Philosophy of language

“ The language in which you think out philosophy and science in your mind, and argue with others in public — is not that the language for writing philosophy and science? If it is not, how then do you reason out those truths within yourselves and in company of others in that very language? The language in which we naturally express ourselves, in which we communicate our anger, grief, or love, etc.— there cannot be a fitter language than that. ”

“ But as language is to express the products of this activity, and as it is cast, so to say, not in the mould of consciousness, but in that of the intellect, it is impossible for us to speak without some logical or ideal combination. ”

“ Now, the soul furnishes the cognitive mind with language for the expression of its cognitions; and it is even the distinctive character of human knowledge, that it depends on language, which not only forms an essential constituent of it, but is also its indispensable organ. ”

“ Language, however, the discursive, but at the same time also the vividly figurative language of man, is entirely the product of the soul, which in its production first of all, and pre-eminently, manifests its fruitful and creative energy. In this wonderful creation the two constituent faculties of the soul—fancy and reason—play an equal and co-ordinate part. ”

“ Such are the benefits of language, even in its fugitive state; but the noblest of all the benefits which it confers, is in that permanent transmission of thought, which gives to each individual the powers and the wisdom of his species ”

“ How truly language must be regarded as a hindrance to thought, though the necessary instrument of it, we shall clearly perceive on remembering the comparative force with which simple ideas are communicated by signs. ”

“ The question as to the origin of language, or, more correctly, the question how man attained to the capacity for this wonderful gift or faculty of speech, which forms so considerable and essential a part of his whole nature, if it is to be taken merely as a matter of historical research and philosophical learning, lies out of the circle which we have marked out to ourselves. A discussion exclusively confined to this special branch of philology has little in unison with speculations involving the inner experience of life and psychological observation. ”

“ Philosophy can not deal with the origin of language as a simple phase since at this point roots in linguistics the science has many divergent roots leading to biology, physiology, comparative anatomy, the gregarious instincts, anthropology, and the basic principles of psychology. But philosophy may deal with the origin of the parts of speech, or other factors of a tongue, as a relatively simple phase of an equally complex phenomenon. ”

“ But now, in order to develop still more completely, and more accurately to ascertain the part which the soul, as the creator of language, contributes to human cognition and knowledge, it will be necessary to examine nicely the essence of reason, and especially in relation to its collateral and closely-connected, but subordinate faculties. ”

“ For fully to complete a knowledge of ourselves, and of life in general, a few particulars only remain to be added, and a comprehensive review of the whole once more to be taken. And this, in the natural order of this simple development of thought, forms the next subject of our labors. By reason of the close vital connection which subsists between thought and speech, language served in the first instance for an external basis of comparison, which in the next place art enabled me to carry still farther, inasmuch as the latter may also be regarded as an inner language. ”

“ His writings are mainly on social and political philosophy, and are based ultimately on one great principle, the divine origin of language. In his own words, “L’homme pense sa parole avant de parler sa pensée” ”

“ But a fatal objection to the hypothesis as explaining the universal and complete principle of the phenomenon of language in all its ramifications, is the fact that the noblest and most cultivated languages are found, upon investigation into their earliest state, to possess, even at this date, the most artificial form, and to be manifoldly rich, and at the same time highly regular and simple. ”

“ When all has been said that logic or mental philosophy can say about the high value of comparative philology, general grammar, and the like, the lowest value of the least important language will still stand high, and pre-eminently high that of what may be called the noble Languages. ”

“ As the intention of all speech is the expression of thought, and as the final purpose of all thinking is the discovery of truth, so the ideal of language, the point toward which it strives, is the absolute form for the realization of intellectual function.
In this high quest no tongue can be overlooked, none can be left out of account. One is just as important as another. ”

“ We require no supernatural interference, nor any conclave of ancient sages, to explain the realities of human speech. All that is formal in language is the result of rational combination; all that is material, the result of a mental instinct. ”

“ Does it not follow, then, that the more accurately we use words the closer definition we shall give to our thoughts? “And by drilling ourselves to write perspicuously we train our minds to clarify our thought, since language is the expression of thought. ”

“ But I need hardly say that I did not lose sight, therefore, of the intellectual and historical character of language; and I may here express my conviction that the Science of Language will yet enable us to withstand the extreme theories of the evolutionists, and to draw a hard and fast line between spirit and matter, between man and brute. ”

“ With one foot language stands, no doubt, in the realm of nature, but with the other in the realm of the spirit. Some years ago, when I thought it necessary to bring out as clearly as possible the much neglected natural element in language, I tried to explain in what sense the Science of Language had a right to be called the last and the highest of the natural sciences. ”

“ Do you know that language is born of human experience, and is a physical science? Do you know that every word has been suggested in some way by the feelings or observations of man—that there are words as tender as the dawn, as serene as the stars, and others as wild as the beasts? Do you know that language is dying and being born continually—that every language has its cemetery and its cradle, its bud and blossom, and withered leaf? Man has loved, enjoyed and suffered, and language is simply the expression he gives those experiences. ”

“ Having thus explained the manner in which I intend to treat the science of language, I hope in my next lecture to examine the objections of those philosophers who see in language nothing but a contrivance devised by human skill for the more expeditious communication of our thoughts, and who would wish to see it treated, not as a production of nature, but as a work of human art. ”

