Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

“ It is from this cause that the language addresses itself so much to our senses, and the creations of its poetry become present to us with such stirring effect. The language abounds in roots of this character; and our commentators, who rather go too deep than too superficially, have shown enough of them. They never know when to quit, and, if possible, would lay bare all the roots and fibres of every tree, even where one would wish to see only the flowers and fruits. ”

“ Still more, he has seen that men are linguistic, as truly, naturally, inevitably, as that they are locomotive or intellectual; and therefore there is a priori reason to believe, that language is not arbitrary or accidental, but springs out of nature, with which it has vital connection. He says, that man is a speaking, as he is a seeing creature; that the parable of God's bringing all creatures to Adam, to name, signifies, that men named things by a pre-established law connecting the mind and outward nature with each other. ”

“ The root of the mother-word will stand in the centre, and around her the grove of her children. By influence of taste, diligence, sound sense, and the judicious comparison of different dialects, lexicons will be brought to distinguish what is essential from what is accidental in the signification of words, and to trace the gradual process of transition; while in the derivation of words, and the application of metaphors, we shall behold the invention of the human mind in its act, and more fully understand the logic of ancient figurative language. ”

“ And if the outer world is the vast dictionary and grammar of thought we speak of, then it is also an organ throughout of intelligence. Whose intelligence? By this question we are set directly confronting God, the universal Author; no more to hunt for him by curious arguments and subtle deductions, if haply we may find Him; but He stands expressed everywhere, so that, turn whichsoever way we please, we behold the outlooking of His intelligence. ”

“ When a great scientific discovery is made, and given forth to the world abstracted from its applications and a full development of its uses, it is apt to fall unobserved, and perhaps sleep for years. The world knows only of seeds that have sprouted. And yet, that a theory of language which, as an organic whole, and in some degree demonstrated as true, is certainly original, should have been passed over [3] so long, as at best but an ingenious and curious speculation, is somewhat strange. ”

“ Grammar and mathematics, for instance, are talked of in a mongrel of Latin and Greek words, whose laborious paraphrasing into equivalent English keeps off the mind, for a long time, from the real subject in hand. It is a commonly acknowledged drawback on all school-instruction, that the mind is employed about words, as counters, which prevents the faculties from being refreshed by those realities of nature intended to be signified by them. ”

“ Bushnell brings forward the argument drawn both from the existence of diverse languages and from the failure of all systems of etymology that have been broached, as if these were conclusive against it, and as a warning to future inquirers not to stumble on dark mountains. But always the discoveries of science seem impossible till they are made, and every erroneous path that is taken is called a conclusive experience. ”

“ Bushnell has done. He says, p. 48:—
"There is only a single class of intellectual words that can be said to have a perfectly determinate significance, viz. those which relate to what are called necessary ideas. They are such as time, space, cause, truth, right, arithmetical numbers, and geometrical figures. Here the names applied are settled into a perfectly determinate meaning, not by any peculiar virtue in them, but by reason of the absolute exactness of the ideas themselves. Time cannot be any thing more or less than time; truth cannot, in its idea, be any thing different from truth ”

“ You may find examples everywhere, even as the lexicons now are. Strike at the first radical form that occurs, as the primitive ‘he is gone,’ and observe the easy gradation of its derivatives. A series of expressions signifying loss, disappearance, and death, vain purposes, and fruitless toil and trouble, go on in soft transitions; and, if you place yourself in the circumstances of the ancient herdsmen, in their wandering, unsettled mode of life, the most distant derivative will still give back in its tones something of the original sound of the word, and of the original feeling. ”

“ There is a logos in the forms of things, by which they are prepared to serve as types or images of what, is inmost in our souls; and there is a logos also of construction in the relations of space, the position, qualities, connections, and predicates of things, by which they are formed into grammar. In one word, the outer world which envelopes our being is itself language, the power of all language. ‘Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge; there is no speech nor language where their sound is not heard ”

“ He even sees, that every word is, in the last analysis, the sign or vocal form of some material thing or action; but what is remarkable is, that while he sees all this, and farther sees that the application of words to moral and religious subjects follows the, same laws of imagination that are exemplified in those sentences which are called "figures of speech," he does not seem to see that the same laws of imagination determined the elements of single words to their subjects, so that every word which is not an imitation of nature, like hum, buzz, boom, is, as it were, a poem ”

“ In bad lexicons this is indeed the case, and many of the most learned philologists of Holland have rendered the way still more difficult by their labors. But the time is coming when this jungle will become a pleasant grove of palms. ”

“ The vast importance of nomenclature to natural science is exemplified in that of chemistry. This nomenclature is, in fact, the best instance of the invention of a language in modern scientific annals. There is a rational principle obvious. The new words explain themselves. A great deal of the time of students of all sciences is used up in settling the meaning of words,—defining ”