Chapter XIII (4)

Our fathers had not the best materials out of which to build up a republic; neither, in all cases, were they themselves sufficiently ripe for the experiment. They had the old leaven of European prejudice largely intermingled in their minds and character. They could not help, it is true, their original make, nor the fashioning which their age, time, and circumstances had put upon them. All this has to be taken into the estimate of any philosophical judgment respecting their performances. But they had learned from the past to trust the present, and to span the future with rainbows of hope. They stood face to face with the people, and each looked into the others' eyes and read there the grounds and sureties of an immortal triumph. Instead, therefore, of resting the supreme power of government in the hands of a person, or a class, making the former a monarch, and creating the other an aristocracy, those grand magistrates and senators of human liberty who framed the Constitution of the new American Nation, made the nation its own sovereign, and clothed it with the authority and majesty of self-government.

A venture so daring, and of an audacity so Titanic and sublime, seemed at that time and long afterward to require the wisdom and omnipotence of gods to guide it over the breakers, and steer it into the calm waters of intelligent government. All the world, except the handful of thinkers and enthusiasts scattered here and there over Europe, was against it, mocked at its bravery and aspirations, and sincerely hoped and believed that some great and sudden calamity would dissolve it like a baleful enchantment. But the hope of the republic was in the people, and they justified the fathers and the institution.

Here, therefore, was opened in all the directions of human inquiry and action a new world of hope and promise. The people were no longer bound by old traditions, nor clogged by any formulas of state religions, nor hampered by the dicta of philosophical authority. Their minds were free to choose or to reject whatever propositions were presented to them from the wide region of speculation and belief. The Constitution was the only instrument which prescribed laws and principles for their unconditional acceptance and guidance; and this was a thing of their own choice, the charter and seal of their liberties, to which they rendered a cheerful and grateful obedience.

With this mighty security for a platform, they pursued their daily avocations in peace, trusting their own souls, and working out the problem of republican society, with a most healthy unconsciousness. Sincere and earnest, they troubled themselves with no social theories, no visions of Utopia, nor dreams of Paradise and El Dorados, leaving the spirit which animated them to build up the architecture of its own _cultus_, with an unexpressed but perfect faith in the final justice and satisfaction of results.

Religion, therefore, and politics--literature, learning, and art--trade, commerce, manufactures, agriculture--and the amenities of society and manners, were allowed to develop themselves in their own way, without reference to rule and preconcerted dogmas. Hence the peculiarities which mark the institutions of America--their utter freedom from cant and the shows and pageantry of state. Bank, titles, and caste were abolished; and the enormous gulfs which separate the European man from the European lordling were bridged over by Equality with the solid virtues of humanity.

What a stride was here taken over time and space, and the historic records of man, in the fossil formations of the Old World during the ante-American periods! It had come at last, this long-prophesied reign of Apollo and the Muses, of freedom and the rights of man. Afar off, on the summits of imaginative mountains, were beheld, through twilight vistas of night and chaos, the proud ruins of dead monarchies, and the cruel forms of extinct tyrannies and oppressions, crowned and mitred no more; whose mandates had once made the nations tremble, and before whose judgment seats Mercy pleaded in vain, and Justice muffled up her face and sat dumb and weeping in the dust. Over the wolds of their desolation hyenas prowled, snuffing the noisome air as for a living prey; ghouls and vampyres shrieked in hellish chorus, as they tore up forgotten graves; and all manner of hateful and obscure things crawled familiarly in and out of palaces and holy places, as if they were the ghosts of the former inhabitants; and, high above them all, in the bloody light of the setting sun, wheeled kites and choughs and solitary vultures; owls and dismal bats flitting, ever and anon, athwart the shadows of their grim processions.

No matter that this vision was in reality but the symbolism of imagination and poetry, that Europe was not dead, but alive with the struggling vitalities of good and evil, and all those contending forces out of which American freedom was born--the vision itself was not the less true, either as feeling or insight; for Europe was now literally cut adrift from America, and the hopes and aspirations of the young republic were entirely different from hers, and removed altogether from the plane of her orbit and action.

The liberalists and thinkers of the age expected great things from a people thus fortunately conditioned and circumstanced. For the first time in modern history a genuine democratic government was inaugurated and fairly put upon its trial. The horizon of thought was now to be pushed back far beyond the old frontiers into the very regions of the infinite; and a universal liberty was to prevail throughout the length and breadth of the land. No more dead formalities, nor slavish submissions, but new and fuller life, self-reliance, self-development, and the freest individuality. Gladly the people accepted the propositions and principles of their national existence. Not a doubt anywhere of the result; no faltering, no looking back; but brave hearts, everywhere, and bold fronts, and conquering souls. Before them, through the mists of the starry twilight, loomed the mountain peaks and shadowy seas of the unventured and unknown future; and thitherward they pressed with undaunted steps, and with a haughty and sublime defiance of obstructions and dangers; fearing God, doing their best, and leaving the issue in His hands.

