Chapter XXVI: Part 26

When I say that this world of ours is not a world suited to the taste of the pleasure-seeker, I do not restrict the meaning of pleasure to "passive sensual enjoyment," but to all kinds of pleasure. There are also intellectual and artistic voluptuaries who sacrifice anything, even the performance of duty, to their pleasure, which I grant is far superior to any kind of passive sensual enjoyment. The pursuit of pleasure is not wrong in itself; but it is not ethical either. Ethics in my opinion has nothing to do either with my own pleasures or with the pleasures of anybody else. The object of ethics is the performance of duty; and the main duty of man is the performance of that which he needs must do according to the laws of nature, to let his soul grow and expand, and to develop to ever higher and nobler aims.

VI. PLEASURABLE FEELINGS AS AN ETHICAL CRITERION.

I know of a French teacher who has an excellent French pronunciation and speaks with perfect accuracy, but whenever he is asked to give a rule which may serve as a guide and a help to correct grammer and elocution, he says: "The chief rule in French is euphony."—"Exactly! But the same rule holds good in a certain sense for all languages."—"O no," he says, "the German is harsh and the English is tongue-breaking; only in French is the supreme law euphony."—"Now for instance," we venture to object, "you say _la harpe_ and not _l'arpe_; you pronounce the _ai_ different in different words you say _j'ai_, but you say _il fait_ and you have again a different pronunciation of the _ai_ in _nous faisons_." He replies, "To pronounce _j'aî_, or as the Germans say _chaî_ would be barbarous. To say _l'arpe_, instead of _la harpe_ is simply ridiculous."—"The question is," we continued in our attempts to understand him, "what is euphonious to the ear of an educated Frenchman?"—"Well," he says, "the ear will tell you. That which jars on the ear is wrong. To say _quat'_ instead of _quatre_, or _vot'_ instead of _votre_, is wrong, it is vulgar. Why? it jars on the ear."

This method of teaching French appears to me a good illustration of our objection to the happiness principle of ethics. It is perfectly true that instances of immorality jar on the feelings of ethically trained minds. Why? They have become accustomed to them and look upon them as barbarous. Ungrammatical expressions and such pronunciations as do not agree with the spirit of a language are suppressed by those who recognise them as incongruous elements. Mistakes jar on their ears because they are incorrect, but they are not incorrect because they jar.

Oatmeal is a favorite dish among the Scotch. If you ask them why they eat it, they will most likely tell you, because it has an agreeable taste. But why do they like it? Because they have through generations grown accustomed to a dish which is conducive to health. Most of the dishes that are wholesome have an agreeable taste to a non-corrupted tongue. But agreeable taste for that reason cannot be considered as the supreme rule in selecting our menu. Agreeable taste is in cases of sickness a very unreliable guide and it is no criterion for a wholesome dinner. Surely the ethics of eating could not be based on agreeable taste.

The pleasurable feeling that is perceived in the satisfaction of hunger through appropriate food or in the satisfaction of any want, is not the bedrock of fact to which we can dig down; it is in itself a product of custom, of inherited habits, and other circumstances; and it can the less be used as a criterion because it varies greatly with the slightest change of its conditions.

Liberty is generally and rightly considered as a good, even though the slave may have and very often actually has enjoyed more happiness than the freed man. Stupidity is considered as an evil, although it inflicts no direct pains and may be the source of innumerable pleasures insipid in the view of others, but delightful to the jolly fool. Professor Höffding quotes from Waitz that the Indian does not progress because he "lives a happy life." Unhappiness is the cause of progress. We look down upon the Fuegians and upon the indolent South American tribe described by Humboldt. But have they not reached the aim of ethics, if happiness be that aim? Professor Höffding says in explanation of their condition:

"That which would make such a life unendurable for us, _the
strong desire for activity, development, and progress_, this
desire does not exist at such stages."

If that is so, our strong desire for activity should be denounced as the source of evil. It would be ethical in that case, as some labor unions and trusts actually propose, to stop, or at least, to impede further progress. The attempt of the Jesuits in Paraguay, which to some extent was an unequivocal success, to rule the people through a spiritual dependence satisfying all their wants and keeping them in perfect contentment, cannot be condemned from that principle of welfare which defines welfare as a continuous state of pleasurable feelings.

I can see how a man can be induced to submit to a moment of pain in order to escape more pain in the future, but I cannot see on what ground one man can be requested to sacrifice himself to suffer pain or to forego his pleasures in order that a dozen or a hundred men may have a jolly time. It appears to me that a greater error has never been pronounced than that of making "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" the maxim of ethics.

For the same reason that prevents us from regarding the principle of happiness as the aim of ethics or as its test and criterion, we cannot consider self-humiliation, contrition, misery, and the abandonment of gayety and merriness as moral or meritorious. Joy and grief are in themselves as little wrong as they are virtuous. Any ethics the end of which is a morose austerity, simply because it makes life dreary, is at least as much mistaken as a philosophy which finds the purpose of life in mere pleasure, be it ever so vain, simply because it is pleasure. To pursue happiness or renounce it, either may sometimes be moral and sometimes immoral. Again, to undergo pain and to inflict pain on others, or to avoid pain, either may also be moral or immoral. The criterion of ethics will not be found in the sphere of feelings. Morality cannot be measured by and it cannot be expressed in pleasures and pains.

