrongly interpreted Aristotle, whose rules did not really prevent Shakespeare from being included among correct writers! Lessing undoubtedly believed in intellectual rules for poetry. Aristotle was the tyrant, father of tyrants, and we find Corneille saying "qu'il est aisé de s'accommoder avec Aristote," much in the same way as Tartuffe makes his "accommodements avec le ciel." In the next century, several additions were made to the admitted styles, as for instance the "tragédie bourgeoise." But these battles of the rules with one another are less interesting than the rebellion against all the rules, which began with Pietro Aretino in the sixteenth century, who makes mock of them in the prologues to his comedies. Giordano Bruno took sides against the makers of rules, saying that the rules came from the poetry, and "therefore there are as many genuses and species of true rules as there are genuses and species of true poets." When asked how the true poets are to be known, he replies, "by repeating their verses, which either cause delight, or profit, or both." Guarini, too, said that "the world judges poetry, and its sentence is without appeal." Strangely enough, it was priest-ridden Spain that all through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led the van of revolt against the rules and precepts of the grammarians. While Torquato Tasso remained the miserable slave of grammarians unworthy to lick the dust from his feet, Lope de Vega slyly remarked that when he wrote his comedies, he locked up the givers of precepts with six keys, that they might not reproach him. J.B. Marino declared that he knew the rules better than all the pedants in the world; "but the true rule is to know when to break the rules, in accordance with the manners of the day and the taste of the age." Among the most acute writers of the end of the seventeenth century is to be mentioned Gravina, who well understood that a work of art must be its own criterion, and said so clearly when praising a contemporary for a work which did not enter any one of the admitted categories. Unfortunately Gravina did not clearly formulate his views. France of the eighteenth century produced several writers like Du Bos, who declared that men will always prefer the poems that move them, to those composed according to rule. La Motte combated the unities of place and time, and Batteux showed himself liberal in respect to rules. Voltaire, although he opposed La Motte and described the three unities as the three great laws of good sense, was also capable of declaring that all styles but the tiresome are good, and that the best style is that which is best used. In England we find Home in his _Elements of Criticism_ deriding the critics for asserting that there must be a precise criterion for distinguishing epic poetry from all other forms of composition. Literary compositions, he held, melt into one another, just like colours. The literary movement of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries attacked rules of all sorts. We will not dwell upon the many encounters of these periods, nor record the names of those that conquered gloriously, or their excesses. In France the preface to the _Cromwell_ of V. Hugo (1827), in Italy the _Lettera semiseria di Grisostomo_, were clarions of rebellion. The principle first laid down by A.W. Schlegel, that the form of compositions must be organic and not mechanic, resulting from the nature of the subject, from its internal development not from an external stamp, was enunciated in Italy. Art is always a whole, a synthesis. But it would be altogether wrong to believe that this empirical defeat of the styles and rules implied their final defeat in philosophy. Even writers who were capable of dispensing with prejudice when judging works of art, once they spoke as philosophers, were apt to reassume their belief in those categories which, empirically, they had discarded. The spectacle of these literary or rhetorical categories, raised by German philosophers to the honours of philosophical deduction, is even more amusing than that which afforded amusement to Home. The truth is that they were unable to free their aesthetic systems of intellectualism, although they proclaimed the empire of the mystic idea. Schelling (1803) at the beginning, Hartmann (1890) at the end of the century, furnish a good example of this head and tail. Schelling, in his Philosophy of Art, declares that, historically speaking, the first place in the styles of poetry is due to Epic, but, scientifically speaking, it falls to Lyric. In truth, if poetry be the representation of the infinite in the finite, then lyric poetry, in which prevails the finite, must be its first moment. Lyric poetry corresponds to the first of the ideal series, to reflection, to knowledge; epic poetry corresponds to the second power, to action. This philosopher finally proceeds to the unification of epic and lyric poetry, and from their union he deduces the dramatic form, which is in his view "the supreme incarnation of the essence and of the _in-se_ of every art." With Hartmann, poetry is divided into poetry of declamation and poetry for reading. The first is subdivided into Epic, Lyric, and Dramatic; the Epic is divided into plastic epic, proper epic, pictorial epic, and lyrical epic; Lyric is divided into epical lyric, lyrical lyric, and dramatic lyric; Dramatic is divided into lyrical dramatic, epical dramatic, and dramatical dramatic. The second (readable poetry) is divided into poetry which is chiefly epical, lyrical, and dramatic, with the tertiary division of moving, comic, tragic, and humoristic; and poetry which can all be read at once, like a short story, or that requires several sittings, like a romance. These brief extracts show of what dialectic pirouettes and sublime trivialities even philosophers are capable, when they begin to treat of the Aesthetic of the tragic, comic, and humorous. Such false distinctions are still taught in the schools of France and Germany, and we find a French critic like Ferdinand Brunetière devoting a whole volume to the evolution of literary styles or classes, which he really believes to constitute literary history. This prejudice, less frankly stated, still infests many histories of literature, even in Italy. We believe that the falsity of these rules of classes should be scientifically demonstrated. In our Theory of Aesthetic we have shown how we believe that it should be demonstrated. The proof of the theory of the limits of the arts has been credited to Lessing, but his merit should rather be limited to having been the first to draw attention to the problem. His solution was false, but his achievement nevertheless great, in having posed the question clearly. No one before him, in antiquity, in the Middle Age, or in modern times, had seriously asked: What is the value of the distinctions between the arts? Which of them comes first? Which second? Leonardo da Vinci had declared his personal predilection for painting, Michael Angelo for sculpture, but the question had not been philosophically treated before Lessing. Lessing's attention was drawn to the problem, through his desire to disprove the assertions of Spence and of the Comte de Caylus, the former in respect to the close union between poetry and painting in antiquity, the latter as believing that a poem was good according to the number of subjects which it should afford the painter. Lessing argued thus: Painting manifests itself in space, poetry in time: the mode of manifestation of painting is through objects which coexist, that of poetry through objects which are consecutive. The objects which coexist, or whose parts are coexistent, are called bodies. Bodies, then, owing to their visibility, are the true objects of painting. Objects which are consecutive, or whose parts are consecutive, are called, in general, actions. Actions, then, are the suitable object of poetry. He admitted that painting might represent an action, but only by means of bodies which make allusion to it; that poetry can represent bodies, but only by means of actions. Returning to this theme, he explained the action or movement in painting as added by our imagination. Lessing was greatly preoccupied with the naturalness and the unnaturalness of signs, which is tantamount to saying that he believed each art to be strictly limited to certain modes of expression, which are only overstepped at the cost of coherency. In the appendix to his _Laocoön_, he quotes Plutarch as saying that one should not chop wood with a key, or open the door with an axe. He who should do so would not only be spoiling both those utensils, but would also be depriving himself of the utility of both. He believed that this applied to the arts. The number of philosophers and writers who have attempted empirical classifications of the arts is enormous: it ranges in comparatively recent times from Lessing, by way of Schasler, Solger, and Hartmann, to Richard Wagner, whose theory of the combination of the arts was first mooted in the eighteenth century. Lotze, while reflecting upon the futility of these attempts, himself adopts a method, which he says is the most "convenient," and thereby incurs the censure of Schasler. This method is