Ferdinand Tönnies

“ No doubt I give him the right to do so, but I give him also the right to the wisest disposal, division and determination of every part of it, and if I have any influence over his will I shall teach him to dispose of his means according to clearly conceived ends; and if I can further influence him in choosing his ends I shall teach him to aim at living as far as possible like a noble human being, and not to direct his efforts to sensuous enjoyment or idle honours. The freedom of the thinker must be understood in the same way. ”

“ We define the abstract concept as a work of art of scientific thought, but scientific thought as an operation with such creations by comparing them, partly with one another, partly with concrete concepts or with particular ideas. The abstract concept is an object to which any characteristics are given, whether presentable to sense or not, whether found connected in reality (“in experience”) or not; it is determined only by the end which the creation is to serve, and this end is knowledge of the relations between objects experienced, and capable of being experienced. ”

“ That the use of language, like other customs, has also a subjective side is obvious with so psychical an act as that of speech; and yet the object is so far intellectual that deviations and errors ought not to excite ill-will. Still, in every linguist there is another kind of dissatisfaction, or at any rate dissent, which makes itself felt, often only as at something ludicrous, and in less marked cases simply as the judgment which denies something as false, and as the wish to correct. ”

“ There at once the individual will, at the height of its enjoyment of power and of its artist’s pride, finds itself over against a more powerful social will which commands its respect, and which, forming itself in a council wherein the most distinguished masters have the greatest natural weight, and exercising its office of distinction and selection, determines with decisive sovereignty, what is to hold universally, what permanently, and what both universally and permanently. ”

“ But with the guarantee of public credit there is opened the door to deception and falsehood; here come in the historical debasements of the currency, which have played such a discreditable part, chiefly in times of transition to the modern state. The State, generally represented in its first phase by princes and their war-chests, lends value to the coins, not so much by moral guarantee as by force, which makes the universal medium of exchange into a legal medium of payment. ”

“ The description is here not merely a statement of limits, which must essentially refer to the comprehension of the concept; but it is as complete as possible a determination of its content, without regard to what the comprehension may be. It is only a make-shift when it is expressed in (not-defined) words of customary usage; science avails itself of this when and in so far as it has no other expressions defined by itself. Sigwart expresses this exactly in the words: “every definition presupposes a scientific terminology”. ”

“ Much less do we recognise the possibility and importance of free choice in the formation of concepts, or we tend to confuse it with the mere determining of the meaning of a word. And yet we have here the source of the mastery of the greatest problems. Conceptual matter is the iron which we, as thinkers, have to forge. ”

“ It is true that for mutual understanding a common idea-system is as necessary as a common sign-system; nay, more so, for if the ideas are there the signs are more easily and quickly gained, and therefore also substituted; while the knowledge of signs is worthless without knowledge of the ideas to which they are to be referred, and this knowledge is much more difficult to gain or replace, especially when we are no longer dealing with perceivable, but only with thinkable objects. ”

“ And so the more acute logicians have always seen that scientific definitions are propositions, the truth of which rests upon the will of the person advancing them. Even if a name already denotes a concept in some (e.g.) scientific usage (i.e. denotes a definitely limited universal idea) , still the person defining must appropriate this concept and the name, if the definition is to hold in his mental context also, i.e. is to be true for him. But free definition is completely necessary when we are operating with those works of thought of the individual which we here call abstract concepts. ”

“ Thus speculation, attaching itself to such naive ideas, makes the word itself into God, or into the revealed Son of God; and as the word can create all and change all it creates and changes itself into flesh, and moves as man among men. But even beyond the sphere of the miraculous a mysterious actual value is attributed to the word, and to certain words therefore a good or evil significance as omens. ”

“ But just as to a large extent laws merely fix, extend or limit, and more especially make consistent the norms of customary law, so also legal determinations treat the meanings of words. On the other hand this often occurs without any respect to customary usage, even in opposition to it. New concepts are formed, and for them new words are created or new meanings given to old ones. The legislator disposes freely of the material of language, but always holds it expedient to respect customary usage, by which indeed he often remains bound, even when he no longer feels himself to be so. ”

“ Its language (which is largely understood) is not yet a complete social organ, of which any one, born and bred in this society, makes use with comparative ease and certainty. This is the case in proportion as the customary usage of language has become a power. Here a mass of fixed meanings has been elaborated, so that word-idea and object-idea are regularly blended. Nevertheless, in many expressions, especially those which are more remote from everyday life (the expressions of complex ideas) the customary usage is uncertain, and leaves therefore greater freedom to individual application. ”