VII. THE SUPERINDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY.

Professor Höffding criticises my view of "that superindividual soul-life which we call society," as based upon a mystical personification of society.

The superindividual motives of the human soul as I use the term, are actual realities, they are no less actual and concrete than are the image and the concept of a tree in my brain. I have sufficiently explained their origin and natural growth ("Ethical Problem," pp. 34-44), and feel that Professor Höffding's charge rests upon a misunderstanding. It appears to me that his term "sympathy," which he regards as the main element of ethical feelings leading to the adoption of the principle of general welfare, is much more liable to be interpreted in a mystical way. At least Schopenhauer's idea of sympathy (which he calls _Mitleid_) is undoubtedly a very mysterious thing, and its existence is supposed to be a direct manifestation of the metaphysical. I do not say that Professor Höffding uses the word sympathy in the sense of Schopenhauer's idea of _Mitleid_, but I am sure that if he attempts to explain its natural origin, he will (in order to remain positive and scientific) have to go over the same ground and arrive at the same conclusion as I did, although he may express himself in different words.

The truth is that man's ideas consist in representations of things and of relations without him, and these ideas are not the product of his individual exertions alone, they are the product of social work and of the common activity and intercourse of human society. This is true of language as a whole and of every single word which we use. This is true of all conceptual thought and most so of all ethical impulses. In spite of all individualism and in spite of the truth that lies in certain claims of individualism as to personal liberty and freedom of self-determination, I maintain that there is no individual in the sense of a separate ego-existence. That which makes of us human beings is the product of social life. I call the ideas and the impulses naturally developing in this way, superindividual, and if we could take them out of the soul of a man, he would cease to be a man. What is man but an incarnation of mankind! Social intercourse and common work produce the superindividual ideas and impulses in man, and these superindividual ideas and impulses in their action constitute the life of society.

This view is not "a mystical personification of society" under the simile of an organism, but it is a description of certain facts in the development of the human soul.

Society is not an aggregation of individuals, it is constituted by the superindividual element in the souls of individual men. The number of people in a society is for ethical purposes unessential. Professor Höffding accordingly makes an unimportant feature prominent, when he says:

"The idea of society, if it is to be scientifically employed,
must always be so applied that at every point the definite
group of individuals which it represents may be established."

If the greatest happiness of the greatest number among a definite group of individuals constitutes the morality of an act, would not the man who falls among thieves be under the moral obligation to renounce his property because the robbers constitute the majority?

If we leave the superindividual element out of sight, we shall naturally fall into the error of counting the individuals and deciding right and wrong by majority votes. The pleasure of a majority however does not constitute justice, and the greatest happiness of the greatest number is no criterion of that which is to be considered as morally good.

Society in the sense of a mere number of individuals will by and by create but does not constitute morality; nor can the majority of a society propose a criterion. The nature of moral goodness is not a matter of number nor of size nor of quantity. It must be sought in the quality of our ideas and motives. Moral are those ideas which tend to build up the life-totality of our souls so as to engender more and more of mankind in man, or still broader expressed, so as to keep man in harmony with the whole cosmos—with God.

VIII. THE POLICY OF THE ETHICAL SOCIETIES.

Professor Höffding considers it perfectly justified that the leaders of the ethical societies "keep these institutions as independent as possible not only of all dogmatic tendency of thought but also of all unnecessary philosophical hypotheses and speculations." So do we, for we object to dogmas, to hypotheses, and mere speculations. We consider the era of dogmatic religion as past, and trust in the rise of a religion based on truth, i. e. a natural and cosmical religion which stands on facts verifiable by science. Every religion, be it ever so adulterated by superstitions which as a rule, the less tenable they appear, are the more tenaciously defended as infallible dogmas—contains in its world-conception at least the germ of becoming a cosmical religion. The development of all religions aims at one and the same goal, namely the recognition of the truth and the aspiration to live accordingly. Those religions which remain faithful to this spirit of the religious sentiment will survive; they will drop the errors of dogmatic belief, they will free themselves of the narrowness of sectarianism and develop the cosmic religion of truth—of that one and sole truth which need not shun the light of criticism and which is at one with science.

We do not object to the ethical societies that they have no dogmas and that they do not identify themselves with a special philosophy; we object solely to their proposition to preach ethics without having a religion, or without basing ethics upon a conception of the world. And why do we object? Simply because it is impossible to preach ethics without basing it upon a definite view of the world, for ethics is nothing more or less than the endeavor to act according to a certain conception, to realise it in deeds. Can you realise in deeds a conception without having any? Can you live the truth without knowing the truth? You must at least have an instinctive inkling of what the truth is.