We know now, after nearly a hundred years of trial, what that issue in the main is, and whitherward it still tends. During that little breathing time, which, compared with the life of other nations, is but a gasp in the record, what unspeakable triumphs have been accomplished! Nearly a whole continent has been reclaimed from the savage and the wild beasts, and the all-conquering American has paved the wilderness, east, west, north, and south, with high roads--dug canals into its hidden recesses, connected the great Gulf with the far-off West by a vast network of railways and telegraphs--planted cities and villages everywhere, and fashioned the routes of civilization; bound Cape Race to the Crescent City and the Atlantic to the Pacific, sending human thoughts, winged with lightning, across thousands of miles of plains and mountains and rivers, and making neighborly the most distant peoples and the most widely sundered States of the mighty Union. Let any man try to estimate the value of this immense contribution to human history and happiness; let him try to measure the vast extent of empire which it covers, and sum up the mighty expenditure of physical and intellectual labor which has conquered those savage wilds, and converted them into blooming cornfields and orchards; which has built these miraculous cities by the sea, and made their harbors populous with native ships and the marine of every nation under heaven; those busy inland cities, the hives of manufacturing industry and the marts of a commerce which extends over all the regions of civilization, from the rising to the setting sun; those innumerable towns of the great corn-growing districts; those pleasant hamlets and pastoral homes which fringe the forest, and girdle the mountains as with the arms of human affection and the passion of love; those mills on the far-off rivers, whose creaking machinery and revolving wheels are the prelude of a yet unborn, but rapidly approaching civility, and whose music, heard by the right ears, is of the divinest depth and diapason, and in full concord with the immeasurable orchestra of triumph and rejoicing which the nation celebrates in the perpetual marches of her starry progress.

No man can compass this vast dominion, and no intellect can plumb its soundings or prophesy of its upshot. Who could have foretold what has already happened on this continent, had he stood with the Pilgrim Fathers on Plymouth Rock, that memorable day of the landing? Looking back to that great epoch in American history, we have no dim regions of antiquity to traverse, no mythic periods as of Memnon and the Nile, but a mere modern landscape, so to speak, shut in by less than two centuries. And yet what unspeakable things are included in that brief period! If we have made such vast strides and so rapid a development in those few years of our national life, with the heterogeneous and unmalleable materials with which we had to deal, converting the filth of Europe into grass and flowers for the decoration of the republic, what may we not achieve hereafter, when this dreadful war is over, and the negro question is adjusted, and the sundered States are reunited, and the Western wilderness is clothed with the glory of a perfect cultivation, and the genius of the people, no longer trammelled by Southern despotism, shall have free room to wing its flight over the immeasurable future?

There will be no likeness, in any mirror of the past, to the American civilization that is to be. New manners, customs, thinkings, literature, art, and life, will mark our progress and attest the mission of the nation. We are fast outgrowing the ideas and influences of that brave company of Puritans out of whose loins our beginning proceeded; and already each man goes alone, insular, self-reliant, and self-sustained. We owe the Puritans a large debt, but it is altogether a pretty fiction to call them the founders of American civilization. They helped to lay in the foundation stones of that early society, and kept them together by cementing them with their love of religious truth and liberty, so far as they understood these primal elements of a state; and we are likewise their debtors for the integrity which they put into their laws and government. But it is too high a demand to claim for them that they were the founders of the republic, and the originators of those great ideas which are embodied in our institutions and literature.

They came to this country with no very enlarged notions, either of religion or freedom, although they were perfectly sincere in their professions of regard for both; and it was this very sincerity which gave solidity and permanence to their colonies. We suppose we may repeat what history has made notorious respecting them, that they were, both in belief and civil practice, very narrow and limited in their outlooks--by no means given to intellectual speculations--and with but little faith in the intellect itself--which, indeed, was proscribed as a sort of outlaw when it stood upon its own authority, outside the pale of _their_ church. The religion which they established had its origin in the reign of Elizabeth, and was a sort of revived Lollardism, which last dated as far back as Wycliffe, long before the Reformation. They thought they could worship God in conventicles, and in the great open-air cathedrals of nature, with quite as much purity of motive and heavenly acceptance as in regularly consecrated churches, and that the right of praying and preaching was inalienable, and secured to all godly men by the charter and seal of Calvary.

They had no idea, however, of non-conformity which was not based upon an orthodox creed, upon _their_ creed, as they subscribed it on Plymouth Rock. They fled from persecution themselves, and sought freedom for themselves in the barren regions of our dear and now hospitable New England; and they, in their simplicity and good faith before God, sought to organize a system of civil and religious polity which should incrust all future generations, and harden them into a fossil state of perpetual orthodoxy.

They were a stern, implacable race, these early fathers, in all that related to belief, and the discipline of moral conduct; and we owe many of the granite securities which lie at the bottom of our social life and government to this harsh and unyielding sternness. It held the framework of the colonies together until they were consolidated into the United States, and until the modern culture of the people relaxed it into a universal liberty of thought and worship.

The Puritans, however, had no notion of such a result to their teachings and labors; and would have looked with pious horror upon them if they could have beheld them in some Agrippa's mirror of the future.

