David Hartley

“ After the fall, we may suppose, that Adam and Eve extended their language to new objects and ideas, and especially to those which were attended with pain; and this they might do sometimes by inventing new words, sometimes by giving new senses to old ones. However, their language would still continue narrow, because they had only one another to converse with, and could not extend their knowledge to any great variety of things; also because their foundation was narrow. For the growth and variations of a language somewhat resemble the increase of money at interest upon interest. ”

“ Diversity of languages does also both help the invention, and correct false judgments. For we think in words, as appears by the foregoing theory, and invent chiefly by means of their analogies; at the same time that a servile adherence to those of any one language, or the putting words for things, would lead us into many errors. Now diversity of languages does both enlarge the field of invention, and by opposing analogy to analogy preserve us from the prejudices derived from mere verbal agreements. ”

“ And, indeed, since children learn the uses of words most evidently without having any data, any fixed point at all, it is to be hoped, that philosophers, and candid persons, may learn at last to understand one another with facility and certainty; and get to the very bottom of the connexion between words and ideas.
It seems practicable to make a dictionary of any language, in which the words of that language shall all be explained with precision by words of the same language, to persons who have no more than a gross knowledge of that language. ”

“ Thus the fore-legs of men and fowls, as we might call them in a harsh, literal, or a highly figurative way, are termed hands and wings respectively. However, in some cases, the same word is used, and considered as a figure; as when the cries of birds and beasts are termed their language. We may also observe, that every part in every animal may, from its resemblance in shape and use to the corresponding parts in several other animals, have a just right to a name, which shall be common to it and them. ”

“ For the more any one looks into the external natural world, the more analogies, general or particular, perfect or imperfect, will he find every where.
Numbers, geometrical figures, and algebraic quantities, are also mutually analogous without limits. And here there is the exactest uniformity, joined with an endless variety, so that it is always certain and evident how far the analogy holds, and where it becomes a disparity or opposition on one hand, or a coincidence on the other. ”

“ And the ideas of all may still retain their peculiarities, by which they are distinguished from each other, after they have fallen below the limits of pleasure into indifference, just as obscure colours, or faint tastes, do.
It is observable, that the mere transit of words expressing strong ideas over the ears of children affects them; and the same thing is true of adults, in a less degree. However, the last have learnt from experience and habit to regard them chiefly, as they afford a rational expectation of pleasure and pain. ”

“ Where languages have rules of etymology and syntax, that differ greatly, which is the case of the Hebrew compared with Greek or Latin, this will become a new source of difformity. For the rules of etymology and syntax determine the application and purport of words in many cases. Agreeably to which we see that children, while yet unacquainted with that propriety of words and phrases which custom establishes, often make new words and constructions, which, though improper according to common usage, are yet very analogous to the tenor of the language in which they speak. ”

“ As the sight and sound of words, impressed upon us on common occasions, do not at all suggest the original of these words from simple letters, this being a light in which grammarians and linguists alone consider words; so the complex pleasures and pains may pass over men’s minds, and be felt daily, and yet not be considered by them as mere combinations, unless they be peculiarly attentive and inquisitive in this respect. ”

“ And yet, since our imperfect languages improve, purify, and correct themselves perpetually by themselves, and by other means, so that we may hope at last to obtain a language, which shall be an adequate representation of ideas and a pure channel of conveyance for truth alone, analogy seems to suggest, that the mixture of pleasures and pains, which we now experience, will gradually tend to a collection of pure pleasures only, and that association may be the means of effecting this, as remarked in the ninth corollary of the fourteenth proposition. ”

“ The association therefore of the sound nurse, with the picture of the nurse upon the retina, will be far stronger than that with any other visible impression, and thus overpower all the other accidental associations, which will also themselves contribute to the same end by opposing one another. ”

“ VIII. As persons, before they learn to read, must have very imperfect notions of the distinction of words, and can only understand language in a gross general way, taking whole clusters of words for one undivided sound, so much less can they be supposed to have any conceptions concerning the nature or use of letters. Now all mankind must have been in this state before the invention of letters. ”

“ And if it was used only for the conveyance of important facts to the succeeding generations, we have no reason to expect the incidental mention of it. It was probably so tedious and difficult a thing to express themselves accurately in it, and verbal messages and contracts so easy and natural in those simple ages, when the veracity of the messenger or contractor was not suspected, as that writing was never used after the confusion of tongues, when language became copious, unless in affairs of great consequence. ”