Mr. Salter separates the domains of ethics and science. He does not believe that ethics can be established on science, for he declares that science deals with facts, i. e. that which is, while ethics deals with ideals, i. e. that which ought to be. "We have to believe in ethics if we believe in them at all," Mr. Salter says, "not because they have the fact on their side but because of their own intrinsic attractiveness and authority."[134] This reminds me of one of Goethe and Schiller's Xenions in which the German poets criticise the one-sided positions of enthusiasts (_Schwärmer_) and philistines:

[134] _What Can Ethics Do For Us_, p. 5. By W. M. Salter. C.
H. Kerr, Chicago, 1891.

Had you the power, enthusiasts, to grasp your ideals completely,
Certainly you would revere Nature. For that is her due.
Had you the power philistines, to grasp the total of Nature,
Surely your path would lead up to th' idea's domain.

Ideals have no value unless they agree with the objective world-order which is ascertained through inquiry into the facts of nature. Ideals whose ultimate justification is intrinsic attractiveness and whose authority is professedly not founded on reality but on rapt visions of transcendental beauty, must be characterised as pure subjectivism. They are not ideals but dreams.

The ethical societies have as yet—so far as I am aware of—not given a clear and definite definition of good. Professor Adler treats this question with a certain slight. Concerning the facts of moral obligation he believes in "a general agreement _among good men and women_ everywhere." (The italics are ours.) _The Open Court_ (in No. 140) has challenged _the Ethical Societies_, saying that "we should be very much obliged to the _Ethical Record_, if it would give us a simple, plain, and unmistakable definition of what the leaders of the ethical movement understand by good, i. e. morally good." But this challenge remained unanswered.

It will appear that as soon as good is defined not in tautologies,[135] but in definite and unmistakable terms, the conception of good will be the expression of a world-conception. Is it possible to do an act which is not expressive of an opinion? And if an act is not expressive of a clear opinion, it is based upon an instinctive, an unclear, and undefined opinion. When the ethical societies declare that they do not intend to commit themselves to religious or philosophical views, they establish an anarchy of ethical conviction. Religion, as we have defined it, is man's inmost and holiest conviction, in accord with which he regulates his conduct. The ethical societies implicitly declare that we can regulate our conduct without having any conviction.

[135] It is obvious that such definitions as "good is that
which produces welfare" are meaningless, so long as we are not
told what it is that makes a certain state _well_ faring or
_well_ being.

Is not an ethical society without any definite convictions upon which to base its ethics like a ship without a compass in foggy weather?

The attitude of the ethical societies in not committing themselves to any religious or philosophical view is after all—and how can it be otherwise?—a palpable self-delusion, for their whole policy bears unmistakably a definite and characteristic stamp. The leaders of the ethical societies will most likely repudiate my interpretation of their position, because it appears to me that they are not clear themselves concerning the philosophical basis upon which they stand and thus (as I am fully aware) many contradictory features appear by the side of those which I should consider as most significant.

IX. PROFESSOR ADLER'S POSITION.

Professor Adler is the founder of the Ethical Societies, he is their leader, and however much Mr. Salter, Dr. Coit, Mr. Sheldon, and Mr. Weston may disagree from him in minor matters, his views are decisive in the management, and the policy of the whole movement depends on him. Through his indefatigable zeal in the holy cause of ethics, his unflinching courage in the defense of what he regards as right, his energetic devotion to his ideals, and through the influence of his powerful oratory he has made the ethical societies what they now are. He determines their character and he is the soul of the whole movement. Now it is true that Professor Adler has never presented us with a systematic philosophy, but all his activity, his speeches, his poems, and the plans of his enterprises represent a very definite philosophical conception, which, to give it a name, may briefly be called Kantian Agnosticism.

Professor Adler is an agnostic, although not after the pattern of Spencer or Huxley. His agnosticism has been impressed upon his mind by Kant.

I expect that Mr. Adler will repudiate the name of agnostic, and it is quite indifferent with what name he may characterise his views. His position remains the same, whatever name he may choose to call it, if he chooses any; and he will choose none for he is too consistent an agnostic to define his position by a name.

It devolves upon me to prove my assertion and I hope to be able to do so.

Professor Adler looks upon ethics as something which lies outside the pale of human knowledge. He says in one of his lectures:

"And now one point more of utmost importance. If there be an
existence corresponding to our highest idea, as we have said
there is, yet we know not what kind of existence that may
be ... why then should we speak of it at all, why should we
try to mention in words an existence which we cannot know? I
will answer why. Because it is necessary to remind mankind
constantly that _there is an existence which they do not
know_.... Because otherwise the sense of mystery will fade out
of human lives...."

Is "the sense of mystery" really a necessary element in human lives to make men aware of the grandeur of the universe. Is there no holiness in clearness of thought, and is ethics only sacred if it is surrounded with the hazy halo of an unknowable transcendentalism?