in fact suitable for his studies in botany and in zoology, but useless for the philosophy of the spirit. Thus both these thinkers maintained Lessing's wrong principle as to the constancy, the limits, and the peculiar nature of each art. Who among aestheticians has criticized this principle? Aristotle had a glimpse of the truth, when he refused to admit that the distinction between prose and poetry lay in an external fact, the metre. Schleiermacher seems to have been the only one who was thoroughly aware of the difficulty of the problem. In analysis, indeed, he goes so far as to say that what the arts have in common is not the external fact, which is an element of diversity; and connecting such an observation as this with his clear distinction between art and what is called technique, we might argue that Schleiermacher looked upon the divisions between the arts as non-existent. But he does not make this logical inference, and his thought upon the problem continues to be wavering and undecided. Nebulous, uncertain, and contradictory as is this portion of Schleiermacher's theory, he has yet the great merit of having doubted Lessing's theory, and of having asked himself by what right are special arts held to be distinct in art. Schleiermacher _absolutely denied the existence of a beautiful in nature_, and praised Hegel for having sustained this negation. Hegel did not really deserve this praise, as his negation was rather verbal than effective; but the importance of this thesis as stated by Schleiermacher is very great, in so far as he denied the existence of an objective natural beauty not produced by the spirit of man. This theory of the beautiful in nature, when taken in a metaphysical sense, does not constitute an error peculiar to aesthetic science. It forms part of a fallacious general theory, which can be criticized together with its metaphysic. The theory of aesthetic senses, that is, of certain superior senses, such as sight and hearing, being the only ones for which aesthetic impressions exist, was debated as early as Plato. The _Hippias major_ contains a discussion upon this theme, which Socrates leads to the conclusion that there exist beautiful things, which do not reach us through impressions of eye or ear. But further than this, there exist things which please the eye, but not the ear, and _vice versa_; therefore the reason of beauty cannot be visibility or audibility, but something different from, yet common to both. Perhaps this question has never been so acutely and so seriously dealt with as in this Platonic dialogue. Home, Herder, Hegel, Diderot, Rousseau, Berkeley, all dealt with the problem, but in a more or less arbitrary manner. Herder, for instance, includes touch with the higher aesthetic senses, but Hegel removes it, as having immediate contact with matter as such, and with its immediate sensible qualities. Schleiermacher, with his wonted penetration, saw that the problem was not to be solved so easily. He refuted the distinction between clear and confused senses. He held that the superiority of sight and hearing over the other senses lay in their free activity, in their capacity of an activity proceeding from within, and able to create forms and sounds without receiving external impressions. The eye and the ear are not merely means of perception, for in that case there could be no visual and no auditive arts. They are also functions of voluntary movements, which fill the domain of the senses. Schleiermacher, however, considered that the difference was rather one of quantity, and that we should allow to the other senses a minimum of independence. The sensualists, as we know, maintain that all the senses are aesthetic. That is the hedonistic hypothesis, which has been dealt with and disproved in this book. We have shown the embarrassment in which the hedonists find themselves, when they have dubbed all the senses "aesthetic," or have been obliged to differentiate in an absurd manner some of the senses from the others. The only way out of the difficulty lies in abandoning the attempt to unite orders of facts so diverse as the representative form of the spirit and the conception of given physical organs or of a given material of impressions. The origin of classes of speech and of grammatical forms is to be found in antiquity, and as regards the latter, the disputes among the Alexandrian philosophers, the analogists, and the anomalists, resulted in logic being identified with grammar. Anything which did not seem logical was excluded from grammar as a deviation. The analogists, however, did not have it all their own way, and grammar in the modern sense of the word is a compromise between these extreme views, that is, it contains something of the thought of Chrysippus, who composed a treatise to show that the same thing can be expressed with different sounds, and of Apollonius Discolus, who attempted to explain what the rigorous analogists refused to admit into their schemes and classifications. It is only of late years that we have begun to emerge from the superstitious reverence for grammar, inherited from the Middle Age. Such writers as Pott, in his introduction to Humboldt, and Paul in his _Principien d. Sprachgeschichte_, have done good service in throwing doubt upon the absolute validity of the parts of speech. If the old superstitions still survive tenaciously, we must attribute this partly to empirical and poetical grammar, partly to the venerable antiquity of grammar itself, which has led the world to forget its illegitimate and turbid origin. The theory of the relativity of taste is likewise ancient, and it would be interesting to know whether the saying "there's no accounting for tastes" could be traced to a merely gustatory origin. In this sense, the saying would be quite correct, as it is _quite wrong_ when applied to aesthetic facts. The eighteenth century writers exhibit a piteous perplexity of thought on this subject. Home, for instance, after much debate, decides upon a common "standard of taste," which he deduces from the necessity of social life and from what he calls "a final cause." Of course it will not be an easy matter to fix this "standard of taste." As regards moral conduct, we do not seek our models among savages, so with regard to taste, we must have recourse to those few whose taste has not been corrupted nor spoilt by pleasure, who have received good taste from nature, and have perfected it by education and by the practice of life. If after this has been done, there should yet arise disputes, it will be necessary to refer to the principles of criticism, as laid down in his book by the said Home. We find similar contradictions and vicious circles in the _Discourse on Taste_ of David Hume. We search his writings in vain for the distinctive characteristics of the man of taste, whose judgments should be final. Although he asserts that the general principles of taste are universal in human nature, and admits that no notice should be accorded to perversions and ignorance, yet there exist diversities of taste that are irreconcilable, insuperable, and blameless. But the criticism of the sensualist and relativist positions cannot be made from the point of view of those who proclaim the absolute nature of taste and yet place it among the intellectual concepts. It has been shown to be impossible to escape from sensualism and relativity save by falling into the intellectualist error. Muratori in the eighteenth century is an instance of this. He was one of the first to maintain the existence of a rule of taste and of universal beauty. André also spoke of what appears beautiful in a work of art as being not that which pleases at once, owing to certain particular dispositions of the faculties of the soul and of the organs of the body, but that which has the right of pleasing the reason and reflection through its own excellence. Voltaire admitted an "universal taste," which was "intellectual," as did many others. Kant appeared, and condemned alike the intellectualist and the sensualistic error; but placing the beautiful in a symbol of morality, he failed to discover the imaginative absoluteness of taste. Later speculative philosophy did not attach importance to the question. The correct solution was slow in making its way. It lies, as we know, in the fact that to judge a work of art we must place ourselves in the position of the artist at the time of production, and that to judge is to reproduce. Alexander Pope, in his _Essay on Criticism_, was among the first to state this truth: A perfect judge will read each work of wit With the same spirit that its author writ. Remarks equally luminous were made by Antonio Conti, Terrasson, and Heydenreich in the eighteenth century, the latter with considerable philosophical development. De Sanctis gave in his adhesion to this formula, but a true theory of aesthetic criticism had not yet been given, because for such was necessary, not only an exact conception of nature in art, but also of the relations between the aesthetic fact and its historical conditions. In more recent times has been denied the possibility of aesthetic criticism; it has been looked upon as merely individual and capricious, and historical criticism has been set up in