“ In words of the second class, viz. such as have both ideas and definitions, it often happens, that one person’s knowledge is much more full than another’s, and, consequently, his idea and definition much more extensive. This must cause a misapprehension on one side, which yet may easily be rectified by recurring to the definition. It happens also sometimes in words of this class, that a man’s ideas, i.e. the miniatures excited in his nervous system by the word, are not always suitable to his definition, i.e. are not the same with those which the words of the definition would excite. ”

“ And it is evident, that if we suppose a people so rude in language and knowledge, as to have names only for the parts of the human body, and not to have attended to the parts of the brute creatures, association would lead them to apply the same names to the parts of the brute creatures, as soon as they became acquainted with them. ”

“ Let a, b, c, d, &c. the several letters of an alphabet, supposed to be sufficiently extensive for the purpose, represent respectively the several simple sensible pleasures and pains, to which a child becomes subject upon its first entrance into the world. Then will the various combinations of these letters represent the various combinations of pleasures and pains, formed by the events and incidents of human life; and, if we suppose them to be also the words of a language, this language will be an emblem or adumbration of our passage through the present life ”

“ They who suppose Adam to be capable of deep speculations, and to have exceeded all his posterity in the subtilty and extent of his intellectual faculties, and consequently in the number and variety of his words, and the ideas belonging to them, have no foundation for this opinion in scripture; nor do they seem to consider, that innocence, and pure unmixed happiness, may exist without any great degrees of knowledge ”

“ We may also see reasons to make us judge, that a diversity of languages is suited to the other circumstances of mankind. For this must prevent the infection of vice from spreading with such rapidity, as it would otherwise have done, had mankind lived together in one large body, and had a free communication with each other by means of the same language. ”

“ In comparing animals of different kinds the analogy grows perpetually less and less, as we take in a greater compass; and consequently our language more and more harsh, when considered as literal, whilst yet it cannot well be figurative in some things, and literal in others ”

“ If then this person should pretend, or even design, to reason from his definition, and yet reason from his idea, a misapprehension will arise in the hearer, who supposes him to reason from his definition merely. ”

“ When the complex pleasures and pains, formed from miniatures of the sensible ones, become the means of gaining other and greater pleasures, viz. by fading from frequent repetition, and so becoming mere ideas, or by any other method, we must suppose, that our present knowledge in language is used as a means of attaining farther knowledge in it. ”

“ For it cannot be supposed, that any nation should be so far destitute of language, as not to have words for common objects, and internal feelings; or having these, that they should lay them entirely aside, and adopt the artificial names of the marks representing those objects and ideas in their steads. But they might easily adopt names, simple or compound, at first ascribed artificially to marks, whose objects and ideas had before this adoption no names. ”

“ Thus we may see, how children and others are enabled to understand a continued discourse relating to sensible impressions only, and how the words in passing over the ear must raise up trains of visible and other ideas by the power of association. ”

“ And though this, in our present state of ignorance, cannot but seem an impracticable project, yet the same ignorance should teach us, that we can form no notions at all of the great increase of knowlege, which may come in future ages, and which seems promised to come in the latter happy times predicted by the prophecies. However, the great, and to former times inconceivable, advancement of knowledge, which has been made in the two last centuries, may help a little to qualify our prejudices. ”

“ Since the Chinese marks are very numerous, and their simple words very few, whereas our words are very numerous, and our simple marks, or the letters of our alphabet, very few; also since our words are the sole immediate representatives of objects and ideas, our written and printed marks being merely artificial pictures of words; one might suspect, that the Chinese words are, in correspondence to this, merely an artificial enunciation of their character. ”

“ They must resemble one another, because the phænomena of nature, which they are all intended to express, and the uses and exigences of human life, to which they minister, have a general resemblance. But then, as the bodily make and genius of each people, the air, soil, and climate, commerce, arts, sciences, religion, &c. make considerable differences in different ages and nations, it is natural to expect, that the languages should have proportionable differences in respect of each other. ”

“ And here again we may observe, that though there are some natural bodies, which absorb and stifle within themselves almost all the light which they receive, and which accordingly are dark, black, and unpleasant to the beholders, yet the greatest part of natural bodies either reflect lively colours, or reflect some, and transmit others, or transmit all the colours freely. ”

“ Animals are also analogous to vegetables in many things, and vegetables to minerals: so that there seems to be a perpetual thread of analogy continued from the most perfect animal to the most imperfect mineral, even till we come to elementary bodies themselves. ”