If our moral ideal does not come by the special revelation of God, as the dogmatic religions maintain, and if we cannot find it in nature, if it is beyond the ken of human cognition, if it is unascertainable by science, whence does it come? Professor Adler says:

"We must, indeed, be always on our guard, lest we confuse the
idea of the Perfect with notions of the good derived from
human experience. This has been the mistake of theology in
the past, the point wherein every theodicy has invariably
broken down. When we think of the Perfect we think of a
transcendental state of existence, when we think of the moral
law in its completeness we think of a transcendental law,
a law which can only be wholly fulfilled in the regions of
the Infinite, but which can never be fully realised within
the conditions of space and time. The formula of that law
when applied to human relations, yields the specific moral
commandments, but these commandments can never express the
full content, can never convey the far off spiritual meanings
of the supreme law itself. The specific commandments do,
indeed, partake of the nature of the transcendental law, they
are its effects. The light that shines through them comes from
beyond, but its beams are broken as they pass our terrestrial
medium, and the full light in all its glory we can never see."

In this passage I believe to recognise the influence of Kant's transcendentalism. I differ from Professor Adler's conception of Kantian transcendentalism, but that is of no account here. One point only is of consequence. Professor Adler uses the word transcendental in the sense of transcendent and thus he changes the ethics of pure reason into mysticism. Professor Adler says:

"Though I can never be scientifically certain, I can be
_morally_ sure that the mystery of the universe is to be read
in terms of moral perfection."

I do not deny that moral instinct ripens quicker than scientific comprehension. Why? Because in a time when science is not as yet so far advanced as to understand the operations of the moral law, those people who instinctively obey the rules that can be derived from the moral law, will survive and all the rest will go to the wall. But the fact that we can have a reliable moral guide in an instinctive certainty which is generally called conscience, even before we attain to scientific clearness, does not prove that science will be forever excluded from the world of moral ideals.

Professor Adler's agnosticism found a very strong expression in a poem which resembles in its tone and ideas the church hymns of the New Jerusalem. The poem is very unequivocal on the point that moral action is comparable to building an ideal city, the plan of which is unknown to the builders. Professor Adler says:

"Have you heard the Golden City
Mentioned in the legends old?
Everlasting light shines o'er it,
Wondrous tales of it are told.

Only righteous men and women
Dwell within its gleaming wall;
Wrong is banished from its borders,
Justice reigns supreme o'er all.

Do you ask, Where is that City,
Where the perfect Right doth reign?
I must answer, I must tell you,
That you seek its site in vain.

You may roam o'er hill and valley,
You may pass o'er land and sea,
You may search the wide earth over,—
'T is a City yet to be!

We are builders of that City,—
All our joys and all our groans
Help to rear its shining ramparts;
All our lives are building-stones.

* * * * *

_What that plan may be we know not._[136]
How the seat of Justice high,
How the City of our vision
Will appear to mortal eye,—

That no mortal eye can picture,
That no mortal tongue can tell.
We can barely dream the glories
Of the Future's citadel."

[136] The italics are ours.

How great an importance is attributed to this song by the leaders of the ethical movement may be learned from Mr. Salter's opinion of it. Mr. Salter says in criticising Unitarianism:

"Not from Unitarianism, not from Christianity, has come the
song that best utters and almost chants this thought [of
an ideal fellowship]. It is from Felix Adler, upon whom, I
sometimes think, more than upon any other man of our day, the
mantle and prophetic spirit of Channing have fallen, and whose
words, I almost believe, are those which Jesus himself would
utter, should he come and put his solemn thought and passion
into the language of to-day."

Agnosticism is in our opinion no sound basis upon which to erect ethics. The unknowable is like quicksand, it gives way under our feet. The ethics of agnosticism must necessarily become mysticism. The ethereal dreams of mysticists need no solid basis, they hover in the air. Mr. Spencer who for some reason or other tried to escape the consequences of his agnosticism in the ethical field, adopted Utilitarianism, basing his moral maxims not upon the unknowable, as consistency would require, but upon the principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

Professor Adler is not a Spencerian agnostic and here lies the strength of his ethics. Although he does not attain to a clear and scientific conception of the origin and natural growth of morality, he sounds no uncertain voice with regard to the Happiness Principle. He has on several occasions, like his great master Kant, uncompromisingly rejected any Hedonism or Eudæmonism. Among all societies aspiring to foster moral ideals, the societies for ethical culture are distinguished for their seriousness and ardor; and there can be no doubt about the cause: it is the spirit of Professor Adler's zeal not to give way to a hedonistic conception of ethics.

X. THE UNITY OF THE ETHICAL PROBLEM.

We conclude. Although the ethical problem can and must be split up in innumerable different problems, we should never lose sight of its unity.

Our age is a period of specialisation, of a division of labor and of detail work. This is true. But the more will it be necessary to survey the whole field and keep in mind the unity of which all piecemeal efforts are but parts. As soon as we lose sight of the unity in a certain system of problems, we are most liable to drop into inconsistencies. This is true of all things, of every science in particular, and of philosophy, the science of the sciences, also. It is no less true of ethics. We cannot engage, with any hope of success, in any of the diverse ethical questions unless we have first solved _the_ ethical problem.

EDITOR.

ON THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE.