its place. This would be better called a criticism of extrinsic erudition and of bad philosophical inspiration--positivist and materialist. The true history of literature will always require the reconstruction and then the judgment of the work of art. Those who have wished to react against such emasculated erudition have often thrown themselves into the opposite extreme, that is, into a dogmatic, abstract, intellectualistic, or moralistic form of criticism. This mention of the history of certain doctrines relating to Aesthetic suffices to show the range of error possible in the theory. Aesthetic has need to be surrounded by a vigilant and vigorous critical literature which shall derive from it and be at once its safeguard and its source of strength. APPENDIX I here add as an appendix, at the request of the author, a translation of his lecture which he delivered before the Third International Congress of Philosophy, at Heidelberg, on 2nd September 1908. The reader will find that it throws a vivid light upon Benedetto Croce's general theory of Aesthetic. PURE INTUITION AND THE LYRICAL CHARACTER OF ART. _A Lecture delivered at Heidelberg at the second general session of the Third International Congress of Philosophy._ There exists an _empirical_ Aesthetic, which although it admits the existence of facts, called aesthetic or artistic, yet holds that they are irreducible to a single principle, to a rigorous philosophical concept. It wishes to limit itself to collecting as many of those facts as possible, and in the greatest possible variety, thence, at the most, proceeding to group them together in classes and types. The logical ideal of this school, as declared on many occasions, is zoology or botany. This Aesthetic, when asked what art is, replies by indicating successively single facts, and by saying: "Art is this, and this, and this too is art," and so on, indefinitely. Zoology and botany renew the representatives of fauna and of flora in the same way. They calculate that the species renewed amount to some thousand, but believe that they might easily be increased to twenty or a hundred thousand, or even to a million, or to infinity. There is another Aesthetic, which has been called hedonistic, utilitarian, moralistic, and so on, according to its various manifestations. Its complex denomination should, however, be _practicism_, because that is precisely what constitutes its essential character. This Aesthetic differs from the preceding, in the belief that aesthetic or artistic facts are not a merely empirical or nominalistic grouping together, but that all of them possess a common foundation. Its foundation is placed in the practical form of human activity. Those facts are therefore considered, either generically, as manifestations of pleasure and pain, and therefore rather as economic facts; or, more particularly, as a special class of those manifestations; or again, as instruments and products of the ethical spirit, which subdues and turns to its own ends individual hedonistic and economic tendencies. There is a third Aesthetic, the _intellectualist_, which, while also recognizing the reducibility of aesthetic facts to philosophical treatment, explains them as particular cases of logical thought, identifying beauty with intellectual truth; art, now with the natural sciences, now with philosophy. For this Aesthetic, what is prized in art is what is learned from it. The only distinction that it admits between art and science, or art and philosophy, is at the most that of more or less, or of perfection and imperfection. According to this Aesthetic, art would be the whole mass of easy and popular truths; or it would be a transitory form of science, a semi-science and a semi-philosophy, preparatory to the superior and perfect form of science and of philosophy. A fourth Aesthetic there is, which may be called _agnostic_. It springs from the criticism of the positions just now indicated, and being guided by a powerful consciousness of the truth, rejects them all, because it finds them too evidently false, and because it is too loth to admit that art is a simple fact of pleasure or pain, an exercise of virtue, or a fragmentary sketch of science and philosophy. And while rejecting them, it discovers, at the same time, that art is not now this and now that of those things, or of other things, indefinitely, but that it has its own principle and origin. However, it is not able to say what this principle may be, and believes that it is impossible to do so. This Aesthetic knows that art cannot be resolved into an empirical concept; knows that pleasure and pain are united with the aesthetic activity only in an indirect manner; that morality has nothing to do with art; that it is impossible to rationalize art, as is the case with science and philosophy, and to prove it beautiful or ugly with the aid of reason. Here this Aesthetic is content to stop, satisfied with a knowledge consisting entirely of negative terms. Finally, there is an Aesthetic which I have elsewhere proposed to call _mystic_. This Aesthetic avails itself of those negative terms, to define art as a spiritual form without a practical character, because it is theoretic, and without a logical or intellective form, because it is a theoretic form, differing alike from those of science and of philosophy, and superior to both. According to this view, art would be the highest pinnacle of knowledge, whence what is seen from other points seems narrow and partial; art would alone reveal the whole horizon or all the abysses of Reality. Now, the five Aesthetics so far mentioned are not referable to contingent facts and historical epochs, as are, on the other hand, the denominations of Greek and Mediaeval Aesthetic, of Renaissance and eighteenth-century Aesthetic, the Aesthetic of Wolff and of Herbart, of Vico and of Hegel. These five are, on the contrary, mental attitudes, which are found in all periods, although they have not always conspicuous representatives of the kind that are said to become historical. Empirical Aesthetic is, for example, called Burke in the eighteenth, Fechner in the nineteenth century; moralistic Aesthetic is Horace or Plutarch in antiquity, Campanella in modern times; intellectualist or logical Aesthetic is Cartesian in the seventeenth, Leibnitzian in the eighteenth, and Hegelian in the nineteenth century; agnostic Aesthetic is Francesco Patrizio at the Renaissance, Kant in the eighteenth century; mystic Aesthetic is called Neoplatonism at the end of the antique world, Romanticism at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and if it be adorned during the former period with the name of Plotinus, in the latter it will bear the name of Schelling or of Solger, And not only are those attitudes and mental tendencies common to all epochs, but they are also all found to some extent developed or indicated in every thinker, and even in every man. Thus it is somewhat difficult to classify philosophers of Aesthetic according to one or the other category, because each philosopher also enters more or less into some other, or into all the other categories. Nor can these five conceptions and points of view be looked upon as increasable to ten or twenty, or to as many as desired, or that I have placed them in a certain order, but that they could be capriciously placed in another order. If this were so, they would be altogether heterogeneous and disconnected among themselves, and the attempt to examine and criticize them would seem altogether desperate, as also would be that of comparing one with the other, or of stating a new one, which should dominate them all. It is precisely thus that ordinary sceptics look upon various and contrasting scientific views. They group them all in the same plane, and believing that they can increase them at will, conclude that one is as good as another, and that therefore every one is free to select that which he prefers from a bundle of falsehoods. The conceptions of which we speak are definite in number, and appear in a necessary order, which is either that here stated by me, or another which might be proposed, better than mine. This would be the necessary order, which I should have failed to realize effectively. They are connected one with the other, and in such a way that the view which follows includes in itself that which precedes it. Thus, if the last of the five doctrines indicated be taken, which may be summed up as the proposition that art is a form of the theoretic spirit, superior to the scientific and philosophic form--and if it be submitted to analysis, it will be seen that in it is included, in the first place, the proposition affirming the existence of a group of facts, which are called aesthetic or artistic. If such facts did not exist, it is evident that no question would arise concerning them, and that no systematization would be attempted. And this is the truth of empirical Aesthetic. But there is also contained in it the proposition: that the facts examined are reducible to a definite principle or category of the spirit. This amounts to saying, that they belong either to the practical spirit, or to the theoretical, or to one of their subforms. And this is the truth of practicist Aesthetic, which