The truth--unpalatable as it may be--is simply this about the Puritans: they were narrow-minded, bigoted, and furious at times with the spirit of persecution; sincerely so, it is true, and believing they did God service; but that does not alter the fact. They had no conception of the meaning of liberty--and especially of religious liberty as a development of Protestantism. Their idea of it was liberty for themselves--persecution to all who differed from them; and this, too, for Christ's sake, in order that the lost sheep might be brought back, if possible, to their bleak and comfortless folds. They could not help it; they meant no wrong by it, and the evil which they thus did was good in the making, and sprang from the bleeding heart of an infinite love.

We like them, nevertheless; and cannot choose but like them, thinking it generous and loving to invest them with as much poetry as we can command from the wardrobes of the imagination. But we can never forgive them--in critical moods--for their inhuman, although strictly logical persecution of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, who represented in his person all the liberal-thoughts-men, both in religion and speculation, then existing on this continent.

This man of capacious intellect and most humane heart was hunted by them out of the associated colonies, as if he had been some ferocious beast of prey, because he differed from them in his religious opinions; and this drove him to found a state in accordance with the most liberal interpretation of Christianity. He had more than once, by his influence with the Indians, saved them from a general massacre; but their theological hate of him was so intense that they would not allow him to pass through their territories on a necessary journey; and once, on his return from England, where he had been negotiating with ministers for their benefit, they capped the climax of their bigoted ingratitude by refusing him permission even to land on their soil, lest his holy feet should pollute it.

It is a little too much, therefore, to say that all our ideas of liberty and religion have sprung from this stout race of persecutors. They were pioneers for us, bu nothing more. Our progress has been the untying of their old cords of mental oppression, and the undoing of many things which they had set up. This was so much rubbish to be moved out of the path of the nation, and by no means aids to its advancement, except as provocatives. What we now are, we have become by our own culture and development, and by the inflowing of those great modern ideas which have affected all the world, and helped to build up its civilization into such stately proportions.

Puritanism, as it then existed in its exclusive power, is, to all intents and purposes, dead upon this continent. The form of it still lingers in our midst, it is true, and in the Protestant parts of Europe its ritual survives, and pious hearts, which would be pious in spite of it, still cling to its dead corpse as if it were alive, and kindle their sacred fires upon the altar of its wellnigh forsaken sanctuaries. We should count it no gain to us, however--the extinction of this old and venerable faith--if we had no high and certain assurance that a nobler and sublimer religion was reserved for our consolation and guidance. We cannot afford, in one sense, to give up even the semblances and shows of religion, and these will survive until the new dayspring from on high shall supersede the necessity of their existence. 'Take care,' said Goethe, in some such words as these, 'lest, in letting the dead forms of religion go, you sacrifice all reverence and worship, and thus lose religion itself!' There is great danger of this in the transition state of human thought and speculation which marks the present crisis of American history. We are not a religious people, and shall not present any development of that sort until the intellectual reaction which has set in among us against the old modes and organons of belief has exhausted the tests of its crucibles, and reduced the dross to a residuum of gold which shall form the basis of a new and sacred currency, acceptable to all men for the highest interchanges.

In the mean while we must work out the problem of this religion of the future in any and all ways which lie open to us--doubting nothing of the final issues. The wildest theories of Millerites, Spiritists, Naturalists, and Supernaturalists, are all genuine products of the time, and of the spirit of man struggling upward to this solution--blindly struggling, it is true, but gradually approaching the light of the far-off truth, as the twilight monsters of geology gradually approached the far-off birth of man, who came at last, and redeemed the savage progressive, the apparent wild unreason of the terrestrial creation.

It is more than probable that this great fratricidal war with which we are now struggling, will prove, in its results, of the very highest service to the nation, and make us all both better and wiser men than we were before. We have already gained by it many notable experiences, and it has put our wisdom, and our foolishness also, to the test. It has both humbled and exalted our pride. It has cut away from the national character all those inane excrescences of vanity and brag which judicious people everywhere, who were friendly to us, could not choose but lament to see us exercise at such large discretion. It has brought us face to face with realities the most terrible the world has ever beheld. It has measured our strength and our weakness, and has developed within us the mightiest intellectual and physical resources. All the wit and virtue which go to make up a great people have been proven in a hundred times and ways during the war, to exist in us. Courage, forethought, endurance, self-sacrifice, magnaminity, and a noble sense of honor, are a few of the virtues which we have cropped from the bloody harvest of the battle field.

It is true that wicked men are among us--for when did a company, godly or otherwise, engage in any work, and Satan did not also fling his wallet over his shoulder and set out with them for evil purposes of his own?--but after all, these are but a small minority, and their efforts to ruin the republic and bring defeat and dishonor upon the Federal arms, have not yet proved to be of a very formidable nature. These, the enemies of America, though her native-born sons, the people can afford to treat with the contempt which they merit. For the rest, this war will make us a nation, and bind us together with bonds as strong as those of the old European nationalities. It will make us great, and loving patriots also; and root out from among us a vast amount of sham and political fraud, to the great bettering of society.