“ Idiomatic expression, the soul of language, has its incipiency in the soul of a people, and may pervade it for centuries before the body of the language, the words in which its thoughts are clad, makes its appearance. ”

“ If we speak of language as the outward realization of thought, we do not mean language as deposited in a dictionary, or sketched in a grammar; we mean language as an act, language as being spoken, language as living and dying with every word that is uttered. ”

“ The word Right should be excluded from political language, as the word Cause from the language of philosophy. ”

“ But the truer answer to the inquiry how language arose, is this: God gave man language, just as He gave him reason, and just because He gave him reason; for what is man's word but his reason, coming forth that it may behold itself? ”

“ We shall always use the word “language” in its largest sense, in which it denotes any system of things or procedures or events considered as a means of communication of thoughts. In everyday life we find nothing mysterious in the fact of the existence of Language ”

“ Given so small a number of graphic and demonstrative roots as would hardly suffice to express the commonest wants of human beings, to produce an instrument that shall render the faintest shades of feeling and thought;—given a vague infinitive or a stern imperative, to derive from it such moods as an optative or subjunctive, and tenses as an aorist or paulo-post future;—given incoherent utterances, to arrange them into a system where all is uniform and [pg 309] regular, all combined and harmonious;—such is the work of the human mind which we see realized in “language.” ”

“ Yet language never was adequate to thought, or its matrix—perhaps never will be, surely not as long as language is vivified by the spirit of progress; but words came to be the indispensable tools with which the soul must work out its destiny. What the hand was to the brain, the tongue is to the mind. Thus humanity found one of its authentic gods in itself. In that discovery lies the chief hope of the race. ”

“ Language is the sum total of those articulate sounds which man, by the aid of this marvellous faculty of speech, has produced and accepted as the signs of all those inward and outward phenomena wherewith he is made acquainted by sense and thought. These signs are “those [2] shadows of the soul, those living sounds which we call words! and compared with them how poor are all other monuments of human power, or perseverance, or skill, or genius! They render the mere clown an artist, nations immortal, writers, poets, philosophers divine!” ”

“ It is the object of the comparative philologist to gather up the scattered fragments, to arrange them and fit them, and thus to show that language is something rational, human, intelligible, the very embodiment of the mind of man in its growth from the lowest to the highest stage, and with capabilities for 39 further growth far beyond what we can at present conceive or imagine. ”

“ The study of our language is further facilitated from the fact, that when its fundamental principles are fully understood, you will naturally have a word for every meaning, instead of a variety of meanings for one word. ”

“ Then we cannot forget what we imply when we say that language is the expression of thought. Words determine the size and shape of ideas. As exactly as the coin answers to the die in which it is struck, does the thought answer to the word by which it is uttered. ”

“ This short survey must suffice to show you how omnipresent the Science of Language has become in all spheres of human knowledge, and how far its limits have been extended, so that it often seems impossible for one man to embrace the whole of its vast domain. ”

“ It is true, also, that if you consult the works of the most distinguished modern philosophers you will find that whenever they speak of language, they take it for granted that language is a human invention, that words are artificial signs, and that the varieties of human speech arose from different nations agreeing on different sounds as the most appropriate signs of their different ideas. ”

“ No one who has once discovered this hidden life of language, no one who has once found out that what seemed to be merely anomalous and whimsical in language is but, as it were, a petrification of thought, of deep, curious, poetical, philosophical thought, will ever rest again till he has descended as far as he can descend into the ancient shafts of human speech, exploring level after level, and testing every successive foundation which supports the surface of each spoken language. ”

“ It is well to pursue this particular topic somewhat further, because this special difficulty arising from the creation of something out of nothing, triumphantly propounded by a certain class of philosophers, is echoed by others as if it concluded the question. The received meaning of language is often a great help to the mind in representing to itself in thought the idea that is expressed by the word. ”

“ Written language is the arbitrary visual sign of spoken language, and spoken language is the arbitrary sign, it may be, of an experienced thing or of an abstract idea. Is, then, this property of our ideas which we call truth the correspondence of ideas with their objects, and is falsity the absence of this correspondence? ”

“ It sometimes happens that toward the close of the downward period, when the words have lost part of their significance, and have not yet begun to recover it, persons arise whose leading and favorite idea is the importance of clear conceptions and precise thought, and the necessity, therefore, of definite language. ”

“ By training his mind to logical deductions, he acquires by degrees, the facility of combining ideas; and, guided by analogy, he reasons correctly without effort. Reasoning is learned like languages. At first, we hesitate in placing the words of a foreign tongue—we are obliged to recollect the rule which is to guide us in every part of speech; but when thoroughly versed in the genius of the language, we speak it fluently, without thinking about the arrangement of words. ”

“ Language, rather than matter, would thus become the object of emulation—speeches would swell into orations—and, in this contention and conflict of genius, men of cleverness, ready wit, brilliant imagination, retentive memory, caustic reply, and last, though not least, soundness of constitution, would rise to the surface, far above those who, with much deeper reflection, much heavier sense, more sterling knowledge, and more powerful judgment, were yet found to be wanting in activity in their parts of speech. ”

“ For language has grown with the human mind, as representing its knowledge of the world: this knowledge consists of the resemblances and differences of things and of the activities of things, that is, of classes and causes; and as there is such order in the world, so there must be in language: language, therefore, embodies an irregular classification of things with their attributes and relations according to our knowledge and beliefs. ”