is occupied with the enquiry as to whether these ever are practical facts, and affirms that in every case they are a special category of the spirit. Thirdly, there is contained in it the proposition: that they are not practical facts, but facts which should rather be placed near the facts of logic or of thought. This is the truth of intellectualistic Aesthetic. In the fourth place, we find also the proposition; that aesthetic facts are neither practical, nor of that theoretic form which is called logical and intellective. They are something which cannot be identified with the categories of pleasure, nor of the useful, nor with those of ethic, nor with those of logical truth. They are something of which it is necessary to find a further definition. This is the truth of that Aesthetic which is termed agnostic or negative. When these various propositions are severed from their connection; when, that is to say, the first is taken without the second, the second without the third, and so on,--and when each, thus mutilated, is confined in itself and the enquiry which awaits prosecution is arbitrarily arrested, then each one of these gives itself out as the whole of them, that is, as the completion of the enquiry. In this way, each becomes error, and the truths contained in empiricism, in practicism, in intellectualism, in agnostic and in mystical Aesthetic, become, respectively, falsity, and these tendencies of speculation are indicated with names of a definitely depreciative colouring. Empiria becomes empiricism, the heuristic comparison of the aesthetic activity with the practical and logical, becomes a conclusion, and therefore practicism and intellectualism. The criticism which rejects false definitions, and is itself negative, affirms itself as positive and definite, becoming agnosticism; and so on. But the attempt to close a mental process in an arbitrary manner is vain, and of necessity causes remorse and self-criticism. Thus it comes about, that each one of those unilateral and erroneous doctrines continually tends to surpass itself and to enter the stage which follows it. Thus empiricism, for example, assumes that it can dispense with any philosophical conception of art; but, since it severs art from non-art--and, however empirical it be, it will not identify a pen-and-ink sketch and a table of logarithms, as if they were just the same thing, or a painting and milk or blood (although milk and blood both possess colour)--thus empiricism too must at last resort to some kind of philosophical concept. Therefore, we see the empiricists becoming, turn and turn about, hedonists, moralists, intellectualists, agnostics, mystics, and sometimes they are even better than mystics, upholding an excellent conception of art, which can only be found fault with because introduced surreptitiously and without justification. If they do not make that progress, it is impossible for them to speak in any way of aesthetic facts. They must return, as regards such facts, to that indifference and to that silence from which they had emerged when they affirmed the existence of these facts and began to consider them in their variety. The same may be said of all other unilateral doctrines. They are all reduced to the alternative of advancing or of going back, and in so far as they do not wish to do either, they live amid contradictions and in anguish. But they do free themselves from these, more or less slowly, and thus are compelled to advance, more or less slowly. And here we discover why it is so difficult, and indeed impossible, exactly to identify thinkers, philosophers, and writers with one or the other of the doctrines which we have enunciated, because each one of them rebels when he finds himself limited to one of those categories, and it seems to him that he is shut up in prison. It is precisely because those thinkers try to shut themselves up in a unilateral doctrine, that they do not succeed, and that they take a step, now in one direction, now in another, and are conscious of being now on this side, now on the other, of the criticisms which are addressed to them. But the critics fulfil their duty by putting them in prison, thus throwing into relief the absurdity into which they are led by their irresolution, or their resolution not to resolve. And from this necessary connection and progressive order of the various propositions indicated arise also the resolve, the counsel, the exhortation, to "return," as they say, to this or that thinker, to this or that philosophical school of the past. Certainly, such returns are impossible, understood literally; they are also a little ridiculous, like all impossible attempts. We can never return to the past, precisely because it is the past. No one is permitted to free himself from the problems which are put by the present, and which he must solve with all the means of the present (which includes in it the means of the past). Nevertheless, it is a fact that the history of philosophy everywhere resounds with cries of return. Those very people who in our day deride the "return to Hume" or the "return to Kant," proceed to advise the "return to Schelling," or the "return to Hegel." This means that we must not understand those "returns" literally and in a material way. In truth, they do not express anything but the necessity and the ineliminability of the logical process explained above, for which the affirmations contained in philosophical problems appear connected with one another in such a way that the one follows the other, surpasses it, and includes it in itself. Empiricism, practicism, intellectualism, agnosticism, mysticism, are _eternal stages of the search for truth_. They are eternally relived and rethought in the truth which each contains. Thus it would be necessary for him who had not yet turned his attention to aesthetic facts, to begin by passing them before his eyes, that is to say, he must first traverse the empirical stage (about equivalent to that occupied by mere men of letters and mere amateurs of art); and while he is at this stage, he must be aroused to feel the want of a principle of explanation, by making him compare his present knowledge with the facts, and see if they are explained by it, that is to say, if they be utilitarian and moral, or logical and intellective. Then we should drive him who has made this examination to the conclusion, that the aesthetic activity is something different from all known forms, a form of the spirit, which it yet remains to characterize. For the empiricists of Aesthetic, intellectualism and moralism represent progress; for the intellectualists, hedonistic and moralistic alike, agnosticism is progress and may be called Kant. But for Kantians, who are real Kantians (and not neo-Kantians), progress is represented by the mystical and romantic point of view; not because this comes after the doctrine of Kant chronologically, but because it surpasses it ideally. In this sense, and in this sense alone, we should now "return" to the romantic Aesthetic. We should return to it, because it is ideally superior to all the researches in Aesthetic made in the studies of psychologists, of physio-psychologists, and of psycho-physiologists of the universities of Europe and of America. It is ideally superior to the sociological, comparative, prehistoric Aesthetic, which studies especially the art of savages, of children, of madmen, and of idiots. It is ideally superior also to that other Aesthetic, which has recourse to the conceptions of the genetic pleasure, of games, of illusion, of self-illusion, of association, of hereditary habit, of sympathy, of social efficiency, and so on. It is ideally superior to the attempts at logical explanation, which have not altogether ceased, even to-day, although they are somewhat rare, because, to tell the truth, fanaticism for Logic cannot be called the failing of our times. Finally, it is ideally superior to that Aesthetic which repeats with Kant, that the beautiful is finality without the idea of end, disinterested pleasure, necessary and universal, which is neither theoretical nor practical, but participates in both forms, or combines them in itself in an original and ineffable manner. But we should return to it, bringing with us the experience of a century of thought, the new facts collected, the new problems that have arisen, the new ideas that have matured. Thus we shall return again to the stage of mystical and romantic Aesthetic, but not to the personal and historical stage of its representatives. For in this matter, at least, they are certainly inferior to us: they lived a century ago and therefore inherited so much the less of the problems and of the results of thought which day by day mankind laboriously accumulates. They should return, but not to remain there; because, if a return to the romantic Aesthetic be advisable for the Kantians (while the idealists should not be advised to "return to Kant," that is to say, to a lower stage, which represents a recession), so those who come over, or already find themselves on the ground of mystical Aesthetic, should, on the other hand be advised to proceed yet further, in order to attain to a doctrine which represents a stage above it. This doctrine is that of the _pure intuition_ (or, what amounts to the same thing, of pure expression); a doctrine which also numbers representatives in all times, and which may be said to be immanent alike in all the discourses that are held and in all the judgments that are passed upon art, as in all the best criticism and artistic and literary history. This doctrine arises logically from the contradictions of mystical Aesthetic; I say, _logically_, because it contains in itself those contradictions and their solution; although _historically_ (and this point does not at present concern us) that critical process be not always comprehensible, explicit, and apparent. Mystical Aesthetic, which makes of art the supreme function of the theoretic spirit, or, at least, a function superior to that of philosophy, becomes involved in inextricable difficulties. How could art ever be superior to philosophy, if philosophy make of art its object, that is to say, if it place art beneath itself, in order to analyse and define it? And what could this new knowledge be, supplied by art and by the aesthetic activity, appearing when the human spirit has come full circle, after it has imagined, perceived, thought, abstracted, calculated, and constructed the whole world of thought and history? As the result of those difficulties and contradictions, mystical Aesthetic itself also exhibits the tendency, either to surpass its boundary, or to sink below its proper level. The descent takes place when it falls back into agnosticism, affirming that art is art, that is, a spiritual form, altogether different from the others and ineffable; or worse, where it conceives art as a sort of repose or as a game; as though diversion could ever be a category and the spirit know repose! We find an attempt at overpassing its proper limit, when art is placed below philosophy, as inferior to it; but this overpassing remains a simple attempt, because the conception of art as instrument of universal truth is always firmly held; save that this instrument is declared less perfect and less efficacious than the philosophical instrument. Thus they fall back again into intellectualism from another side. These mistakes of mystical Aesthetic were manifested during the Romantic period in some celebrated paradoxes, such as those of _art as irony_ and of the _death of art_. They seemed calculated to drive philosophers to desperation as to the possibility of solving the problem of the nature of art, since every path of solution appeared closed. Indeed, whoever reads the aestheticians of the romantic period, feels strongly inclined to believe himself at the heart of the enquiry and to nourish a confident hope of immediate discovery of the truth. Above all, the affirmation of the theoretic nature of art, and of the difference between its cognitive method and that of science and of logic, is felt as a definite conquest, which can indeed be combined with other elements, but which must not in any case be allowed to slip between the fingers. And further, it is not true that all ways of solution are closed, or that all have been attempted. There is at least one still open that can be tried; and it is precisely that for which we resolutely declare ourselves: the Aesthetic of the pure intuition. This Aesthetic reasons as follows:--Hitherto, in all attempts to define the place of art, it has been sought, either at the summit of the theoretic spirit, above philosophy, or, at least, in the circle of philosophy itself. But is not the loftiness of the search the reason why no satisfactory result has hitherto been obtained? Why not invert the attempt, and instead of forming the hypothesis that art is _one of the summits or the highest grade_ of the theoretic spirit, form the very opposite hypothesis, namely, that it is _one of the lower grades_, or the lowest of all? Perhaps such epithets as "lower" and "lowest" are irreconcilable with the dignity and with the splendid beauty of art? But in the philosophy of the spirit, such words as lowest, weak, simple, elementary, possess only the value of a scientific terminology. All the forms of the spirit are necessary, and the higher is so only because there is the lower, and the lower is as much to be despised or less to be valued to the same extent as the first step of a stair is despicable, or of less value in respect to the topmost step. Let us compare art with the various forms of the theoretic spirit, and let us begin with the sciences which are called _natural_ or _positive_. The Aesthetic of pure intuition makes it clear that the said sciences are more _complex_ than History, because they presuppose historical material, that is, collections of things that have happened (to men or animals, to the earth or to the stars). They submit this material to a further treatment, which consists in the abstraction and systematization of the historical facts. _History_, then, is less complex than the natural sciences. History further presupposes the world of the imagination and the pure philosophical concepts or categories, and produces its judgments or historical propositions, by means of the synthesis of the imagination with the concept. And _Philosophy_ may be said to be even less complex than History, in so far as it is distinguished from the former as an activity whose special function it is to make clear the categories or pure concepts, neglecting, in a certain sense at any rate, the world of phenomena. If we compare _Art_ with the three forms above mentioned, it must be declared inferior, that is to say, less complex than the _natural Sciences_, in so far as it is altogether without abstractions. In so far as it is without conceptual determinations and does not distinguish between the real and the unreal, what has really happened and what has been dreamed, it must be declared inferior to _History_. In so far as it fails altogether to surpass the phenomenal world, and does not attain to the definitions of the pure concepts, it is inferior to _Philosophy_ itself. It is also inferior to _Religion_, assuming that religion is (as it is) a form of speculative truth, standing between thought and imagination. Art is governed entirely by imagination; its only riches are images. Art does not classify objects, nor pronounce them real or imaginary, nor qualify them, nor define them. Art feels and represents them. Nothing more. Art therefore is _intuition_, in so far as it is a mode of knowledge, not abstract, but concrete, and in so far as it uses the real, without changing or falsifying it. In so far as it apprehends it immediately, before it is modified and made clear by the concept, it must be called _pure intuition_. The strength of art lies in being thus simple, nude, and poor. Its strength (as often happens in life) arises from its very weakness. Hence its fascination. If (to employ an image much used by philosophers for various ends) we think of man, in the first moment that he becomes aware of theoretical life, with mind still clear of every abstraction and of every reflexion, in that first purely intuitive instant he must be a poet. He contemplates the world with ingenuous and admiring eyes; he sinks and loses himself altogether in that contemplation. By creating the first representations and by thus inaugurating the life of knowledge, art continually renews within our spirit the aspects of things, which thought has submitted to reflexion, and the intellect to abstraction. Thus art perpetually makes us poets again. Without art, thought would lack the stimulus, the very material, for its hermeneutic and critical labour. Art is the root of all our theoretic life. To be the root, not the flower or the fruit, is the function of art. And without a root, there can be no flower and no fruit. II Such is the theory of art as pure intuition, in its fundamental conception. This theory, then, takes its origin from the criticism of the loftiest of all the other doctrines of Aesthetic, from the criticism of mystical or romantic Aesthetic, and contains in itself the criticism and the truth of all the other Aesthetics. It is not here possible to allow ourselves to illustrate its other aspects, such as would be those of the identity, which it lays down, between intuition and expression, between art and language. Suffice it to say, as regards the former, that he alone who divides the unity of the spirit into soul and body can have faith in a pure act of the soul, and therefore in an intuition, which should exist as an intuition, and yet be without its body, expression. Expression is the actuality of intuition, as action is of will; and in the same way as will not exercised in action is not will, so an intuition unexpressed is not an intuition. As regards the second point, I will mention in passing that, in order to recognize the identity of art and language, it is needful to study language, not in its abstraction and in grammatical detail, but in its immediate reality, and in all its manifestations, spoken and sung, phonic and graphic. And we should not take at hazard any proposition, and declare it to be aesthetic; because, if all propositions have an aesthetic side (precisely because intuition is the elementary form of knowledge and is, as it were, the garment of the superior and more