A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF GLASGOW, ON JAN. 21, 1891.

It seems impossible to many people to look upon language as anything but an instrument of thought. In one sense this is perfectly true. We think by means of words, just as we see by means of eyes, and hear by means of ears, and walk by means of legs. But could we walk without our legs, or see without our eyes? We can walk with artificial legs, no doubt, and so we can think and speak in foreign languages, and in every kind of artificial sign-language. But as artificial legs presuppose natural legs, foreign and artificial languages presuppose our own natural language.

When we speak of instruments we mean generally such things as knives with which we cut, or pens with which we write. They are instruments which are useful, but they are not indispensable, and can be replaced by other instruments. This does not, however, apply to eyes, ears, or language, and in order to mark that distinction the former are generally called instruments, the latter organs.

Now, if we call language the organ of thought, we, no doubt, admit that we can distinguish between the _organon_, that which works, and the _ergon_, i. e. the work which it performs. But it does by no means follow that therefore the _ergon_ could ever exist without the _organon_. We can easily distinguish between the act of spoken thought and the organ of spoken thought, but it does by no means follow that therefore the act of spoken thought could ever exist without the organ of spoken thought.

It may seem unfair in this argument to call thought "spoken thought." It looks like begging the whole question. But it really is not so. By calling thought "spoken thought," we only supply a deficiency of our modern languages. If we were Greeks, we should use the simple word _Logos_, and instead of begging the question, we should show that our proposition is, really self-evident, or, it may be, even tautological, namely that _logos_ is impossible without _logos_.

Here we can see at once how intimately thought is connected with language, how it is dependent on it, or, more correctly, how inseparable the two really are. If, like the Greeks, we had a word such as logos, we should probably never have doubted that what we call speech and thought are but two sides of the same thing. And the same lesson is taught us again and again, if only we are inclined to listen to it.

Suppose we had no such word as _matter_, would not our whole system of thought be different? Matter is not an object, perceived by our senses. We may even go further and say that matter by itself never exists. This or that matter exists, chemical substances, say, gold or silver, oxygen or hydrogen, exist; but matter, which some philosophers look upon as the most certain and concrete of all things, is simply an abstraction, something that may be predicated of many things, but that is never found by itself _in rerum naturâ_.

Some people define matter as what is ponderable and impenetrable, but here again, nothing exists that is simply ponderable, or impenetrable. It is always something else; it is iron, wood, stone, vapor, gas, but never matter, _pur et simple_.

It is clear, therefore, that matter is made by us, and that without some such word as matter, we could never have the faintest idea or concept of matter. For how should we call it? On the other hand, it is equally clear that we could not have the word matter, without the concept of matter. For what would be the use of it? Now, what follows from this apparent dilemma? If the concept cannot be prior to the name and the name cannot be prior to the concept, they must needs be simultaneous, or, more correctly, they must be the same thing under two aspects.

From an historical point of view, that is, if we consider the genesis of words and concepts, not in modern times, but during that period when words and concepts were framed for the first time, we are bound to admit that the word is really the _prius_. That period may be ever so far distant, but it was nevertheless a very real and truly historical period.

How did man arrive at such a word as matter? The word itself tells its own story. It came to us from French, it came into French from Latin. In Latin _materies_ or _materia_ still means wood and timber, though it has also assumed the meaning of matter, like the Greek ὕλη, which means both wood and matter. The process by which _materies_ came to mean matter is clear. If _materies_ meant originally the wood out of which a hut, a table, a chair, or a stick was made, it was naturally applied to other substances also, such as stone, bricks, or metal when used in the making of huts, tables, chairs, or sticks. In the same way we speak of a pen, i. e. a quill, though we mean a steel pen.

When the original special meaning of wood thus disappeared, there remained only the meaning of building material, material, and, at last, of matter and substance. We say now, What is the matter? What does it matter? but we little think of the solid beams out of which such expressions were hewn and fashioned. In this sense, therefore, we may say that historically the word _materies_ came first, meaning a beam, and that gradually it shed its various attributes, one after the other, till there remained nothing but its trunk, and that is what we now mean by matter.

Here, therefore, we see the process of generalisation which is very important, particularly in the later periods of language and thought.

But it is the greatest mistake to suppose that language, such as we know it, what we might call historical language, always begins with the particular and then proceeds to the general. Adam Smith was one of the ablest defenders of the theory that the _Primum Cognitum_ and the _Primum Appellatum_ must have been the particular. But all the facts of language are dead against this theory. And yet, that theory has once more been put forward by a philosopher who prides himself on nothing so much as that his philosophy rests throughout on positive facts. I do not blame a philosopher who is ignorant of the results obtained by the Science of Language, so long as he abstains from touching on the subject. But constantly to appeal to language, and yet to ignore what has been achieved by comparative philologists, is unpardonable. No one is a greater sinner in that respect than Mr. Herbert Spencer.

