Corpus

“ If we analyse a judgment, every word in which it is expressed, whether it is a noun or a verb or a preposition or a conjunction, conveys a distinct meaning, indicates a term or a relation, each of which can be made a distinct object to the mind, and all of which are combined in the single meaning the judgment expresses. It is in this complexity that the possibility of error lies, and the possibility increases as the complexity increases. ”

“ To understand the word itself it is necessary that there shall be a consciousness and an inference leading to a judgment that the word is such or such, as a sound or a written symbol, and the whole process by sensation and perception must be repeated with every word in order to distinguish it as a word. Then perception, apprehension, and reflection are all employed in confirming a judgment about the meaning of the word, and no word has any meaning until it is interpreted into concepts of number, space, motion, time, or judgment, one or all. ”

“ Phrenology claims to be a science in which the relation of the functions of mind to the material of the brain substance is observed. It asserts that just as speech, taste, touch, &c., have their centres in certain convolutions of the brain, so have benevolence, firmness, conscientiousness, &c., and that by studying the configuration of the brain, as indicated by that of the skull, a man's character may be approximately discovered. ”

“ Having pointed out the importance of correct grammar and the right choice of language, I wish now to furnish you with some practical suggestions for the construction of sentences. Remember that a good thought often suffers from a weak and faulty expression of it.
Your sentences will certainly shape themselves after the structure of your own mind. If your thoughts are vivid and definite, so will be your language; if dreamy and hazy, so will your composition be obscure. Your speech, whether oral or written, can be but the expression of yourself; and what you are, that speech will be. ”

“ If the common faculties of understanding were attached to particular organs, the person who possesses the organ of any common faculty ought to be endowed with all particular kinds of faculties. If there were an organ of perception, of memory, of judgment, or of imagination, any one who has the organ of perception, of memory, of judgment, or of imagination, ought to possess all kinds of perception, of memory, of judgment, or of imagination. ”

“ But since no speech contains a verb which might present to us a verbal form which is not also the form of a determined verb, nor a conditional which does not point with precision to the action or occurrence subordinated to a condition, it is evident that the scheme places before us, not the living and concrete body of the speech, but a dissected and dead part of this body. ”

“ For all those who do not hold the view that words and thoughts originate from sources above and outside the nerve substance, the localization of the functions of speech in portions of the cortex follows as a necessary postulate of logic.... ”

“ But after all my rambling thoughts upon that Subject, I must leave it to better Reasoners than my self to determine, whether Speech and Reason are so individual, that whatever Creature has any share in the one, must be allow’d to partake of the other. However it be, the Letter I have been lately observing, has throughly convinc’d me, that whether a Man may Speak or no, at least he may Write without Reason. But this I am sure is a Digression in me, whatever it was in the Author of the Memoirs. ”

“ Now this dependence of the cognitive mind on its organ of language, discursive indeed, but yet almost always figurative—this close and intimate connection between man’s knowledge and his speech—is even the characteristic mark of human intelligence. ”

“ In any case the psychological distinction between a brute and a man consists in the latter being able to mean a proposition; and the kind of mental act which this involves is technically termed a “judgment.” Predication, or the making of a proposition—whether by gesture, tone, speech, or writing,—is nothing more nor less than the expression of a judgment; and a judgment is nothing more nor less than the apprehension of whatever meaning it may be that a proposition serves to set forth. ”

“ Thus if anyone ask what is the mind's object when you say 'Columbus discovered America in 1492,' most people will reply 'Columbus,' or 'America,' or, at most, 'the discovery of America.' They will name a substantive kernel or nucleus of the consciousness, and say the thought is 'about' that,—as indeed it is,—and they will call that your thought's 'object.' Really that is usually only the grammatical object, or more likely the grammatical subject, of your sentence. ”

“ All that we can know of the mind of an individual is from the communication of his ideas in terms or signs which are conventional between us, in order to be intelligible, or from his actions. Thus by discourse, which is imparted to the ear, or by intelligible characters presented to the eye, which convey his thoughts, and by his conduct, we are enabled to estimate the character of his mind. ”

“ His phraseology rolls ever in solemn and majestic periods, in which every substantive marches ceremoniously accompanied by its epithet; grand pompous words peal like an organ; every proposition is set forth balanced by a proposition of equal length; thought is developed with the compressed regularity and official splendour of a procession. ”

“ It has been shown that there is a faculty of the mind by which bodies are cognized as kinds, which has been called sensation. It has further been shown that there is a faculty of the cognition of bodies as forms, which has been called perception. It is now designed to demonstrate that there is a faculty of the mind by which bodies are cognized as forces, and this faculty I shall call apprehension. ”

“ On the one side we have seen logicians comparing them to so many letters, and on the other psychologists enumerating the several sensible properties of gold or wax—their colour, weight, texture, &c.—as instances of such elements. In this way formal logic and sensationalist psychology have been but blind leaders of the blind. Language, which has enabled thought to advance to the level at which reflection about thought can begin, is now an obstacle in the way of a thorough analysis of it. ”

“ It was natural enough that the originators of conceptual logic, seeing that judgments can be expressed by propositions, and conceptions by terms, should fall into the error of supposing that, as propositions consist of terms, so judgments consist of conceptions, and that there is a triple mental order—conception, judgment, reasoning—parallel to the triple linguistic order—term, proposition, discourse. ”