complex forms), all are not _purely_ aesthetic, but some are philosophical, historical, scientific, or mathematical; some, in fact, of these are more than aesthetic or logical; they are aestheticological. Aristotle, in his time, distinguished between semantic and apophantic propositions, and noted, that if all propositions be _semantic_, not all are _apophantic_. Language is art, not in so far as it is apophantic, but in so far as it is, generically, semantic. It is necessary to note in it the side by which it is expressive, and nothing but expressive. It is also well to observe (though this may seem superfluous) that it is not necessary to reduce the theory of pure intuition, as has been sometimes done, to a historical fact or to a psychological concept. Because we recognize in poetry, as it were, the ingenuousness, the freshness, the barbarity of the spirit, it is not therefore necessary to limit poetry to youth and to barbarian peoples. Though we recognize language as the first act of taking possession of the world achieved by man, we must not imagine that language is born _ex nihilo_, once only in the course of the ages, and that later generations merely adopt the ancient instrument, applying it to a new order of things while lamenting its slight adaptability to the usage of civilized times. Art, poetry, intuition, and immediate expression are the moment of barbarity and of ingenuousness, which perpetually recur in the life of the spirit; they are youth, that is, not chronological, but ideal. There exist very prosaic barbarians and very prosaic youths, as there exist poetical spirits of the utmost refinement and civilization. The mythology of those proud, gigantic Patagonians, of whom our Vico was wont to discourse, or of those _bons Hurons_, who were lately a theme of conversation, must be looked upon as for ever superseded. But there arises an apparently very serious objection to the Aesthetic of pure intuition, giving occasion to doubt whether this doctrine, if it represent progress in respect to the doctrines which have preceded it, yet is also a complete and definite doctrine as regards the fundamental concept of art. Should it be submitted to a dialectic, by means of which it must be surpassed and dissolved into a more lofty point of view? The doctrine of pure intuition makes the value of art to consist of its power of intuition; in such a manner that just in so far as pure and concrete intuitions are achieved will art and beauty be achieved. But if attention be paid to judgments of people of good taste and of critics, and to what we all say when we are warmly discussing works of art and manifesting our praise or blame of them, it would seem that what we seek in art is something quite different, or at least something more than simple force and intuitive and expressive purity. What pleases and what is sought in art, what makes beat the heart and enraptures the admiration, is life, movement, emotion, warmth, the feeling of the artist. This alone affords the supreme criterion for distinguishing true from false works of art, those with insight from the failures. Where there are emotion and feeling, much is forgiven; where they are wanting, nothing can make up for them. Not only are the most profound thoughts and the most exquisite culture incapable of saving a work of art which is looked upon as _cold_, but richness of imagery, ability and certainty in the reproduction of the real, in description, characterization and composition, and all other knowledge, only serve to arouse the regret that so great a price has been paid and such labours endured, in vain. We do not ask of an artist instruction as to real facts and thoughts, nor that he should astonish us with the richness of his imagination, but that he should have a _personality_, in contact with which the soul of the hearer or spectator may be heated. A personality of any sort is asked for in this case; its moral significance is excluded: let it be sad or glad, enthusiastic or distrustful, sentimental or sarcastic, benignant or malign, but it must be a soul. Art criticism would seem to consist altogether in determining if there be a personality in the work of art, and of what sort. A work that is a failure is an incoherent work; that is to say, a work in which no single personality appears, but a number of disaggregated and jostling personalities, that is, really, none. There is no further correct significance than this in the researches that are made as to the verisimilitude, the truth, the logic, the necessity, of a work of art. It is true that many protests have been made by artists, critics, and philosophers by profession, against the characteristic of _personality_. It has been maintained that the bad artist leaves traces of his personality in the work of art, whereas the great artist cancels them all. It has been further maintained that the artist should portray the reality of life, and that he should not disturb it with the opinions, judgments, and personal feelings of the author, and that the artist should give the tears of things and not his own tears. Hence _impersonality_, not personality, has been proclaimed to be the characteristic of art, that is to say, the very opposite. However, it will not be difficult to show that what is really meant by this opposing formula is the same as in the first case. The theory of impersonality really coincides with that of personality in every point. The opposition of the artists, critics, and philosophers above mentioned, was directed against the invasion by the empirical and volitional personality of the artist of the spontaneous and ideal personality which constitutes the subject of the work of art. For instance, artists who do not succeed in representing the force of piety or of love of country, add to their colourless imaginings declamation or theatrical effects, thinking thus to arouse such feelings. In like manner certain orators and actors introduce into a work of art an emotion extraneous to the work of art itself. Within these limits, the opposition of the upholders of the theory of impersonality was most reasonable. On the other hand, there has also been exhibited an altogether irrational opposition to personality in the work of art. Such is the lack of comprehension and intolerance evinced by certain souls for others differently constituted (of calm for agitated souls, for example). Here we find at bottom the claim of one sort of personality to deny that of another. Finally, it has been possible to demonstrate from among the examples given of impersonal art, in the romances and dramas called naturalistic, that in so far and to the extent that these are complete artistic works, they possess personality. This holds good even when this personality lies in a wandering or perplexity of thought regarding the value to be given to life, or in blind faith in the natural sciences and in modern sociology. Where every trace of personality was really absent, and its place taken by the pedantic quest for human documents, the description of certain social classes and the generic or individual process of certain maladies, there the work of art was absent. A work of science of more or less superficiality, and without the necessary proofs and control, filled its place. There is no upholder of impersonality but experiences a feeling of fatigue for a work of the utmost exactitude in the reproduction of reality in its empirical sequence, or of industrious and apathetic combination of images. He asks himself why such a work was executed, and recommends the author to adopt some other profession, since that of artist was not intended for him. Thus it is without doubt that if pure intuition (and pure expression, which is the same thing) are indispensable in the work of art, the personality of the artist is equally indispensable. If (to quote the celebrated words in our own way) the _classic_ moment of perfect representation or expression be necessary for the work of art, the _romantic_ moment of feeling is not less necessary. Poetry, or art in general, cannot be exclusively _ingenuous_ or _sentimental_; it must be both ingenuous and sentimental. And if the first or representative moment be termed _epic_, and the second, which is sentimental, passionate, and personal, be termed _lyric_, then poetry and art must be at once epic and lyric, or, if it please you better, _dramatic_. We use these words here, not at all in their empirical and intellectualist sense, as employed to designate special classes of works of art, exclusive of other classes; but in that of elements or moments, which must of necessity be found united in every work of art, how diverse soever it may be in other respects. Now this irrefutable conclusion seems to constitute exactly that above-mentioned apparently serious objection to the doctrine which defines art as pure intuition. But if the essence of art be merely theoretic--and it is _intuibility_--can it, on the other hand, be practical, that is to say, feeling, personality, and _passionality_? Or, if it be practical, how can it be theoretic? It will be answered that feeling is the _content_, intuibility the _form_; but form and content do not in philosophy constitute a duality, like water and its