When speaking of the process by which the abstract idea of color was formed he says:[137] 'The idea of each color had originally entire concreteness given to it by an object possessing the color; as some of the unmodified names, such as orange and violet, show us. The dissociation of each color from the object specially associated with it in thought at the outset, went on as fast as the color came to be associated in thought with objects unlike the first, and unlike one another. The idea of orange was conceived in the abstract more fully in proportion as the various orange-colored objects remembered, cancelled one another's diverse attributes, and left outstanding their common attribute. So it is if we ascend a stage, and note how there arises the abstract idea of color, apart from particular colors.'

[137] _Data of Ethics_, p. 124.

Now this is all untrue. Such names as orange and violet are some of the latest names of color. They presuppose such late, nay exotic, concepts, as _orange_ and _violet_. The question why an orange was called an orange, and a violet a violet remains unasked and unanswered. In the old names for _black_, _white_, _red_, _green_, and _blue_, there is not a trace of ink, or snow, or blood, or sea, or sky. They are all derived, so far as we can analyse them at all, from roots meaning to shine, to grow, to beat black and blue, and not from oranges, roses, or violets.

Again, what can be the meaning of such a sentence as:[138] 'Words referring to quantity furnish cases of more marked dissociation of abstract from concrete. Grouping various things as small in comparison either with those of their kind or with those of other kinds; and similarly grouping some objects as comparatively great, we get the opposite abstract notions of smallness and greatness.' Does Mr. Spencer really believe that we can call things small and great, that our language can possess two adjectives expressive of these qualities, and that yet at the same time we are without an abstract notion of smallness and greatness? Mr. H. Spencer constantly calls on the facts of language, to confirm his views, but his facts are hardly ever correct. For instance: after having explained that, according to his ideas, greater coherence among its component motions broadly distinguishes the conduct we call moral from the conduct we call immoral, he appeals to the word _dissolute_, when meaning immoral, as proving this theory. But _dissolutus_ in Latin meant originally no more than negligent, remiss. _Dissolutio_ meant languor, weakness, effeminacy, and then only licentiousness and immorality. Language, therefore, in no way confirms Mr. H. Spencer's speculations, still less does experience, for no man is so coherent in his acts, so calculating, so self-restrained, as the confirmed criminal; no one is often so careless, so little shrewd, so easily duped as the thoroughly moral and therefore trustful and confiding man.

[138] L. c., p. 125.

But to return to the history of the word for matter. The process by which _materies_, wood, came to mean matter, is intelligible enough, whether we call it generalisation, or abstraction. But how came _materies_ to mean wood? That is the question which has to be solved, and in solving it, we shall find that while in the second period of thought-language the progress is from the particular to the general, the progress in the first period is the reverse, namely from the general to the particular. In the case of _materes_ this is very clear. No one can doubt that in _materies_ the radical element is _mâ_, the derivatives _ter_ and _ies_. The radical element _mâ_ is found in Sanskrit _mâ-tram_, measure, _mâ-nam_, measuring, _mâ-na-s_, a building; in Greek μέ-τρον, measure; in Latin _me-tare_, to measure. We can hardly doubt that the oldest Aryan name for mother also, namely _mâtar_, Greek μήτηρ, Latin _mater_, English _mother_, is derived from that root, though it is doubtful in what sense. It may have meant originally no more than maker or fashioner, and it is important to observe that in the Veda the same word _mâtar_, occurs as a masculine and means maker, and actually governs an accusative. But it may also have meant arranger, controller, and mistress of all household affairs. Whatever its original intension was, _mâtar_ soon became a mere name. Its etymological keynote was no longer audible, and _mâtar_ meant mother and all that was implied in that name when used by children and others.

If we compare all the words which contain this _mâ_ as their common element, we can see that it meant originally to put two or more things together. This led to two applications. What we call measuring is really putting two things together, one by the side of another, to see how far they agree and how far they differ. Thus _mâ_ took the special meaning of measuring, in such words as Greek μέτρον and Sanskrit _mâtram_. But to put together could also be used in the sense of joining, carpentering, building, and making, and this meaning we find in such words as (Sanskrit) _mânas_, a building, _mâti_, he measures, he makes, and likewise _materies_, what has been fashioned, what can be used for building a hut, timber, wood, building material, then any kind of material, and at last matter, substance in its most general acceptation.

You can see here very clearly the twofold process in the formation of words, first, from the general to the particular,—from measuring to wood, and then from the particular to the general, from timber to matter.

If you ask, what is this syllable _mâ_ which has the general meaning of measuring and making, I can only answer, We know, and we do not know. We know as a fact that it is the common element in a number of words, which are differentiated by a number of derivative elements, called suffixes, prefixes, and infixes, but which can all be shown to share in common the general meaning of making and measuring. These common elements have been called roots. The question whether these roots ever existed by themselves, and whether any language could ever have consisted of these roots, is a foolish question. For as soon as a root occurs in a sentence, it is either a subject or a predicate, a noun or a verb, and it has ceased to be a mere root. But on the other hand, it is quite true that in certain languages, as, for instance, in Chinese there is no formal difference between a root and a word—there are no suffixes or prefixes. But the strict rules of the collocation of words in every sentence make it quite clear whether a word is to be taken as a substantive, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, and all the rest.