“ Again, in the multiplied reflex action of the mind upon itself and its own judgments and conceptions, there may be some imperfections in the analysis or critical examination of the component parts of the idea, in the synthesis or construction of these component parts into an ideal formula, and in the language by which verbal expression is given to the conceptions of the mind. What is to be aimed at is, to obtain intellectual conceptions which are clear and adequate to the idea, and a verbal expression which is also clear and adequate to the mental conception. ”

“ Or, again, when you say 'lion,' 'stag,' 'horse,' or any other words which denote agents--neither in this way of stringing words together do you attain to discourse; for there is no expression of action or inaction, or of the existence of existence or non-existence indicated by the sounds, until verbs are mingled with nouns; then the words fit, and the smallest combination of them forms language, and is the simplest and least form of discourse.
THEAETETUS: Again I ask, What do you mean?
STRANGER: When any one says 'A man learns,' should you not call this the simplest and least of sentences? ”

“ When we remember that the sentence, and not the isolated word, is the starting-point of philology—when we make it what the logician would term the fundamentum divisionis for our classification of speech—there is no longer any difficulty in distinguishing between the several families of speech, and assigning to each its character and place. ”

“ An attentive investigation will show, that there is no way in which the individual mind can, within itself, to any extent, combine its ideas, but by the intervention of words. Every process of the reasoning powers, beyond the immediate perception of sensible objects, depends on the structure of speech; and, in a great degree, according to the excellence of this chief instrument of all mental operations, will be the means of personal improvement, of the social transmission of thought, and the elevation of national character. ”

“ The powers of abstraction and generalization, memory and reason, the tendencies which occasion the inflexions and combinations of words, are all necessary to the formation and use of language. Are not these parts of the same scheme of which the bodily faculties by which we are able to speak are another part? Has man his mental powers independently of the creator of his bodily frame? To what purpose then, or by what cause was the curious and complex machinery of the tongue, the glottis, the larynx produced? ”

“ We express in language, by means of verbs, adjectives, and equivalent expressions, what, as to their qualities, things are, what they do, and in what relation they stand. But in addition to such expressions, by which we qualify, describe, compare, and distinguish the various objects that we observe and think about, we have certain other expressions by means of which we assert that given objects are, or are real, rather than are not, or are unreal. Now, in technical phrase, we shall hereafter call the expressions of the latter type the ontological vocabulary of our language. ”

“ The material with which we think is language and speech concept, a thing which has been used from time immemorial as something external, a bridge for thought, and which has a single purpose—that of communication. ”

“ We must conversely, as soon as the idea arises in our mind, associate with it a mental image of the word, and by means of this image we must innervate our articulatory apparatus so as to reproduce the word as physical sound. To read or to write a language other elements still must be introduced. But it is plain that the faculty of spoken language alone is so complicated as to call into play almost all the elementary powers which the mind possesses, memory, imagination, association, judgment, and volition. ”

“ In this mood the verb must have an agent and object, expressed or implied; as, "farmers cultivate the soil." But a whole sentence, that is, an idea written out, may perform this duty; as, "The study of grammar, on false principles, is productive of no good." What is productive of no good? What is the agent of is? "The study," our books and teachers tell us. But does such a construction give the true meaning of the sentence? ”

“ Being, as they are, objective products of subjective processes, they must display corresponding changes; and that they do this, the cases of Language, of Science, of Art, clearly prove.
If we strike out from our sentences everything but nouns and verbs, we shall perceive how extremely vague is the expression of ideas in undeveloped tongues. When we note how each inflection of a verb or addition by which the case of a noun is marked, serves to limit the conditions of action or of existence, we see that these constituents of speech enable men more precisely to communicate their thoughts. ”

“ The Faculty of Speech and the Speech-Centers
The origin of man has been traced to Eastern prehuman groups. The origin of words has been traced to the mind through the faculty of speech. Just when our kind became human, no one knows. When man acquired the most important of his peculiar faculties, no one knows. ”

“ As these [tropes and figures of composition] are a deviation from the principles of metaphysics and logic, they are frequently VICIOUS. Since the Attribute of this proposition is so peculiarly offensive to you, your first care, methinks, should have been to gain precise and exact ideas of the subject; without which it is not possible to judge, whether what is affirmed of it be exceptionable, or no.
By tropes and figures of composition, you seem to understand metaphors, allegories, similitudes,370 and whatever else is vulgarly known under the name of figures of speech. ”

“ The faculty of rational Discourse, as Max Müller pointed out, is denominated in Greek by the word λόγος, applicable at once to the mental activity and to its appropriate expression in speech. Discourse is an instrument by means of which man has been enabled to construct his whole system of representations of the world in which he lives, the system of what is commonly called his Knowledge. ”

“ From what has already been said of Substance, what is to be said of Attribute is easily deducible. For if we know not, and can not know, any thing of bodies but the sensations which they excite in us or in others, those sensations must be all that we can, at bottom, mean by their attributes; and the distinction which we verbally make between the properties of things and the sensations we receive from them, must originate in the convenience of discourse rather than in the nature of what is signified by the terms. ”

“ Scientific methods applied to linguistic research have separated the abstract entities from the concrete: the soul of a word no longer is confused with its form in sound or with its graphic sign; the spirit of a tongue is not confounded with its sustentacular principles. Many difficulties have been cleared away, which formerly obscured the unities of the concrete and the abstract phenomena of linguistics. Modern methods have enabled some of the more intelligent of our specialists to discuss, with a semblance of reason, such things as values, realities, entities, and identities. ”