recipient; in philosophy content is form, and form is content. Here, on the other hand, form and content appear to be different from one another; the content is of one quality, the form of another. Thus art appears to be the sum of two qualities, or, as Herbart used to say in his time, of _two values_. Accordingly we have an altogether unmaintainable Aesthetic, as is clear from recent largely vulgarized doctrines of Aesthetic as operating with the concept of the _infused personality_. Here we find, on the one hand, things intuible lying dead and soulless; on the other, the artist's feeling and personality. The artist is then supposed to put himself into things, by an act of magic, to make them live and palpitate, love and adore. But if we start with the _distinction_, we can never again reach _unity_: the distinction requires an intellectual act, and what the intellect has divided intellect or reason alone, not art or imagination, can reunite and synthetize. Thus the Aesthetic of infusion or transfusion--when it does not fall into the antiquated hedonistic doctrines of agreeable illusion, of games, and generally of what affords a pleasurable emotion; or of moral doctrines, where art is a symbol and an allegory of the good and the true;--is yet not able, despite its airs of modernity and its psychology, to escape the fate of the doctrine which makes of art a semi-imaginative conception of the world, like religion. The process that it describes is mythological, not aesthetic; it is a making of gods or of idols. "To make one's gods is an unhappy art," said an old Italian poet; but if it be not unhappy, certainly it is not poetic and not aesthetic. The artist does not make the gods, because he has other things to do. Another reason is that, to tell the truth, he is so ingenuous and so absorbed in the image that attracts him, that he cannot perform that act of abstraction and conception, wherein the image must be surpassed and made the allegory of a universal, though it be of the crudest description. This recent theory, then, is of no use. It leads back to the difficulties arising from the admission of two characteristics of art, _intuibility_ and _lyricism_, not unified. We must recognize, either that the duality must be destroyed and proved illusory, _or_ that we must proceed to a more ample conception of art, in which that of pure intuibility would remain merely secondary or particular. And to destroy and prove it illusory must consist in showing that here too form is content, and that pure intuition is _itself_ lyricism. Now, the truth is precisely this: _pure intuition is essentially lyricism_. All the difficulties concerning this question arise from not having thoroughly understood that concept, from having failed to penetrate its true nature and to explore its multiple relations. When we consider the one attentively, we see the other bursting from its bosom, or better, the one and the other reveal themselves as one and the same, and we escape from the desperate trilemma, of either denying the lyrical and personal character of art, or of asserting that it is adjunctive, external and accidental, or of excogitating a new doctrine of Aesthetic, which we do not know where to find. In fact, as has already been remarked, what can pure intuition mean, but intuition pure of every abstraction, of every conceptual element, and, for this reason, neither science, history, nor philosophy? This means that the content of the pure intuition cannot be either an abstract concept, or a speculative concept or idea, or a conceptualized, that is historicized, representation. Nor can it be a so-called perception, which is a representation intellectually, and so historically, discriminated. But outside logic in its various forms and blendings, no other psychic content remains, save that which is called appetites, tendencies, feelings, and will. These things are all the same and constitute the practical form of the spirit, in its infinite gradations and in its dialectic (pleasure and pain). Pure intuition, then, since it does not produce concepts, must represent the will in its manifestations, that is to say, it can represent nothing but _states of the soul_. And states of the soul are passionality, feeling, personality, which are found in every art and determine its lyrical character. Where this is absent, art is absent, _precisely because pure intuition is absent_, and we have at the most, in exchange for it, _that reflex_, philosophical, historical, or scientific. In the last of these, passion is represented, not immediately, but mediately, or, to speak exactly, it is no longer represented, but thought. Thus the origin of language, that is, its true nature, has several times been placed in _interjection_. Thus, too, Aristotle, when he wished to give an example of those propositions which were not _apophantic_, but generically _semantic_ (we should say, not logical, but purely Aesthetic), and did not predicate the logically true and false, but nevertheless said something, gave as example invocation or prayer, _hae enchae_. He added that these propositions do not appertain to Logic, but to Rhetoric and Poetic. A landscape is a state of the soul; a great poem may all be contained in an exclamation of joy, of sorrow, of admiration, or of lament. The more objective is a work of art, by so much the more is it poetically suggestive. If this deduction of lyricism from the intimate essence of pure intuition do not appear easily acceptable, the reason is to be sought in two very deep-rooted prejudices, of which it is useful to indicate here the genesis. The first concerns the nature of the _imagination_, and its likenesses to and differences from _fancy_. Imagination and fancy have been clearly distinguished thus by certain aestheticians (and among them, De Sanctis), as also in discussions relating to concrete art: they have held fancy, not imagination, to be the special faculty of the poet and the artist. Not only does a new and bizarre combination of images, which is vulgarly called _invention_, not constitute the artist, but _ne fait rien à l'affaire_, as Alceste remarked with reference to the length of time expended upon writing a sonnet. Great artists have often preferred to treat groups of images, which had already been many times used as material for works of art. The novelty of these new works has been solely that of art or form, that is to say, of the new _accent_ which they have known how to give to the old material, of the new way in which they have _felt_ and therefore _intuified_ it, thus creating _new images_ upon the old ones. These remarks are all obvious and universally recognized as true. But if mere imagination as such has been excluded from art, it has not therefore been excluded from the theoretic spirit. Hence the disinclination to admit that a pure intuition must of necessity express a state of the soul, whereas it may also consist, as they believe, of a pure image, without a content of feeling. If we form an arbitrary image of any sort, _stans pede in uno_, say of a bullock's head on a horse's body, would not this be an intuition, a pure intuition, certainly quite without any content of reflexion? Would one not attain to a work of art in this way, or at any rate to an artistic motive? Certainly not. For the image given as an instance, and every other image that may be produced by the imagination, not only is not a pure intuition, but it is not a _theoretic_ product of any sort. It is a product of _choice_, as was observed in the formula used by our opponents; and choice is external to the world of thought and contemplation. It may be said that imagination is a practical artifice or game, played upon that patrimony of images possessed by the soul; whereas the fancy, the translation of practical into theoretical values, of states of the soul into images, is the _creation_ of that patrimony itself. From this we learn that an image, which is not the expression of a state of the soul, is not an image, since it is without any theoretical value; and therefore it cannot be an obstacle to the identification of lyricism and intuition. But the other prejudice is more difficult to eradicate, because it is bound up with the metaphysical problem itself, on the various solutions of which depend the various solutions of the aesthetic problem, and _vice versa_. If art be intuition, would it therefore be any intuition that one might have of a _physical_ object, appertaining to _external nature_? If I open my eyes and look at the first object that they fall upon, a chair or a table, a mountain or a river, shall I have performed by so doing an aesthetic act? If so, what becomes of the lyrical character, of which we have asserted the necessity? If not, what becomes of the intuitive character, of which we have affirmed the equal necessity and also its identity with the former? Without doubt, the perception of a physical object, as such, does not constitute an artistic fact; but precisely for the reason that it is not a pure intuition, but a judgment of perception, and implies the application of an abstract concept, which in this case is physical or belonging to external nature. And with this reflexion and perception, we find ourselves