By the same process by which we have reduced a number of words to the root _mâ_, the whole dictionary of Sanskrit, and of English also, in fact of all the Aryan and likewise of the Semitic languages, has been reduced to a small number of roots. Given that small number of roots, we undertake to account for the whole wealth of words in any language, simply by means of derivation with suffixes and prefixes, and by means of composition.

In all this we are dealing with fact, facts which are as well ascertained as any facts in physical science.

Making allowance for a small margin of words which have as yet resisted all attempts at etymological analysis, we can state that the vast majority of words in Sanskrit has been reduced to about 800 roots. In the progress of language whole families of words derived from some of these roots become extinct while others continue prolific and take their place. The consequence is that the number of roots in English has dwindled down to 461, while the sum total of words has risen to about 250,000.

Every one of these roots has a general or conceptual meaning, such as striking, pushing, rubbing, cutting, bearing, binding, measuring, building, moving, going, falling, and all the rest.

It often happens, however, that two or more roots have the same or nearly the same meaning, and this explains why, when we count the fundamental concepts expressed by our 800 roots in Sanskrit, we find that they amount to no more than 121.

I say again that in all this we are dealing with well ascertained facts.

The next step, however, leads us into the domain of theory. If we are asked, how these roots came into existence, we may decline to answer the question as outside the limits of science. A chemist would probably do the same, if he were asked how the chemical elements came into existence. In fact, the students of the Science of Language have always taken their stand here and have treated roots as ultimate facts.

I ought to mention, however, two theories which, though they have long been surrendered by students of the Science of Language still enjoy a certain popularity, and commend themselves to many people by their extreme simplicity and plausibility.

The first consists in ascribing the roots of all languages to a direct communication from God. It is impossible to refute such an opinion; all we can say is that such a communication, if we try to realise it in imagination, would imply such a crude anthropomorphism that one naturally shrinks from entering into details.

The second consists in looking upon roots as imitations of the sounds of nature or as interjections. Here all we can say is that the experiment has been tried again and again, and has failed. Every language contains a number of such words which are imitations of the sounds of nature or interjections. No one can doubt of the origin of _bow wow_, a dog, or of _pooh-poohing_, in the sense of rejecting. But the great stock of words, however, cannot be accounted for by this easy process, and no serious scholar would think of resuscitating what many years ago I described as the Bow-wow and Pooh-pooh theories.

But while the student of language seems to me to have a perfect right to treat the roots of language as ultimate facts, it is difficult for the philosopher not to look beyond. He cannot hope to do more than to suggest an hypothesis, but if his hypothesis accounts for the few facts he has to deal with, such an hypothesis is legitimate, though, no doubt, it is very far from being an established truth.

The hypothesis which I suggested on the origin of roots, was suggested to me by Professor Noiré's hypothesis as to the origin of concepts. My late friend, Professor Noiré, was one of those who discovered difficulties where no one else saw them. While most philosophers were satisfied with the fact that man possessed the power of forming, not only percepts, but concepts also, while no trace of conceptual thought was found in animals, Noiré subjected this power of forming concepts to a most minute psychological analysis, and thus was brought face to face with the question, what was, from a psychogenetic point of view, the real impulse to the formation of conceptual thought. Questions like this, which to most people, seem perfectly superfluous, often mark the real progress in the history of philosophy. Logicians see no difficulty in explaining how, either by addition or subtraction, positively or negatively, concepts are formed out of percepts. White, they say, is either what snow, milk, and marble share in common, or what remains if we drop from snow, milk, and marble all but their color. The psychologist who looks upon the human mind as the result of an evolution, whether in the individual or in the race, asks, not _how_, but _why_ such concepts should have been formed. Now Professor Noiré showed, as I thought, with great sagacity, that the first inevitable concepts arose from man's consciousness of his own repeated acts; that nowhere in nature could we find a similar primitive and irresistible impulse to conceptual thought, but that if the beginning had once been made, there was no longer any difficulty in accounting for the further development of conceptual thought in all directions.

I call this no more than an hypothesis, or, if you like, a guess, and I do not see how in the regions in which we find ourselves, we can expect anything more than an hypothesis. But when one hypothesis, like that of Noiré's, harmonises with another hypothesis, that was formed quite independently, we cannot help seeing that the two lend each other powerful mutual support.

Let us remember then that a most careful psychological analysis had led Noiré to the conclusion that the germs of all conceptual thought were to be found in the consciousness of our own repeated acts. And let us place by the side of this, the well-ascertained fact that the germs of all conceptual language, what we call the roots, express with few exceptions the repeated acts of men. Is not the conclusion almost inevitable that these two processes were in reality but two sides of one and the same process in the evolution of human thought and human language? Professor Noiré did not know of the linguistic fact, when he arrived at his psychological conclusions. I did not know of his psychological conclusions, when I arrived at my linguistic facts. But when I saw that by different roads we had both arrived at exactly the same point, I thought that this could not be by an accident.