We shall have reason in many ways to bless its coming and its consequences. It was indeed just as necessary to our future national life and happiness as the bursting out of a volcano is to the general safety of the earth. It will destroy slavery for ever, and thus relieve us from the great contention which has so long and so bitterly occupied the lives of our public men and the thoughts of the world. In reality, we have never yet given republicanism a fair trial upon this continent. With that dreadful curse and crime of slavery tearing at its heart and brain, how was it possible for equality and self-government to be anything else but a delusion and a mockery? This cleared out of our pathway, and we have enough virtue, intelligence, and wealth of physical resources in the land to realize the prophecy and the hope of all noble thinkers and believes on the planet, and place America first and foremost among the nations--the richest, the wisest, the best, and the bravest.

LONGING

The corruption of a noble disposition is invariably from some false charm of fancy or imagination which has over-mastered the mind with its powerful magic and carried away the will captive. It is some perverted apprehension or illusory power of the infinite which causes a man who has once fallen a prey to any strong passion to devote all his energies, thoughts, and feelings to _one_ object, or to surrender himself, heart and soul, to the despotic tyranny of some favorite pursuit. For man's natural longing after the infinite, even when showing itself in his passions and feelings, cannot, where genuine, be satisfied with any earthly object or sensual gratification or external possession. When, however, this pursuit, keeping itself free from all delusions of sense, really directs its endeavor toward the infinite, and only to what is truly such, it can never rest or be stationary. Ever advancing, step by step, it ever rises higher and higher. This pure feeling of endless longing, with the dim memories of eternal love ever surging through the soul, are the heavenward--bearing wings which bear it ever on toward God. Longing is man's intuition of enternity!--SCHLEGEL.

THE LESSON OF THE HOUR.

I.

Strong in faith for the future,
Drawing our hope from the past,
Manfully standing to battle,
However may blow the blast:
Onward still pressing undaunted,
Let the foe be strong as he may,
Though the sky be dark as midnight,
Remembering the dawn of day.

II.

Strong in the cause of freedom,
Bold for the sake of right,
Watchful and ready always,
Alert by day and night:
With a sword for the foe of freedom,
From whatever side he come,
The same for the open foeman
And the traitorous friend at home.

III.

Strong with the arm uplifted,
And nerved with God's own might,
In an age of glory living
In a holy cause to fight:
And whilom catching music
Of the future's minstrelsy,
As those who strike for freedom
Blows that can never die.

IV.

Strong, though the world may threaten,
Though thrones may totter down,
And in many an Old World palace,
Uneasy sits the crown:
Not for the present only
Is the war we wage to-day,
But the sound shall echo ever
When we shall have passed away.

V.

Strong--'tis an age of glory,
And worth a thousand years
Of petty, weak disputings,
Of ambitious hopes and fears:
And we, if we learn the lesson
All-glorious and sublime,
Shall go down to future ages
As heroes for all time.

VI.

Strong--not in human boasting,
But with high and holy will,
The means of a mighty Worker
His purpose to fulfil:
O patient warriors, watchers--
A thousandfold your power
If ye read with prayerful purpose
The Lesson of the Hour.

THE SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: ITS CHARACTER AND RELATION TO OTHER LANGUAGES.

_ARTICLE ONE._

THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH.

The CONTINENTAL for May contained an article, written by Stephen Pearl Andrews, entitled: A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: ITS POSSIBILITY, SCIENTIFIC NECESSITY, AND APPROPRIATE CHARACTERISTICS. Although then treated hypothetically, or as something not impossible of achievement _in the future_, a Language constructed upon the method therein briefly and generally explained, is, in fact, substantially completed at the present time. It is one of the developments of a new and vast scientific discovery--comprising the Fundamental Principles of all Thought and Being, and the Law of Analogy--on which Mr. Andrews has bestowed the name of UNIVERSOLOGY. The public announcement of this discovery, together with a general statement of its character, has been recently made in the columns of a leading literary paper--_The Home Journal._

Although the principle involved in the Language discussed in the article referred to is wholly different from that upon which all former attempts at the construction of a common method of lingual communication have been based; and although such merely mechanical _inventions_ were therein distinguished from a Language _discovered as existing in the nature of things_; several criticisms, emanating from high literary quarters, indicate that there is still much misunderstanding as to the real nature of a Universal Language framed upon the principles of Analogy between Sense and Sound. This misunderstanding seems most prevalent in respect to the two points relating directly to the practical utility of such a Lingual Organ. It is assumed that a Language so constituted must be wholly different in its material and structure from any now existing, and that the latter would have to be abandoned as soon as the former was adopted. It is supposed, therefore, that in order to introduce the SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE, the people must be induced to learn something entirely new, and to forsake for it their old and cherished Mother-tongues. The accomplishment of such an undertaking is naturally regarded as highly improbable, if not impossible.

It is also supposed that every word of the Language is to be determined in accordance with exact scientific formulas;--a process which, if employed, would, as is conceived, give a stiff, inflexible, monotonous, and cramped character to the Language itself; and would be wanting in that profusion of synonymes which gives an artistic and life-like character to the lingual growths of the past.