“ Theology, Jurisprudence, political and moral disciplines, is not (in our sense) free science; it has so far remained fettered to tradition and popular belief, often also to convention and legislation. Mathematics and the mathematical sciences correspond most closely to our concept of science. Everything which is called science, like everything which is called art, has its terminology, its technical concepts. ”

“ As a matter of fact free persons can, without being related as teacher and pupil, come to an agreement as to the validity of concepts and make compatible the meanings even of these words. But by the abstraction of science we express the thought—to which a wide reality corresponds—that the construction and coining of concepts is always originated by individuals of genius, who therefore to a certain extent, and primarily in their own school, occupy the position of legislators. ”

“ Perception is all apprehension through sense; recollection includes, besides the reproduction of perceptions, the reproduction of all other sensations in so far as they have an object, or at any rate a content which can be regarded as object. Human recollection is also thought. Thought, as we understand it here, is itself for the main part recollection of signs, and by means of signs of other things which are denoted. In what follows the name “ideas” is occasionally used to include both perceptions and recollections, but may also include feelings. ”

“ By the attribution of names, natural thought immediately satisfies the recurring need for knowledge and explanation; and this is closely connected with that imaginative-poetic animisation of nature which is always drawing fresh material from it, even though it becomes gradually drier and more prosaic. Even after scientific thought has proceeded so far as in our days among the best educated, that need is still always satisfied, when the activity of a human being is asserted or indicated as the cause of a phenomenon ”

“ We have already said that they make free use of language as of an instrument; the word is consciously formed as a means to the end of communication. Hence all unessential “accessories” fall away, which express feelings and excite feelings; language becomes prosaic, and the “dry” written expression is therefore adequate; the individual element is submerged, and definite social styles, forms, and methods rule as patterns—and this all the more in proportion as what corresponds to these ideas presents itself clearly in reality. ”

“ Since mutual imitation is the expression of unanimity, this, the natural harmony of minds, may be regarded as the first cause of a current meaning of words, as of other signs. In every nursery, in the bosom of every happy family, we may see how new names for men and things are invented and understood, how they are taken up and repeated from delight in them or in their inventor—e.g., the child who imitates the sound. It is similar when, in larger communities of language, orators and authors introduce new and special words, or new meanings for old words ”

“ It is true that at first the development of gesture-language is the easier, just because it deals with a greater number of natural signs; hence in the earlier phases of human development it is only supplemented by sound-language; a relation which afterwards reverses itself, until finally the sound-language as fixed in writing acts by itself alone and lacks even the explanation which the speaker gives to his words by the modulation of his voice. The progress from sensuous and particular to conceptual and universal communications develops itself in general in the same relation. ”

“ In every circle of human beings, that which all know (or at any rate may learn) , that therefore to which all feel themselves bound, is held to be so real (i.e., like the natural) , the connexion between name and thing becomes so firm, that it is felt and thought of as necessary. ”

“ But here we are distinguishing and defining, and take therefore no account of customary language; thus affording, ourselves, an instance of scientific freedom in forming and classifying concepts; a freedom limited only by criticism of its conduciveness to the end in view. (It is in this way that we expect to justify our ideas in the course of the treatise.)
41. But if we investigate social habit, usage, more closely, we find that something of the kind always arises where the living together of men rests upon the bases most natural to it. ”

“ The use of signs of different kinds, which is so infinitely important for the whole cultured life of humanity, depends principally upon made signs. Sensation in common, thought and belief in common, make themselves known in the use of signs, even when these have no other purpose than to afford expression to just this feeling and fellow-feeling, to be “symbols” of the community. ”

“ The social will, which we there defined as belief, exists before it and itself conditions it. But here it is thought—this again is only an ideal limiting-case—that the social will is primarily represented only by the individual person of the teacher; around him there gather the scholars, who acquiesce of their own free insight in the recognition of the concepts formed by him, and agree that their signs shall hold good. Here teaching is far from bringing about a belief in the signs, participation in their special and consecrated or even only aesthetic meaning. ”

“ Old and new attempts to construct a universal language correspond to a thoroughly reasonable and necessary idea, which in the present extension of intercourse will sooner or later take deeper root and make rapid growth. We cannot indeed deny that in many respects it would be better to elevate a given, natural language to the rank of an international means of communication ”

“ When any society elects a Commission, and instructs it to draw up the conventional rules accepted in it, altering them as may seem good, replacing the less expedient by the more expedient, and determines unanimously to conform to these new rules—then this Commission becomes a legislative body. Such an origin and authorisation of legislation is here thought of as a normal case. ”