There remained, however, one more question to be answered, and that question again could be answered hypothetically only. How can we account for the sounds of the roots, which we have recognised as the germs of conceptual thought and conceptual language? Why should, for instance, the concept of rubbing be expressed by MAR, and that of tearing by DAR? Here again Noiré and others before him have pointed to the well-known fact that men, when engaged in common acts, find a relief in emitting their breath in more or less musical modulation. It has therefore been supposed that our roots are the remnants of sounds which accompanied these acts, and which, being used, not by one man only, but by men acting in common, were therefore intelligible to the whole community.

No one would dream of representing this theory of the origin of our conceptual roots as a well-ascertained historical fact. It is and can only be an hypothesis. But, as such, it fulfils all the requirements of a working hypothesis. It explains all that has to be explained, and it does not run counter to any facts, or any well established theories. It explains the sounds of our roots, not as mere interjections, which would be the signs of momentary feelings, and not, what we want, the signs of our consciousness of a number of repeated acts as one action. Our roots are, if we may venture to say so, conceptual, not interjectional sounds. They are, in fact, exactly what, according to Noiré's philosophical system, the primary elements of language ought to be.

I do not say that this theory is the only possible theory of the origin of roots, and therefore of language. Let a better theory be started, and I shall be delighted to accept it. But don't let us try to revive exploded theories, unless there are new facts to support them. I can only give you my own experience. For many years I was satisfied to look upon roots as ultimate facts. But when Professor Noiré showed that the fundamental concepts of our thought must be concepts expressive of our own acts, and when thereupon I went carefully through the list of our Aryan roots and found that with few exceptions, every one of them, as a matter of fact, expressed the ordinary acts of men in a simple state of civilisation, I was driven to the conclusion that the primitive roots of Aryan speech may owe their origin to the sounds which naturally accompany many acts performed in common by members of a family, a clan, or a village. This would vindicate once more the conviction which I have always held that language was from the beginning conceptual, and confirm the well-known statement of Locke, that 'the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction between man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to.'

Allow me in conclusion to say a few words on what I can hardly call a criticism, but rather a misrepresentation, or, I ought perhaps to say, a complete misapprehension of this theory of the origin of roots which appeared in a book lately published by Professor Romanes, "Mental Evolution in Man," as a continuation of an earlier work of his, called "Mental Evolution in Animals." My learned friend, Professor Romanes, labors to show that there is an unbroken mental evolution from the lowest animal to the highest man. But he sees very clearly and confesses very honestly that the chief difficulty in this evolution is language and all that language implies. He tries very hard to remove that barrier between beast and man. For that purpose he devotes a whole chapter, the thirteenth, to a consideration of the roots of language, and yet he says at the end of the chapter, "I wish in conclusion to make it clear that the matter—that is the question whether roots are imitations of sound or interjections—is not one which seriously affects the theory of evolution."

If it were so, why should Professor Romanes have devoted a whole chapter to it? But it is not my intention to argue this question with Professor Romanes, but rather to show how difficult it is for any one, not acquainted with the Science of Language, even to apprehend the problems that have to be solved. Professor Romanes is, I believe, a most eminent biologist, and the mantle of Darwin is said to have fallen on his shoulders. Far be it from me to venture to criticise his biological facts. But we see in his case how dangerous it is for a man who can claim to speak with authority on his own special subject, to venture to speak authoritatively on subjects not his own. Professor Romanes has, no doubt, read several books on philology and philosophy, but he is not sufficiently master of his subject to have the slightest right to speak of men like Noiré, Huxley, Herbert Spencer, to say nothing of Hobbes, with an air of superiority. That is entirely out of place. When he points out differences of opinion between philologists, he does not even understand how they have arisen, and he ought to know better than anybody else that mere difference of opinion between two competent scholars does not prove that both are wrong and can never be used to throw discredit on the whole science.

But as I said just now, I am not going to argue with Professor Romanes because, as he says himself (p. 276), if I were right, his whole theory would collapse. I hope this is not the case, but I feel sure that, if it were, Professor Romanes would only rejoice at it. Anyhow why introduce so much of the _meum_ and _tuum_ into these discussions? If it could be proved that the Aryas came from Europe, then, no doubt, the other theory that they came from Asia, would collapse. But among serious students every such collapse would be greeted with gratitude, and would be looked upon simply as a step in advance. We are all fellow workers, we all care for one thing only, the discovery of truth. It is in this spirit, and without a thought of any collapse, that I venture to point out a number of clear mistakes which occur on almost every page when Mr. Romanes touches linguistic questions, and which fully account for his not perceiving the true character of the evidence placed before us by the Science of Language.

On page 267 he says that I profess, as a result of more recent researches, to have reduced the number of Sanskrit roots to 121.

I wish I had. But the number of roots in Sanskrit stands as yet at about 800; the number 121, of which he speaks, is the number of concepts expressed by these roots, many of them conveying the same, or nearly the same idea. A root is one thing, a concept quite another. To confuse the two is like confusing thought and expression.