Both of these objections arise, as we shall hereafter see, from an erroneous impression of the nature of Language based on Analogy, coupled with a misconception of the real character and constituents of existing Languages. It is the purpose of the present papers to correct these false notions. In order to do so--and, what is essential to this, to present a clear exposition of the true character of the Language under consideration, and of its relations to the Lingual Structures of the past and present--it is necessary to give a preliminary examination to the fundamental question of the Origin of Speech. By means of this examination we shall come to understand that the existence and general use of a Universal Language with the elements of which Nature has herself furnished us, would not involve the abrupt or total abandonment of the Tongues now commonly employed; but, on the contrary, while preserving all that is substantially valuable in each, would enable us to acquire a knowledge of them with a facility which Comparative Philology, as now developed, lays no claim to impart.

How, then, did Language originate? In setting out to answer this question, Professor Max Mueller says, in his _Lectures on the Science of Language_:[A]

[Footnote A: Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, in April, May, and June, 1861, by Max Mueller, M. A. From the second London edition, revised. New York: Charles Scribner, 124 Grand street. 1862.]

'If we were asked the riddle how images of the eye and all the
sensations of our senses could be represented by sounds, nay, could
be so embodied in sounds as to express thought and to excite
thought, we should probably give it up as the question of a madman,
who, mixing up the most heterogeneous subjects, attempted to change
color and sound into thought. Yet this is the riddle we have now to
solve.

'It is quite clear that we have no means of solving the problem of
the origin of language _historically_, or of explaining it as a
matter of fact which happened once in a certain locality and at a
certain time. History does not begin till long after mankind had
acquired the power of language, and even the most ancient
traditions are silent as to the manner in which man came in
possession of his earliest thoughts and words. Nothing, no doubt,
would be more interesting than to know from historical documents
the exact process by which the first man began to lisp his first
words, and thus to be rid forever of all the theories on the origin
of speech. But this knowledge is denied us; and, if it had been
otherwise, we should probably be quite unable to understand those
primitive events in the history of the human mind. We are told that
the first man was the son of God, that God created him in His own
image, formed him of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life. These are simple facts, and to be
accepted as such; if we begin to reason on them, the edge of the
human understanding glances off. Our mind is so constituted that it
cannot apprehend the absolute beginning or the absolute end of
anything. If we tried to conceive the first man created as a child,
and gradually unfolding his physical and mental powers, we could
not understand his living for _one_ day without supernatural aid.
If, on the contrary, we tried to conceive the first man created
full-grown in body and mind; the conception of an effect without a
cause, of a full-grown mind without a previous growth, would
equally transcend our reasoning powers. It is the same with the
first beginnings of language. Theologians who claim for language a
divine origin, ... when they enter into any details as to the
manner in which they suppose Deity to have compiled a dictionary
and grammar in order to teach them to the first man, as a
schoolmaster teaches the deaf and dumb, ... have explained no more
than how the first man might have learnt a language, if there was a
language ready made for him. How that language was made would
remain as great a mystery as ever. Philosophers, on the contrary,
who imagine that the first man, though left to himself, would
gradually have emerged from a state of mutism and have invented
words for every new conception that arose in his mind, forget that
man could not, by his own power, have acquired _the faculty_ of
speech, which is the distinctive character of mankind, unattained
and unattainable by the mute creation. It shows a want of
appreciation as to the real bearings of our problem, if
philosophers appeal to the fact that children are born without
language, and gradually emerge from mutism to the full command of
articulate speech.... Children, in learning to speak, do not invent
language. Language is there ready made for them. It has been there
for thousands of years. They acquire the use of a language, and, as
they grow up, they may acquire the use of a second and a third. It
is useless to inquire whether infants, left to themselves, would
invent a language.... All we know for certain is, that an English
child, if left to itself, would never begin to speak English, and
that history supplies no instance of any language having thus been
invented....

'Speech is a specific faculty of man. It distinguishes man from all
other creatures; and if we wish to acquire more definite ideas as
to the real nature of human speech, all we can do is to compare man
with those animals that seem to come nearest to him, and thus to
try to discover what he shares in common with these animals, and
what is peculiar to him, and to him alone. After we have discovered
this we may proceed to inquire into the conditions under which
speech becomes possible, and we shall then have done all that we
can do, considering that the instruments of our knowledge,
wonderful as they are, are yet too weak to carry us into all the
regions to which we may soar on the wings of our imagination.'

As the result of a comparison of the human with the animal kingdom, Professor Mueller remarks that, 'no one can doubt that certain animals possess all the physical acquirements for articulate speech. There is no letter of the alphabet which a parrot will not learn to pronounce. The fact, therefore, that the parrot is without a language of his own, must be explained by a difference between the _mental_, not between the _physical_ faculties of the animal and man; and it is by a comparison of the mental faculties alone, such as we find them in man and brutes, that we may hope to discover what constitutes the indispensable qualification for language, a qualification to be found in man alone, and in no other creature on earth.'

Of mental faculties, the author whose ideas we are stating, claims a large share for the higher animals. 'These animals have _sensation_, _perception_, _memory_, _will_, and _intellect_, only we must restrict intellect to the comparing or interlacing of single perceptions.' But man transcends in his mental powers the barriers of the brute intellect at a point which coincides with the starting-point of language. And in this coincidence Professor Mueller endeavors to find a sufficiently fundamental explanation of the problem of the origin of language.