at once outside the domain of pure intuition. We could have a pure perception of a physical object in one way only; that is to say, if physical or external nature were a metaphysical reality, a truly real reality, and not, as it is, a construction or abstraction of the intellect. If such were the case, man would have an immediate intuition, in his first theoretical moment, both of himself and of external nature, of the spiritual and of the physical, in an equal degree. This represents the dualistic hypothesis. But just as dualism is incapable of providing a coherent system of philosophy, so is it incapable of providing a coherent Aesthetic. If we admit dualism, we must certainly abandon the doctrine of art as pure intuition; but we must at the same time abandon all philosophy. But art on its side tacitly protests against metaphysical dualism. It does so, because, being the most immediate form of knowledge, it is in contact with activity, not with passivity; with interiority, not exteriority; with spirit, not with matter, and never with a double order of reality. Those who affirm the existence of two forms of intuition--the one external or physical, the other subjective or aesthetic; the one cold and inanimate, the other warm and lively; the one imposed from without, the other coming from the inner soul--attain without doubt to the distinctions and oppositions of the vulgar (or dualistic) consciousness, but their Aesthetic is vulgar. The lyrical essence of pure intuition, and of art, helps to make clear what we have already observed concerning the persistence of the intuition and of the fancy in the higher grades of the theoretical spirit, why philosophy, history, and science have always an artistic side, and why their expression is subject to aesthetic valuation. The man who ascends from art to thought does not by so doing abandon his volitional and practical base, and therefore he too finds himself in a particular _state of the soul_, the representation of which is intuitive and lyrical, and accompanies of necessity the development of his ideas. Hence the various styles of thinkers, solemn or jocose, troubled or gladsome, mysterious and involved, or level and expansive. But it would not be correct to divide intuition immediately into two classes, the one of _aesthetic_, the other of _intellectual_ or _logical_ intuitions, owing to the persistence of the artistic element in logical thought, because the relation of degrees is not the relation of classes, and copper is copper, whether it be found alone, or in combination as bronze. Further, this close connection of feeling and intuition in pure intuition throws much light on the reasons which have so often caused art to be separated from the theoretic and confounded with the practical activity. The most celebrated of these confusions are those formulated about the relativity of tastes and of the impossibility of reproducing, tasting, and correctly judging the art of the past, and in general the art of others. A life lived, a feeling felt, a volition willed, are certainly impossible to reproduce, because nothing happens more than once, and my situation at the present moment is not that of any other being, nor is it mine of the moment before, nor will be of the moment to follow. But art remakes ideally, and ideally expresses my momentary situation. Its image, produced by art, becomes separated from time and space, and can be again made and again contemplated in its ideal-reality from every point of time and space. It belongs not to the _world_, but to the _superworld_; not to the flying moment, but to eternity. Thus life passes, but art endures. Finally, we obtain from this relation between the intuition and the state of the soul the criterion of exact definition of the _sincerity_ required of artists, which is itself also an essential request. It is essential, precisely because it means that the artist must have a state of the soul to express, which really amounts to saying, that he must be an artist. His must be a state of the soul really experienced, not merely imagined, because imagination, as we know, is not a work of truth. But, on the other hand, the demand for sincerity does not go beyond asking for a state of the soul, and that the state of soul expressed in the work of art be a desire or an action. It is altogether indifferent to Aesthetic whether the artist have had only an aspiration, or have realized that aspiration in his empirical life. All that is quite indifferent in the sphere of art. Here we also find the confutation of that false conception of sincerity, which maintains that the artist, in his volitional or practical life, should be at one with his dream, or with his incubus. Whether or no he have been so, is a matter that interests his biographer, not his critic; it belongs to history, which separates and qualifies that which art does not discriminate, but represents. III This attitude of indiscrimination and indifference, observed by art in respect to history and philosophy, is also foreshadowed at that place of the _De interpretatione_ (_c_. 4), to which we have already referred, to obtain thence the confirmation of the thesis of the identity of art and language, and another confirmation, that of the identity of lyric and pure intuition. It is a really admirable passage, containing many profound truths in a few short, simple words, although, as is natural, without full consciousness of their richness. Aristotle, then, is still discussing the said rhetorical and poetical propositions, semantic and not apophantic, and he remarks that in them there rules no distinction between true and false: _to alaetheueion hae pseudeothai ouk hyparchei_. Art, in fact, is in contact with palpitating reality, but does not know that it is so in contact, and therefore is not truly in contact. Art does not allow itself to be troubled with the abstractions of the intellect, and therefore does not make mistakes; but it does not know that it does not make mistakes. If art, then (to return to what we said at the beginning), be the first and most ingenuous form of knowledge, it cannot give complete satisfaction to man's need to know, and therefore cannot be the ultimate end of the theoretic spirit. Art is the dream of the life of knowledge. Its complement is waking, lyricism no longer, but the concept; no longer the dream, but the judgment. Thought could not be without fancy; but thought surpasses and contains in itself the fancy, transforms the image into perception, and gives to the world of dream the clear distinctions and the firm contours of reality. Art cannot achieve this; and however great be our love of art, that cannot raise it in rank, any more than the love one may have for a beautiful child can convert it into an adult. We must accept the child as a child, the adult as an adult. Therefore, the Aesthetic of pure intuition, while it proclaims energetically the autonomy of art and of the aesthetic activity, is at the same time averse to all _aestheticism_, that is, to every attempt at lowering the life of thought, in order to elevate that of fancy. The origin of aestheticism is the same as that of mysticism. Both proceed from a rebellion against the predominance of the abstract sciences and against the undue abuse of the principle of causation in metaphysic. When we pass from the stuffed animals of the zoological museums, from anatomical reconstructions, from tables of figures, from classes and sub-classes constituted by means of abstract characters, or from the fixation and mechanization of life for the ends of naturalistic science, to the pages of the poets, to the pictures of the painters, to the melodies of the composers, when in fact we look upon life with the eye of the artist, we have the impression that we are passing from death to life, from the abstract to the concrete, from fiction to reality. We are inclined to proclaim that only in art and in aesthetic contemplation is truth, and that science is either charlatanesque pedantry, or a modest practical expedient. And certainly art has the superiority of its own truth; simple, small, and elementary though it be, over the abstract, which, as such, is altogether without truth. But in violently rejecting science and frantically embracing art, that very form of the theoretic spirit is forgotten, by means of which we can criticize science and recognize the nature of art. Now this theoretic spirit, since it criticizes science, is not science, and, as reflective consciousness of art, is not art. Philosophy, the supreme fact of the theoretic world, is forgotten. This error has been renewed in our day, because the consciousness of the limits of the natural sciences and of the value of the truth which belongs to intuition and to art, have been renewed. But just as, a century ago, during the idealistic and romantic period, there were some who reminded the fanatics for art, and the artists who were transforming philosophy, that art was not "the most lofty form of apprehending the Absolute"; so, in our day, it is necessary to awaken the consciousness of Thought. And one of the means for attaining this end is an exact understanding of the limits of art, that is, the construction of a solid Aesthetic. THE END