In reference to this point of coincidence, he quotes Locke as saying that, 'the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to,' and then adds:

'If Locke is right in considering the having of general ideas as
the distinguishing feature between man and brutes, and, if we
ourselves are right in pointing to language as the one palpable
distinction between the two, it would seem to follow that language
is the outward sign and realization of that inward faculty which
is called the faculty of abstraction, but which is better known to
us by the homely name of reason.

'Let us now look back to the result of former lectures. It was
this: After we had explained everything in the growth of language
that can be explained, there remained in the end, as the only
inexplicable residuum, what we called _roots_. These roots formed
the constituent elements of all languages.... What, then, are these
roots?'

Two theories have been started to solve this problem: the Onomatopoetic, according to which roots are imitations of sounds; and the Interjectional, which regards them as involuntary ejaculations. Having discussed these theories, and taken the position that, although there are roots in every language which are respectively imitations of sounds and involuntary exclamations, it is, nevertheless, impossible to regard any considerable number of roots, and much less, all roots, as originating from these sources, the distinguished Philologist announces as the true theory, that every root 'expresses a general, not an individual, idea;' just the opposite of what he deems would be the case if the Onomatopoetic and Interjectional theories explained the origin of speech.

Some paragraphs are then devoted to the examination of the merits of a controversy which has existed among philosophers as to

'whether language originated in general appellations, or in proper
names. It is the question of the _primum cognitum_, and its
consideration will help us perhaps in discovering the true nature
of the root, or the _primum appellatum_. Some philosophers, among
whom I may mention Locke, Condillac, Adam Smith, Dr. Brown, and,
with some qualification, Dugald Stewart, maintain that all terms,
as at first employed, are expressive of individual objects. I quote
from Adam Smith. 'The assignation,' he says, 'of particular names
to denote particular objects, that is, the institution of nouns
substantive, would probably be one of the first steps toward the
formation of language.... The particular cave whose covering
sheltered them from the weather, the particular tree whose fruit
relieved their hunger, the particular fountain whose water allayed
their thirst, would first be denominated by the words _cave_,
_tree_, _fountain_, or by whatever other appellations they might
think proper, in that primitive jargon, to mark them. Afterward,
when the more enlarged experience of these savages had led them to
observe, and their necessary occasions obliged them to make mention
of, other caves, and other trees, and other fountains, they would
naturally bestow upon each of those new objects the same name by
which they had been accustomed to express the similar object they
were first acquainted with.''

This view of the primitive formation of thought and language, is diametrically opposed to the theory held by Leibnitz, who maintained that 'general terms are necessary for the essential constitution of languages.' 'Children,' he says, 'and those who know but little of the language which they attempt to speak, or little of the subject on which they would employ it, make use of general terms, as _thing_, _plant_, _animal_, instead of using proper names, of which they are destitute. And it is certain that all proper or individual names have been originally appellative or general.'

Notwithstanding the contradictory and seemingly antagonistic nature of these positions, Professor Mueller shows that they are not irreconcilable.

'Adam Smith is no doubt right, when he says that the first
individual cave which is called cave, gave the name to all other
caves; ... and the history of almost every substantive might be
cited in support of his view. But Leibnitz is equally right when,
in looking beyond the first emergence of such names as cave, town,
or palace, he asks how such names could have arisen. Let us take
the Latin names of cave. A cave in Latin is called _antrum_,
_cavea_, _spelunca_. Now _antrum_ means really the same as
_internum_. Antar, in Sanskrit means _between_ or _within_.
_Antrum_, therefore, meant originally what is within or inside the
earth or anything else. It is clear, therefore, that such a name
could not have been given to any individual cave, unless the
general idea of being within, or inwardness, had been present in
the mind. This general idea once formed, and once expressed by the
pronominal root _an_ or _antar_, the process of naming is clear and
intelligible. The place where the savage could live safe from rain
and from the sudden attacks of wild beasts, a natural hollow in the
rock, he would call his _within_, his _antrum_; and afterward
similar places, whether dug in the earth or cut in a tree, would be
designated by the same name ... Let us take another word for cave,
which is _cavea_ or _caverna_. Here again Adam Smith would be
perfectly right in maintaining that this name, when first given,
was applied to one particular cave, and was afterward extended to
other caves. But Leibnitz would be equally right in maintaining
that in order to call even the first hollow _cavea_, it was
necessary that the general idea of hollow should have been formed
in the mind, and should have received its vocal expression _cav_
...

_'The first thing really known is the general. It is through it
that we know and name afterward individual objects of which any
general idea can be predicated, and it is only in the third stage
that these individual objects, thus known and named, become again
the representatives of whole classes, and their names or proper
names are raised into appellatives.'_

The italics in the last paragraph are my own.

But the name of a thing, runs the argument, meant originally that by which we know a thing. And how do we know things? Knowing is more than perceiving by our senses, which convey to us information about single things only. 'To _know_ is more than to feel, than to perceive, more than to remember, more than to compare. We know a thing if we are able to bring it, and [or?] any part of it, under more general ideas.' The facts of nature are perceived by our senses; the thoughts of nature, to borrow an expression of Oersted's, can be conceived by our reason only. The first step toward this real knowledge is the '_naming of a thing_, or the making a thing knowable;' and it is this step which separates man forever from all other animals. For all naming is classification, bringing the individual under the general; and whatever we know, whether empirically or scientifically, we know it only by means of our general ideas. Other animals have sensation, perception, memory, and, in a certain sense, intellect; but all these, in the animal, are conversant with single objects only. Man has, in addition to these, reason, and it is his reason only that is conversant with general ideas.

'At the very point where man parts company with the brute world, at
the first flash of reason as the manifestation of the light within
us, there we see the true genius of language. Analyze any word you
like, and you will find that it expressed a general idea peculiar
to the individual to which the name belongs. What is the meaning of
moon?--the measurer. What is the meaning of sun?--the begetter ...

'If the serpent is called in Sanskrit _sarpa_, it is because it was
conceived under the general idea of creeping, an idea expressed by
the word _srip_. But the serpent was also called _ahi_ in Sanskrit,
in Greek _echis_ or _echidna_, in Latin _anguis_. This name is
derived from quite a different root and idea. The root is _ah_ in
Sanskrit, or _anh_, which means to press together, to choke, to
throttle. Here the distinguishing mark from which the serpent was
named was his throttling, and _ahi_ meant serpent, as expressing
the general idea of throttler. It is a curious root this _anh_, and
it still lives in several modern words. In Latin it appears as
_ango_, _anxi_, _anctum_, to strangle, in _angina_, quinsy, in
_angor_, suffocation. But _angor_ meant not only quinsy or
compression of the neck; it assumed a moral import, and signifies
anguish or anxiety. The two adjectives _angustus_, narrow, and
_anxius_, uneasy, both come from the same source. In Greek the root
retained its natural and material meaning; in _eggys_, near, and
_echis_, serpent, throttler. But in Sanskrit it was chosen with
great truth as the proper name for sin. Evil no doubt presented
itself under various aspects to the human mind, and its names are
many; but none so expressive as those derived from our root _anh_,
to throttle. _Anhas_ in Sanskrit means sin, but it does so only
because it meant originally throttling--the consciousness of sin
being like the grasp of the assassin on the throat of his victim
... This _anhas_ is the same word as the Greek _agos_, sin ... The
English _anguish_ is from the French _angoisse_, the Italian
_angoscia_, a corruption of the Latin _angustiae_, a strait ... _Ma_
in Sanskrit means to measure, from which we had the name of the
moon. _Man_, a derivative root, means to think. From this we have
the Sanskrit _manu_, originally thinker, then man. In the later
Sanskrit we find derivatives, such as _manava_, _manusha_,
_manushya_, all expressing man. In Gothic we find both _man_ and
_mannisks_, the modern German _mann_ and _mensch_.'

And now we are brought by the author of _The Science of Language_ to the great question to which the foregoing is merely preparatory, to the fundamental consideration of Philological research: 'How can sound express thought? How did roots become the signs of general ideas? How was the abstract idea of measuring expressed by _ma_, the idea of thinking by _man_? How did _ga_ come to mean going, _stha_ standing, _sad_ sitting, _da_ giving, _mar_ dying, _char_ walking, _kar_ doing?' Here is his answer:

'The four or five hundred roots which remain as the constituent
elements in different families of languages are not interjections,
nor are they imitations. They are _phonetic types_, produced by a
power inherent in nature. They exist, as Plato would say, by
nature; though with Plato we should add that, when we say by
nature, we mean by the hand of God. There is a law which runs
through nearly the whole of nature, that everything which is struck
rings. Each substance has its peculiar ring. We can tell the more
or less perfect structure of metals by their vibrations, by the
answer which they give. Gold rings differently from tin, wood rings
differently from stone; and different sounds are produced according
to the nature of each percussion. It was the same with man, the
most highly organized of nature's works. Man, in his primitive and
perfect state, was not only endowed, like the brute, with the power
of expressing his sensations by interjections, and his perceptions
by onomatopoieia. He possessed likewise the faculty of giving more
articulate expression to the rational conceptions of his mind. That
faculty was not of his own making. It was an instinct, an instinct
of the mind as irresistible as any other instinct. So far as
language is the production of that instinct, it belongs to the
realm of nature. Man loses his instincts as he ceases to want them.
His senses become fainter when, as in the case of scent, they
become useless. Thus the creative faculty which gave to each
conception, as it thrilled for the first time through the brain, a
phonetic expression, became extinct when its object was fulfilled.
The number of these _phonetic types_ must have been almost infinite
in the beginning, and it was only through the same process of
_natural elimination_ which we observed in the early history of
words, that clusters of roots, more or less synonymous, were
gradually reduced to one definite type.'

Professor Max Mueller occupies a commanding position in the foremost rank of the students of Philology. His work on _The Science of Language_, from which the preceding discussion of the Origin of Speech is taken, is, so far as I am aware, the latest volume treating of the problem in question which has issued from what is commonly regarded as high authority in the department of Language. It is to that volume, therefore, that we are to look for the last word of elucidation which the Comparative Philologist can furnish respecting it. And it is for this reason--in order that we might have before us the results of the latest research of the schools--that the exposition of the Origin of Language given in the work referred to has been so fully stated.

Where, then, does this explanation of the problem leave us? Does it go to the bottom of the matter? Is it sufficiently distinct and satisfactory? In brief, does it give us any clear understanding of the Origin of Speech? Does it not rather leave us at the crucial point of the whole inquiry, with the essence and core of the subject untouched and shrouded in mystery? Some indefinite hundreds of roots, obtained, it is assumed, by means of some indescribable and unknown mental instinct! This is the sober and contented answer of Philology to the investigator who would know of the Sources of Language, and its constituent elements. But of the component parts of these roots--the true and fundamental constituent elements of Speech, without a knowledge of which there can be no basic and conclusive comprehension of the meaning of roots--and of the nature of the method by which these elements become expressive of thoughts or ideas, there is no word. Language, as it now rests in the hands of the Comparative Philologists, is in the same state that Chemistry was when Earth, Air, Fire, and Water were supposed to be the ultimate constituent elements of Matter, ere a single real ultimate element was known as such. But Chemistry, _as a science_, had no existence prior to the discovery of the simple constituents of Physical creation. In like manner, a _Science_ of Language must be founded on a knowledge of the nature and _meaning_ of the simple elements of Speech. Until this knowledge is in our possession it is only on the outskirts of the subject that we are able to tread. Roots are, it is true, the actual bases of Language, so far as its concrete, working, or synthetical structure is concerned; in the same sense that _compound_ substances are the main constituents found in the Universe as it really and naturally exists. But, although the proportion of simple chemical elements, in the real constitution of things, is small, as compared with that of compound substances; yet it is only by our ability to separate compound substances into these elements that we arrive at an understanding of their true character and place in the realm of Matter. So it is only by our ability to analyze roots--the compound constituents of Language--into the prime elements which have, except rarely, no distinctive and individual embodiment in it, that we can hope to gain a clear comprehension of the nature of Language itself, or of its most primitive concrete or composite foundations.

Comparative Philology furnishes us with admirable guidance--so far as it goes. But we do not wish to stop at the terminus which it seems to consider a satisfactory one. The final answer it offers us, we do not regard as final. We gladly accept the analysis of Language down to its Roots. But we wish to analyze Roots also. That the Moon derives its name from being regarded as the _Measurer_ of time; and Man, from the notion of _thinking_; that an (_anh_) is a widely-diffused root, signifying _pressure_; and that _ga_ denotes _going_; with similar expositions, is valuable information, and takes us a great way toward the goal of our seeking. But the question of questions relating to Language is not answered by it. Why should the abstract idea of measuring be expressed by _ma_; and that of thinking by _man_? How did _an_ come to signify pressure; and _ga_, going? Is there any special relationship between these roots and the ideas which they respectively indicate? Or was it by chance merely that they were adopted in connection with each other? Might _da_ just as meet have been taken to denote doing, and _kar_, giving, as _vice versa_? Has the root _an_ any distinguishing characteristics peculiarly fitting it to suggest _choking_ or _pressure_? Or might that notion have been equally well expressed by _stha_?

It is at this fundamental stage of the investigation, whence a true _Science_ of Language must take its departure, that the labors and disclosures of Comparative Philology cease; leaving the problem of the Origin of Language involved in the same state of unintelligibility with which it has always been surrounded. It is just at this point, however, that the SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE previously noticed begins its developments. By means of its assistance we may hope, therefore, to arrive at a satisfactory solution of the problem in question, and, through this solution, at a clear understanding of the more specific objects of our present inquiry. Before approaching this main object--the exposition of the general character of the NEW SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE and its relations to existing Tongues--and still in aid of that purpose, I must offer some further comments upon the excerpts already made from 'The Science of Language;' and upon a few other points which remain to be extracted from that work.

Of the four or five hundred roots which remain, the insoluble residuum (so thought by Professor Mueller) of Language, after eliminating the immense mass of variable and soluble material, he says: 1. That 'they are _phonetic types_ produced by a power inherent in human nature;' 2. 'Man, in his primitive and perfect state, was not only endowed like the brute with the power of expressing his sensations by interjections, and his perceptions by onomatopoieia [mere imitation of sound]. He possessed _likewise_ the power of giving _more articulate_ expression to the _rational conceptions of his mind_.' The italics here are, again, my own, introduced for more emphasis and more ready reference to the central thought of the writer. 3. 'That faculty was not of his own making. It was an instinct, an instinct of the mind, as irresistible as any other instinct. So far as language is the production of that instinct, it belongs to the realm of nature. Man loses his instincts as he ceases to want them. His senses become fainter when, as in the case of scent, they become useless. Thus the creative faculty which gave to each conception, as it thrilled for the first time through the brain, a phonetic expression, became extinct when its object was fulfilled.' 4. 'The number of these _phonetic types_ [root-syllables] must have been almost infinite in the beginning, and it was only through the same process of _natural elimination_ which we observed in the early history of words, that clusters of roots more or less synonymous, were gradually reduced to one definite type.'